Frontstretch Newsletter: Jan. 1, 2024
Volume
XVIII, Edition I |
Welcome our New Presenting Sponsor, Race Face Digital! |
The Frontstretch Newsletter is presented by Race Face Digital, the ultimate entertainment platform for race fans and collectors to collect, buy, sell and trade digital MP4 collectible racing cards. |
- Teams are continuing to work on their efforts ahead of the 2024 season. In addition, we will continue our offseason content with a look at some New Years' Resolutions for drivers. The countdown to the Daytona 500 will continue with a look back at more classic Daytona 500s. We'll also have any news that breaks for you at Frontstretch. |
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| 3-Time NASCAR Champion Cale Yarborough Dead At
84 Three-time champion Cale Yarborough died Sunday after a long illness in his native South Carolina. He was 84. |
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| Gil de Ferran Brought Winning Back to
Penske Two-time CART champion and 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner Gil de Ferran died Friday after suffering a heart attack in Florida. He was 56. |
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| Ty Dillon Driving Trucks for
Rackley Rackley WAR announced Friday that Ty Dillon will drive the No. 25 Chevrolet full-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2024. |
Photos are courtesy of Penske Entertainment and Nigel Kinrade Photography. Graphic courtesy of our own Jared Haas. Have news for
Frontstretch? Don't hesitate to let us know; email us at frontstretcheditors@googlegroups.com with a promising lead or tip. |
Around the World in Motorsports: Dec. 25-31 |
- Former NASCAR team owner JT Lundy died Wednesday at the age of 82. Lundy, a Kentucky native, is best remembered for being a thoroughbred horse breeder and running Calumet
Farm, a world-renown horse farm near Lexington, from 1982-1992. Calumet horses have won two Triple Crowns (Whirlaway in 1941 and Citation in 1948) and the Kentucky Derby six additional times. During the time Lundy ran Calumet Farm, he ran the farm into unsustainable debt due to substantial investments and massive
financial outlays, such as a $30 million insurance policy on Alydar, the rival to Affirmed during Affirmed's run to the Triple Crown in 1978. Massive financial outlays and defaulting on loans resulted in the farm's bankruptcy. During his time running Calumet Farm, Lundy bought partial ownership of Ranier Racing, a team that was racing part-time in NASCAR with Cale Yarborough driving.
As Ranier-Lundy
Racing, the team saw Yarborough claim his final NASCAR victories in 1985 and 1986. When Yarborough left to start his own team for 1987, Ranier and Lundy hired Davey Allison to replace him. Lundy ultimately sold his share of the team shortly afterwards in order to focus on Calumet Farm's financial issues.
- High Class Racing/MDK Motorsports filled out their remaining open
seats for the Rolex 24 at Daytona Wednesday. Full-time drivers Dennis Andersen and Seth Lucas will be joined in the No. 20 ORECA 07-Gibson by Laurents Hoerr for the five MIchelin Endurance Cup races. Scott Huffaker will drive at Daytona only. Hoerr will be making his IMSA LMP2 debut. He has only one previous start in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. That came in
the 2021 Rolex 24 at Daytona for Muehlner Motorsport America in a Duqueine M30-D08-Nissan in the now-defunct LMP3 class. Hoerr finished third in class, seven laps down. Huffaker has 15 career LMP2 starts, all in the Michelin Endurance Cup races over the past four years. He has five career victories, all of which came with PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. In response to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with
Gaza. As a result, the container ship carrying the teams' equipment from Europe to Dubai has been forced to detour and sail around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. The detour adds multiple weeks to the trip, meaning that the majority of the teams would not get their equipment to the Dubai Autodrome in time for the race. The schedule change now means that
the race is a direct clash with the Rolex 24 at Daytona. As a result, there have been six team withdrawals from the race and significant driver changes since a number of drivers traditionally run in both races. |
The Critic's Annex: 1990 First Union 400 by Phil Allaway
With the offseason well and truly underway, we at Frontstretch have decided to give our Newsletter subscribers some extra content during the slower months. We're going to take a look at some older races and how they were covered on TV. If you have any other races that you'd like to see us look back at how they were covered on TV, please contact Phil
Allaway at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.
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This week, we're looking back at an infamous race in NASCAR history, the 1990 First Union 400 at North Wilkesboro Speedway. It is a race of firsts and lasts. It was the first and only victory in the then-NASCAR Winston Cup Series for Brett Bodine. It was the only
victory on an oval and the last NASCAR victory for King Racing. It was also the last Cup victory for Buick. If that were all this race was known for, I might still look back on it, but it wouldn't be as big of a priority. In reality, there has a big discussion over the years as to whether or not Bodine really won the race. Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt were convinced that
Bodine was on the tail end of the lead lap when the final caution flew. Waltrip apparently still believes that he won the race to this day. The mess occurred due to an elongated round of pit stops under green. Bodine pitted on lap 304, while Earnhardt pitted on lap 315 and Waltrip on lap 318. A couple of laps after Waltrip's stop, Kenny Wallace crashed in turn 1 and
brought out a yellow. There is one more important aspect to how this mess was covered at the time. The 1990 First Union 400 did not air live on television. ESPN had rights to the race, but aired it via tape-delay. Why? The race coincided with the first day of the 1990 NFL Draft. As you know, the NFL Draft is literally ESPN's baby. They built it up from an insignificant event in 1980 to the three-day extravaganza that it is today. With no second ESPN channel at the time (ESPN2 didn't launch until 1993), that meant that the race aired on a delay. Since the race was going to be tape-delayed, ESPN did
not air any of the mess that happened during the yellow. The version of the race that is on NASCAR Classics is the version that aired on ESPN that glossed over the issue. Hence, why we have posted a satellite feed on the race above (posted on YouTube by user SMIFF TV). On the satellite feed, you can see how the on-air crew figured out in real time about what the heck happened and
how NASCAR's Chip Williams (NASCAR's director of public relations at the time) was informing the media in the press box. Sadly, there was no real explanation of the complete mess that happened for viewers watched the delayed broadcast. Bob Jenkins briefly mentioned on the restart that there were some scoring issues that had to be worked out, but now that they were, they were going back green. Of course, given that NASCAR had an 18-lap caution for an incident that wasn't all the serious makes the
whole setup seem disingenuous. So, what definitively happened here? NASCARman and our former colleague Brock Beard looked into the whole mess to answer a couple of questions here. One, did Bodine really win the race? Two, where did the scoring error come into play? The result is this YouTube video. |
ESPN's broadcast did show the pace car picking up Earnhardt as the leader after Kenny Wallace crashed. This is where the error occurred. However, Earnhardt was behind Bodine, who had only dropped to fourth prior to his pit stop and had 11 laps on fresh
tires against Earnhardt's 100 lap+ tires prior to the stop. My only issue with the video above is that this mess didn't put Bodine on a lap of his own. Instead, it put Bodine roughly three-quarters of a lap ahead of Earnhardt and the other leaders at the back of the queue. During that period, Bodine's crew chief Larry McReynolds called Bodine in for four fresh tires, thus eliminating the tire freshness deficiency. This stop was not caught on camera as ESPN spent the majority of the 18-lap caution using static cameras. From there, Bodine was able to fight off a charge from Earnhardt and Waltrip, then
pulled away to take the win. The win is in fact legitimate, but NASCAR's own error allowed Bodine a free extra pit stop that likely played a role in him winning the race. Had he not taken the extra set of tires, could Bodine have won the race? Given his earlier performance in the race, as noted in the above video, I think that could have happened, but it would have been
much harder than it ended up being. During the scoring mess, there was plenty of frustration to go around, even in the booth. NASCAR did not have electronic scoring at the time (it wouldn't be introduced until mid-1993), so this would happen from time to time. If we didn't have electronic scoring today, you could have easily had issues like this. We'll use the 2022 Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond that Denny Hamlin won as an example. He drove up from 45 seconds behind to win that race with a three-stop strategy in the final stage. Had a yellow flown in the final 137 laps that day with the wild strategies at play, chaos would have reigned without electronic scoring. Post-race coverage just involved interviews with Bodine and McReynolds before ESPN left North Wilkesboro. You didn't get any idea of just how bad the scoring issue was if you were watching the tape-delayed broadcast at the time. We also didn't hear from Waltrip or Earnhardt after the race. Would have been good to hear their thoughts on the issue on-air. Most of the comments in that time on
the issue would have aired on TNN's Inside Winston Cup Racing and/or ESPN's SpeedWeek, or been seen in print in publications such as Winston Cup Scene. Outside of the scoring mess, this was a legitimately great race. Earnhardt actually got lapped on merit early, then recovered to lead. Waltrip had his best finish of 1990 and legitimately could
have won this race had the scoring mess not happened. Dick Trickle was in the hunt nearly the entire race before suffering a late engine failure. There was great racing for position and ESPN did a great job bringing viewers this action throughout the field. They just dropped the ball when it came to the most important story of the race. |
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