Understanding NASCAR, part 4: How to pass someone

[jmowreader]

Now we get into the meat of the sandwich: the racing.

The objective in any race is to leave with as many points as you can. It's not necessarily to win.

This morning, I went to one of the multitude of NASCAR-themed websites and recorded how many times every driver finished a race in the Top 10 in 2006. I split it into short-track races, which I classified as races on tracks less than 1-1/2 miles long, and long-track races, which are on tracks of at least 1-1/2 miles. I chose that distance because most of the new tracks are that long. I think California Speedway's the only one that's longer.

It turns out that there are fifteen drivers--Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart and Bobby Labonte--who consistently run in the Top 10. We'll call them The Contenders--any one of these drivers could win the race. (For the record, only one driver who isn't on that list won a non-plate race in 2006: Kurt Busch, who was 17th in the Top 10 standings.)

Because of the way the championship is decided, consistently putting the car into the Top 10 is more important than winning races. Jimmie Johnson, the 2006 Nextel Cup Champion, won only five races, but he put the car in the Top 10 in 24 races--a full two-thirds of the season.

To leave the track with a Top 10 finish, you've got to end the race with at least 33 cars behind you. It's done by passing and guarding.

The first pass is just a pass on the straights, like a pass you'd make in your street car. This doesn't happen often.

The second pass is in the turns. This is where most passing happens, and it helps to understand Racing Grooves--places on the track that have a lot of rubber on them. The more rubber, the faster you can go. You'll run into one-groove, two-groove and three-groove tracks; most of them are two-groove tracks. How you get by a guy here is normally to pass him when he's in the upper groove and you're in the lower groove, because that's the shortest way around the track. It's not a universal---Kevin Harvick won the Daytona 500 on an outside pass in the last lap--but it's close.

The third pass is the Draft. Get two cars close enough together and they'll go faster than one out by himself. If you watch restrictor plate races you see this a lot.

The fourth pass is the Bump Draft. It's like a regular draft but you rear-end the guy you're trying to push forward. If you're not ready for it, it destabilizes your car and can cause you to crash, which happens a lot.

The fifth pass is the Rub. It's just like the Bump Draft except that after you rear-end the guy you pull out from behind him. Now he's destabilized from being hit, even more destabilized from his aerodynamic bubble disappearing, and you can go right around him. One thing you've got to consider before you rub a guy: if he hasn't got much of a sense of humor, when you get almost all the way around him he might accidentally decide to move up the racetrack a little and contact your rear bumper, spinning you out, sending you on a fun ride through the infield, and landing your sorry ass in the wall.

The sixth pass is the Free Pass. Many years ago, when a caution came out you were allowed to continue racing back to the start/finish line. There was a gentleman's agreement that people on the lead lap wouldn't attempt to pass the leader but the leader would slow down to let cars that were a lap or more down past him--this allowed them to make laps up and get back into contention. Now you "freeze" position when the yellow comes out, but NASCAR gives the first car that's one lap down a "free pass" back onto the lead lap.

The seventh pass is the Pass In The Pits. This is a very simple, elegant pass that usually doesn't work. What you do is to go into the pits with a big bunch of other cars, take on two tires when everyone else is taking four, and get back onto the track before everyone else. It doesn't work because when you go back to racing, the guys with better left-side rubber will leave you behind quickly. It makes a slight bit of sense if you can take the race lead by doing it--leading a lap under caution still gets you five bonus points. But in the greater scheme of things, if everyone else is screwing on four new tires, you should do the same thing.

There are several Illegal Passes. You can't pass before you have started the race--your car has to cross the start/finish line before you can pass someone. You can't pass on the apron on a restrictor plate track--most of the people who did this wound up starting the wreck everyone calls The Big One.

Before you pass, you have to decide whether it's in your best interest. Let's say you're J.J. Yeley and you're running in second at Richmond. Richmond is a 3/4-mile track and is therefore in the Short Track class. The car in front of you is the 29 of Kevin Harvick--who scored four wins and ten Top 10 finishes on short tracks in 2006--and he's running strong. You've pitted for the last time and there are 45 laps remaining in the race. Do you try to pass him? Not now. It's not in your best interest. Kevin Harvick is hard to pass on a short track, and if you try it right now you'll wear your tires out. (Remember, his rubber is just as new as yours is right now.) If you're going to pass this guy, you want to wait until about five to go when, if you don't succeed in passing him, you'll have enough life left in your tires to make it to the end. You try passing him now and there's a real good chance you'll end up back in 10th at the end of the race. Tenth doesn't pay the points second does, and that's the name of this game: how many points you have at the end of the year. You're better off getting in behind him and conserving fuel.