ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604290114
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: AUTO RACING
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
The old NASCAR reared its ugly head again this weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.
This was not the sleek, professional, well-tuned, self-confident NASCAR that has been emerging in recent years as stock car racing hurtles through a period of tremendous growth.
This was the old NASCAR, the scheming and dictatorial NASCAR, the my-way-or-else NASCAR. This was the NASCAR that made people think races were fixed.
It was bad enough that Gary Nelson, NASCAR's Winston Cup director, forced car owner Robert Yates and driver Ernie Irvan to give up their pole-winning car for the sake of a horsepower test in the garage Friday, then broke the engine.
But the worst of it was how Nelson tried to talk his way out of it. Give him credit for coming to the media center and facing the tough questions. Unfortunately for Nelson and for NASCAR, he didn't come clean.
Nelson's first mistake was that he tried to do NASCAR research and development in the middle of a race event, and the plan blew up in his face just as Yates' engine blew up on the portable chassis dynamometer.
Yates learned the bad news Saturday morning when he opened the engine and found those tiny craters and pock marks on the tops of the pistons - the tell-tale evidence of damage.
Nelson had personally ruined Yates' best restrictor-plate motor for Irvan's pole-winning car. And it's not as if Yates can snap his fingers and get another motor as good as that one.
``We built 23 restrictor-plate engines this winter and two of them turned out good,'' he said. ``That was our best bullet. I hope they're happy.''
Yates and Irvan and crew chief Larry McReynolds had begged Nelson not to do the test. They told him he would damage the engine. They knew what was going to happen.
``Ernie told them it was going to kill the engine,'' McReynolds said. ``They said, `Oh no, we know how to do it. We've done it many times before. We did it on a passenger car and it worked fine.' That was the best response. It was a donkey show.''
Nelson said during his news conference that Yates had the option not to have his car tested. He stood by that statement Saturday.
``I feel it was not without a choice,'' Nelson said.
But even without hearing any of the words exchanged, you could see watching from a distance Friday that wasn't true. You could see that Yates and McReynolds were pleading with Nelson to not do the test - and that Nelson wasn't budging.
On Saturday, when McReynolds was told of Nelson's ``option'' statement, he said, ``That's a lie.''
``They didn't give us any option,'' Yates said. ``They told us.''
By the end of the final practice Saturday for today's Winston Select 500, Irvan and his team were in a deeper funk than ever. To replace the broken engine, they had assembled one engine from parts of two backups, but it had proved to be nowhere near as good as the old one.
``I don't even want to talk about it,'' Irvan said.
Nelson also tried to suggest Friday that any damage to Irvan's engine might have happened on the track during qualifying. And on Saturday, even his apology was guarded.
``If that [damage] occurred, we apologize,'' he said. ``Our intention was not to do any damage.''
There was no ``if'' about it.
NASCAR spokesman Kevin Triplett agreed Friday's test wasn't NASCAR's finest hour, but he disputed any notion the sanctioning body's actions were heavy-handed.
``Several car owners asked for this test,'' Triplett said. ``Do we not do it and have people say we're trying to favor someone? Do we do it in a closed session and have people say we're trying to hide what we find? Do we do it in the open and risk something going wrong?
``That's what we did, and we're getting nailed to the wall. We're very concerned with having people realize we're doing things above board. That's why Gary personally put himself on the line. But nobody's saying, `At least they gave it a shot.'''
It is true that in the past NASCAR wouldn't have bothered to do the test in the open and would have tried to cover up the type of fiasco that occurred Friday.
But that doesn't change the fact that Nelson was warned what could happen, he was offered alternatives, he rejected the advice and he blew Yates's engine.
That was heavy-handed, and it may have directly affected one driver's ability to compete in one of NASCAR's biggest races of the year.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB