Too Close?

Ned Jarrett was never a full throttle, give ’em hell kind of driver. His driving style, like his personality, was smooth and steady. Yet peel back the pages of time and watch Gentleman Ned win 15 races in 1964 and 13 in ’65. Look a little deeper and discover that in ’65, Jarrett’s last full season on the circuit and a year in which he won his second NASCAR driving title, he actually won two races by 22 laps each. That’s right, the man actually won by 22 laps, twice.

The ’60s were a fascinating era for stock car racing, a time when guys like Jarrett and Junior Johnson often won by astounding margins, racing on mostly small tracks in crossroads towns and burgeoning Southern cities that no longer host NASCAR’s top stock car circuit. Jarrett and Johnson won 13 races each in ’65, and their 26 combined wins made up nearly half of the season’s 55 events. Jarrett acknowledges that multi-lap wins were sometimes unappealing to fans, but often, he points out, contenders fell out of otherwise exciting races late due to mechanical problems, leaving Jarrett or some other driver to take a big win.

Thirteen different drivers won during the ’65 season, but an average of just two cars were on the lead lap at the finish of the 55 races, and 14 cars on average failed to finish. And here’s the kicker: Twenty-three events were won by one lap or more.

“In my days of racing, when we were seeing those multi-lap wins, you couldn’t drive those cars as hard as they would run, from start to finish, like the drivers today have to do,” says Jarrett. “To stay on the lead lap and stay in competition, you have to drive the car as hard as it will go, all the time. You couldn’t do that back in my days of racing because a big percentage of the time you wouldn’t be there at the end of the race. That’s what made David Pearson and Richard Petty so successful; they knew how hard you could drive the car and expect it to be there at the end of the race.”

Although the sport had changed in significant ways a decade after Jarrett retired, when Pearson and Petty were at their peaks, the so-called modern era had yet to completely envelop stock car racing. The ’75 season had eight different winners, but, still, an average of just two cars were on the lead lap at the conclusion of Winston Cup’s 30 races that year. The average number of DNFs had risen from 14 a decade earlier to 17. A full one-third of events were won by drivers who lapped the field, including two six-lap wins and one by seven laps.

Flash forward to the 2001 NASCAR Winston Cup season. Nineteen drivers reached Victory Lane, and five were first-time winners. An average of 18 cars were on the lead lap at the conclusion of the 36 races, as no driver won by lapping the field.

Parity clearly rules Winston Cup racing, and many are of the opinion that the sport is better and more exciting because of it.

“If you want to talk about some boring races, go back to the good-old days because there were races when Richard Petty and David Pearson would check out by three or four laps,” says Jeff Burton, driver of Roush Racing’s No. 99 Ford. “So the good-old days are now, make no mistake about it.”

Statistically, Winston Cup racing has been building to this point for a couple of decades, with multi-lap wins becoming less common and a growing number of cars finishing races on the lead lap. Nonetheless, the extent of the sport’s parity last season left many surprised, including Sterling Marlin, who has been around stock car racing’s big leagues since his days as a youngster helping his dad, Coo Coo Marlin, compete in NASCAR.

“It just shows how much the competition has improved in Winston Cup racing because you never know on a given Sunday who can win the race,” Marlin says. “Looking back to last year with 19 different winners, that’s pretty wild because we usually have 10 to 12 guys who can win each year. To me, having 19 winners last year was a real shocker.”

The Great Equalizer

How did the sport evolve from one where winners often idled well above the pack, such as during Jarrett’s heyday, to one where virtually any driver on the track is capable of winning?

Two correlating factors have contributed to getting stock car racing to this point. One, sponsorship dollars have given teams the tools to build better, faster, more durable cars. When Winston Cup’s modern era began in 1972, so, too, began an influx of marketing and promotional activity that brought major corporate sponsorships into the sport. Teams eventually had more money to invest in equipment over the course of a season, so cars became more reliable as parts were swapped out more frequently and put under less stress.

Two, over the past three decades teams have used that money to continually invest in personnel and build teams capable of making technological advances within the industry. This has been especially true in the past decade.

Sponsorship packages of $10 million and up help support mechanics, shock specialists, a number of engine builders, engineers, fabricators, trips to wind tunnels, team managers, research and development staffs, and so on.

“The technology we have today—for materials, for engines—lets the cars run all day and finish races,” says Richard Childress, a six-time Winston Cup champion team owner. “That’s a big thing. Just the technology alone has done away with a lot of the DNFs we were seeing before. You’re able to do so much more with the parts and pieces.

“What comes along with technology, the second thing and the major player, is sponsorship. Back in the ’70s you had four teams, basically, that had major sponsors. Back then major sponsors were a key to those four or five teams that were winning all the races. Today you’ve got 30-some, almost 40 cars that have major sponsors. I think the major sponsors that have come into the sport are the main reason for the parity, because today everybody, all the teams, can afford to be able to be competitive, where in the past you only had five or six teams that could be competitive.”

A growth spurt fueled by sponsorship money and encompassing both personnel and technology has helped reshape the sport. Focus has shifted to areas of the car previously overlooked—such as shocks, brakes, even exhaust systems—and duties among team members have evolved since the time Childress began fielding a car he drove on the circuit back in the early ’70s.

“I think what you see is a rise in the caliber of people, with specialists in all the different areas,” Childress says. “Today a crew chief has a car chief. The crew chiefs do very little work on the cars any more. They’re there concentrating on what to do to make the cars go faster, keeping the teams going . . . . It’s a whole different group of people in the crew chief area.

“The crew chiefs today are totally different than crew chiefs were 10 years ago. Ten years ago the crew chief was out there setting the car up and doing things. Today the crew chief has his car chief and the crew chief tries to do the thinking and keeping the team going, keeping it together. He’s almost become, instead of a crew chief, almost more of a team manager. He makes the calls on the car, what to do chassis-wise and stuff, but he still has somebody else in there doing (the work) for him.”

Childress says the number of specialists is what costs so much to be competitive. Success depends on putting the right team of specialists together. He pinpoints the time when the explosion in personnel and technology began. “I have to look back in the ’80s, when we started a lot of the wind tunnel work,” Childress says. “After gathering all the different technology that’s out there, at that point it took specialty people, engineers and other people, to read that data. Then NASCAR has done a good job policing and trying to keep the teams as equal as possible.”

The Right Mix

Thirteen Winston Cup team owners reached Victory Lane last season. There was concern a few years ago that multi-car teams would ruin the sport. Burton, who drives for the four-car team of Jack Roush, says that hasn’t happened; that multi-car teams have actually helped the sport.

“When the multi-car teams really got going, there was a real concern it would make Winston Cup racing less competitive,” says Burton. “As last season showed, just the opposite has happened because there are more drivers who are competitive. Maybe it’s still the same car owners winning races, but the fans could care less about that. The drivers and the cars are the ones who put on the show, and that’s what the fans go to the races to see.

“Anybody involved in the sport knows we can’t exist without the car owners and every single person on the team working their (tails) off. But the fans watch the racing on the track, they don’t see the work that goes into it behind the scenes and back at the shops even though that’s probably the most important part of what we do. So, in my opinion, the multi-car teams have made the sport even more competitive. The end result of that is more winners and closer competition.”

There is, however, a line of reasoning that maintains the sport is better off with one dominant driver, a Jeff Gordon or someone else who is winning lots of races and setting the standard for success. But Winston Cup racing has not experienced a true level of domination since Gordon had consecutive seasons from ’96 through ’98 when he won 10, 10 and 13 races. The top figures the past three seasons have been seven wins by Gordon in ’99, six by Tony Stewart in 2000 and six by Gordon last year.

Winning margins that were often measured in laps or half laps are now measured in mere seconds. The average margin of victory last season in 34 of 36 races (two were decided under caution) was 1.2 seconds, 4/10 quicker than the average from the 2000 season. It’s practically unheard of now for a race winner to lap the field, and the lead pack is not just tightening up, it’s growing. Last season’s average of 18 cars on the lead lap was up from 16 the season before and up six from just five years previous when the ’96 season had an average of 12 cars on the lead lap at the finish.

The number of winners each season has also climbed steadily since Winston Cup racing’s modern era began in 1972, the year the schedule was trimmed from as many as 55 races to approximately 30 per year. Prior to last season’s modern record of 19 winners, 14 drivers reached Victory Lane during the 2000 season, and that was preceded by five straight years of 11 different winners each season. In fact, the ’90s saw 10 or more winners every year, and the last time fewer than 10 drivers won in a single season was 1985 when nine won.

Good Or Bad?

Ned Jarrett has mixed emotions on whether or not the level of parity found in recent seasons is good for stock car racing.

“I think it helps lead to the unknown,” Jarrett says. “It’s nice to be able to have a sport where you don’t know who might win on a given day. In many of your ball sports, they can pretty well predict who’s going to win, although circumstances might change that. In auto racing, NASCAR Winston Cup racing in particular, you can’t do that.

“But I still believe having someone out there for everyone else to chase is good for the sport. When Jeff Gordon was winning 10 or 12 races a year, and Dale Earnhardt was, and Richard Petty was—whoever it was—I think that was good for the sport. It certainly gives the sport a lot of attention and sets the bar. That concept is better than having 36 different winners.”

From his perspective as a team owner, Childress would like to see the best of both scenarios: a good mix of winners and a dominant driver. Having 19 different winners, for instance, helps create a larger fan base, he maintains.

“But then, like in every sport, you’ve got to have your Tiger Woods and your Jeff Gordons and these kind of people,” Childress says. “Then you’ve also got to have your Kevin Harvicks and Robby Gordons and these type of guys we have with us, who are out there today building a following.”

Parity, in whatever form, has not come without a price, though. There is concern that Winston Cup competition, with cookie-cutter cars not only performing the same but looking the same as well, has gotten so close that it lacks the definition and flavor found in previous decades. There is also concern that too much emphasis on technology has shifted Victory Lane’s bottom line from driver talent to other factors, such as aerodynamics, pit stops, or wherever else the slightest advantage can be gained.

“I am concerned about the direction we’re headed in as far as the aerodynamics and downforce,” says Jarrett. “I believe if the cars were running at slower speeds at all racetracks we would see even better racing than we’re seeing today. And I think one thing that’s helped to take that away is the aerodynamics, because the cars have so much downforce on them. When one car gets up behind another it’s difficult to pass. I feel that we need to put a bit more of it back in the drivers’ hands.”

Childress says the guy behind the wheel is still the deciding factor, however. “A driver can be a driver, but to be a winning driver they still have to have that desire and the will to win,” he says. “You’ve got a lot of guys who want to win, but when it gets down to the end of the day they can’t pull it off. So the drivers are still important.”