Sunday it was announced that Juan Pablo Montoya is going to run the NASCAR Nextel Cup next season for Chip Ganassi Racing. Today, it is rumored that Danica Patrick from the Indy Racing League is looking at making the change to NASCAR as well.
If you are a gear-head, don’t yell me. I’m going to simplify greatly for the non-gearheaded of our readers, as motorsports is big business, as well as fun.
Stock cars, meaning NASCAR Nextel Cup, are those big rolling billboards with fenders over the tires. Believe it or not, those bodies are somewhat like a Dodge Challenger, Chevy Impala and Ford Fusion. Next year you will see a Toyota Camry body style.
Under the metal skin, the things are purpose-built race cars with walloping big V-8 engines and carburetors. 700 to 800 horsepower are common and they run on Sunoco pump gasoline. The car must weight 3500 pounds, ready to race.
Formula One and Indy Racing League cars are sort of alike. They are the low-slung fragile looking ones with the exposed wheels. There are dozens of little wings, big wings, Gurney flaps and wickerbill aerodynamic devices bolted onto them. There are all kinds of advertisements plastered on the Formula One and IRL cars too.
IRL cars run on methanol, while Formula One has a unique gasoline-related fuel, special to their series. A Formula One car has to weigh 1100 pounds and the tiny little computer controlled engines put out around 800 to 1000 horsepower. IRL cars are less powerful and weigh a little more.
Some argue that Formula One is the pinnacle of the automotive engineering arts. The vehicles generate enough downforce from all those wings that, theoretically, you could drive them upside down inside a big pipe.
Other argue that paying $10 million for a chassis and another $5 million for one engine is insane even if it will rev to 20,000 rpm. Some call NASCAR stock cars overgrown taxi cabs. Some call the IRL cars toys, not fit for decent race fans. I like them all. I’d watch riding lawn mowers race, but I’m different.
Drivers in NASCAR race into their 50’s and are just as competitive as the teenagers and twenty-somethings. Formula One is only for those who have jackrabbit reflexes and eyes like a cat. A Formula One driver is ancient at 30, if he isn’t dead. A career in NASCAR is 10 to 25 years like Jeff Gordon or Mark Martin. The Formula One career is perhaps 10 years at the most and only for the truly stellar like Schumacher.
NASCAR has the rules set up so of a field of 43 cars, at least 30 have a real shot at winning that particular race. IRL, it comes down to cubic dollars. It will be a Penske car that wins. Formula One, either Schumacher or Alonzo, Ferrari or Renault. If you aren’t in those rides, you are at the back.
Formula One is notorious for the utterly confusing politics of any decision that involves Bernie Ecclestone. The IRL is not quite broke and the rules reflect that state of mad panic, plus Tony George. NASCAR is ruled by Brian France and Mike Helton. If they say so, it is so and don’t ask again. Behave or Be Gone.
There are thirty-six races in the Nextel Cup from February to November. Formula One is eighteen races. IRL holds fourteen. Drivers are very rarely salaried positions: They race for a percentage of the purse, sponsorship and other money that comes in. There might be bigger money in Formula One, but the racing isn’t good. The IRL doesn’t pay well but the racing is occasionally good.
So Montoya and Patrick can race more often, more competitively, in cars that cost a couple of hundred thousand, for a purse in the millions. In Formula One and the IRL you have cars that cost millions running for a purse in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It might be a tougher gig in NASCAR, as the drivers race more often, over longer distances. The upside is the money and the sheer joy of competing door to door with 42 other drivers.
There will be a learning curve, as the dynamics of the two types of cars are almost polar opposites. Expect some truly bone-headed mistakes and crashes from Montoya and Patrick if she jumps. However, the racing, the real reason, is worlds better than where they are now.
I’ll address the gender issue too: For those who think a woman isn’t “strong” enough to hustle an evil-handling stock car around Richmond or Texas, let me remind you that Nextel Cup cars all have power steering. IRL cars don’t have power steering and Danica Patrick has done just fine at Richmond and Texas.
Montoya and Patrick are racers. Watching racers compete is a blast.
RoadDave 