THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 1, 1995 TAG: 9503010590
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
When the winner of Sunday's Pontiac 400 at Richmond International Raceway finishes his celebration in Victory Lane and his car is rolled to the garage for the mandatory inspection, NASCAR will be waiting with new faces, new gadgets and a determined new attitude.
From sophisticated electronic surveillance to a simple new device consisting of a suction cup and a scale for weighing fish, NASCAR Winston Cup director Gary Nelson is leaving no stone unturned in his crusade to clean up any techno-cheating that might be happening in the Winston Cup series.
At Rockingham last Sunday, Nelson's inspectors, including new hire Steve Peterson, an electronics specialist, tested ignition systems and even tore one apart, looking for hidden circuit boards or other unapproved electronic devices.
At Daytona, inspectors scoured the airwaves, homing in on and hunting down data transmission signals, searching for teams that might be violating NASCAR rules by sending digital data from their cars that would provide a vast array of information about the vehicles' performance.
No such activity was found, Nelson is happy to report.
``We traced down a lot of stuff at Daytona,'' he said. ``Everything turned out to digital fax machines and cellular phones. We even traced one signal down that turned out to be that little helicopter that CBS was using to help televise the race.''
In his efforts to keep the sport clean, Nelson has even gone so far as to consult with an official from a high-tech security company whose specialty is testing electronic banking services by trying to rob them.
His mission, Nelson said, ``is not to catch people. We're trying to convince them not to try it.'
A native of Southern California, the 41-year-old Nelson is laid-back by nature. So one of his least favorite things to do is to confront the members of a team he's busted and dish out fines and penalties.
But when he's had to, the former crew chief turned NASCAR top cop has laid down the law.
The repercussions of NASCAR's record fines at Daytona are still being felt.
At Rockingham on Sunday, for the second race in a row, Nelson forced the teams of Junior Johnson and Bill Davis, who were fined for cheating at Daytona, to tear down their engines and undergo a thorough, time-consuming postrace inspection, even though neither car had been in contention in either race.
Normally, the teardown is limited to the top five finishers and a randomly selected car or two.
``We're going to look a little closer at somebody we know has broken the rules already,'' Nelson said.
(On Monday night, a three-member panel of the NASCAR-administered National Stock Car Racing Commission reduced Johnson's fine from $45,100 to $35,100 for using an altered engine manifold at Daytona. The panel also reduced crew chief Mike Beam's indefinite probation to the next four races but placed Johnson on probation for the same period - through the April 2 race at Bristol. Johnson had appealed the penalties.)
Besides the forlorn presence of the Johnson and Davis teams, there were other interesting sights in NASCAR's post-race inspection area at Rockingham.
One was Peterson, who formerly worked on electronics and computers at Roush Racing. Peterson is one of five new inspectors Nelson has hired to replace three inspectors who departed.
Peterson's primary job is inspecting safety equipment, Nelson said, and he's already come up with an ingenious testing device to make sure the roof flaps will open if they need to open.
``He developed this really neat thing with a suction cup attached to a fish scale,'' Nelson said. ``You lift the roof flap with the fish scale and it tells you how much it takes to open the flap. We're developing a standard for how easily it should open. Previously, we'd been using a pocket knife to pry them open to make sure they worked.''
But on Sunday at Rockingham, Peterson was in the roped-off inspection area with a small blue box that Nelson identified as a diagnostic testing device for ignition systems. The blue box elicited some curious comments.
National Speed Sport News correspondent Stan Creekmore heard an engine builder ask NASCAR's pace car driver, Elmo Langley, what the blue box was.
``It's my lunch box,'' Langley replied.
Nelson confirmed that Peterson was testing for unapproved circuitry in the ignition boxes.
``In other forms of racing, such as drag racing, the technology has gotten to the point that when the driver puts his foot to the floor, an on-board computer adjusts the ignition or fuel to give maximum traction,'' Nelson said.
In fact, before the use of computers and digital transmissions was limited in Formula One racing, Honda engineers in Japan were making adjustments by satellite to the Formula One cars while they were speeding around the track, Nelson said.
An on-board computerized traction-control system would be tremendously beneficial to a stock car, he said. For instance, at shorter tracks such as Rockingham and Richmond, the engine can generate too much power, spinning the rear wheels on the pavement when the driver hits the gas coming off the turns. An on-board computer, reading information from tiny sensors attached to each wheel, can control traction by cutting engine power, even to the point of taking one of the eight cylinders out of commission.
But NASCAR has banned the computers in its effort to control the cost of stock-car racing, Nelson said.
To hunt for violations, ``all we did was go to the manufacturers of ignition boxes and get their diagnostic equipment,'' he said. ``It's perfect for making sure that the ignition boxes are non-computerized.''
So far, all the cars have passed the ignition test. But when inspectors got to the ignition box on Dale Jarrett's car Sunday, they discovered that it had an ``oddball wiring harness'' that couldn't be hooked up to their blue box. So they pried it open. They found nothing amiss but ruined the box in the process.
For Jarrett's team, that meant several extra hours of work Monday, replacing ignition boxes on the car.
``They pried the back off them, so we were fearful of using them again,'' crew chief Larry McReynolds said.
Nelson attributed that incident to the growing pains of instituting new processes and said NASCAR was working toward getting everyone to use the same wiring harnesses so they can easily test them instead of prying them open.
``I'm a little bit surprised that they've gone to those extremes,'' said Jimmy Makar, Bobby Labonte's crew chief, whose car's ignition box was checked after Sunday's race.
``But I'm happy to see it. I'm glad to see NASCAR step up the inspection process and keep everybody on level terms.'' by CNB