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Not yet, please Owners say potential engine rule can work, just not now
Updated: Friday June 15, 2001 11:21 PM
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com LONG POND, Pa. -- Every NASCAR rule change, no matter how minor, comes with a certain amount of murmuring. And when the potential change being discussed concerns something as fundamental as engines, the drumbeats become that much more intense. NASCAR director Gary Nelson wouldn't comment on the recent report that the sanctioning body will restrict race teams to one engine for qualifying, practice and the race at the New England 300 in Loudon, N.H. next month. Regardless, it's apparent that the possible change has been discussed in the garage ... at length. "All it is about the Loudon thing is talk," Andy Petree, owner of the No. 33 and the No. 55 cars, said Friday. "I don't think it'll happen by then. Hardly any teams can react in that amount of time to this kind of change. But going in the direction of one engine per weekend along with some, what I would call, significant changes to the rules inside the engine, to limit where we have been going and where we are going, I think is a step in the right direction." Where NASCAR has been going, and fast, is in the direction of ever-more exotic materials, a la Formula One -- and the result is ever-increasing costs. Clearly, by limiting what parts teams can use and eliminating the need for a team to have multiple engines on hand, expenses will be decreased dramatically. Petree and Robert Yates each estimate the teams could save as much as $1 million annually in the short run.
But Petree, long an advocate for controlling engine costs, is far less concerned about immediate savings than he is the longer-term implications of doing nothing. "There's no telling what it could save us down the road," he says. "Where this thing is going is crazy. Look where we are right now. Where are we going to be in two, three years? That is just as important as how much we are going to save in the first year we do it." If money is the primary motive behind restricting teams' use of multiple engines, such a rule change has the added benefit of potentially enhancing competition. "We've had some discussions in the garage area and I think people would like to have less engines, maybe less R&D, less exotic materials, things like that," said Larry McClure, who owns the No. 4 car of Kevin Lepage. "It does make the smaller teams more competitive and if that does happen, I'd be all for that." Like his fellow owner Petree, McClure is dubious about making such a change during the season -- not because it can't be done, but because implementing such a change fairly would be difficult at best. "I don't think it's feasible that you can run one engine [right now]. Maybe you could get by with it at some of these tracks, but you take part of this field down on this end that doesn't have provisionals," McClure said, pointing toward the garages of some teams deeper in the standings. "They're not in good enough [shape in the] standings, they go to a place with a race motor and don't qualify ... what I'm saying is, there's a lot more pressure on these guys than them down there." Additionally, the unfortunate reality is that any change will, ultimately, still benefit the wealthier teams more, at least in the short run. Teams with money will simply spend whatever is required to develop the best possible engine while teams on a tighter budget won't have that luxury. Regardless, in the long run, limiting engines will level the playing field. "You really can't separate the two as far as cost and the playing field," Petree said. "If they do it right, and I've made my opinions pretty clear to [NASCAR], it will significantly reduce the cost as far as the motors go and it will close the gap between the haves and have-nots." And, at the end of the day, even some the haves acknowledge that something needs to be done. "I think right now with the escalating costs like we have," said Richard Childress, "[things] have gotten so far out of hand ... our qualifying engines, we don't run 'em maybe 20, 25 miles per race, and you spend thousands of dollars on 'em. They [run a single engine] in Busch, it works real well. I know we run more miles, but we just have to make it work."
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