1980 Syracuse Schaefer 200 Controversy

ground effects machines have created a tremendous controversy here this weekend for the running of the shaffer 200 at syracuse new york [Music] already a tremendous controversy is brewing however one of the drivers gary bulloe brought a ground effects car here from florida and that's caused several of the other drivers to modify their cars in the past several days two ground effects because a ground effects car is much faster than a conventional car one of those drivers who has modified his car is jeff beaudine and larry had an opportunity to talk with him earlier well i there's nothing we can do about it we came here to run for the front spot and when we showed up we had a legal car gary blue showed up with a car that was far superior than ours and we just went home and went to work and and try to come up with something that would allow us to compete with gary and a few of the other fellows have done the same thing today there's just no other choice we had to uh do this circuit we didn't want to we came with a legal car we didn't want to have to change it but to compete with gary and to give the fans a show we had to do it so this car has been rebuilt over the past three days oh yeah we've worked a lot long hours uh you know we haven't been to bed for a couple nights and i hope it's all worth i hope the weather clears up and we can get out there and put a show on for the fans jeff one of the big complaints seems to be that this race is designed for the weekly competitor to give him a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to race for how do you react to that well i agree to it uh the promoters and the officials here made a mistake by not having a set of rules that would not allow a car like ours or like gary's and i feel sorry for the other fellas but like i say we had to do it to be able to compete we didn't come here to try to finish second we came here to try to win and put a show on for the fans and we just had to do what we did now here is the poll setter the car that began all the controversy if you look close there are some resemblances here to a lincoln continental but it's gary bellew the man who has won three of these races the only one to win three gary do you think you have an unfair advantage yeah but we have an advantage uh you know we work six months in the garage 12 14 hours a day to get that advantage uh i think we did our homework real well and you know like i said before thank kenny well and don brown for designing a car and i just did a fabulous shot and put it all together you know just a combination of good motor good chassis builder good construction good sheet metal the right tires and uh came out to be a real good combination for us [Music] like i said earlier i said you know i'd rather be really lucky than good you know what we need right now is a whole lot of luck andy it's been a very controversial week hasn't it well larry that's certainly an understatement it started with one automobile here in practice on wednesday that quite frankly we didn't expect to be here and uh quite honestly we'd prefer not be here and now we've got several cars that as you label are controversial in today's field well let's talk about the kind of car we're talking about first what kind of car is it that you'd really would prefer not to be racing here well i think the concept is known as ground effects it's the use of aerodynamics the use of the air in a cushion or wing effect to keep the car pushed down on the racetrack in other words what the drivers are doing is they're building the cars as wide and as high as possible putting the largest possible interior wing around them in the cockpit and creating an airfoil in effect as you know the rules here in syracuse for stock cars ban exterior airfoils but we have no rule concerning interior airfoils so they found a loophole in the rules right quite frankly we have minimum rules as far as height and width because if you'll remember back in the olden days the the way to get around a racetrack aerodynamically was to cut cut the least amount of air as possible make the car as small as possible to avoid that problem we set minimum rules as far as the number of inches we allow it in height and with but not maximum rules andy from the spectator standpoint the ground effects cars are probably a plus why is dirt opposed to them well indeed they may be a plus for the fans they may be a plus as far as a technical advancement for racing but uh quite frankly larry that's not the kind of automobile we want to see here in the shaffer 200. this is not a one day or one week event it's the culmination of 22 qualifying races throughout the summer at various speedways which run modified stock cars each and every week and we want the same type of automobile which runs on the weekly circuit to be competitive here at syracuse the drivers who run the fondas on saturday night the flemington's on saturday night the beach ridge speedways in maine and on and on and on we want those cars to be able to come here at syracuse be competitive and run for the 125 thousand dollars which is offered here we don't want a car coming to syracuse which is especially fabricated just for this racetrack just for this race to understand what we're supposed to be watching here this weekend let's first dissect the name of this kind of car it's called a modified stock car but over the years the term stock car sort of been dropped off for the convenience of journalists i guess but the origin of this car goes way back to the early 1950s when people were taking stock cars off of the assembly line of detroit and running them under mild dirt tracks across the country what they discovered after a very short period of time was that the smaller cars or the lighter weight cars obviously were a little better were a little faster easier to handle and more suitable for automobile racing so the division of modified racing was born this is a traditional modified as you can see the body closely resembles that of a detroit produced gremlin and the rules do say that the bodies must resemble something that rolls off an assembly line at detroit now there are restrictions on the engine no more than cubic inches there is a height limitation in terms of minimum the car must be at least 50 inches higher but there is no maximum height and also this roof can have a slope of no more than 10 degrees this is the traditional modified race car that has raced up and down the east coast for the past 15 years but this weekend at syracuse something dramatic has happened this car you'll recognize is a dramatic departure from the traditional modified that we just looked at oh it starts simple enough here in the front end just a regular regulation modified nose but as you move back toward this chevrolet engine and get closer to the driver cockpit you see dramatic differences in the body design of this race car total aerodynamics now the rules state there can be no airfoils outside the bodywork of the car so what has this team done it has simply made the body wider and put the airfoils the wings the aerodynamics inside the outer portion of this race car they have found a loophole in the rolls now this is one of those inverted wings that we've seen on sprint cars already in 1980 down here at the bottom of this wing skirts similar to those used in indianapolis they slide they move and what they help do is create a partial vacuum underneath this race car which allows the air pressure above it to push the car down on the ground this entire race car from front to back and top to bottom is now aerodynamically designed this car happened to be rebuilt over the past three days one of the top teams showed up with an aerodynamic car and the other top teams felt they had to redesign theirs to keep pace now here is the finishing touch to the aerodynamics of this racing machine this huge opening here allows the air to gush out creating a partial venturi effect the same kind of effect that was engineered into the chaparral indianapolis cars of johnny rutherford the air rushes out of here again creating more of a vacuum underneath this race car he qualified at 112.651 miles an hour 31.957 seconds around this one mile track starting alongside gary ballou in the front row will be sammy beavers who will be driving car number 73 here this afternoon sammy beavers qualified at a speed of 108.424 so that's more than four miles an hour slower than gary blew the pole sitter well there you get the difference between first and well about the next 15 cars slavin was not expected to qualify that well but he really did

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Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020