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Sprint Cup
HEMBREE: Fuel-injecting Jake Elder
Wondering how one of NASCAR’s legendary mechanics would react to the changing landscape…
Dale Earnhardt (right) won his first-ever NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race with crew chief Jake Elder (left) when he took the 1979 Southeastern 500 at Bristol. Earnhardt won nine Cup races at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: ISC Archives/Getty Images)
It has been entertaining during the preseason to listen to NASCAR officials, crew chiefs, engineers and drivers talk about the electronic fuel injection systems that will control the distribution of gas in racing engines beginning next week at Daytona.
Gone, apparently forever, is the carburetor, a reliable device that NASCAR has partnered with – was the carburetor a stakeholder? – since its raw beginnings.
Now jets will inject fuel into the engine’s cylinders. That’s fundamentally different from the past, of course, but the changes go far beyond that swap. The amount of fuel provided by each injector will be controlled by computer, and, after each run, team members can plug in their laptops and get a precise reading on engine performance. Instead of jumping elbow deep into the innards of the engine, tuners can adjust fuel flow and other particulars via the laptop.
It is at this point in the discussion that I think about Jake Elder and what his response might be to such a concept.
“Do what?” he might ask.
Elder, who died about two years ago, was a NASCAR crew chief and mechanic cut from original cloth. He might have invented the carburetor. If not, he certainly knew its territory better than most in the sport, and he could make a race car go places it didn’t want to go – and make it run faster through those places than most of his contemporaries.
In a modern sport in which it’s often difficult to tell the mechanics from the marketing people, Elder would stand out. His work uniform would be just that – dirty and greasy from the day’s labor. His English would be “street Southern”. His response to being handed a laptop? Toss it in the nearest dumpster.
Elder was the definition of old-school NASCAR.
He was the “author” of one of the best quotes ever produced by a NASCAR competitor. After he led Dale Earnhardt Sr. to a career-first victory at Bristol, TN in 1979, Elder turned to Earnhardt and said, “Stick with me, kid, and we’ll have diamonds as big as horse turds.”
As funny as that was, the point of the statement was lost on Elder. It wasn’t Earnhardt who moved on; it was Elder. He became known as “Suitcase” Jake for his habit of working for a while for a team, becoming disgruntled about this or that, and packing up his tools and moving on down the road. At any given moment, it was difficult to predict where he might be the following season.
But success usually followed Elder along the way. It was only in the final years of his career, as the sport began depending more and more on engineers and specialists of one sort or another, that he began slipping into the background.
If he roamed garage areas today, in this computer age, the walk would be dizzying.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
Gone, apparently forever, is the carburetor, a reliable device that NASCAR has partnered with – was the carburetor a stakeholder? – since its raw beginnings.
Now jets will inject fuel into the engine’s cylinders. That’s fundamentally different from the past, of course, but the changes go far beyond that swap. The amount of fuel provided by each injector will be controlled by computer, and, after each run, team members can plug in their laptops and get a precise reading on engine performance. Instead of jumping elbow deep into the innards of the engine, tuners can adjust fuel flow and other particulars via the laptop.
It is at this point in the discussion that I think about Jake Elder and what his response might be to such a concept.
“Do what?” he might ask.
Elder, who died about two years ago, was a NASCAR crew chief and mechanic cut from original cloth. He might have invented the carburetor. If not, he certainly knew its territory better than most in the sport, and he could make a race car go places it didn’t want to go – and make it run faster through those places than most of his contemporaries.
In a modern sport in which it’s often difficult to tell the mechanics from the marketing people, Elder would stand out. His work uniform would be just that – dirty and greasy from the day’s labor. His English would be “street Southern”. His response to being handed a laptop? Toss it in the nearest dumpster.
Elder was the definition of old-school NASCAR.
He was the “author” of one of the best quotes ever produced by a NASCAR competitor. After he led Dale Earnhardt Sr. to a career-first victory at Bristol, TN in 1979, Elder turned to Earnhardt and said, “Stick with me, kid, and we’ll have diamonds as big as horse turds.”
As funny as that was, the point of the statement was lost on Elder. It wasn’t Earnhardt who moved on; it was Elder. He became known as “Suitcase” Jake for his habit of working for a while for a team, becoming disgruntled about this or that, and packing up his tools and moving on down the road. At any given moment, it was difficult to predict where he might be the following season.
But success usually followed Elder along the way. It was only in the final years of his career, as the sport began depending more and more on engineers and specialists of one sort or another, that he began slipping into the background.
If he roamed garage areas today, in this computer age, the walk would be dizzying.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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