HEMBREE: The Chill Of Adventure

Sprint Cup

HEMBREE: The Chill Of Adventure

An unusual weekend at Michigan International Speedway spins the big numbers…

Mike Hembree | Posted June 16, 2012 Brooklyn, MI

SPEED.com NASCAR Editor Mike Hembree is a veteran, award-winning motorsports journalist. (File Photo)

Few who were there at Daytona International Speedway in the uncertain winter of 1983 are likely to forget Cale Yarborough’s qualifying run for that year’s Daytona 500.

Yarborough and his team, led by veteran crew chief Waddell Wilson, were determined to post the first 200-mile-per-hour time-trial run for the 500. Yarborough had not reached 200 in practice, but garage-area talk said he was sandbagging.

On the first of two qualifying laps, Yarborough’s orange-and-white missile of a Chevrolet broke the 200 barrier with a run of 200.503 mph. On pit road, Wilson and his boys broke into smiles.

That all changed a few seconds later as Yarborough, gunning for more, sailed into the third turn with caution thrown to the wind. The car began to slide and then lifted into the air as might a kite on a blustery spring day. From that point forward, Yarborough was simply along for the ride.

The car flipped, then slammed into the outside wall before flipping again and landing on its crumpled roof.

Yarborough was OK; the car was not. The team switched to its backup car – oddly, a Pontiac – and Yarborough went on to win the 500. It was a grand finish to the week after one of the most spectacular accidents ever in a NASCAR qualifying session.

This was the chill of adventure, the approach to new frontiers, the chasing of a challenge.

It was similar to what Sprint Cup teams face on this most unusual weekend at Michigan International Speedway.

Speed again is in the spotlight. Several years after Yarborough’s rapid run at Daytona, restrictor plates put the clamps on dicey speeds there and at Talladega. Now the big numbers are flashing in neon at a non-restrictor plate track. Greg Biffle ran a ridiculously fast lap at 204.708 miles per hour in Friday practice, and the track’s fresh asphalt has invited spot speeds approaching 220 in the turns.

It was all a lot of fun and spectacle until a significant number of teams began experiencing blistering of tires, a product of the repaving and unexpectedly high temperatures. Despite NASCAR’s mostly successful efforts to keep them on the planet, race cars occasionally think they can fly when speeds cross 200, and the idea of a tire giving up at that speed does not prompt pleasant thoughts.

So Goodyear took an unusual turn Friday night in switching left-side tires to a different, tougher compound for Sunday’s race.

The positive here is that this is a step away from the brink, but it leaves teams with only one hurriedly scheduled Saturday afternoon practice with the new tire, and the distinct possibility of Sunday morning rain could throw another joker card into the mix.

It’s the sort of weekend that will shoot electricity through the garage area – and the grandstands.

Speed sells. Danger sells. It’s the chill of adventure, mixed in with a healthy dose of trepidation.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Hembree

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