Track Clean-ups

[Old Sunshine Fan]

How does your track handle cautions and clean-ups....Some are fast as heck and the action continues....others are slow as hell and drag on WAY to long...I have seen three cars towed off the track (by one wrecker....one @ a time) with a second wrecker sitting in the infield doing nuttin....over a twenty minute delay in the action....Hope they sold enough beer and pretzels....
Does your track work smart or waste time on cautions and clean-ups?Do you feel like calling you Grandmother to come over to the track and show em how to do it quicker...just wondering...OSF

[Phil Jacques]

How does your track handle cautions and clean-ups....Some are fast as heck and the action continues....others are slow as hell and drag on WAY to long...I have seen three cars towed off the track (by one wrecker....one @ a time) with a second wrecker sitting in the infield doing nuttin....over a twenty minute delay in the action....Hope they sold enough beer and pretzels....
Does your track work smart or waste time on cautions and clean-ups?Do you feel like calling you Grandmother to come over to the track and show em how to do it quicker...just wondering...OSF

As far as the wrecker sitting there doing nothing, I am not sure about down there but I am pretty sure that up here, a licensed tow truck driver is the only one able to operate the truck per osha standards. So if the track owns the trucks, maybe there was only one licensed driver on that particular night? Regardless, that track should have been adequately staffed. We also have hit and miss cleanup crews up here. Some tracks are fast and efficient, others look like a bunch of monkeys screwing a football...

[egspeedway]

OSHA, nothing like a little government to move the program right along. Of course that is after they have verified the decibel levels. In N. Fl and S Ga I have seen tracks with only a tractor or some piece of heavy equipment with a chain. The tractors use their pto to lift in the same way it does a bush hog. Ideally a track should have 2 functional wreckers so cars can be moved quickly and hopefully without further harm to the wrecked car. In the good old days local wrecker companies lined up to help for the free publicity. I am sure the lawyers have made that a thing of the past due to liability.

[Winger]

I've actually been to several tracks down here where a wrecker is sitting on the infield. I think in almost every case, it was because it was broke down. I don't believe there are any requirements to be a wrecker driver either.
Some tracks just seem to be slow when it comes to clean ups. Others are on the ball and everyone knows what they should be doing.

[Frasson118]

Went to Putnam several years ago, and they had about an 8 car pile-up. 2 wreckers came out & hooked up to 2 cars.

One of them immediately dropped a drive shaft, so the lone working unit had to haul off everything else, including the other wrecker.... at a pace of about 3 MPH.

It took almost an HOUR to get everything back to the pits.

Probably the worst example I'd ever seen.

[turnleft]

Tow

I hit the wall one night, I did about 500 in damage. The tow truck did about 1000 in damage towing my car in, and added hours of work for me and my crew. Seems most of the tracks have volunteers, that do not have much training, they lack speed, and actually add to the damage already done. I do not know much about towing to be an expert on this, but I always thought the roll backs were the fastest, and did the least amount of damage?

[scottgarrity07]

On the flip side is the wrecker driver at New Smyrna. A couple years back I got turned off of turn four and the front clip was wasted. The dude there is like a brain surgeon with pto. He put my car in my tight enclosed trailer backwards and the rockers weren't even hitting the wheel wells (normally there's like 3 inches of clearance). If anyone knows that guy's name, let me know. I owe him a beer. He kept a bad situation from being worse. He's the best wrecker driver I've seen anywhere.

[zerofor]

When we were at Sandusky a couple saturdays ago

They used two wreckers to cradle a street stock back to the pits that didnt look to need to be cradled front and back.They dropped it twice going in the pitgate and just gave up and towed it on in with just one wrecker.

[Matt Albee]

The tracks have to have a balance between more damage to the race car(s) and making the fans wait needlessly. Sitting in the stands enduring long, long cleanups gets old fast. And when there are several per race, you start wondering what you're missing on television.
Some tracks are incredibly slow with cleanups and it's because they don't have the equipment, the manpower, and/or the training to get the show moving again.
And in some cases i've seen, the track personnel just really don't seem to be in any hurry at all.

[scottgarrity07]

Watch some of those "Sid's View" videos that Phil Jacques posts and you will see the "Webby Cam" footage. Webby is part of the clean up crew at Waterford Speedbowl and rides around on a quad. As soon as the wreck is over Webby jets in and orchestrates the clean up process. He dictates to the wrecker driver what to do. The end result is a quick clean up with no further damage to the cars. No small feat since the Waterford SK Mods are wild and wind up on top of each other quite a bit.

[Old Sunshine Fan]

And in some cases i've seen, the track personnel just really don't seem to be in any hurry at all.

That's exactly what I'm talking about....after you sit and wait for longer than what you think is a reasonable amount of time, you start to wonder if management gives a crap about the fans.... (or are they just trying to sell more beer and pizza).... how can most tracks clean-up and go while others have a reputation for super slow clean-ups....OSF

[Matt Albee]

After the Watkins Glen race, i think we've seen a new record for track clean-up. And not a good record. A record for fans sitting still with nothing happening.

An hour and a half red flag to repair a guardrail?

How did the Jimmy Johnson spin there toward the end take that long to clean up? That track takes a long time to get around under caution. No one was in any hurry.

Earlier, a harmless spin, the driver fires up and drives away, still a caution that lasted 10 minutes.

And last, just when we thought a race might happen, Hamlin manages to run into the end of pit road and spread a blizzard of.....sand. Now there's some real high tech barriers, plastic drums filled with sand. Better than being filled with water like some tracks, but decidedly low tech. It's hard to believe that safer Barrier tech hasn't progressed over the last 15 years to include barriers for the end of pit road. Not to mention the hour and a half it took to repair an ancient guardrail. But guess who owns the Watkins Glen track. Some of the money wasted on the museum in Charlotte, and the new building in Daytona, and the fancy new injectors at DIS should have been invested in rebuilding the safety infrastructure at Watkins Glen.

[scottgarrity07]

Ryan Newman wasn't very happy about the walls at The Glen while being interviewed after his wild wreck today. Armco barrier (guardrail) is a woefully outdated material to construct walls out of, just ahead of railroad ties. At a high speed track like The Glen it's flat out dangerous. Armco has a tendency to "grab" the car when compromised and whip the car violently. I don't even like seeing it at short tracks. Concrete is unforgiving but it almost always stays intact and mostly deflects the energy of impact. Armco does absorb some of the impact but it often does not stay intact in a hard crash, creating a potentially lethal situation. The bigger the track, the more hazardous Armco is. At Stafford Motor Speedway (a weekly short track) speedway management worked with the SAFER barrier people to engineer SAFER barrier that did not require concrete behind it. They used this to replace the Armco barrier in their turn one which had seen a lot of nasty accidents over the years. It was the first place it was ever used. Since then it has been installed at Pocono after Elliot Sadler's terrible wreck there a few years back. ISC (NASCAR) needs to call up SAFER and order a crapload of this stuff and install it at mad fast Watkins Glen. I saw JD McDuffie lose his life there when he hit the Turn 5 Armco many years ago. The bandaid solution was the "Bus Stop Chicane" to lower speeds on turn entry. Unfortunately, there are many more high speed sections at The Glen that could be dangerous. Do we only need to react to things when there is a tragedy?

[egspeedway]

But look at all the beer and hot dogs they sold and NASCAR did not have to take a hit for a debris caution. The debris was quite evident. On another note what an up and down weekend for racing. From the tragedy in New York to the feel good finish for Almendinger in a single car independent team for the win. While I generally abhor right hand turns on a race track, this was an entertaining race. For the record my childhood racing hero Al Keller won NASCARS first road race in 1954 in New Jersey. I also attended there second in Titusville in 1956. I am not a bigot I just have a preference.