By Bob Gangwer
“Living in the Present”
(Reprinted from Wailing with Wing Side Up LIVE internet radio show)
Oswego, NY 03/02/09…..I have been told by a couple of close friends, and I’m sure that you have heard me say it more than once or read a couple of times here in this column that, “History is best remembered embellished.” I also believe that if we don’t know where we came from we don’t know where we are going and that we need to learn from our mistakes as well as our accomplishments. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about supermodified history. I’ve been wondering if we are too quick to think that we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater and that we should just go back to how it was.
The last few years, well the last 14 years or so since the East vs West Shootout at IRP, (being an Indiana native and having grown up going to watch hobby stocks at that place, I refuse to call it what they want it called now), I’ve come across a lot of people that seem to think we need a national set of rules for the supermodifieds, or worse yet in my opinion, less rules and more open competition.
This is a touchy subject for me and something I’ve struggled to understand from all points of view for many years. When I was younger I spent a lot of time watching great shows that had sprint cars, radical offsets and rear engine cars. At the time, I thought that was the only way to go. I didn’t know any better.
Things kind of started to come around for me and I started to think somewhat differently when I wrote a story about supermodifieds in 1993 for Short Track Racing Magazine. That story recently became better read than I ever when it got passed around to several people up here in Oswego. Ok, so it was only 5 people, but they were all involved with supermodified racing at some level and it’s probably more than ever read it the first time around when it was published. Not wanting to be the odd man out, I went back and read it again as well. I was kind of surprised at some of the things being said back then that resemble a lot of what is being said yet again today. In fact a few of the comments raised the eyebrows of one of the recent readers to the point that they looked at me and said “The more things change the more they stay the same.”
Here’s an excerpt that brings attention to the way things were and the way many wish they still could be:
“As the 1960s passed and the 1970s rolled up to the starting line, Oswego and Supermodified racing were about to enter into the most unbridled stage. The rules were wide open, except for a ban on wings at Oswego.” Interesting isn’t it that we are now running wings again semi regularly at Oswego and the big buzz now is the “King of the Wings” event which to some, it seems, including those that wrote the press release, will unseat the International Classic as the ‘premier’ supermodified event of the season. I wonder what we’ve learned from the time the wings were first banned to when they came back in 1992 until now when people are saying Oswego needs even more wing racing.
The story goes on to say
“Innovation and creativity was the name of the game. Gurney Eagle power plants, superchargers, rear engines, four wheel drive and huge stroker engines were in vogue.”
I know many of our listeners pine for that era again. In fact I still miss it myself and I wasn’t up here to even see it. I did get to see it back home though and it was amazing.
So you may think it ends there, but WAIT there’s more!
“As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, supermodified car counts were dropping. The high cost of innovation and creativity that had been the driving force of the previous decade was stifling the class. Something had to be done.” Is this sounding familiar yet folks? Ok not yet? Keep yer ears open and eyes peeled, here’s some more, “Once more Oswego Speedway took a stand. First went the aluminum blocks, then a ban on the superchargers. Next, power choking mufflers became mandatory. Finally the popular rear engine cars were outlawed and an engine size of 467 cubic inches was instituted. It was as if the whole lively spirit of supermodified racing had been snuffed out with one fell swoop of an almighty rule book. After all, this was a class of racing that had been formed by a devil-may-care attitude of rebellion. It was a class that prided itself on few rules; originality, creativity and hard core no hold barred innovation.”
Yet in retrospect the 1980s and up into the 90s saw some of the best car counts and a steady progression of talent with a good mix of the new and the old. You still had the guys from MI coming in as well as a strong contingent of New England and Ohio teams. The locals got even stronger and it became next to impossible to beat them on their home turf. So did the rules hurt the supers? I’d like to think not.
It’s funny in a twisted kind of way that Davey Hamilton said at the time
“The Rules out here are terrible compared to the east coast,” “Rear engine cars are still allowed out here, which is ridiculous. There are guys out here talking about building offset rear engine cars and all that’s going to do is make obsolete everything that’s out there today.” Davey went on to say “Another thing we have out here is push rod, Indy car-type independent front suspension on the cars, which is stupid The technology of it is way too high because the normal weekend racer does not have the technology, people or information to do their own car like that and it would put them out of business”
Boy, oh boy, does that all sound like it could have been written yesterday after an interview in a local Oswego, NY garage. Of course you always have the other side of the argument as well that we need those kinds of thing and there’s nothing wrong with that kind of technology. Personally, I don’t think that way, but I’m open to hearing about why others do.
When Davey explained how he felt about rear engine cars that’s when I really started to change my viewpoint on allowing them. As I’ve said, I grew up loving them and count Jim Shirey’s rear engine V-2 as one of my all time favorite supermodifieds and I have to say that seeing pictures of Jimmy Shampine’s ‘Green Machine’ was a contributing factor in me wanting to come to Oswego Speedway long before I ever made it here. Remember I grew up on McClaren, Gibson, Reynolds, Otts, Bible and the likes too. But those cars were hurting guys even then. When racers like Joey Payne, Jim Pasquin, Jim Birges, Michael Barnes, Bobby Haynes, Jr. and AJ Russell, say they wouldn’t want to be in one and hit a wall head on and try to survive, hey who I am to argue? I recently had a somewhat heated email conversation with a person about this very issue and I’m here to say once and for all to any and all that are reading this that we don’t need to allow rear engine cars again, for any reason, anytime, anywhere except for a vintage exhibition.
Honestly, tell me, do you really want to see a rear engine car with today’s tire, engine and suspension technology and the speeds they can produce, hit a wall with a stuck throttle like Michael, Craig or the Jet did? Oh sure…HANS, Rage PRO, impact absorbing foam, we do not have the cost effective technology to make these cars feasible for today. Indy cars and F1 is safe because the cars blow apart and absorb the impact, the driver is encapsulated in a pod and the surrounding parts are a lot lighter than what the supermodified teams should ever think about using. Furthermore, anyone that would continue to argue with me about the feasibility of making the cars as safe as Indy or F1 needs to stop and think about where those cars go after one major incident. You could honeycomb and fold layers of aluminum; you could buy some Kevlar to make a monocoque, and you could also simply invest that time and money into your kid’s college fund because in the long run if teams are allowed to do that, there won’t be any supermodified DIVISION and we can all just sit at home and watch the kids grow or enjoy our retirement a lot cheaper.
So many times I hear people say, “These are supermodifieds, we only need four rules and one of those rules is we don’t need rules.” Then I hear them say, “If there were one set of rules for all the sanctions we’d all have more cars because they could go wherever they wanted to race.” It seems to me that we can’t have it both ways, unless of course you are talking about everyone having no rules, or open competition at every event, which brings me to my next point;
We don’t need open comp non sanctioned events to help the DIVISION survive. It’s not the 1970s or even the 80s anymore. There are fewer cars because they are harder to maintain, the time constraints on the working man are bigger than they’ve ever been it has little to do with the rules. I have to ask anyone who touts this reasoning as sensible and doesn’t own one, work on one, race one, or function in some official capacity how they would make it cost effective, not only for the teams but also the sanctions that would have to inspect each individual creation for the safety of the fans and other drivers. Once in a while, I don’t see a huge issue with an open comp show as long as rear engine cars aren’t involved. It’s a good gimmick, it creates fan interest. I helped on one such deal in 1999 up at M40. The crowd was horrendous, but something like 17 cars showed and the racing was pretty good. In the end, a normal, modern era supermodified won with a guy driving it that has lived long enough to talk about the ‘good ole days’ of run whatcha brung. His name was Jim Shirey.
I tend to believe, after much discussion with many different people that the nature of the beast is its own undoing. Because of the innovative nature that our DIVISION was formed on, ways to continue to make it evolutionary yet still affordable to most have become non existent. If we had continued on the path we were on, the DIVISION would be a lot weaker than it is now with a smaller cross section of do it yourself racers. We have to keep this within the realm of the shade tree mechanic who loves cars and has a need to make them go faster. We need to make this DIVISION attractive to the younger MySpace generation that we lose on a daily basis to Tuners, LowRiders, and Street Racing. There’s talent out there that thinks even now that supermodified racing is too hard and too expensive to break into, so I say let’s keep the rules as they are, keep them stable and enforce them consistently. Let’s start looking at other ways to be innovative and let’s start by looking at how to make the cars more environmentally friendly. I do truly hate the idea of crate engines, but it’s awfully hard not to take a serious look at what the SMRA is trying to do and what it could mean to some kids coming out of a tech school that know nothing about engines that don’t use EFI or Oxygen Sensors.
Let’s not forget the past, let’s love it and learn from it, but let’s not lose ourselves in it. The past gave rise to the DIVISION. Let’s not forsake what we have here in the present, we have some great racers, decent schedules, and a few fresh bodies becoming involved and we need to work to keep them involved. Finally, let’s work hard on common sense solutions for the future and someday down the road, maybe another kid from Indiana like me will get to say he fell in love with “The Ultimate Short Track Race Car.”
Popularity: 3% [?]
i agree with the outlaw of rear engine supers for the fact this would make the front end roadster obsolete also as a kid i remember Hite/GRAVES would run the four wheel drive creation ,it would run great for 33 laps ,problem was it was a 45 lapper .the car seemed to always have mechanical problems.anyway who has T/M in this day and age,and if you do,its not fair to the average joe ,therefore we need to have rules at least for competitions sake.i miss the days of SHAMPINE but this is the present as much as ive been stuck in the past for many years now.the problem with rear engine supers is they would ultimately evolve into a radically offset indycar thank you john mazzoli oswego ny