Growing Pains

The one engine rule for 2002, Silly Season is coming to a close, and more challenges to the Earnhardt Law.

One Engine Rule……..

One of the highest hurdles the Winston Cup teams will have to clear as the 2002 season gets underway will be the new one engine rule. The rule was mandated by NASCAR last October while the teams were competing at Martinsville, and is set to go into effect for the second race of the season at Rockingham. I doubt very seriously that they will implement the new rule until after Daytona. Practice and qualifying, along with the Twin 125 qualifying races and practice before the 500 mile restrictor plate race, would probably be too much for one engine to be able to endure.

Competitors in the Busch Series are no strangers to the use of the same engine for all phases of their weekend events. They have been racing under the one engine rule for years. This past season when the horsepower and carburetor size were increased, the engines seemed to hold together pretty well for the most part. John Darby, the new director of the Winston Cup Series beginning with the 2002 season, is the former director of the Busch Series. He has lots of experience with the single engine concept, and will be available to help some of the Cup teams meet the challenge.

The key words where the Cup Series is concerned seems to be “growing pains.” Odds are there will quite a few engine failures in the first half of the 2002 season. Engine builders are going to have to find the happy medium between the high horsepower qualifying engines and the durable work horse race engine. NASCAR has already put in place weight parameters on engine parts to deter engine builders from using the lightweight qualifying engine parts. As per usual, winners of the top qualifying positions will have their engines torn down and their parts will be inspected by NASCAR officials. They will have to be put back together with the same parts unless infractions are found.

There will always be room for trickery in the garage area. Some competitors feel that others will be cheating with trick qualifying engines to score a top starting position and then break the engine in practice in order to install a more durable one for the race. It has been determined that if the engine used in obtaining a qualifying position is not in the racecar at race time, the entry will be shuffled to the rear of the field. There are those who feel that this will not deter some teams from cheating. The publicity and sponsor advertising advantage of a top qualifying run may be enough to get some teams to bend the rules on tracks where coming up through the field from the rear of the pack during a race is not a problem.

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