Originally posted by Ecke-109-
Wasnt it the same with Dale Earnhardt the intimidator?
You can definitely argue that point, he did manage to "get away" with a lot of stuff but he also was penalized more often than not. He proved on more than one occaision why he was probably the best stock car driver ever.
What seperates F1 and NASCAR are the 2 basic philosophies;one puts the focus on technology, the other the driver. Both have elements that I love to watch but NASCAR is a better race to watch.
6 or 7 years ago Car & Driver wrote an article about the "how hard is it to turn left for 500 laps?". They sent Larry Webster (I think) down to a small 1/2 mile oval short-track and Jeff Burton met him there with a couple of then-Cup cars. After getting some pointers from Burton and taking a couple of familiarization laps the author then went on to race the car on the oval for quite a while. He wrote that the act of driving an oval was mentally much, much harder than you'd think as a casual fan. The mental aspect of making every lap as fast and as consistant was brutal. He walked away from it with a huge newly found respect for the NASCAR drivers. You have to remember this; NASCAR drivers are racing cars not even meant for racing i.e. highly modified tube-chassis cars that are based on production family cars. F1 on the other hand is the exact opposite.
I am with Saur on this one, don't change a thing. Let F1 be the showcase for technology. Remember, Scuderia Ferarri for a long time were the whipping boys of F1 until they got their program back to the glory days of old. Within the last decade McLaren-West were the dominant cars, look at them now.
