[vincesanity82]

Thought you Earnhardt fans may enjoy this, I had never seen it..

YouTube - 1999 Iroc Round 3: Dale and Dale Jr.

[SpaceCadet]

Vince, thanks for posting that. I have not seen it before. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Made me happy and sad all at the same time.

[LSC9901]

Best part was hearing Bob Jenkins and Benny !!!

[Quality88]

I was at that race. I was on top of Melling Racing's owners RV. That was awesome.

[3fanforever]

Wow, I didn't know that video was out there. Thanks for sharing it vincesanity82. It sure brings back a great memory for me. I watched it on TV, and I remember I was on my feet jumping up and down at the end with a lump in my throat from my heart. During the interview I had tears in my eyes from pride in both Sr and Jr. Great race and an awesome finish.

[PenelopePitStop]

Now THAT's why I loved IROC. Nothing better than the Earnhardt's and Martin battling for the win.

I know many members look down on IROC and sometimes think that Cup racing is headed in the same direction. IROC put the best drivers from several series in equal cars and let them battle it out. Always a good show!

[wingkey1]

Originally Posted by PenelopePitStop

Now THAT's why I loved IROC. Nothing better than the Earnhardt's and Martin battling for the win.

I know many members look down on IROC and sometimes think that Cup racing is headed in the same direction. IROC put the best drivers from several series in equal cars and let them battle it out. Always a good show!

Now THAT's why I loved IROC - Here too. IROC had it's very unique place in motorsports. It was/is a shame that similar was not prepared for other than paved oval racing. Drivers from notably different motorsports venues participated in IROC. There were dirt folks, twisty track folks, etc.

Would have been really great to have a "dirt IROC", a "twisty IROC", etc., and watch the same group of truly great talents play in each others backyard. The head here swims with the pure delight of the thought of this. Was like watching E Sr. prove/show himself in the (we believe we are accurate with the following) the 24 hours at Daytona.

think that Cup racing is headed in the same direction - Cup can only arrive here when teams are eliminated and a single entity prepares all event vehicles. Many do not have a real appreciation of this. IROC drivers would essentially be drawing a pill for the vehicle they will use (no adjustment allowed). IROC cars were "equally prepared". Meaning nothing in the set-up was driver specific/preferred before or during the event. Drivers had to adjust, allowing all to evaluate the drivers ability (or lack thereof) to do so.

Those who have had the responsibility to do set-ups understand that this makes the seperation between IROC and CUP huge (Make that HUGE).

Personal Insight - when the sons here raced Quartermidget (QM) we raced with/against a young man whos' uncle was with the IROC vehicle set-up team. When he wasn't flying off somewhere to the IROC venue for the weekend, he was helping his nephew set up his QM. We got to learn quite a bit about IROC near every Sunday for years. Neat stuff.

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by PenelopePitStop

Now THAT's why I loved IROC. Nothing better than the Earnhardt's and Martin battling for the win.

I know many members look down on IROC and sometimes think that Cup racing is headed in the same direction. IROC put the best drivers from several series in equal cars and let them battle it out. Always a good show!

I certainly don't look down on IROC as a series, but what I dislike is that NASCAR is slowly heading in that direction.It is just taking away the individualism and making what was once a great series into a cookie cutter series.

[Racer Duck]

unfortunately, the onward drive to complete equality in the mechanical part of NASCAR racing will never end. And, as many know, the first 80% is the easiest and cheapest to achieve. And the same is true for the first 80% of the remaining 20% and so on....

No matter how "equal" one may believe a group of vehicles used in competition may be, they just aren't: there's always some critical difference that propels one ahead of the other. Competitive engine builders know this phenomena very well .. some engines will just outperform the others even though they are "identical" and have identical setups performed by the same person.

In IROC, the victor was usually the driver who found the "edge" the car inherently contained and exploited it. More often than not, it was the fella with the "home track" advantage, i.e,, the NASCAR guys: they knew the track and how to drive full bodied race cars on it; the contenders were always deficient in one of those two areas thus had to depend on their ability to ferret out the advantage their car had and to learn how to exploit it while overcoming their lack of familiarity with either the type of vehicle or the track... Those non-NASCAR winners proved how really exceptional they were as drivers.

Not surprisingly, in the early days of IROC the NASCAR boys had zilch in successes championship wise. For instance, in the first year, 1975, they drove Porsche cars and there were 4 races at 2 tracks: 3 at Riverside (a road course) and 1 at Daytona. The top 5 in the championship represented the SCCA (1st, 2nd, 5th), USAC (3rd) and NASCAR (4th) At least half (then 40% when they increased the # of races to 5) of the venues were road courses in the early days. As the venue mix shifted to ovals and super speedways, the NASCAR boys took over and since 1992 there hasn't been a road course in the mix, nor a non-NASCAR Champion. In the most recent IROC (2006), they drove Pontiacs at Daytona twice and at Texas and Atlanta. The highest non-NASCAR driver in the championship standings was a Grand Am series driver in 6th.

So, what do we learn from this? I believe it's that there's no such thing as "equal" in racing, and IROC's original intent to bring together the greatest drivers in auto racing was usurped by NASCAR's need to beat their chest. As such, the competition has been tilted in NASCAR's favor for more than half of the competitions and most of the world's best drivers have politely ignored invitations to compete after seeing the inequity built into the competitions.