Equality makes Winston Cup a trick-or-treat world
By Richard Petty, Special to Turner Sports Interactive
October 31, 2001
12:42 PM EST (1742 GMT)
COMMENTARY
The fact that this week is Halloween got me to thinking: Stock car racing is a lot like this holiday.
How is that? Well, glad you asked.
Every day is trick or treat for a NASCAR Winston Cup team. It seems like you are either on top of the world or the world is on top of you.
OK, I admit it was a stretch, but when you are out Wednesday night, hoping that some nice lady is going to throw Honey Nut Cheerios, Sparkle paper towels, a Sprint phone card or a Hot Wheels die-cast in your jack-o-lantern sack, you think about it too.
There just is no in-between in this sport. You are either great or terrible. And it seems like there is a whole lot less "great" than there is anything else.
The reason is simple. This is a sport where thousandths of seconds separate the best of the best from the worst of the worst.
It seems like it doesn’t take much to go from last to first, but finding that last couple thousandths of a second might be the hardest thing in the world to do.
Let’s face it. When you narrow it down to the 45 or 46 teams in NASCAR Winston Cup racing, they are all pretty good.
It’s kind of like the time one of the boys in the shop said he was dating a girl in a family that was the prettiest family he had ever seen.
"How’s that?" I asked.
"Let me put it to you this way," he told me. "The ugliest one in the bunch is the dog, and he’s darned near gorgeous."
That’s the way these race teams are. The ugliest one of the bunch is among the best you will ever find. There just isn’t much difference.
The fact there isn’t much difference between teams makes winning that much sweeter -- and that much harder to do.
The rules have made the cars run awfully close together. The good part of that is you have a lot of cars that could win just about any week. If there is a down side to it, it’s the fact that it’s just harder to pass that it used to be.
A difference of one second between you and the car up front means you have to work a little bit to get around him. A difference of one thousandth of a second between you and the car up front means it’s almost impossible to get around him -- unless he makes a mistake.
You hear a lot these days about track position, and that is the reason. There used to be two or three "track position" tracks. Now just about every track we race is a "track position" track.
You always want to be up front because, even if it’s not your best day, you can probably still hold off the guy behind you because he’s not going to be that much better than you.
The big question at a Talladega or Daytona in the past was, "Where do you want to be on the last lap?" Some would say second, some would even say third place. Nobody ever said the lead.
Now, that is the place to be. You can make your destiny from the lead, just like you could make it from second or third place in years past. You can force somebody to draft with you, or break the draft on somebody else.
Equality has sure hit NASCAR Winston Cup racing. Because of that, you’re never too far from greatness but you’re never too far from bad times either.
It makes every day -- whether you are working at the track or working in the shop -- a pretty crucial day. You’re going to be working as hard as you can work to find those thousandths or hundredths that you need.
So enjoy trick or treat this week. In the NASCAR world, it’s an everyday thing.
| 
