It’s far too early to celebrate, but the success of last weekend’s Race of Champions Icebreaker at Selinsgrove following on the heels of Gater’s well-attended Motorsports Expo in Syracuse can’t help but brighten the prospects for the year ahead, at least on the dirt modified front.

The numbers from Selinsgrove looked like this. Friday night 56 small blocks were in competition and a reported 35 big blocks practiced. The crowd was of decent weekly size. Saturday 64 cars ran the big block race (some of them small blocks that stayed over, but I would guess less than 15) and the crowd was SRO.

The only time I’ve seen a bigger fan turnout at Selinsgrove was the Speedweek 410 sprint race a few years ago where they parked in the adjacent bean field. Of course the great weather was a big factor, but if they weren’t race fans they could have done a lot of other things on the first nice weekend of the spring.

Things ran a bit late but the Friday program was in the books by 10:30 and Saturday the checker flew around 9 p.m. There were some issues with turn three on Saturday but overall the surface prompted Andrew Harpell to quip at the drivers meeting, “I want all you guys to take a bag of clay home to New York.” Remember he runs one of those Empire State tracks, Five Mile Point, whose surface can be as unpredictable as the judges on American Idol.

Speaking of things that are predictable, Pat Ward won the small block race. With new equipment from the John Wight stable this year, the three-time RoC titlist is loaded. Having started his racing career on a shoestring, he knows how to take care of a car and just as important, he knows how to read a track.

Matt Sheppard was just as impressive in the big block feature, and for the same reasons. He kept the car under him and played the surface like Eric Clapton plays a Stratocaster. Sure, he’s got great equipment, but so do a dozen or so guys who couldn’t catch him. Duane Howard, proving on both nights he’s not just a bullring specialist, and Ward came closest. Matt is at least 15 years younger than Howard and a quarter century behind Ward. The times they are a-changin’ indeed.

It would have been a great story of redemption if Ryan Godown had won on Saturday, as he took the checker in the 2009 Icebreaker only to come up light at the scales. But it was not to be as after swapping the lead with Sheppard on a pair of restarts, he lost contact and eventually dropped out with what looked like a broken shock tower.

I think the Icebreaker, the brainchild of Selinsgrove race director Joe Kaminski, works for the same reasons the Spring Sizzler worked at Stafford in the 1970’s. It’s a short-distance, big-money race in a world where “big race” and “long race” have come to be synonymous. Also like the Icebreaker, it’s in the spring when budgets haven’t been drained and everybody is tied for the point lead.

Joe works hard to get everything sponsored and probably Sunoco dealer Insinger Performance doesn’t get enough credit from us in the media as the title sponsor. If you’re into geography, Insinger is located in Dushore, Pa., home of the asphalt racing Miller family (Wayne and L.W., not Junior of Madhouse fame). Just down the road (U.S. 220) is Sonestown, home of Amerian Idol finalist Aaron Kelly. Both are in Sullivan County, the least populated county in the Commonwealth, where the deer outnumber the people.

This week, weather permitting, we penetrate 35 miles deeper into Penn’s Woods for the Port Royal opener to see the Great Goodyear Gamble up close and personal…. weather permitting as always.

The issue of bringing back the good old days has been around since shortly after NASCAR Winston Cup racing became well established on TV in the mid-1980’s. The drivers have become too bland, the complaint goes; they’re all pretty boys too interested in plugging their sponsors, saying, “It was a good day for the Jimmy Joe Bob’s Chevy Impala. Our 22nd place is gonna be real important when we get to the Race to the Chase. Mostly I wanna thank all my sponsors (insert at least five names), my crew, my momma, my wife, the Good Lord, and say ‘Hi’ to my Aunt Sadie in the nursing home back in Ashtabula.”

Nobody, the argument goes, is willing be a bad guy, except Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya. Nobody is willing to fight like a man the way Bobby, Donnie, and Cale did in the 1979 Daytona 500, and nobody except Dale Sr. ever used the bumper for the purpose it was put there- to bump.

The facts may get a little blurred, given that the most famous crashing finish, the 1976 Daytona 500, was reluctantly agreed by David Pearson and Richard Petty to be “One of them racin’ deals.” They didn’t send valentines, but they didn’t vow retaliation.

NASCAR itself has increasingly been portrayed as the villain, said to be too coprorate, too image conscious, etc. A variety of factors starting with TV ratings led NASCAR this winter to announce that bump drafting and out-of-bounds restrictions at Daytona and Talladega would be loosened and the policing of on-track behavior would left up to the drivers. In other words, “Have at it, boys.”

It worked pretty well for three races. Montoya’s rant about his teammate Jamie McMurray at Las Vegas, including using the Magic Word on PRN, was just what the doctor ordered. Then came Sunday at Atlanta, where Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards came together early in the race, sending Edwards to the garage for 156 laps. In the closing stages, Edwards dumped fifth-place Keselowski at the flagstand, and Brad went airborne and into the outside wall with his roof.

It might have looked like a replay of their last lap confrontation at Talladega last year, where Keselowski won as Edwards flipped, but that was on the last lap with the win at stake. Under those circumstances, it’s understood that anything goes. This time Edwards was 156 laps behind and had no business anywhere near Keselowski or any other car racing for position. He should have been on the bottom, out of traffic, or better yet in the garage if he could not improve his position by making any more laps.

Edwards expressed in the garage that he only wanted to spin Keselowski, not flip him, but wrecking a guy at 175 mph when you are not racing for position is just dumb.. really dumb… approaching idiotic, not to mention exceedingly dangerous.

The problem with the honor system, as a wise man once said, is that some have the honor and some have the system. While NASCAR’s strategy to let the drivers police themselves has merit, this is a point where a voice of reason needs to be heard loud and clear. If not NASCAR, then who?

Veteran reporter Rick Minter, formerly of the Atlanta Journal and now on RacinToday.com, made the best suggestion I’ve heard. The leadership, he says, has to come from the drivers in the garage able to command respect from their peers. Minter mentions Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon, and I agree, adding Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, Bill Elliott, Jimmie Johnson and even Tony Stewart to that list.

* * *

On the last lap at Atlanta I caught a glimpse of the scoring pylon and I think it said 340 laps had been run, which is 15 more than scheduled, most of it under caution. I have mixed emotions on the merit of the “three tries” policy for green-white-checker finishes, and I’m concerned that “overtime” will become the expected result rather tan an extraordinary situation. Can you imagine the departing ticket buyer at Bristol complaining, “We only saw 500 laps. We got robbed!” But if NASCAR is committed to it, fine.

The problem, of course, is found in Mark Martin’s famous words of wisdom, “The biggest cause of caution flags is caution flags.” Here’s a suggestion for keeping the multiple tries for a green flag finish alive while avoiding The Race That Would Not End, like Atlanta. On the first attempt, use the regular procedure, double file. Second and third tries, if necessary, go single file.

It’s been done before, y’know, like for the first 60 years of Cup Series history.

Everybody else with a keyboard in front of them has given their opinion of the Daytona 500, so I might as well join them. After all, we have the same features in the Twin Tiers that distinguished the Great American Race- cold wind and potholes.

I’m not an engineer so I can’t analyze why the track came apart or why the first patch didn’t hold up. I know the whole episode was a huge embarrassment to NASCAR and to Daytona- probably as bad for customer relations as the Brickayrd 400 tire debacle of 2008 was to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And it was even worse for the TV ratings. Not only did the 1 hour, 41 minute initial delay send the casual viewers drifting away from their sets, but the finish wound up in the middle of the Winter Olympics and the NBA All-Star pre-game show. From a TV perspective, it was the perfect storm.

The finish saved the day to some degree. You got an upset victory, probably the longest shot sinced Derrike Cope in 1990, and Earnhardt Nation was energized by Junior’s run through the pack to second place. There’s an issue lurking in the background when you go to multiple green-white-checker finishes, however, and it’s not just the charge that they were giving the No. 88 extra laps. If you were around at Watkins Glen in 2002 for the Busch North race, this scenario will seem familiar.

Everybody plays fuel games on superspeedways. Sometimes you win, and sometimes, like Mark Martin at Michigan last summer, you lose. It’s like kicking a field goal on the last play. Six inches inside the upright and you’re a hero, six inches outside the upright and you’re a goat. Crew chiefs have learned to build the possibility of one try at a green-white checker into their calculations.

Remember, each try to make that green-white-checker also requires at least a lap or two to realign the field, even if there’s no track clearing to be done. So three tries doesn’t add six laps; it probably adds a minimum of nine or ten laps, which can be five percent or more of a superspeedway race. What happened in the BNS race at the Glen in ‘02 was that on each green flag, one or more cars would run out of gas, meaning another green flag, and more cars running dry. Bryan Wall won the race because he threw in an extra can of gas when he was last on the lead lap and had nothing to lose. Vic Coffey’s first win at Syracuse was accomplished under similar circumstances.

If there is a perfect way to assure a competitive finish, I haven’t seen it yet. For the Cup Series, I say one try at green-white-checker, then call it quits before the problems multiply.

* * *

Not being in Florida for the short track races means I’m not in a good position to offer opinions, but a few truths can be drawn from the numbers. Car count-wise, the big-block modifieds were strong at Volusia, and the late models held their own. They didn’t have the 100+ cars of a few yeas ago, but that couldn’t last. I saw numbers in the high 60’s, which is healthy by any standard. The UMP modifieds seemed to be down quite a bit, but again, I wasn’t there. Volusia sprint car counts were decent and adding All-Star sanction at Easy Bay really revived that series. The USAC shows at East Bay seemed to draw well.

On asphalt at New Smyrna, you would have the same 22 modifieds whether you made them all PowerBall winners or if you offered them an old bowling trophy. It’s just a lifestyle.

* * *

Don’t make plans to go to Lincoln Speedway for their opener on February 27. Lincoln is about 75 miles north of Washington, and you know the snow they’ve had in D.C. Lincoln’s Wayne Harper told me they could have the track and pits ready for next Saturday, but not the parking lots. Lincoln is now shooting for Saturday, March 6. Wish them luck.

Okay, Danica Mania has arrived and it’s not leaving anytime soon.

Ms. Patrick did a good job in the ARCA race at Daytona. She ran in the lead draft, got in trouble and got out of trouble, and finished sixth behind five drivers of greater experience. She earned a shot at this weekend’s Nationwide race, where the depth of the field will be far greater. A top-20 would be satisfactory to all parties except maybe the internet which needs her to win or to crash to top last week’s hype. Remember the TV newsroom in the Eagles “Dirty Laundry"?

The ARCA media coverage was all Danica, all the time, including several photo captions and headlines identifying it as Danica’s “first NASCAR race". First stock car race, but not first NASCAR race, guys. The AP story had it right. They even led with Bobby Gerhart’s win before devoting most of the story to Danica.

Thursday night SPEED ran an interview from the Daytona Speedweeks media day, with a very professional looking Danica, GoDaddy uniform tastefully worn, talking to Wendy Venturini. Not only was there an appearance makeover, but she made repeated reference to her husband, not something you’re likely to hear on any of the GoDaddy Girl commericals. You see, the NASCAR demographic is 25-and-over, largely parents, and claimed to be 40 percent women. The GoDaddy demographic, at least for the TV spots, is clearly 17-to-21 males with elevated testosterone levels.

Elsewhere at Daytona it was good to see Mark Martin get the pole for what Ken Squier christened “The Great American Race", a title which seems a little dubious with a quarter of the field branded Toyota. I heard some complaints about Junior not congratulating his teammate afterward. I hope that’s not part of NASCAR’s new policy on driver conduct. The fans like a genuine feud whether it’s Allison vs. Yarborough back in the day or Hamlin vs. Keselowski in 2010. The fans don’t like drivers acting like spoiled rock stars or NBA thugs.

As for the Bud Shootout, if they wanted a last-lap crash, they got it. Same place as the famous free-for-all in 1979, but no fisticuffs ths time. It was good to see Ken Schrader in a competitive car again, even if he did get swept up in the crash.

* * *

Speaking of the Big One, this Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the Big One to End All Big Ones. It took place on the second lap of the Autolite 250 modified-sportsman race at Daytona, February 13, 1960. Quoting from Greg Fielden’s “Forty Years of Stock Car Racing":

… Coming out if the fourth turn, 37 cars - that’s right, 37 cars - crashed, 12 cars flipped, and 24 cars were knocked out of the race. Some of the drivers eliminated in the crash included Larry Frank, Speedy Thompson, Ralph Earnhardt, Wendell Scott, Joe Lee Johnson and Hooker Hood…

Earnhardt and Scott should need no introduction, but Frank and Thompson were both Southern 500 winners, Joe Lee Johnson would soon become the first World 600 winner as well as the father of today’s Tennessee dirt late model star Ronnie Johnson, and Hooker Hood, aside from having a great nickname, was the father of former USAC sprint car champion Rick Hood who still races out west. Larry Frank passed away just a few weeks ago in South Carolina.

Remarkably, no one was seriously hurt in the train wreck. Four drivers were hospitalized overnight, three of them northern modified racers at some stage of their careers- Jackie McLaughlin, Billy Rafter, and Will Cagle. The race was restarted and won by Georgia driver Bubba Farr, whose idea of a modified was a 1956 Ford with a 430 Lincoln engine fed by six carbs.

* * *

While researching the 1960 Daytona crash, I ran across this tale in Greg Fielden’s book. It comes from Weaverville, N.C., August 13, 1961:

… Junior Johnson was declared the winner after the 500-lapper on the half-mile paved oval was halted after 258 laps due to impossible track conditions.

Duiring a red flag period on lap 208… NASCAR told the drivers that after another 50 laps the race would be halted for good. As the teams gamely tried racing in the final 50 laps, all NASCAR personnel removed their black and white uniforms and left the facility. When the race was red flagged, some 4,000 spectators remained on the grounds and a few of them started a riot.

A pickup truck was dragged across the access road to the infield, essentially locking the racing teams inside…. sheriff deputies were called to the scene, but they were unable to get the mob to disperse. The State Highay Patrol was summoned, but their efforts also failed.

As darkness approached, Pop Eargle, a 6-foot-6, 285 pound crewman for the Bud Moore team, went to the gate to discuss the matter with one leader of the group. Eargle was jabbed in the stomach with a 2-by-4. Incensed, Eagle grabbed the big piece of wood and whacked the mobster in the head. Shortly afterward, the drivers and crew members were allowed to leave….

While NASCAR may wish to see more emotion in today’s racing, I doubt a replay of Pop Eargle’s Last Stand is exactly what they have in mind.

I try to broaden my racing horizons when the opportunity presents itself. One of those happened recently when I was given the chance to attend indoor ice racing at the First Arena in Elmira, featuring speedway bikes and quads under the sanction of Xtreme International Ice Racing (XIIR). They brought a dozen bikes and about 16 quads, one of which crashed doing a wheelie during introductions.

Being a complete novice at this type of racing, I didn’t have to try to react like a first-time fan. I really was one, admittedly not a fan parting with hard-earned cash for his ticket. From that perspective, there were some good points and some bad points to the show.

THE GOOD….

* Unlike midget and kart races I’ve seen on the concrete floor of hockey rinks, the bikes (500 cc, methanol, no brakes) and the quads could really race. There was plenty of passing in the heats, most of it clean in the bikes, most of it rough in the quads. They brought out the Zamboni twice to clear the snow dug out by the spiked tires.

* As you would guess from the above, the quads were a lot more entertaining than the bikes. Not only did they look out of control, but there were several local riders slow enough to get lapped by the pros in a four-lap heat race, making the pros look even faster. A co-worker of mine from the Daily Review brought her son and three of his fourth-grade buddies. For them the quads were way cool. You see the same thing at a short track- the kids like the street stocks because they crash a lot.

* There was a nice small-format souvenir program distributed free at the door. It was the only real source of information available all night, as you will see below.

* The air quality wasn’t too bad. Unlike the indoor kart races at the State Fairgrounds, which left me with a hacking cough until Tuesday, there was only a slight aroma noticed and that smelled to me like castor oil. No ill effects on the digestive tract, though.

THE BAD…

* The ticket said 7:30, the program said first heat at 7:45, and they waved the green at 8:10. Since this was at least their second appearance at the arena, you can’t give them a mulligan for first-time glitches.

* They lost more time during the show and the feature listed in the program for 9:30 was almost an hour late, for a six-lap, one minute race. That’s not good for an event aimed at a youthful audience, even if there wasn’t a school day coming up. My colleague had an hour drive back to Towanda with a car full of tired ten year olds.

THE UGLY…

I’ve heard some bad announcing in my time. I’ve done some bad announcing. But the guy that came with XIIR took things to a new level. He made the loudest short track announcer I know, New Egypt’s Nick Leach, sound like Barry Manilow. He started screaming at 7:30 and was still screaming at 10:30. He was scolding the crowd for not getting loud enough when the show was half an hour late and there was nothing on the track, and he never backed off. Many years ago I worked with Berserko Bob Doerrer, one of the original speed freak drag race announcers, on the Skoal Motorsports Report. He only screamed when there was something exciting going on.

I couldn’t understand the riders’ names or the sponsors, and it remained a mystery to me why the top riders on the bikes were called “The Edge", “The British Bulldog", and “Mad Dog". I learned from a reliable source a couple of days later that Anthony “The British Bulldog” Barlow is the owner of the series and Shawn “Mad Dog” McConnell is a leading Hollywood stunt rider.

At least his music bed was pretty good, with some Sly and some James Brown mixed in with the heavy metal.

If the idea is to create good guys and bad guys, the lifeblood of the WWE and Monster Jam, then tell us something about them in a style the sound system can handle and the fans can understand. Maybe interview them while the Zamboni is cleaning up the ice at intermisson. Maybe use the house spotlights to build suspense for the feature, which a lot of people missed because they were already headed for the exits.

Better yet, go to a Super Dirt Series race and listen to Shane Andrews or go the World of Outlaws late models and listen to Rick Eshleman. Find out how a professional traveling announcer sounds and how he works the crowd.

* * *

I’m not in the business of reviewing racing websites, but I ran across one recently that held my attention for a whole evening. It’s called vukovichaccident.com and it explores the crash that took the life of Bill Vukovich Sr. during the 1955 Indy 500 in incredible detail. There’s a report that reads like a master’s thesis from a school of forensic pathology, plus still photos and video, some of it raw photos and 8-mm home movie footage from ‘55 and some enhanced with modern technology. The creator, Rex Dean, is described as having spent a career in the motion picture industry and that’s not hard to believe.

For a little background, Vukovich had won the 1953 and 1954 Indy 500’s after crashing while leading in the closing laps in ‘52. Known as the “Mad Russian” he was a tough guy from the tough school of west coast midget racing in the 1940’s. When asked about the fierce heat in ‘53, when driver Carl Scarborough succumbed to heat stroke in the pits, Vukovich replied, “You think this is hot? Go drive a truck in Fresno in July. That’s hot.”

So Vukovich was trying for his third straight win, a feat at which had eluded Wilbur Shaw and Mauri Rose in the previous decade and a half. All 33 starters were Offy 270 powered and almost all were Kurtis chassis, mostly roadsters but a few upright dirt cars as well. None had a rollbar.

Vuky started fifth, battled with Jack McGrath for a while, then pulled away. On lap 57 he was about to lap rookie Al Keller and veteran Johnny Boyd as he came off turn two and Rodger Ward flipped in front of them. Keller over-reacted, went down to the infield and then shot across the track into Boyd. Vukovich couldn’t avoid Boyd’s right front wheel and was launched into the air. His car sailed almost level over the low outside wall, but caught the left rear wheel and started flipping end over end, barely passing under a footbridge that spanned the track. It hit several parked vehicles, barrell rolled twice, came to rest upside down, and caught fire.

Author Dean’s main conclusion is that Vukovich was almost certainly dead from one of several impacts before the fire. Remarkably, Ward and Boyd both flipped as part of the same sequence but both sustained relatively minor injuries.

It makes you swallow hard when you realize how much the Vukovich accident has in common with the Dale Earnhardt accident at Daytona in 2001. In both cases the leading driver of the era, the man who epitomized the indestructable warrior, lost his life in the marquee event of the sport, a situation guaranteed to bring a flood of unwanted attention from media who never cover motorsports at any other time. Making the point even more clearly is the fact that both Vukovich and Earnhardt suffered basal skull fractures as their cause of death according to autopsy reports.

It’s not fun reading, but vukovichaccident.com is a brilliant piece of research. I recommend it to serious students of our sport’s history, and I recommend some soul-searching afterward