When the Wayne County Dodge Pro Stock team was accused of using nitrous, was anybody surprised? Not one bit. Seeing nitrous used at a drag race, legally or otherwise, seems natural. But seeing A.J. Foyt and Darrell Waltrip busted for using nitrous in the 1976 Daytona 500’s doesn’t seem normal, and that’s a statement, considering the legacy of cheating that NASCAR is known for. In truth, if there is a rule in a racing organization, there is somebody who is looking for the loophole, or at least a way to fly under the radar if they are breaking it. NASCAR holds some of the most infamous stories, though: from Junior Johnson’s 1966 “Yellow Banana” Ford Galaxie that had more aero tweaks than the Formula 1 cars of the period did to Smokey Yunick’s infamous 7/8ths scale 1967 Chevelle, there is no shortage of trickery going on in the pits, even today.
The most recent rumor circulates around teams poking tiny holes in the tires, which would allow enough air to bleed off that by the time the tires heated up and sealed the holes, the tire pressure would be at it’s optimum air pressure level instead of overinflated. While the concept makes no sense in several ways, mainly because there is no way to control the PSI of the tire that way, no guarantee of success, and besides, you poked a hole in a racing slick tire, NASCAR has felt it clear to remind the teams that on their punishment scale, P1 being a slap on the wrist and P6 meaning that you and Brian France are gonna have a nice, long talk, that anybody caught screwing with air pressures will be getting a P5…and will be paying a lot of money in fines. NASCAR is even taking tires from different teams to check them for holes or any kind of air-bleed system.
So, in light of that, what is the strangest method of cheating in professional motorsports that you have ever heard of? Fake fuel tank? Buckshot in the framerails for weigh-in? A fan that sucked the car down to the track, like Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team tried in 1978?
The Greatest Cheats in NASCAR History
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a6138/top-nascar-engineering-cheats/
Keep in mind the article was written in 2010 so I am sure there are plenty of cheats from then till recently
Well, Bernie Ecclestone’s ’78 car wasn’t that clever, because Chaparral had already done that in ’70 with the 2J that got banned.
I’d say that Bobbie Allison’s detachable rear bumper was one of the weirder ones. Who would think that the car would run faster and handle better without the rear bumper?
Brake checking the guy behind was my first thought , those bumpers must have been held on with balsa wood.
F1 with flexible wings that flatten at speed.
It wasn’t “cheating”at the time but NASCAR teams running super lite springs in the rear and riding on the bump stops to get the spoiler out of the air was pretty good.
An old Circle Track mag had a story about a guy cheating with a garage door opener. Apparently it was installed to move a hidden weight attached to the opener to alter the left/right weight bias. A guy sat in the bleachers and would hit the door remote, moving the weight. This car was a dirt car that ran the headers out the passenger side and that’s where the mechanism was hidden
Check out “How I won Daytona on 7 cylinders”
getting faster lap times by soaking slicks in WD40
with paint roller soak thoroughly the tread surface of the race tire
wrap tires tread surface with saran wrap
place tires in large dark garbage bags for 2 weeks
remove and place on car and run a .50 -.75 second per lap faster for qualifying
I heard of one NASCAR truck guy that felt the truck was faster when it was a bit narrower on certain tracks – narrower than the rules called for. So every so often they would “use the wall” to narrow the front a touch.
Darrell Waltrip’s car going thru tech with a fake lead radio in it to make legal weight.
After tech, a normal radio replaced it for the race. A J’s car as well as one other racer was about 5 MPH up on the rest of the field. Suspecting something, NASCAR made them re-qualify. Lo and behold more in line speeds were then turned. They could not find A J’s nitrous set up. MAGIC!!
How bout the ole’ “nitrous system in the hood” trick. Leave the entire system mounted to the inside of the hood and use the hood pins to supply power and ground.
Or a certain big name NASCAR team using seven cylinders of an eight cylinder engine on the restrictor plate tracks. They’d use the “unused” cylinder as an airpump to supply air to the remaining seven cylinders.
Tim Richmond’s team using a helmet filled with lead to go through tech and “forgetting it” in the hauler just before a race when a crew member would run back to get a real, lighter one was pretty clever.
There were a few alcohol funny car teams doing this too. Heavy helmet and an out worldly heavy body support poll.
Jeff Gordon’s “T-Rex” car. Build a car for a non-standard NASCAR event (The Winston), get it banned, then watch the other teams try to copy the banned features and hide it.
Drivers who tried this found that while the car worked well for about 10 laps or so, like what they were running in the Winston, but that if you tried it in a 400 or 500 mile race, it would chew up tires like you wouldn’t believe. Turns out the car was not just built to win the Winston – it was to sucker other drivers into trying out bad ideas.
Ha!
I seem to recall a rumor that Smokey somehow turned the inside of a bell housing into a supercharger and explained the tubing off the bell and into the engine compartment as an “experimental” clutch cooling device. Also, some Mopar super stock teams in the sixties would weigh the car with water filled tires and change tires before and after the race. Dick Landy’s name comes to mind on that one.
An old friend who I haven’t seen in about 20 years had a story that he swore was true and I have no reason to doubt it. Don’t remember the year but it was back when a certain Ford driver was winning every thing and on that particular day said Ford engine hand grenaded shortly after the burn out. Low and behold there was a nitrous bottle on the track when said Ford car was push back which was quickly scooped up and wisked away. Never saw any print about it anywhere.
It happened to Jerry Eckman back in the 90’s:
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/blowup-feature-nitrous-controversey-page-3
what the fuck
Wayne County went thru so much shet. Major tech before the car even got back to the pits….It was never proven that they were using NOS. The GM boys didn’t like getting beat !!!
Wayne County Car’s were impounded, taken apart, no cheating was ever discovered, just a driver with a drug problem.
T-rex was not cheating – it was a melding of everyone on the team’s ideas
to make a car go faster – different front geometry and locations , smoothed
radiused edge chassis parts under the car , etc,etc,etc,ad infinium .
Full second faster then the standard car at Charlotte when tested .
Nascar let them run it at the Allstar race, after telling Hendrick they would appreciate it if the car was never presented for tech again – ever…
and it was not .
NO2 age of prostock was the standard – an article about Bob Gibbins
part way’s with son Billy because Bob would not run NO2 also had admissions from other teams that inspectors would have their hands on the system while they leaned over to look at he car and not detect it !
It did not have to be big bottles – think an Co2 cartridge for an air gun size
container —-Just a quick shot for a second or so
Didn’t Gliden put son Rusty in a full on cheater N2O car to prove he could get the car through tech and the inspectors had no clue. Is that what happened to Rusty,banned?
I always heard Rusty showed the tech where nitrous was after proving his point. I don’t think Rusty is banned.
toyota team Europe fitting an adjustable turbo restrictor to to 1995 celica rally cars.
I had a guy down the street paint the inside of his engine to improve oil pressure for the stock car races in oxford maine
Smokey Yunick getting around the rule stating the fuel tank size by installing a hundred feet of “large diameter” fuel line.
I heard of a guy that pumped mercury in his chassis. Right side for tech so he wouldn’t have too much left side bias. Roll off the scales and pump it back to the left side.
Heard of a dirt-track racer modifying the vaccum advance on his distributors. He claimed that by changing the spring tension,it worked like a cheater cam. He had a distributor machine,& carried several spares to the track.He consistently won against more expensive,better financed teams. Must have been something to it.
Not NASCAR, but I’ve heard of a local circle track guy using a set of fully ported “double Hump” heads with black paint sprayed into the ports and run on high mileage short blocks to get by the techs.
Kid in the soap box derby had batteries in his pocket wired to a chain around his neck, hooked the chain around the back of his helmet where it contacted a metallic strip decal. When he was at the starting gate he would touch the helmet to the headrest where it made contact with a wire that went to the nose of the car where there was a coil of wire making an electromagnet. As the starting gate was lowered the magnet would attach the car to the gate, pulling it off the line. He got a holeshot start and won all the races. High tech cheating by a 12 year old.
one of my favorite Smokey Yunick stories is that he showed up to qualifying with a car that had fenders without a wheel opening. Sort of fenderskirts that were permanent. Competition cried foul, but nothing in the rule book prevented it, and Smokey pointed out, if the rear tires couldn’t be changed because they were fully enclosed, only the competition would gain from his foolishness, right? So the competition withdrew their complaints, tech passed Smokey’s car, and he got the pole position. Then the car rolls into the pits, and Smokey takes a Sawz All to the fenders and cuts out a wheel opening, and competition squawked. Smokey pulls out a rule book, and says, nothing in the rules says I can’t cut on my fenders.
Variations on the fuel line Smokey Yunick stories, one was that real early on in the Grand National days when they used very stock cars, Smokey saw that nothing in the rules mentioned the size of the fuel line, so he went with way oversized huge tubing… and added a gallon to the fuel on board but still had a stock tank. Another was that after they made a rule about the fuel line size, he sealed up a frame rail and used it as a fuel log. From the fuel tank some line was tapped to the frame rail, and then near the fuel pump on the engine another tube was tapped into the frame rail to draw the fuel out of. A couple extra gallons that way. Another was that the fule tank was over sized, but bumped up so the interior volume was testing at the gallon limit, but after tech the tank was pumped out with a bladder(air bag) to increase it’s size and a couple extra gallons were enabled. After the race the car was dropped on a spare tire, which collapsed it back to “stock” gallon size
Another early Grand National racing cheat was that the car body was off set to put the center of gravity to the left side. The body was a factory unmolested body, and the chassis was stock within rules, but the car was not centered on the chassis
On Smokey’s Boss 302 he needed the space where the stock starter was located, so he had a starter made that spun backward, then he flipped it from facing forward to facing rearward, and opened up that area for the headers to use for more optimum flow design
To get more space in the engine bay where he wanted it, he got an Australian steering box (right hand drive) and when installed in the American race car it was able to be mounted in a better location than a stock American steering box
Racing stock cars used to mean that they were car bodies from the factories, and had drip rails around the side windows. Smokey cut them off and put them back on closer to the car for less aerodynamic drag
My old man took his asphalt sportsman to a dirt track for race with a clearly different frame than the 5-6-7 chebbies running at the time. The rulebook at this track stated that a “Nascar Style” frame was allowed. The track tech took one look and said don’t bother taking it off of the trailer. So my dad pull out his copy of their rulebook and points to the Nascar frame wording. He than asked the tech if he’s seen one before. The tech gets all goofy-faced and says Where’d you get that??” My dad says “somewhere south of here.” Needless to say, all 5 of the track techs come over and are oogling over the chassis.
As the rest of the story goes, the car wasn’t made for dirt. It was last in the heat, squeaked into the feature in the consi, then as the track hardened up, it came alive. As he was passing someone for second, the regular walled him.
Smokey Yunick takes the cake “In 1968, he said NASCAR specified how big a fuel tank could be, but he noticed no one said how big the fuel line could be. Instead of a half-inch fuel line, Yunick created a two-inch fuel line that was 11 feet long, and held five gallons of gas. ”
With the roll bar that is!
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a6138/top-nascar-engineering-cheats/
Paying off NASCAR to outlaw the HEMI
and the WING (then bringing it back 30 years later)
and MOPAR in general.
I was told by one of my friends that I should never buy a block from one of the modifies that run at our local track. I have been told that tech only pumps the #1 cyl for compression and because of this the other 7 are “highly modified”
A fan that sucked the car down to the track, like Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team tried in 1978? Brabham did this and it worked. It wasn’t cheating…it had not been banned yet just like Jim Halls Chaparral
Swiss Cheese the inner fender wells so air pressure doesn’t build up over 150 mph, and flows to cool the brakes… Penske Donahue Camaro
The Penske Camaro was also the car that recieved supercooled race gas that shrunk enough that they got 21 gallons into a 20 gallon tank. The drum was double walled and packed with dry ice. http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-to-cram-more-gas-into-race-car-step.html
Okay – I was waiting to see this one: the old, old floor jack trick- put the jack under the fuel tank & jack up the tank until it buckles upward & remove the jack & then fill tank with fuel & tank will pop back out & increase the capacity…..probably still in use today on small tracks around the country 3:)