I Couldn't Help But Wonder...

With all this talk of bringing back "pack racing" at Daytona I couldn't help but wonder... Were things that much better way back when?

Old school "pack racing" was hold your breathe close, hold your breathe tense, hold your breathe dramatic. Fans loved it... Drivers hated it.

The trouble with "pack racing" was that one driver could not overtake on his own. The last lap pass for the win rarely happened unless the cars were two by two already. For a driver to overtake he needed 25 other cars to go with him. If he moved and they didn't he found himself on his own, going very quickly... backwards. The cars were so closely packed together on the high banks that one wrong move caused "the big one", and the drivers felt powerless to do anything about it.

Fast forward to 2011 and "tandem drafting". Drivers don't mind it but fans hate it. Yes the cars are a little more split up for the first 499 miles but the drivers can slingshot when it comes down to that final mile.

So back in the day a driver needed as many cars as possible pushing his if he decided to pull out of the draft, today one car pushing will do the job.

NASCAR seem to understand the need to limit the speed differencial between the tandem drafting and the ols fashioned pack drafting but hopefully they also realise the need to maintain the ability to race one-on-one.

Personally I am not sure a fully blown return to "pack racing" is as good as some rose tinted glasses make it look.

With all this enthusiasm surrounding the 2013 Cup Series Ford Fusion and with it a return to "stock" looking cars, I couldn't help but wonder... What was the last "stock" looking stock car?

Current Cup cars may not be the spitting image of a specific road car but at least they are more road car in proportion than the generation before and in my eyes make for a good looking "stock car" if no so "stock" car...

Did a road Monte Carlo ever look like this...

or a Charger ever have a front like this?

Or a Taurus look like this...

This is better...

Getting better, a Pontiac Grand Prix that looks like the road car, right down to the detail in the front and the overall shape... 

A Thunderbird from the same era, again thats what a T-bird looked like back then...

An Oldsmobile, again from the same era, and again looking like an old road going Olds Cutlass Supreme...

Same goes for the Chevy Lumina...

A little older and again they look like road cars, Buick on the high side and another T-bird down low...



So to find the last "stock" looking "stock car" it looks like we have to go back to the era of Lumina vs Thunderbird vs Grand Prix vs the odd Buick and Oldsmobile. They were still race cars but they were "stock" looking!

Despite all of this looking backwards I am excited about the future, the upcoming 2012 season, and what 2013 will bring!