Morgan Lucas Racing
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Thu, July 17th 2008
One of the great debates in drag racing these days—especially since the arrival of multi-car teams—revolves around team orders. There have been some real nasty arguments throughout the sport over the pros and cons of teammates taking a dive for the benefit of the other and I’m not going to weigh in on the issue now.
But there’s a flip side to the scenario and we saw it Sunday in Denver. Morgan and J.R. raced in the first round, meaning that only one team car was going to advance. If two teammates have to face each other during eliminations, the first round is the worst round for that to happen. There are those that would say, “Well, you’re guaranteed having one of your team drivers advance to the second round.”
True, but that’s still two rounds short of the final, which leaves a long way to go for the event title. Now, if you face your teammate in Round 2, you’ll have a car in the semi’s, which is MUCH better; and if you race your bro in the semi’s, one of you is on the way to the final, which is MUCH, MUCH better. Of course, if both of your cars are in the final, that’s a “no lose” situation.
But a first round team matchup doesn’t guarantee much, and as we saw, after Morgan beat J.R. in the first round, he was then stopped by Larry Dixon in the second.
“We were anticipating a great day, but only made it to the second round,” said Lucas. “We’ll keep trying and with two more races to go on the Western Swing, we’ll have plenty more opportunities.”
I guess there’s not a whole lot more that can be said.
While everyone was in Denver, I was at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut aboard my motorcoach with my family taking a little weekend getaway. In case you didn’t know, Lime Rock Park is a legendary 1.5-mile road course in the beautiful Berkshire hills of New England where sports car racing has been going on for over 50 years. The American LeMans series was making its annual visit and since I did a lot of sports car racing years ago—some of it at Lime Rock—we decided to catch the event.
We sat on a large, grassy hill overlooking Turn 1, the corner they call “Big Bend”, enjoyed a picnic lunch, caught some rays under clear, sunny skies, and watched the ALMS and GT1 cars have at it. It was a perfect day—except for one thing.
When drag racing is your favorite kind of motorsport and you’ve become accustomed to 8000-horsepower nitro engines, 0-100 mph in under a second, and pair after pair of the most menacing machines every mounted with wheels thundering down a dragstrip, sports car racing becomes a bit too “civilized”.
Even the crowds at Lime Rock lack that intensity that you find everywhere at an NHRA national event. I’m not here to compare sports car racing with NHRA drag racing because we really are talking apples and oranges. But just from a visceral, five-senses viewpoint, drag racing generates a whole lot more adrenaline and energy for me than road racing—although I remain a big fan of that as well. People cheer when a Top Fuel car or Funny Car completes its warmup in the NHRA pits. Sports car fans barely notice when an ALMS prototype or a GT1 Porsche cranks up before heading to the grid.
But, hey, both styles of racing have their own particular brand of buzz. The buzz is just a little wilder when there’s nitromethane involved.
Let’s go burn some in Seattle.