There is a SIMPLE fix to the Pro-Stockers "skating" around......Put some damn WING in the car. It is just so much easier to blame the track than to put enough wing in it to NOT be on the ragged edge of crashing because it might slow you down a hundredth. If a 10,000hp fueler can stay stuck, the track AIN'T THAT BAD.

Always the Pro-Stock guys complaining about track prep because they REFUSE to put wing in the cars

Monte

Monte you are smarter then that!
I agree the Pro Stock cars need some wing but this surface is junk. It was the 1st day the track opened. All the Alcohol,Pro Mod and many other cars have trouble with the track. You can be like the others that say $hit happens but I have seen to many cars get lose and hit the wall at Z MAX to say it was the drivers fault.

Could they put more wing on the car if they wanted to? Dont the Pro Stock rules prevent that? they showed pices on tv and on internet where "chunks" small aggregate really were lifting on the track after the fuel cars run, they cut some tires because of it,also claimed by Dim Light that water was coming up through track because of the lower temps, Salt Lake City's Rocky Mountain used to do that, seen several wrecks and called races because of that. Pro Stock is allways on the edge since they lack downforce, a slick track just makes that worse.

The wickerbill is adjustable on the cars, but putting a little more in it slows the cars a couple hundredths, so they pretty much refuse to do it. I have been at NUMEROUS test sessions at various tracks and we are rolling Pro-Mods down through there like nobodys business and the pro stocks look like they are on a skating rink. They run as little downforce as possible. If it moves the shock sensors at the top end, they think that's too much wing.

I have been to Zmax before, personally never had an issue with getting down that track.

Now if water was seeping through, THAT is an issue. But if every class other than the pro stocks were going right down, hard to put much stock in the "junk track" argument

Monte

I believe a sportsman racer posted a graph of his car spinning all over the track just a bit before this accident. I've had an old turbo car of mine get sideways there. Track is rarely up to spec

Track is notorious as being poorly prepped for 'wingless' high powered door cars (Ask Hemi Fred or Bob Reed....and that was what? Several years back?

It's going to be interesting...Friday there was easily LESS than Half of the normal crowd there, in fact if you took all the people on each side and made them sit next to eachother there wouldn't have been enough butts to fill 3 sections of bleachers (Ex: Sections A though C). To me (and a lot of people) If you take the 'under the lights' night session away from a Friday, you kill much (if not most) of the incentive to even go...

That being the case, I'm willing to bet that Mr. Bruton is not going to dump a bunch more $$$ into resurfacing...not with all the problems he's already having filling NASCRAP seats...

I predict Speedway MotorSports (Bruton's company) will be looking (if not already in the works....which knowing Bruton it is) to divest themselves of the NHRA fairly quick, not enough players with deep enough pockets to refill the hole that's going to make.

Track seems great for either sub 6 second cars with wings or slower bracket cars, as for Pro Stock....maybe they need some type of Z axis yaw sensor that limits/kills power once they start skating above say 100 mph, no downforce of course also means your brakes aren't going to do very much for you...easy fix and the technology is already there...but of course that also means it could be manipulated to work as a traction control device.

As you can see (evident how the cars can invert and stay more-or-less on path) that a Pro Stock car is about as aerodynamic upside down as it is right side up....just like a bullet. So the tires aren't doing much gripping for the brakes to do very much on the big end without the chute deployed.

I recall when many were praying Bruton would buy out the NHRA. What a train wreck that would have been.

Some were saying they only prep to 1000 ft. for the TF classes.

If they prep past that the fuelers chunk the tires.

If that's the case and they have 4 lanes, why not prep 2 for PS and Bike classes and the other 2 for the Fuelers?!

I saw one interview last night with Bruton and he was asked what he would do different to prep for the 4 wide race in Spring (Hate 4 wide racing BTW) and he basically said nothing, the track is fine and pretty muched blamed the rain for cancelling the race. No mention of the Pro-Stock guys pulling out and leaving the staging lanes after V Graines wrecked.

All this talk of wings wouldn't have helped AJ. he went loose before the 330. Track sux. Fix it.

Dim light I am still laughing !!! thats hilarious.!

I saw Jason make that run also but if I'm not mistaken....he was the one, the inside car camera was showing shaking his head because he was on the edge of losing it himself?? The Summit cars are set up equally and Anderson didn't make it down through there either and had to push the clutch in.

There seemed to be more issue in the left lane than the right. Jason laid down that .53 in the right lane and like someone else in this thread mentioned....that track has been known for its issues over the years....

If they did mandate a (as a number) a 1" wicker bill
to ALL the pro stocks it could correct this issue

I am just so glad V Gaines is ok. I really like him as he just seems like such a nice all around type of guy. Ron

I ran at Zmax a few years back, all passes were in Lane 2 and it is the smoothest track I have personally been down. But rubber adhesion and water seepage are 2 issues I've been told are issues at this track, that said NC is an area of the country where we have fairly extreme temperature and humidity changes. particularly in the late winter, I've seen 50 degree swings back and forth and back again within one week (Low 30's to low 80 and back to the 30's) over the course of 3 weeks spans as recently as last March.

Cars ran pretty well at the 4 wide back in April....Wonder if this is not mostly track prep. The track pretty much sits dormant between events, they need to run more T&T's during the year but they won't because of the High Overheads of opening a 4 lane track....Someone told me it cost's $6000 per hour to staff and light the track for a T&T, so without sponsor subsidies it's just not going to happen.

Zmax is a National Event track, plain and simple. The weekly, or whenever else they run prep is irrelevant, because it simply doesn't matter to them. That track doesn't NEED to be open and racing to support itself. Bruton sure doesn't need the money.

Even if they DID run on a weekly basis, NHRA comes in and completely scrapes a track to bare surface and re-preps for a national event anyway.

The "traction twins" told me once that was the nicest surface they had ever prepped

Monte