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Fearview mirror: in NASCAR, dramas can unfold behind you, and sometimes objects are closer than they … a-y-y-i-i-e-e-e-a-a-ahhhh!
Sporting News, The, August 19, 2005 by Mark McCarter
You're on the highway. You look up, and you see things in the mirror that scare the bejeebers out of you.
* The grill of a toxic waste-hauling 18-wheeler with "Born To Be Wild" painted in red and orange letters on the extra-wide black bumper.
* A small-town sheriff with a Smokey's hat and a ticket quota.
* A mom yakking on a cell phone while chauffeuring six kids to swimming practice.
You drive in the Nextel Cup Series. You look up and see things in the mirror that scare the bejeebers out of you. For instance, any of a number of racing brethren atop 3,400 pounds of racecar, having gargled from a 55-gallon drum of testosterone.
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Rearview mirror?
Call it a fearview mirror.
There are two facets to the craft of racing through a mirror. First, the games people play, the various tricks and stunts by the men in the mirror, designed to distract, disrupt and, occasionally, dismantle the driver ahead. Second, the people who play the games.
The consensus in the garage area is simple:
For the first, the details fall into the category of "If I told you, then I'd have to kill you." This is secret stuff.
For the second, in the macho sport of racing, nobody wants to admit another driver gives him the willies. Might as well admit you don't know how to change your car's oil and you TiVo Will & Grace.
But stick with us. Take in some tales through the looking glass, then meet the one driver nobody wants to see in the mirror.
The games people play
He can be seen on movie screens all over the country, trying helplessly to shake a pesky Volkswagen named Herbie out of his mirror. Perhaps that's what makes Dale Jarrett reluctant on the subject.
"I don't know that that's something I want to talk about," Jarrett says.
The mirror racing, he means, not his cameo in Herbie: Fully Loaded.
"Everybody does a little something different. I'm not going to say what I do," Jarrett says.
Points leader Jimmie Johnson says, "Sometimes you have to mess with somebody aerowise to get the advantage or get by them. It's so tough to pass at a lot of these tracks. You have to get real close to someone's bumper to loosen him up and get by. Otherwise, you'll just be stuck behind him.
"Some people use it to play games, and other people use it just to pass."
Ultimately, it becomes a mental game. It's more about the driver looking back through the mirror than it is about the driver in the mirror.
"We do what we can do to get somebody to slip and make a mistake--trying to get a nose under them getting off the corner, things like that," says Greg Biffle, a five-time winner this season.
Elliott Sadler says, "Yon always try to keep the guy in front of you playing some kind of guessing game--darting in and out of his mirror, making him have to check it more than once. We do stuff like that all of the time."
The people who play the games
Just like the postpubescent movie starlet behind the wheel of Herbie, most Nextel Cup racers have mastered fearview driving.
"Everybody's good at it," Johnson says.
Carl Edwards says: "It just depends on the day. They're all usually pretty relentless."
Edwards says Biffle "is definitely a guy who'll get the job done when he's behind you."
Biffle says, "There's not any one guy I don't like to race with right now. I couldn't say I'd be more apprehensive if Tony Stewart was in my mirror more than Matt Kenseth or any of the others."
Sadler says: "Everybody does it to everybody. And the more you race somebody, the more you know who's really messing with you and who's trying to make a pass."
Like who?
"Certain guys are very aggressive all the time," he says. "Certain guys aren't going to give you a break. I'm not going to mention any names. That always has a way of coming back to bite you."
It's old hat stuff
It's not a new phenomenon. But today's drivers are taking mirror racing to new heights. Or depths.
"We used to call it 'get under the trunk enough to where they couldn't see your nose,' "former driver Donnie Allison says.
According to Benny Parsons, the 1973 NASCAR champion who now is an NBC analyst, it was less prevalent in the previous generation. Drivers couldn't afford the time and money needed for repairs if they crashed.
"You only had a handful of people (on your team), and the business was dead-serious business," Parsons said. "If you played around and tore something up, how bad was that?"
The king of 'em all
Used to be, the biggest case of fearview mirror came from looking back to see a Chevy bow tie on a black car, accompanied by a pair of goggles, a mustache and a demonic leer.
"Oh, Earnhardt," Parsons says when asked about the most frightening historic mirror images. "Oh, yeah. You looked up and saw the 3 car back there, you knew you were going to get hit."
Allison remembers the late Dale Earnhardt's early days. "When Earnhardt first came into Cup racing, he was young," Allison says. "He had an awful, awful lot of potential. And he wanted to go.
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