Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

nintendolife.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 441 posts

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#361

Post by mawise »

daguava wrote: post #81

This is one of those events that I'm of several minds about: 1) This is what keeps people outside the scene interested and taking note - NASCAR absolutely should publicize and play up this moment, it brings a lot of folks to the sport. It was incredibly awesome. 2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again"…

> A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.

That's exactly what happened in the cycling world when UCI decided they needed to ban the "supertuck"[1]

[1]: https://www.bicycling.com/racing/a35566614/uci-supertuck-ban...

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#363

Post by sokoloff »

Shocka1 wrote: post #348
BadOakOx wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations. I don't watch Nascar, but as from comments from other places, there is nothing new with it. It has been known and attempted by others now and then [1]. It is a high risk high reward move and this time it turned out good. If it wasn't regulated so fa…

I have some family members that are huge fans, so I follow somewhat. It should be noted with your link that Darlington is a much faster and lengthier track than Martinsville. At Darlington, Larson was very close to Hamlin when he initiated the wall ride halfway through the corner - he may have gained a half second or so, not several, like at Martinsville. I see this as more of a Richmond/Martinsville short track stra…

I think you’ll see the defensive line move up the track to block this on exit, which will open up the possibility for someone to get under the defending car, which should make the racing tactics more interesting in the last lap.

This tactic will wear the car out far too much to be used on multiple laps, so it may just get race fans to experience more excitement and interest on the last lap.

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#364

Post by prego_xo »

volleygman180 wrote: post #342

Just wait until military soldiers start camping inside the corner of a room, or jumping and prancing as they come around a corner while in battle.

Imagine the anger as some 18 year-old from the U.S dropshots your best friend.

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#365

Post by bombcar »

thefreeman wrote: post #334
bscphil wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you play hundreds to thousands of iterated games of video game football where you control the ball on every play, you’re bound to run into the scenario and be detached enough to know what to do. Back in the day, the AI for opponents was often fairly stupid. Rather than spreading out intelligently to prevent an opponent from reaching the goal line, they would just sprint towards your current location at all t…

As a bit of an aside, the past few years have seen a drastic rise in coaches "going for it" on 4th down instead of punting in a lot of situations. This is mainly attributed to the rising use of analytics by coaching staffs.

It can be directly attributed to people studying the stats - but it had been known for years that "going for it on 4th" was statistically better. But coaches were loathe to do it because if they did, and failed, they'd get yelled at for not doing it "normally", and if they succeeded nobody would notice.

It took quite awhile for that logjam to break.

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#366

Post by sokoloff »

arwineap wrote: post #358
wiredfool wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the 3" fuel line issue a decade or more ago. When limiting the size of the fuel cell to x gallons, they neglected to specify the size of the fuel line. More fuel capacity is an advantage late in the race, allowing for the potential to not have to pit for a splash of gas or have to drive as conservatively. Well, a 3" line has a couple of gallon capacity if it extends the length of the car, and at one point,…

You're thinking of Smokey Yunick, and that's just a taste of his antics Check out the "reverse torque special" where he reversed the direction of his engine, so the tq pull would naturally turn him in the correct direction for nascar Or when he modified the roof and raised the floor to get a more aerodynamic car Or when he qualified with wheel covers, and cut them out before the race ( rules didn't stipulate you had…

Or placed an inflated basketball in the fuel tank when it was going to be measured for capacity, only to deflate the basketball for the race.

Or load the car with cold (more dense) fuel.

Or (allegedly) race a 15/16ths scale car with a matching 15/16ths scale street car strategically parked in the track parking lot so the scrutineers could compare against a stock car and see that it matched.

Or built a race engine with the correct size cylinder in the easiest to measure location and oversized cylinders in every other position.

Other racers had special lead-filled radios and overweight helmets that would be in the car for tech, then get changed out before qualifying. Or lead shot filled in the frame rails and a wax seal or threaded fitting to keep it in. Darrell Waltrip tells a hilarious story where the threaded seal was in the jack point and NASCAR jacked the car to go look for it. Moving bars of Mallory (tungsten, basically) from the right to left after passing tech. Another racer was caught with a 22 gallon tank (20 was the limit at the time), apologized and agreed to change it. (He changed it to a 28 gallon tank.)

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#367

Post by bombcar »

discardedrefuse wrote: post #104
TulliusCicero wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really interesting. The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit, that was already present. But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive. What the existence of video games does, is allow people to do things like this in an environment where social expectations and pressure don't really exist. It's like a psychologica…

> The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit, that was already present. But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive. Clock management is a pretty big aspect of (American) football strategy and very much expected. I don't think anyone considers it gaming the rules. Just off the top of my head: - Teams with comfortable lead…

There are books on it - https://johntreed.com/products/football-clock-management-5th... for example, and they're quite worth the read if you're interested in football at all. Some of the clock management tricks are relatively unintuitive - and some only work if you do it most but not all the time.

Football is a really interesting sport above/behind the field.

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#368

Post by bombcar »

pif wrote: post #305
jefftk wrote: post #56

Reminds me of another example of video-game inspired tactics: Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. For certain football fans, the excitement of a last-minute comeback now commingled with the shock of the familiar: It's…

Sorry, I don't get it: what did he gain by shaving 6 seconds out of the last 17? Please, help me understand!

Clock management in football is incredibly important - the last 17 seconds can take multiple minutes to play if the team has timeouts, throws out of bounds, all sorts of things.

You want to burn the clock if you have the ball and 17 seconds remaining, because you don't want the other team to have a chance to retaliate.

It's a very delicate balance and one of the most difficult "coach" decisions football has, and it applies throughout the game, and changes based on how your offense and defense are doing vs theirs (do you score fast and hope to defend and score again, or do you score slow and hope to defend only, etc).

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#369

Post by mindcrime »

arwineap wrote: post #358
wiredfool wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the 3" fuel line issue a decade or more ago. When limiting the size of the fuel cell to x gallons, they neglected to specify the size of the fuel line. More fuel capacity is an advantage late in the race, allowing for the potential to not have to pit for a splash of gas or have to drive as conservatively. Well, a 3" line has a couple of gallon capacity if it extends the length of the car, and at one point,…

You're thinking of Smokey Yunick, and that's just a taste of his antics Check out the "reverse torque special" where he reversed the direction of his engine, so the tq pull would naturally turn him in the correct direction for nascar Or when he modified the roof and raised the floor to get a more aerodynamic car Or when he qualified with wheel covers, and cut them out before the race ( rules didn't stipulate you had…

Definitely a Smokey Yunick special there. That whole idea is so iconic / infamous in racing that it's directly referenced in the movie Days of Thunder in a scene where Harry Hogge is talking to the car he's started building and says something like "I'm going to give you a fuel line that will hold an extra gallon of fuel".

They didn't mention Smokey by name, but it was clearly an allusion to that.

Re: Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

#370

Post by mindcrime »

metaphor wrote: post #191
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #2

Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you.

Surprised Smokey Yunick's name isn't mentioned anywhere. Reminds me of this entertaining seminar[1] of a bunch of old school IMSA racers describing how they got "creative" racing around the rules to gain an unfair advantage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfq7-1ePW-M

It always makes me happy to see Smokey Yunick's name come up on HN. It doesn't happen very often[1], but he was clearly a "hacker" as much as any programmer or computer science guy was!

[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Post reply on HN