IMCA racers work the gray area

If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.

That phrase has been offered up at racetracks across the country for as long as there have been rules to break in sports. In motorsports, the idea of living in the 'gray areas' and pushing the boundaries of the rules is not only common, it's expected.

So why is that the case? What makes a racer walk the ethical line between innovation and cheating? Are the sanctioning bodies doing enough, and if not, what can they do?

The Gazette sought the answers to these questions in relation to IMCA and its racers, where over the last 10 years, all manner of rule-breaking has been seen. Of what there can be no doubt, though, is it's not going to stop.

'When I first started here, I think everybody kind of comes into their jobs here saying, 'I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to change this mentality.' None of us have done that,' said IMCA President Brett Root. 'I've given up trying to really get too emotional over people cheating. It's just something that's going to happen. Some people do it on purpose, some guys just don't know the rules. There's a lot of guys in between.

'Like I tell the racers involved — especially in our more severe penalties — it's nothing personal. I don't take it personal you're cheating, so you shouldn't take it personal we just fined you. It's just the way it is. It's always going to be part of the sport.'

Motivation behind breaking the rules is certainly not limited to motorsports — let alone sports in general. Politicians and businessmen and women have been blurring the lines of what's legal and illegal for centuries, all in search of more money or more wins.

'If a guy finds a gray area to work in — ultimately that's our job.'

- Nick Marolf

IMCA Late Model racer

As much money that is on the line at major events in dirt racing, there's certainly monetary incentive for some racers, but when asking the sport's racers and officials, motivation to break the rules is far more competitive-based.

The vast majority of racers at the IMCA level are doing so as a hobby and certainly not to make a living. Therefore, the drive to win races pushes people to find something others haven't.

'If a guy finds a gray area to work in — ultimately that's our job,' said Late Model racer Nick Marolf. 'The rule says we can't do this, but it doesn't say we can't do that. When you find that gray area, you should be able to race that gray area throughout the year. The next year, hey, that's gone.

'It's not my job to write the rule book. It's my job to read the rule book as it's advantageous to me.'

Every season brings out different things racers have discovered or perfected that aren't explicitly prohibited in the IMCA rule book. The most prevalent rules broken often change year-to-year, but there are a few common threads: chemically altered tires, alterations to the engine and electronic traction control.

It's the former that stands as the single most broken rule in the IMCA rule book — by nearly everyone's account. IMCA's rule is clear in that racers cannot chemically alter tires in any way. Marolf admitted he's likely one of the inspirations for specifying that rule from 'no softening of tires' to 'no chemically altering tires,' as he was caught two years ago with a chemically altered, but not softer, tire.

IMCA sends tires to be tested at Blue Ridge Laboratories in North Carolina. The lab takes multiple samples of a tire, applies testing agents and spins them in a centrifuge. Their results determine if chemicals have been added, and they send the results back to IMCA with their determination. It's a test that costs $500 per tire, plus shipping. IMCA then replaces that tire for the racer at $135. That cost, then, ultimately sees the testing limited to Deery Brothers Summer Series races and not weekly shows.

The chain reaction there becomes a much higher rate of tire doping at the weekly level than in a Summer Series race. Local promoters, Marolf said, simply can't afford to test tires and ultimately spend $2,000 every week.

'The tire thing, if they're not policing it, you're seeing three, four or five guys doing it every night,' Marolf said. 'It's always funny to me that you've got great weekly guys, then you go to the same track for a Deery show and they struggle to make the show. I look at that and see obviously they're doing something different weekly they're not doing now.'

Who is or isn't doping tires is one of the fiercer debates rolling right now in and out of the pit area.

In general, racers who have been around a long time and have seen many different things can spot something out of the ordinary in a hurry. A local IMCA racer, who was granted anonymity so he could speak candidly, said he has regular conversations with others about it.

'I've had three guys call me this week and ask me about tire dope. And they're all IMCA racers,' the racer said. 'Obviously I know three guys who aren't running clean to begin with and who are searching because they aren't happy with what they're doing. It's their job to go figure out what that is.

'There's a reason a guy who won a ton of races four or five years ago and won (an IMCA) national title and all that and now he's a fifth or sixth place car. It's because they started teching tires.'

Electronic traction control represents the biggest fine IMCA has to dish out. Former IMCA racer Kevin Blum was hit with the largest fine in IMCA history at $10,000 for getting caught using it at the 2009 Pepsi Nationals at 34 Raceway in Burlington. Root was Vice President at the time, but handled that situation and told media at the time he was proud of IMCA being one of the first to catch the electronic unit being used.

'We try pretty heavily to enforce it. It's not an easy thing to do,' Root said. 'Electronics can be somewhat like tire dope; it can be very, very difficult for the average individual to keep up with.

'We have to be knowledgeable to be dangerous and know the products we're allowing and know when we see something that's modified, or know where something might be hiding that isn't permitted on the car.'

Despite some on Internet forums and in the pit area accusing Justin Kay — the latest in a long line of racers over the years who have taken their turn at the top — of using the device, Root and others don't believe it's a serious issue now because of the cost of installing one. Marolf said the devices are around $7,000, so weekly racers would never see their money back — unlike, perhaps, someone on a national tour.

Another local IMCA racer, who was also granted anonymity, said the car he's affiliated with tried one out and didn't see what all the fuss was about.

'We had access to one that was someone else's and he wasn't running it. We took it, put it in and took it to a test,' the racer said. 'It didn't do enough for me to ever justify spending that kind of money within my budget. We never raced a race with it in. I just wanted to know what I was facing.

'I don't think Kay has it, but even if he did have it, I'm not sure it could take a second-place car and make it a first-place car. The way I felt about it, I didn't see that much of an advantage in it. There wasn't that much change. It wouldn't even make a 10th place car a fifth-place car. The guys blowing the horn about it don't have any experience with it.'

With so many rules to break, and so many racers to break them — approximately 8,100 IMCA racers across the country — it's not feasible for IMCA to catch everyone who's cheating.

'There's a lot of people who have won a lot of races because they thought of something before the rules thought of it. That's racing. That's the idea.'

- Andy Eckrich

IMCA Late Model racer

IMCA, then, has to do its best to stay on top of what it can. Many racers and fans often offer up problems that need fixing or rules being broken, but not viable solutions to those problems.

Those who do offer solutions — most often racers who run Deery Brothers races and have been involved in all the major Late Model series run across the country — agree better enforcement is the answer.

'IMCA does better than a lot of the stuff I've done, but they don't do near as good as they think they do. More tech, more crew guys. More manpower to check tires, everything,' said Andy Eckrich, who operates Precision Performance in Cosgrove. 'They need to have an IMCA tech guy at every Deery show. Every track has a flagman. We're relying on that track's officiating crew. Some of these tracks don't know Late Models well. Some of them are good because they've been around Late Models a lot.'

The problem with not having an enforcer, as it were, at the track is racers then tend to get braver and braver. Even with the threat of a tire test hanging out there, racers become bold enough to make IMCA put their money where their mouth is.

'They need to scare people. I remember one of the first times I went to a Deery show, Josh McGowan sniffed my tires and came walking over a little while later and asked what I was using on my tires,' a local racer said. 'Maybe he was (messing with) me, but it worked. He gave me that sort of get-out-of-jail free card and said to start mounting my tires with water only. Maybe it was a bluff. But you need to have a guy going through the pit area scaring people. But racers are smart. If they get scared a couple times and don't get caught, they start calling the bluff.'

A common solution to the tire-doping problem specifically is to enforce a durometer rule, where the tire has to fall within a set parameter of softness. Many racers — including Marolf, who has championed this idea — believe it will save lower-budget teams by allowing them to make older tires last longer.

His and others' belief is that the spending gap will always be there, regardless of if they're allowed to dope tires or not.

'Allowing lower-buck teams to do stuff to their tires actually lets them run older tires and stay more competitive, compared to the teams that continually put new tires on the car. In the long run, a tire is $135 and they could double the life of the tire by spending $25 or $35 messing with it but still meeting the durometer rule, the lower-buck teams are still going to compete with medium to higher-budget teams,' Marolf said. 'The teams that have money are constantly going to be on new tires because a new tire fires off better. You can only put so many heat cycles in a tire before it gives up. Those teams, if you let them, are still going to play with tire dope — they'll just do it on new tires, where other guys will do it on old tires. There's always going to be a disconnect between the high-dollar teams and low-dollar teams, and you're never going to be able to completely close that gap. But I think how we are now, the gap is wider than it would be if they let them do it.'

IMCA's fear, though, is stock car racing becoming like karting, where haulers arrive to the track with 10 or more sets of tires mounted and prepped for different track conditions — even if the racers still have to be within a certain threshold.

'Dirt track racing has gone down that road and it opens you up to multiple brands of tires and multiple compounds of tires — which generally speaking aren't cost effective for the racers,' Root said. 'That becomes one of the biggest costs because racers are always trying to find the latest and greatest way to get inside the boundaries of the durometer rule but still have an advantage over the next guy. For us, one compound rule makes the most sense.'

Rule enforcement is a moving target, and one very rarely hit when considering the breadth of racers in this area — let alone the country — and the narrow margins in which promoters and IMCA work financially.

Racing has been and will be built on innovation. Finding the line — and where IMCA puts the line — between innovation and cheating is what matters most.

'There's a lot of people who have won a lot of races because they thought of something before the rules thought of it. That's racing. That's the idea. That's the Smokey Yunick in everybody,' Eckrich said. 'But when it's blatant in the rules already and you don't follow it, that's cheating. I think that's the difference.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com