Technical inspectors at Maine stock car tracks have been screamed at, challenged to fights and made the subject of complaints that are reaching new levels on social media.
“It’s thankless. It’s one of the worst job you could have at a racetrack,” said Derek Mingo, the tech inspector during Saturday night racing at Speedway 95 in Hermon.
But, like Speedway 95’s Wednesday night inspector Dave McCullough, Mingo said a “lot more drivers appreciate what we do rather than complain” and they respect the fact they have a difficult job to do and are trying to ensure everyone is racing fair.
“It’s a challenge every week because people are always looking for a way to make their cars go faster and better,” said McCullough, who noted that some of them are willing to push the rules as far as they can to gain an advantage.
“Some think you’re picking on them. But if they go too far, you have to put a stop to it. You try to make it as fair as possible. You have to be consistent,” McCullough added.
The tech inspectors can take money or a trophy away from a driver who spent the whole week preparing their car because the driver violated the track rules by doctoring their car.
Following a race, the top finishers in each class must pass tech inspection and if they fail, they are disqualified. The vast majority abide by the rules.
In a passionate and sometimes volatile sport like auto racing, being disqualified doesn’t sit well and drivers often let their feelings be known to the tech inspector.
“You’ve got to be pretty thick-skinned,” said Nick Huff, who leases Unity Raceway but also helps his father, Kris, with the tech inspections. “You get a lot of insults.”
“People have screamed at me. They’ve offered to fight me. All kinds of stuff,” said McCullough, who handles tech inspections along with his son, John, during Wacky Wednesday racing.
“I tell them, ‘If you want this job, you can have it.’ But most of them appreciate what we do. They know somebody has to be the bad guy,” McCullough added.
“You don’t win any friends in there,” said Speedway 95 owner Del Merritt. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In a perfect world, you could use the honor system. But that’s not going to happen.
“They have to treat everyone the same and enforce the rules properly,” added Merritt, who feels Mingo and the McCulloughs have done their jobs very well.
McCullough said there are some drivers who cheat and others who simply make an honest mistake.
“We have people who don’t realize what they’ve done and others who do it on purpose and will say they didn’t do it,” said McCullough. “Some of the the ideas they come up with are crazy.”
Huff has a different perspective.
“Ninety-five percent of [cheaters] know what they’re doing but they like to play dumb and say they didn’t know [the rules]. They’ll give you a bogus story or a silly excuse,” he said.
But Huff said the drivers have been more respectful this season.
The tech inspectors get to know the drivers, so they have an idea which ones might be more prone to test them. The cheating usually involves the engine, since it is the toughest part of the car to examine.
They have witnessed some interesting cheating tactics.
“You are allowed one spring rubber per car and you can put it anywhere. One guy filled both of his rear springs full of spring rubbers. There were probably 10 of them,” said McCullough, who disqualified the driver.
“The next week, he had bought two new springs so he had just the one spring rubber and he won,” added McCullough.
Mingo recalled that one driver “had put so much tire softener on his tires, the softener was still coming off of his tires after he had won the race.” The driver was disqualified.
Huff said a driver told him his car’s body was “home-fabricated because he was trying to save money. He couldn’t afford to buy body panels. But what he he was trying to do was improve his car’s aerodynamics.”
Huff didn’t disqualify him but forced him to add 50 pounds of weight to his car.
Tech inspections vary in length.
McCullough said it usually takes them five to seven minutes per car.
He also said they have reached the point where they can tell if a car might be illegal before the race, so they will inform the driver so the driver can make the adjustments necessary to ensure its legality for the race.
Mingo said if they suspect that an engine is illegal, it could take two hours to pull it out and examine it.
“You have to keep them on their toes,” he said.
Huff uses a “spy camera” at Unity, which enables them to check out an engine without removing it from the car and significantly reduces the time spent on tech inspection.
Mingo said it is “challenging” to catch the cheaters at Speedway 95 but he pointed out that they have had just one disqualification so far this season, while McCullough hasn’t had any.
Unity usually has one disqualification every race night, according to Huff.
“We probably disqualify three or four a year. But it’s been real good this year,” said McCullough. “I don’t know whether they have smartened up or we have a different crowd of people.”
The techs absorb a lot of complaints and it has reached new levels with the advent of social media. Mingo said social media is “one of the worst things to happen to stock car racing because people will use it to complain about the track.
“All you can do is tech the same way for every driver,” he added.
They try to make it known to all the drivers that they are available if they have any questions prior to the feature. That ensures that if drivers have any doubts about the legality of their car, they can find out ahead of time and address it.
Being the person who leases the track and a tech inspector requires a balancing act, according to Huff.
“You have to be fair but you also want the drivers to keep coming back,” he said.
Huff will occasionally get a car from another track that will be illegal because they don’t know the Unity rules. If they can’t make the necessary changes to legalize the car, he will let them race but won’t allow them to finish in the top three and they will have to make the adjustments before the next time they race.
However, he said it irritates him when a multiple-car owner will threaten to takes his cars elsewhere if he doesn’t get his way in the tech garage.
“People like that leave a bitter taste in my mouth. It isn’t good for the sport,” said Huff, who will disqualify them if they aren’t legal.
The tech inspectors know it is important to maintain their composure and to not hold a grudge.
“Once I leave the racetrack on Wednesday night, I don’t worry about what happened. It’s on to the next Wednesday,” said McCullough.
“Everybody simmers down in a couple of days,” said Huff. “Things are sometimes said in the heat of the moment that people don’t mean.”
They all enjoy being involved in racing and McCullough points out that it gives them the opportunity to “meet people.”