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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

When I think about "cheating taken to an artistic level," Baseball is the sport that comes to mind first. Drugs, tampering with the ball, tampering with the bat, sign stealing, and so on.

Baseball is also rife with gamesmanship. stuff that feels like it could be cheating, but isn't - or, stuff that's cheating, but mostly unenforced. There's too much to be worth talking about here. Just read [1] instead.

It makes sense that Baseball would be this way. It's stochastic. The outcome of one pitch has no innate correlation with the outcome of the next. There's relatively little causality in Baseball, and when everyone is a pro, it's hard to rely on talent alone. Some might even say it's a fool's errand.

[1]: https://thebaseballcodes.com/2021/06/24/gamesmanship-in-base...

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May I introduce you to Smokey Yunick:

> In another incident, Yunick showed up for a race with stock fender wells still installed on his Chevelle, even though the rules stated they could be removed. After the car qualified well due to improved aerodynamics, fellow competitors complained. Yunick replied, "The rules say you MAY remove them. They don't say you HAVE to." After qualifying, Yunick promptly cut out the fender wells. After further complaints to NASCAR, Smokey said, "The rules don't say WHEN I can remove them."

A racer after HN's heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

Motor racing has the best opportunities for cheating by engineering and almost cheating by creatively interpreting the rules. My favorite two cheats are the NASCAR that shed weight in the form of ball bearings when lapping, and Toyota's air restrictor that opened up when installed that got them banned from rally racing.

The ball bearing thing is especially brilliant because they were released from the jacking points where NASCAR inspectors lifted the cars. The one point under the car they couldn't inspect.

I don't understand enough about cars to see what is special about this. Do the stock fender wells help and that's why it was better for him to keep them when nobody else did? And if so why did he remove them later to be like everyone else? What am I missing?

If the advantage is aerodynamic he should've kept them the whole time. If the point was to lose weight for the race, I don't get why doing it in qualification. Can someone explain?

Not sure of the specifics. The point is he did something different that appears to have been advantageous. His competitors read the rules differently or didn’t think to try.

If I had to guess taking the fender liners out could help cool the brakes. Qualifying is short so the heat buildup isn’t as important as in a full race.

NASCAR racers have also been known to blatantly cheat in one area to deliberately get caught and draw the attention away from additional cheats. The inspectors find one thing, flag it, then pass the car when it is fixed, leaving the bigger cheat undiscovered.

If you’re taking a car over the pits (rectifying a defect notice - not sure how universal this term is?) you leave a blown tail lamp or something so they have something easy to find. Then they don’t try too hard and find something expensive that needs rectifying. When you come back they only check the tail lamp noted earlier.

Was wondering the same thing, so I found https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-smokey-story.ht...

TL;DR: Fender wells give better aerodynamics but prevent easy tire changing.

Interesting. Your link mentions the wheel arches, not the fender wells mentioned in wikipedia. Definitely sounds like the same story otherwise. Your link is from 2006, the wiki article references a book. I wonder which is right.

Most iconic cheating I can think of is taking the subway during the NYC marathon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_Ruiz

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