Motorsports Talk

Live Blogging ARCA/USAC Championship Press Conference

2011-10-14T11:39:00.020-04:00

Don't forget, ARCA championship finale this Sunday, live on SPEED at 2 pm ET. I will also be broadcasting the race along with DC Bash on ARCAracing.com.

1:03 pm ET: Chris Buescher - "I really don't know what I will be doing next year right now. What I do know is it will be something. It all comes down to what we have funding to do. Right now RoushFenway has two Cup cars to sell and all of it's Nationwide program to sell, so they have their hands full. But it is really comforting to me to know I am still on the radar and they want me in a car somewhere."

12:58 pm ET: Ty Dillon - "The deal with Frank here in the spring should be over, I hope. I had a lot faster car at the time and he was definitely coming back to me. It's my job to come here and win and I didn't want to not win when we had the fastest car. But it was definitely a learning experience, which is exactly what we're here to do. I think if I am in the situation again in the near future I'll be a lot more patient. It's a real honor to come up here and lock up the ARCA championship. It's something I'll be able to hold over Austin's head, that's for sure, being the first Dillon to win a major championship."

12:29 pm ET: "We'll have the motorsports spotlight shining on Toledo on Sunday. We're proud of what we're doing here. We're dug in and we're going to be here long term. We're happy we can shine the spotlight on the city. We'll have 85 race teams here this weekend, none of which are local. We'll have thousands of race fans in to see these two national championship events this weekend bringing revenue into the city. We're proud we're able to do that."

12:23 pm ET: Toledo Speedway was built in 1960. Drager and partner Roy Mott purchased the track in 1999 and has made numerous capital improvement projects in the ensuing 12 years. The next project on the radar will happen over the winter as the original wooden and steel-scaffolding grandstands will be replaced. The speedway has been repaved, had a new catchfence installed, has moved the pits to the outside of the track to improve sightlines for the spectators, installed a pit road inside turns one and two, replaced the track's lighting system, added six suites, put in a 3,000 square foot inspection station in the pit area and now will be replacing the 50-year-old grandstand system. The closed-deck steel and aluminum grandstands will match what spectators use at nearby Michigan International Speedway.

12:21 pm ET: ARCA President Ron Drager now on stage. "We're proud of Ty and Chris and we are proud of the role we played in their development. We'll be seeing them race in much bigger venues for years to come."

12:20 pm ET: "I dont know where we're going. We have some things on the table but a lot of them are based on funding. We've had a lot of great sponsors this year but we're going to need more to move forward. We'll see what comes up. One thing is for sure we'll be racing somewhere."

12:19 pm ET: "I've raced a lot of different things and worked my way up through several different series. Learning how to adapt and getting wins on different types of racetracks is really big. You need all the pieces to fall in to place at any of these racetracks. Thankfully we've had a pretty consistent and smooth year. ARCA is a lot of fun because you do get to go to all these different tracks. Places like Salem, every stock car driver should have to go race there. It's so rough and so fast and it's a lot of fun."

12:18 pm ET: "I've always worked on the cars myself growing up. I really want to learn more of the chassis stuff on these cars. It's about learning the mechanics of the cars and getting laps behind the wheel."

12:17 pm ET: Chris Buescher - "We were only scheduled to do the speedway races so we've been taking it one by one all year. We didn't know what we were doing week to week sometimes. We ended up in some interesting points battles so it's been a really fun year for us. Toledo was really hard on us the first year but we came back with a new car last year and Gary Roulo has put on a setup that really works here. This is a great racetrack, you can race two and three wide here and it's a lot of fun."

12:16 pm ET: Next on stage is Chris Buescher. Although Buescher is behind Dillon in the season championship standings, he is a virtual lock to earn the 2011 ARCA rookie of the year award.

12:14 pm ET: "Our plans are to go full-time NCWTS racing next year. We'll have the same team working on my ARCA car move up with us."

12:12 pm ET: I love racing at Toledo. It's a cool track. It's got a great surface and enough banking to put on a great race. I had a ball the last time here and I think we'll have another great race this weekend."

12:11 pm ET: Ty Dillon - "Winning seven races in any series is very special. To win a championship in a series where you know everyone and have so much fun and respect with is really cool."

12:09 pm ET: Ty Dillon now takes the stage. As soon as he rolls off the grid on Sunday he will clinch the series championship.

12:05 pm ET: Press conference kicks off. Toledo Speedway welcomes both USAC Traxxas Silver Crown and ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards national championship events. USAC points battle comes down to Levi Jones and Jerry Coons, Jr. Jones leads by 12 points, with Kyle Larson in third 46 points behind and Tracy Hines in fourth 61 points out. Last year's event was the first for the Silver Crown cars and it was one of the most exciting USAC events of the entire season with points leader Bud Kaeding getting involved in a late-race crash and losing the title to Jones. The race is named after local Toledo USAC legend Rollie Beale.

11:57 am ET: ARCA champion-to-be Ty Dillon has arrived, as has second-place Chris Buescher. Dillon won here at Toledo in the spring and Buescher swept both races in 2010.

11:44 am ET: We've gathered here at the Toledo Speedway Bar and Grille for the pre-championship event press conference for the USAC Traxxas Silver Crown Series and ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards. The USAC finale is tomorrow afternoon while the ARCA season ender is Sunday and will be televised live on SPEED.

Ty Dillon will speak of his 2011 season and answer questions from the media, and the speedway will also announce a significant capital improvement project for 2012.

What do Kyle Busch's 100 wins really mean?

2011-07-17T12:00:00.003-04:00

One hundred.

If you have one hundred pennies, you have a dollar. In this day and age, a dollar isn't what it used to be. A hundred dollars? That's enough to take a family of four to the movies and get snacks. Or maybe -- maybe -- enough to buy a ticket to a NASCAR race near you and have enough left over for a T-shirt of your favorite driver.

One hundred years is a century. One hundred yards is a football field. Whenever a list of "the best of all time" is compiled, chances are it will be composed of 100 items, be they songs, movies, or racecar drivers.

When the definitive list of the all-time best NASCAR drivers is written, there is little doubt that Kyle Busch will be on it. He's proven he can win, any time, anywhere, in any type of racecar.

And he just reached his own "100" milestone: 100 career NASCAR national touring series wins. His 22 Cup wins, 49 Nationwide Series wins, and 29 Camping World Truck Series wins at just 26 years of age is indeed an impressive accomplishment.

But how impressive?

Does it put him in the same league as Richard Petty and David Pearson? Or even Bobby Allison, Cale Yarbourogh, Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Gordon? Afterall, he's publicly stated he'd like to reach 200 career NASCAR wins, a number heretofore reached only by one man: The King, Richard Petty.

The answer there, unfortunately for Busch's legacy, is not quite yet.

There's a real possibility that Busch will reach the 80 win plateau that so few before him have crested. But as of now, for the stat that matters, he's 178 wins behind Petty's total.

Sure, the bulk of Petty's wins came in the 1960s and into the 1970s, many on dusty dirt tracks and out of the way paved short tracks. Many were short races against short fields thin on any serious competition. But the fact of the matter is, even then, Petty's wins were in the top stock car series in the country. That still stands for something.

Busch has 22 wins, which is no small feat considering how hard it is to win just one race at the sport's highest level. But it's not quite time to put him in that elite group based on his prodigal win rate in the lower divisions.

If you're going to discredit many of Petty's wins due to the competition, or lack thereof, let's dissect Busch's 49 Nationwide wins. Who is the competition in that series? Sure, he has had to beat the likes of Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, and lately Brad Keselowski, but beyond that who is there? During the past five seasons, the Nationwide Series has had the competitive depth of many of those fields that Petty whipped up on prior to the start of the sport's modern era in 1972.

In his 29 Camping World Truck Series wins, the only Cup competition he's faced is from Harvick and Bowyer.

The bottom line is Busch is driving superior equipment in those series, his Nationwide cars are provided by a Cup team with virtually unlimited access to technology and a budget double, triple, or even more than that of most of the Nationwide Series regulars. While he owns his own Truck team, he still has unlimited access to Cup technology and it's no secret he's spending way more than most would consider prudent in that series.

Since Martin Truex won the Nationwide Series championship in 2005, the final time a non-Cup driver won the title, Harvick, Edwards, Bowyer, Busch, and Keselowski have all taken the glory in the NNS. Meanwhile over in the Cup Series, it's been all Jimmie Johnson. Five consecutive times Johnson has celebrated on stage and taken home the big trophy, and really the only trophy in NASCAR that anyone truly cares about.

Can Busch knock Johnson off his throne and lay claim to a Cup championship? History says no, at least until he quits chasing after wins in lower divisions.

A quick examination of the Nationwide Series all time win list offers further proof. Mark Martin (49), Busch (49), Harvick (37), Edwards (33), and Jeff Burton (27) make up five of the top six on that list and scored the majority of their wins in that division while also being a full-time Cup Series driver. Their collective Nationwide Series win total: 195. Their collective Cup championship total: zero.

Busch has the makings of a Cup champion. But can he pull it off while double- and sometimes triple-dipping? Odds are no. Why? Simple: in order to beat Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus, you have to be better than Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus. Johnson concentrates on one thing, winning the Sprint Cup Series championship. Knaus can reach Johnson any time of day, in the car or out. Can Dave Rogers reach Busch? Sure, when he's not in the Nationwide Series car or in the Truck. Some weekends there are ten to twelve hours, right square in the middle of the time when he's needed the most, that Busch is unavailable to his crew chief because he's busy racing in series that for a major league championship caliber driver just don't mean anything at all.

Mark Martin was a guaranteed Cup champion-to-be in the 1990s and into the 2000s. It was unfathomable that he'd go his career without a Cup title. But he spent the best part of his career, the years when he could have won multiple championships, bouncing back and forth between garages and taking time and effort away from where his main focus could be. He might not say it if asked, but chances are deep down he knows he would trade those meaningless 49 Nationwide Series wins for just one Cup Series championship.

Hopefully for Busch, he doesn't come to that realization too late.

On Kentucky's traffic woes

2011-07-12T10:24:00.002-04:00

Inaugural NASCAR events are fun. Whenever you add a track, everything is so new and the unknown adds a level of excitement to the routine that fans, teams, media and even officials have come to know week in and week out.

I had the pleasure of working with Mansfield Motorsports Park during 2003 and 2004 as the track prepared for its first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event. My job was to handle the media and public relations, so I wasn't involved in all of the logistical planning meetings with NASCAR and state and local governments, but I can say the track spent countless hours working on ingress and egress plans for the 25,000 people we expected.

Despite all of those hours, traffic backed up. Part of it was outside our control: construction on the nearest highway. Part was just the sheer volume of cars coming in on roads that had never seen that amount of traffic before. Another part was we had hundreds of acres of parking that were rendered useless due to several inches of rain in the preceeding three days. All of it added up to stopped cars and rising tempers.

Just like our neighbors to the south in Kentucky would learn seven years later, we had angry fans due to something we spent a lot of time working on.

To the best of my knowledge, everyone who had a ticket made it in to the track before the green flag that day in May 2004. While fans were upset, most of the anger was the "blowing off steam" variety. Who hasn't needed to vent after spending two hours in traffic?

After getting to the track at 5:30 that morning, I went to the back gate and helped get teams and drivers in, then spent some time helping get cars parked in one of the usable grassy lots. I did hear lots of frustration from a lot of people, but it was actually very easy to deflect it. All I had to do was offer an immediate and sincere apology and tell them I we were glad they were here and we all hope they enjoy the race.

It's beyond my imagination that SMI, a company that has prides itself on the facilities it builds and its relationship with its customers, missed out on that final piece of the puzzle.

Traffic backups are part of life in NASCAR. Sure, the problems in Kentucky are now legendary, but having customer service reps there (or your parking attendants and security agents) apologize immediately would have defrayed a large part of the frustration. For those stuck in traffic on the highway, surely they were listening to the radio, so why not have track officials (if not Bruton Smith or Marcus Smith) on every radio station from Cincinnati to Louisville apologizing to them as they sat still on I-71?

I've been to Kentucky Speedway a dozen times since that first Truck race there in 2000. Their traffic issues then were well known and they addressed them and made significant changes. But the changes they made weren't ready for another 40,000 people thrown in the mix.

Now, since no one apologized to them until it was way too late, those who were seriously inconvenienced don't want to hear empty promises of how things will be different next year. They want someone to blame and take all of the anger and frustration they can dish out. Bruton Smith would have you believe it's the Commonwealth of Kentucky to blame since "I-71 is a horrible, terrible highway." But did Kentucky officials tell him to add the 40,000 seats before infrastructure was in place to handle 40,000 more people? Not likely.

So the fans will continue to vent their anger at SMI. The ticket exchange program announced on Monday may help deflect some of that anger, but the likelihood that it makes it all go away is very slim.

Will fans once again risk sitting in traffic for six hours or more to go to Kentucky Speedway? I hope they do because it's a great place to watch a race. But realistically, there's a significant portion of that audience that won't be back. Are there enough people who didn't go this year but are willing to take the chance in the future to do so?

It seems the answer will be no, based on what we've seen and heard in the past four days.

On the two-car draft and what's "real" racing

2011-07-04T11:15:00.002-04:00

The question is continually raised after each of NASCAR's new-era restrictor plate races: is the two-car tandem draft "real racing"?

Racing is all about doing whatever it takes to get to the finish line first. In some cases, it's about having the fastest car. In others, it's about the fastest pit crew. Some races play out so that the winner is the one with the best fuel mileage. And in four races a year, it's about who gets the best push from their partner on the final lap.

The two-car draft isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Go back and watch Kevin Harvick move to the front down the backstretch on the final lap of the 2007 Daytona 500. It's just that now it's each driver, each green flag lap all race long.

There are questions by long-time, award-winning writers asking if the lead changes (which have come in record numbers with this style of racing) actually mean anything. The answer to that one is simple: does any lead change other than the last one ever mean anything? When Dale Earnhardt won at Talladega in 1984, did any of the first 73 lead changes that day mean anything? No, only the final one in which Earnhardt took the lead did. But here's the rub: any lead change could be the last one, even one on lap 2 at Daytona.

For too long, we've heard how the number of lead changes (and also the number of cars on the lead lap) are benchmarks of competitiveness. The more lead changes the more competitive the race, and by extension, the more exciting the show for the fans. While that's generally true, it's not always the case. One of the best races I've ever seen was a 400-lap ASA race at the quarter-mile Anderson Speedway that was led green to checkered by Steve Holzhausen. Conversely, some of the most tedious races I've watched were some plate races with the big packs and plenty of artificial lead changes.

Does today's plate racing offer edge-of-your-seat excitement from green to checkered? I think so. It's not because the drivers are in one big pack and one mistake could take out two-thirds of the field at any time. But instead it's because of the skill and timing it takes to successfully make a two-car draft work. You can go from first to sixteenth in one lap or sixteenth to first just as easily now as you could then, but the danger of wiping out half the field or more is dramatically lessened. And the bonus, at least to me, is the speed which often approaches or even exceeds 200 mph.

Sure, pack racing was exciting. The big wrecks were highlight reel material. But too often we saw The Big One break out early leaving 20+ cars to just ride around and log laps hoping to improve a position or two instead of being in contention to win.

As the pavement at Talladega and Daytona slowly loses grip it could be we'll see yet another evolution in plate racing. Maybe NASCAR will make some rules changes to mix things up once again. Until then, I'm going to continue to enjoy the new-era plate races and enjoy the unpredictability they offer.

On USAC and short track racing

2011-07-02T12:31:00.001-04:00

There's always something special when open wheel cars race on a paved short track. The speeds are high, the racing is close, and the fans flock to watch the show.

My home track, Toledo Speedway, has hosted two high profile short track open wheel shows in recent weeks. The Fastest Short Track Show in the World annually takes place during the NASCAR weekend at nearby Michigan International Speedway and packs the fans in the stands for a winged supermodified and winged sprint car doubleheader. There's always a pilgramage of NASCAR drivers, crew members and media too since MIS is just an hour or so away. And the first Friday in July always brings the USAC Sprint cars and Midgets to Toledo for Hemelgarn Racing Night, sponsored by 1996 Indy 500 winning car owner Ron Hemelgarn.

Anticipation always runs high for both shows. The winged cars can run around the high-banked half-mile wide open with lap times coming close to the 11-second bracket. The flat-out speed is matched with a lot of close wheel-to-wheel racing, and that was no exception this year. The USAC cars run without wings, and although they are around two seconds per lap slower the speed is still impressive and the drivers come into the equation as they're running 130 miles per hour with virtually no downforce.

The only thing missing from these shows this season was a full field of cars. For many years, both weekends would jam the pits as much as the grandstand. The MSA Supermodifieds had 16 cars, enough for a good feature but not enough for any meaningful preliminaries. USAC's car counts were way off from the past, with only 12 sprint cars and 17 midgets on hand. In years past, USAC had sprint car heat races with 12 cars trying to race into the feature.

Friday's USAC racing was close and exciting and hotly contested at the front, but the lack of a full field meant there wasn't any lapped traffic to race through, eliminating a major opportunity for the drivers behind the leader to make a move or force a mistake.

Maybe USAC needs to look at recombining the Pavement Championship back into the overall series championship points to draw a full contingent of drivers and teams to the asphalt tracks. The costs of pavement racing have grown, so it's understandable that they've spun that part of the schedule off on its own, but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't help because now the dirt specialists don't have to run the paved tracks at all to stay in the hunt for the title. Why not find a way to run a balanced schedule, split evenly between paved and dirt tracks and crown the champion as the driver that masters both?

Television played a major role in bringing USAC sprint car and midget racing from obscurity in the early 1980s to their peak well into the 1990s and 2000s. TV has gone away, and much of the sponsorship money has left too. But the racing is just as good if not better than it once was. Maybe someone out there can put together the right package and get USAC back on live TV. With Versus looking to make the move from a niche network to the NBC Sports challenger to ABC's ESPN maybe a newly revived "Thursday Night Thunder" could bring USAC back to the masses. It's going to take sponsors and people with a strong vision to make it happen, and unfortunately those are sorely lacking in the short track world right now.

In the meantime, if you have a chance to visit your local short track please, by any means possible, do it. Even if it means recording a Saturday night NASCAR race on the DVR, get out and enjoy your local track. The drivers aren't multi-millionaire superstars that you read about on Jayski or even on TMZ. They're regular people, just like you and your neighbors. They spend money they often don't have to be there and chase their dreams and the checkered flag. They run hard, and most times, are happy to sign a checkered flag, a photo, or a T-shirt and then actually thank you for asking for an autograph. It truly is racing as it should be.

On a great weekend of racing, sleeping good at night, and mean ol' Mother Nature

2011-06-03T15:19:00.000-04:00

There's no question about it. Between Monaco, Indianapolis, and Charlotte the three Memorial Day Sunday races combined to give race fans the best full day of racing we've ever witnessed. There may have been better Monaco Grands Prix, there may have been better Indianapolis 500s, and there may have been better Coca Cola 600s, but never have each of them been so intense and enthralling on the same day, back to back.

I wonder if J.R. Hildebrand has found a way to go to sleep at night since last Sunday?

We saw Dale Earnhardt, Jr. handle his defeat graciously, only emphasizing the belief of many that he will indeed be back in victory lane soon. But I wonder of Steve Letarte has found a way to go to sleep at night since last Sunday? That defeat seemed to sting him the most.

How many times did the Ganassi teams miscalculate fuel throughout the Month of May at Indianapolis? Both Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon had issues on their pole qualifying runs and in the latter stages of the Indy 500.

The mojo of the Indianapolis 500 is definitely returning, and the crowd is better than it's been in years. But to say it's the best since The Split is just plain wrong. The first race after the formation of the IRL in 1996 played to a full house. It took several years of unknown drivers (and a rain-plagued 1997 race) to whittle away raceday attendance. There were some empty seats this year, but yet another thrilling race and a return to the atmosphere of days gone by should help fill those seats in the future.

Does Dan Wheldon's second Indy 500 win put him among the top 33 drivers in 500 history? Not only does he have two wins, he has two runner-up finishes too. And in eight starts he only has two finishes out of the top six. Those are some pretty solid numbers right there.

Unfortunately Mother Nature didn't see fit to allow the Little 500 to go off as scheduled on Saturday. If you've never seen it, it's a 500-lap pavement sprint car race on a tiny quarter-mile track in Anderson, Indiana, about a half an hour north of Indianapolis. The 33-car field lines up in eleven rows of three, just like the "other" 500 just down the road. A shower popped up about 90 minutes before the start, and after two hours of track drying another shower popped up and pushed the race to the next night. Chris Windom took the lead with five laps to go to collect his first Little 500 victory, defeating Eric Gordon who was looking for his record tenth race win.

Why I changed my opinion of the Busch/Harvick Darlington incident

2011-05-10T15:16:00.001-04:00

When an incident happens in a NASCAR race, it's often viewed in the immediate context in which it happened.

Take, for instance, the on-track clash between Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick at Darlington. If one simply looks at what happened coming through turn four and down the frontstretch, then it looks like Busch made a bee-line for Harvick's back bumper and took him out.

Without a chance to sit and look at the entirety of the race, or even that lap, it's easy to come to that conclusion. But when looking at a replay, it's often best to let the action rewind a bit further to get a deeper look.

Rewinding the Busch/Harvick incident to the green flag on that restart and the picture becomes a little more clear. Exiting turn two, Busch looks to the inside of Harvick down the backstretch. Whether he was protecting the position or giving Busch a message is unclear, but down the backstretch Harvick slammed door-to-door with Busch. As they raced through turns three and four, Clint Bowyer looked to the inside and made it three wide.

It was the second unwise decision to go three-wide by Bowyer in two days; he was involved in starting a big crash in Friday's Nationwide Series race when he was in the middle of a three-wide sandwich and he looked low on Saturday just as Busch and Harvick decided to settle things among themselves, this time taking himself out of contention for a top-ten.

As for Busch, he showed his displeasure with Harvick by hooking the 29 car in the right rear midway down the frontstretch. Harvick went for a long slide but really didn't suffer any damage other than the loss of track position.

The real fireworks were after the race. Harvick chased Busch down, and after both avoiding pit road and stopping on the frontstretch, they ended up nose-to-tail on pit road with the 29 car in front of the 18. After a few moments, Harvick unstrapped and went to the window of Busch's car and threw a punch while Busch wisely put the car in gear and drove off since Harvick's enforcers were on their way up pit road. Unfortunately, Harvick's car was in the way and Busch pushed it and it rolled into the wall.

I originally thought Busch taking a dive at Harvick was uncalled for. But looking at the entirety of that lap, Harvick seemed to have one coming. Add in him admittedly wrecking Busch in the Homestead finale last season and maybe he has more than one coming his way.

Harvick has never been one to shy away from controversy or confrontation. He got in Greg Biffle's face at Bristol in 2001 and went nose-to-nose with Ricky Rudd at Richmond in 2003. He's also gone toe-to-toe with, of all people, Joe Nemechek at Charlotte in 2005.

Harvick has announced his penalties on his Twitter feed, and he's also said "this isn't over." Obviously there is some issue Harvick has with Busch, and it could be a competitive issue or a personal issue or a combination. It's no secret the two have rubbed fenders on the track on all three series, and when Busch started his own Truck Series team he hired Rick Ren away from KHI, and that too could be a source of friction.

As a fan, I have no problems with two drivers mixing it up on the track or off. As someone who works in the sport, I still don't have a problem with it, until the crew guys get involved. There's nothing wrong with Busch vs. Harvick one-on-one, but Busch vs. Harvick and eight guys in RCR uniforms? That's a little unfair. It's interesting that NASCAR has not announced penalties for any of the crew members who crossed pit wall and ran up pit road looking for a fight.

Have at it boys. But let's keep it among the drivers, as NASCAR intended.

On muddled last laps at Talladega and Daytona

2011-04-17T10:43:00.001-04:00

Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Talladega once again showed the several flaws in how NASCAR manages races and how they fail to keep the viewers at home informed of the most basic information at the most critical of times.

Now, before anyone jumps all over me for what I am about to say, please understand that I am all for being safety conscious. Although the drivers involved have accepted millions upon millions of dollars to participate in a dangerous sport for a living, which is more than a fair trade-off, I don't think anyone should be subjected to any preventable danger.

So let's ask this: what purpose does a caution flag serve on the last lap when no car will ever go through the scene of a crash at speed?

Regardless of the severity of Mike Wallace's crash on the last lap at Talladega, NASCAR made a huge mistake by throwing the caution flag.

Talladega Superspeedway is huge. A lap at speed takes about 50 seconds. The field had just taken the green flag a lap and a half prior to that and was still in a pack, so the cars weren't spread around the track. When Wallace crashed, the only cars behind him on the track were clear of him before his car actually stopped moving. The rest of the field could have - and should have - raced back to the checkered flag and finished the race under green.

If there was a pack of 10 cars just exiting turn two as Wallace was flipping going into turn three, the caution would have been justified. However, the track behind the incident was clear. Therefore, had there been a need for them to be dispatched, the safety crew could have attended to Wallace without worrying about any racecars passing them at speed since the race was over and the cars would have been slowed the next time they came around.

The only purpose that caution served was to confuse the finish, Which leads to the next point.

We've had the debate about showing pit road times whenever there is a penalty, but when are we going to hear the uproar about showing scoring as of the last timing line whenever there is a caution flag at a critical moment?

NASCAR timing and scoring should be connected live and in real time to the broadcast partners, and when the caution comes out and the field is frozen, that order should be somehow shown on the television screen as it happens. And to enhance the viewers' knowledge, all timing lines on the track should be clearly marked, just like they are on pit road. That way everyone knows exactly where the lines are, whether you're at home watching or sitting in the cockpit at speed, and whenever there is a caution everyone knows who crossed what line in what position when the yellow lights flickered on.

This would be made even easier if NASCAR allowed the drivers to race to the NEXT timing line instead of reverting to the PREVIOUS timing line when the caution comes out, because on the last lap they also take into consideration video replays, which of course can be left open to interpretation.

It's a shame that people invest three hours watching a race - a race, by the way, that was edge-of-your-seat exciting up until the muddled end - and they go away not really having any real understanding of who won and why. The audience should not need to have the broadcasters give any sort of confirmation on who won, they should have empirical evidence

On Shrub, JJC, start-and-parks, Bristol's banking, Fox, and NSSN

2011-03-23T15:14:00.000-04:00

Kyle Busch continued his mastery of Bristol Motor Speedway with dominant wins in both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series races last weekend. Not bad at all, but he still has a way to go to reach Darrell Waltrip's seven-Cup-wins-in-a-row streak. His five consecutive NASCAR wins (last August's NCWTS, NNS, and NSCS wins plus this weekend's NNS and NSCS sweep) are impressive, but still a ways away from seven Cup wins in a row.

It seems the second-biggest story of the weekend is Jennifer Jo Cobb's refusal to start-and-park in the NNS race and the resultant PR sniping that has gone back and forth between her and her now former team. Now, there are apparently theft charges filed against her and her crew chief Steve Kuykendall for parts her former owner said were illegally taken and then found in a storage container Cobb had rented. Cobb started out the year with a great sixth-place run in the NCWTS race at Daytona, but that momentum has slowly drained away. She no doubt received a lot of good will from the NASCAR fans for refusing to start-and-park, but that can evaporate too unless to focus returns to her abilities and results on the track. She's struggled for a long time to find her footing in the sport, and while she still has a way to go if she ever wants to be a contender for top-tens on a routine basis, it would be a shame to see what she's worked for disappear over a dispute as silly as this one seems to have become.

-The JJC situation has raised the ire of the anti-start-and-park brigade once again. There really is no right answer for this situation. I know that there are teams that start and park that really do want to be out there racing, and they use funds raised in their S&P races to foot the bill for when they do run the full distance. But there are others that are there just to collect a paycheck. It's a shame that there aren't enough teams willing to go race than there was 10 years ago. Look at box scores for Nationwide races from 1997 and 1998 and see how many DNQs there were and tell me today's NNS is any healthier. NASCAR could eliminate the practice by reallocating some of the purse money from those back of the field positions to the middle of the field.

-The other hot topic is the lack of spectators in the grandstands at Bristol. I admit it was very surprising to see that many empty seats. There are several factors involved: gas prices, hotel prices, ticket prices, and the new racing surface at Bristol. I for one enjoy the three-wide racing at BMS, but I concede that maybe they went too far with the reconfiguration. Maybe it's time to dig up the concrete once and for all and lay down some nice grippy asphalt with banking at 34 degrees at the bottom, 35 in the middle, and 36 at the top. Maybe that will give us all what we really want - good racing mixed in with some temper-raising beating and banging.

-The attendance estimate at Bristol was laughable. When you know a place seats 160,000 and it's easily half empty, how can you justify saying there are 120,000 people there?

-I am not going to bag on the Fox Sports crew too much, but they definitely left a huge info gap on Sunday when Jeff Burton suddenly slowed on the frontstretch and cars behind him piled into one another. What caused Burton's car to slow? If all you were doing was watching TV you never knew because they never updated it. Why have four pit reporters if you aren't going to let them do their job? I continue to believe that Fox has some of the most talented and respected personalities assembled on their team, but their execution often leaves me disappointed. From Darrell Waltrip talking over play-by-play man Mike Joy to Larry McReynolds' continued butchering of the English language to Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond and their consistent buffoonery, it leaves me just shaking my head. Krista Voda, Dr. Dick Berggren and Matt Yocum continue to be the bright spots, working hard and delivering consistently informative updates whenever they are allowed to. Give us the info, keep the chuckleheaded hillbilly humor to a minimum, show us the cars on the track, and everyone will be happy.

-Farewell National Speed Sport News, we hardly knew ya.

On Carl's consistency, the Gordon/Conway mess, IndyCar's grid limits, single file racing, LVMS's victory lane, Wise's ride, and Danica's first top-5

2011-03-08T21:10:00.001-05:00

- I am an avid reader of Bob Margolis's Sledgehammer blog, particularly his weekly "Observations" on Mondays. I do have a disagreement with him this week, right off the bat: he believes no one in the Sprint Cup Series has yet shown the consistency to be pegged with the favorite label. I disagree. I believe Carl Edwards has shown that out of the gate he will be the guy to beat for the title this season. He closed 2010 with two straight wins, finished second at Daytona, won the pole at Phoenix before getting eliminated in someone else's mess while running strongly, and followed up with a win at Las Vegas. How much more consistent can he be?

-The Robby Gordon/Kevin Conway mess continues to make headlines as the two trade insults through press releases. Conway's team sent out one of the worse press releases I've ever read with sponsor innuendo and double entendres right in the very first line. I love a good play on words as much as anyone, but maybe referencing stiff competition should be left to people who don't need to play musical chairs from ride to ride as the driver drops one and then the next and then the next out of the top-35.

-It's mystifying to me why the IndyCar Series would limit its starting fields to 26 cars. The more the merrier I say, and with so many unused cars sitting on the sidelines that could certainly be dragged out before moving to new equipment in 2012, why not invite anyone and everyone? If it's a matter of keeping certain slow drivers off the track, just don't issue them a license.

-Las Vegas Motor Speedway spent millions reconfiguring the track to a multi-groove, progressively banked layout to improve competition. It's always fun to see 190 mph speeds, but there also needs to be close racing and right now the 1.5-mile tracks aren't offering much of it beyond the initial starts and restarts. Maybe that will change as the teams figure out the handling package with the new noses and other aero enhancements.

-Speaking of LVMS, no one is questioning it's claim as one of the finest facilities in all of motorsports. It's an amazing place, no doubt about it. The view from the stands is incredible and everyone who's ever been inside it will never say anything negative about the "Neon Garage." However, there is one thing that needs to be remedied: the location of victory lane. It's in the middle of the garage area where a small percentage of the paying customers can see it. Yes, the Neon Garage ticketholders can see it, but that's what, one percent of the people there? Move it out somewhere where the people in the grandstands can see it too. California Speedway made that mistake back in 2004, moving victory lane to the end of the infield suites towards turn four, and no one had any idea it was there. They soon relocated it back to where it belongs, right where everyone can see it.

-How about Josh Wise's airborne ride in the Nationwide race? Reminded me of the good old days watching Mickey Thompson stadium off-road races in the early days of ESPN! Wanna bet that launching pad is remedied by the time the IndyCar Series makes it to LVMS in October?

-Bernie Ecclestone has set a May 1 deadline for the unrest in Bahrain to be solved or the Formula 1 circuit will cancel its 2011 race. Anyone else wishing NASCAR was racing in Las Vegas this weekend so they could make a bet on the race being canceled?

-We heard the Negative Nancy's get on Jennifer Jo Cobb for playing the attrition game en route to a sixth-place finish at Daytona, and now we're hearing the same detractor's complain about Danica Patrick's fourth-place finish at LVMS. I stick with what I said, it doesn't matter how you got there only that you get there. Fourth is fourth, it's the best finish by a woman, and that's excellent for her. However, I think what we need to look with when talking about Danica isn't just results it's her development as a stock car driver. You can learn a lot more about racing a stocker back in the pack than you can by jumping out front by a mile and winning (see Steven Wallace's ARCA career for proof). She's learning, well, hopefully she is, and that's what matters at this point not where she finishes. But I am sure every top-ten she brings home is more than welcome, too.

Cheering at the 500 gives a reason to put all motorsports media on the same page for unbiased NASCAR coverage

2011-03-01T15:10:00.003-05:00

The current debate over journalistic ethics and conduct in NASCAR media centers and press boxes is long overdue. With the introduction of Citizen Journalists into the NASCAR media corps, it's time that the reset button is hit and everyone is brought onto the same page, both professional journalists, broadcasters, and bloggers alike.

As an avid news and blog reader, I believe all viewpoints of the sport should be welcome. It's a stroke of genius by NASCAR to welcome bloggers into the media corps as it broadens the coverage of the sport in a time when traditional media outlets are cutting staff and space devoted to motorsports.

But just because a blogger doesn't have the training of a traditional journo, that doesn't mean he or she shouldn't be held to the same standards of behavior of the rest of the media circus. And that goes double for those broadcasting the races on Fox, TNT, and ESPN - in fact, it should be doubled or even tripled since they have the largest audience and therefore a bigger responsibility.

As part of my New Year's resolution, I've been to the gym five to six times a week trying to slim down and get in better shape. I spend long periods on cardio machines and it gives me pause to think, and I've spent some time this week thinking of this situation and then learned of the termination of Tom Bowles by Sports Illustrated for admitting that he cheered as Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500.

Bowles is a fantastic writer, which is augmented by a strong passion for the subject matter. However, he did break - even for an instant - one of the cardinal rules of sitting in the press box: no cheering. Was termination warranted? Probably not, but a warning from both the sanctioning body's media relations department and his former employer would have both been warranted.

But how is what Tom Bowles did different than what Darrell Waltrip did during the Camping World Truck Series race at Daytona? Waltrip openly cheered for, and even gave his best redneck hoot, for his brother as he crossed the line to win the race. Is that appropriate?

Okay, so the next comparison then is if Waltrip can't do it, why was Ned Jarrett allowed to when Dale Jarrett won at Daytona in 1993?

What's the difference?

It's a huge difference. Jarrett did it reluctantly; remember, Ken Squier was told to lay back and Ned was told to bring him home on the last lap. Furthermore, he never used his position as a broadcaster with CBS and ESPN to get his son a ride. The younger Jarrett spent many years toiling in virtual anonymity on the North Carolina short tracks and in the Busch Series before earning a shot at the big time based on talent alone, not because his father would give his team or sponsors additional coverage if he was hired. In fact, he never went out of his way to promote any of Dale Jarrett's sponsors. Can Waltrip honestly say that? Can Larry McReynolds say it? No, neither can. They both promote their own agendas, which includes Michael Waltrip Racing, Toyota, Brandon McReynolds, and any other company or entity that offers them cash for an endorsement.

How many other television broadcasters have a conflict of interest? The question would be better answered if you asked which broadcasters do NOT have a conflict of interest within the garage area.

The NASCAR audience deserves unbiased coverage and commentary from broadcasters. Bloggers, who may only be covering the sport from a narrow perspective, say they're covering a certain driver, team, or manufacturer, should still adhere to the same professional standards of behavior as their professional brethren. Dress professionally, act professionally and courteously, and check your fan card at the door to the press box or media center.

Now that the gates are open, maybe NASCAR should offer some sort of Citizen Journalist orientation at each event, or at the very least send along a sheet of guidelines with each credential confirmation. It could be very simple: here is what you can do (go into the garage area, sit in on press conferences, ask questions, take pictures, etc.), here is how you should dress (business casual), here are some tips to get an interview (be polite, work with public relations reps, ask for a scheduled appointment, or join in one of the media availabilies), and here is what NOT to do (wear a driver t-shirt, cheer in the press box, interfere with a one-on-one interview, etc.).

And with that, NASCAR and its broadcast partners should set similar guidelines. No cheering for anyone. No wearing of sponsor logos on your apparel. No emceeing media or hospitality events for teams and/or drivers involved in the series you cover. No active team owners on the air (imagine Jerry Jones in the booth calling the Super Bowl!). If you have a relative on a team or on the track, check emotions at the door - and if that repeatedly proves to be a problem then you're out. The viewers at home expect - and they deserve - unbiased commentary and analysis.

On the health of the Truck Series, aggregating win totals, broadcast quality, Jeff Gordon as the underdog, and crashing back to earth

2011-02-28T09:16:00.001-05:00

A few notes and observations following a mildly entertaining weekend at Phoenix International Raceway...

- The Camping World Truck Series, while still not on the radar of most of the Sprint Cup garage, is in danger of transforming into another version of the Nationwide Series. Too much Cup driver involvement, too little chance for series regulars to win, and too many combination races with the Cup Series is robbing the series of its identity. For most of its existence, the series stood on its own with numerous stand-alone races in markets not touched by the Sprint Cup and/or Nationwide Series. Those days, sadly, are long gone. Unfortunately, the series is now seen only as easy pickin's for guys like Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Clint Bowyer to pad their "NASCAR national touring series" win totals.

- While on that point, we need to put an end to aggregating win totals and making it seem important. Is it impressive that Kyle Busch has 88 career wins among the Truck, Nationwide, and Cup Series? Yes it is. Does it put him in the same league as Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, and Jeff Gordon? No it does not. He has 19 Cup wins. That's an impressive number in and of itself, but he's still 60+ wins in the majors away from joining those guys.

- Leading every lap in a race is impressive. While the action at the front of the pack wasn't always hot in Saturday's Nationwide Series race, it's too bad ESPN chose not to show any of the racing among the rest of the field. Too often NASCAR's broadcast partners choose to show the drivers in the top three, even when they're running by themselves, instead of showing us the race. Maybe NASCAR is not compatible with today's personality-driven mindset. I for one don't want to see four or five drivers all day simply because they're the most famous (or the "Fan Favorite") but I do want to see actual racing. I think it's interesting that the networks continue to show us the drivers they think we all want to see and the ratings have slipped. I have a feeling if they had showed us the racing and covered the total event instead of the drivers that fit into their pre-conceived storylines the ratings might not have dipped so severely.

- I am sure there were a lot of people watching on Sunday that never thought they would cheer for Jeff Gordon to win that were very happy with the results at Phoenix. Who ever would have thought that Jeff Gordon, once hated as the guy who wins too much, would be the underdog?

- The Big One at Phoenix? It's more likely than you think! The first 100 laps at PIR were brutal, with a lot of carnage and some contenders taken out and others left with damage. Is the way the drivers are racing each other now due to the new point system, which doesn't really put more of a focus on winning but instead puts more pressure not to finish badly? There's been a lot of hard racing both at Daytona and at Phoenix, and it will be interesting to see if it carries over to Las Vegas this weekend.

- It's funny to hear Juan Montoya say it's too far to travel between Charlotte and Las vegas as a reason for him not to pursue the $5 million bonus available to non-IndyCar Series regulars for their season finale on October 16. How many Cup drivers traveled to Milwaukee and Road America from Sonoma for a Nationwide Series race over the last five years? The mileage between Sonoma and Milwaukee is approximately 2,149. The mileage between Charlotte and Las vegas is 2,218. Next excuse please...

- It was time for some of those heartwarming stories at Daytona to come crashing back to earth at Phoenix. Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne had a whirlwind week, but his return to the cockpit was nothing but frustration as he crashed all three days - first in Cup series practice, then in the Nationside Series race, and again in the Cup race on Sunday. People forget that although he's now a Daytona 500 winner, he's still a pretty raw rookie when it comes to the Sprint Cup Series. Racing at Daytona and racing at Phoenix have zero in common, and each takes a totally different skill set. He's still good, don't get me wrong, but it could take him a while to develop at the so-called "drivers tracks," places like Phoenix, Martinsville, Bristol, etc.

- Another heartwarmer turned heartbreaker was Brian Keselowski, who went from finishing fifth in the Gatorade Duel to qualify for the Daytona 500 to DNQing at Phoenix. That's a long way to go only to turn around and head for home with nothing to show for it. Hopefully the next time Brian comes to the track he's up to speed and in the show; like I said last week the only thing he needs to get in there and mix it up with his younger brother is money.

You can follow me on Twitter @ChasKrall

A few SpeedWeeks Thoughts

2011-02-21T13:42:00.001-05:00

A few thoughts on the recently completed Daytona SpeedWeeks…

- The two-car draft phenomenon wasn’t necessarily all that aesthetically pleasing, but it raised the level of excitement throughout the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series races immensely. Seeing cars run 200 miles per hour was breathtaking, and that was all due to the two-car drafts. While some of the techniques used in the old pack-style of drafting carried over, it showcased a new level of skill and bravery that we haven’t seen at Daytona in many years. Not surprisingly, some drivers that excelled in the old style of racing struggled. Not surprisingly, a young driver with no drafting experience in packs won, I believe in large part because he didn’t have to unlearn anything to succeed.

- While the Wood Bros. Racing team was the winner of the race, the official car owner listed in all of NASCAR’s post-race reports was none other than The King, Richard Petty. With former Wood Bros. Driver David Pearson being inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, with the throwback paint job on the car, and it being the 35th anniversary of the 1976 Petty-Pearson finish at the 500, it’s really a nice twist that Petty (who transferred the points from the shut down No. 19 Richard Petty Motorsports team to guarantee the No. 21 a spot in the field for the 500) and the Woods somehow managed to share the victory together, even if it’s just on paper.

- There is a reason why NASCAR races aren’t just one lap. Success doesn’t automatically go to the fastest car that way. One has to finish before they can finish first. All of the negative comments about Jennifer Jo Cobb and Jeffrey Earnhardt lucking into good finishes in Friday night’s Camping World Truck Series race are nothing more than sour grapes. They both did a great job of staying out of trouble and being there at the end. It doesn’t matter how you get there, only that you did. Ask Derrike Cope if it matters to him that he didn’t lap the field en route to Daytona 500 glory. Would it have been nice? Sure. Did he win the race without it? Sure did, and that’s all that matters.

- If there was any justice in the racing world, Regan Smith would have been battling with Trevor Bayne for the win in the Daytona 500. Smith was excellent all week and even with the accident on the backstretch that left his No. 78 Chevrolet bruised and battered he still managed to salvage a top-ten. Hopefully he can carry some of the momentum from Daytona to some other races this season – particularly at Talladega in a couple of months.

- Dale Earnhardt, Jr. seemed like a different man on Sunday. The competitive fire was there, there was the Earnhardt swagger coming across in his radio transmissions, and he drove perhaps the smartest race I’ve seen him drive in his career. I really thought he had a chance to win, even with the late-race flat tire. But that flat eventually cost him his chance as he was caught up in a wreck just after the unscheduled stop to change it. I don’t believe one driver’s success or lack thereof has that much impact on the sport, even a driver as popular as Dale Earnhardt, Jr., but after seeing the run at Daytona I am convinced Earnhardt, Jr. can return to victory lane again in 2011.

- With the old pack style of racing, every car could run with every other car. Any driver, as long as he or she could keep the car behind the one in front, could run with any other. This new style of racing truly highlighted driver skill. Those that quickly mastered swapping position could get to the front and stay there. Those that couldn’t languished in the back.

- Someone raised an interesting question regarding Friday night’s Truck race: what would happen if a driver’s window net came down? Surely he’d be black flagged. What would happen if a driver lost half his spoiler on lap 50? Again, surely he’d be black flagged. So why no black flag for losing it on lap 99? Remember, the spoiler isn’t there just for the downforce it creates, it’s there standing nearly straight up because of the drag it creates and Michael Waltrip had half of that drag eliminated in the dash to the checkered. It would have been an unpopular call considering the driver, the date, and the incredible amount of pre-race talk that had been focused on Dale Earnhardt, but NASCAR would have been as justified in that black flag as they were on Sunday when they flagged David Ragan for an improper restart.

- It’s a shame the underdog stories from Thursday’s Gatorade Duels came to such an inglorious end on Sunday. J.J. Yeley fell victim to engine failure before he could work up a sweat and Brian Keselowski was taken out in the big wreck on lap 29. But the fact that either of these drivers made the 500 was a victory in and of itself, it’s just a shame they couldn’t make it to the end.

On Daytona 500 dreams coming true

2011-02-17T20:55:00.001-05:00

There are days in racing that confound and utterly frustrate you and make you question why you chose to pursue working in the sport for a living. Every racer has felt it – the feeling that the mountain is too tall and the rock being pushed up that mountain is too heavy. The urge to throw in the towel and go back to some normal semblance of life beckons, and some give in.

They return to lives of driving a truck or working as an automotive technician or a plumber. The calls of the fans in the stands are long since replaced by customers walking through the door, the phone ringing, or smoky truck stop restaurants off some state highway just outside of town.

For the thousands of drivers, owners, mechanics, and yes, even PR reps like myself, who have felt the urge to throw in the towel and have gone through with it and returned to “civilian” life, there is the one underdog story out there that proves it can be done. And in this Daytona 500, there are two such stories and both come from the same geographic corner of the country.

By now, everyone has embraced the Brian Keselowski story. Working in a small shop with just himself, his father Bob, and his uncle Ron (along with some part-time help), Keselowski went from the outhouse to the penthouse once his younger brother Brad hitched to the back bumper and literally shoved from from being Tail-end Charlie to nearly winning the second Gatorade Duel.

I’ve had the great fortune of being around the Keselowski family for the better part of the past decade, which came on the heels of being a huge Bob Keselowski fan while growing up and watching him win races in the famous “Black Bandit” No. 29 late model at Toledo Speedway.

While trying to find my footing in this sport, I hooked up with the Keselowski’s driver, Terry Cook, and his wife, ESPN truck series pit reporter Amy East for the 2001 season. I went to virtually every race that season and spent much of those weekends either in the K-Automotive transporter or sitting between the Cook motorhome and the Keselowski motorhome once the garage closed, talking racing and sharing a laugh or two.

In those days, Brian was a mechanic and an over-the-wall crew member, while Brad was a tall, lanky kid who put all his efforts into learning the mechanics and engineering, toting a briefcase and watching everything those around him were doing. Soon, the brothers were racing late models, just like Bob.

Brian won a track championship at Toledo Speedway in 2003, exactly 20 years after his father did. He also scored a couple of ARCA wins, which put him in the same class as his dad again, as Bob was the 1989 ARCA Racing Series champion. Brad also raced late models, but tended to travel between tracks instead of chasing points at any one. I recall one night at Toledo he showed up with a brand new car; it was beautiful and fast. He was making his way to the front when the left rear wheel flew off coming off the fourth corner, sending him hard into the wall and destroying the car.

Brad made his way to the family Truck Series team, but by then they were down on funding and struggling. He still made an impression, and when Ted Musgrave was suspended for a race in 2006, Brad got the call. He immediately showed he had the right stuff by winning the pole and nearly winning the race; a late-race bump from Travis Kvapil taking him out of contention after leading late in the going.

We all know where Brad’s career has gone since. He moved on to JR Motorsports and then on to Penske, with a Cup win for James Finch thrown in for good measure.

Brad has earned his time in the spotlight. Brian has shown the same level of skill and ability behind the wheel, but for whatever reason hasn’t had the breaks his younger brother did. Maybe that’s exactly what happened when Brad spun midway through Thursday’s second Duel race. Maybe that was Brian’s good break. Once Brad went to the back and latched on to his brother, the cameras took notice. Fans started to learn that there are two Keselowski brothers, and the second one isn’t just a start-and-park Nationwide Series driver, he’s actually a pretty competent shoe looking for a good break.

The second story also comes from the state of Michigan. In fact, the Whitney Motorsports team with driver J.J. Yeley has also planted its roots at the same short tracks that the Keselowski family did.

Dusty Whitney was one of the youngest late model owners at Toledo Speedway in the early 2000s. Although his drivers didn’t necessarily win a lot, they did run up front quite a bit and he found his path in the sport. He helped the Keselowski family during their ARCA foray, owning Brian’s cars and collecting a couple of wins along the way. His Dusty’s Collision sponsorship can still be seen on cars racing at Flat Rock and Toledo Speedways, showing he hasn’t forgotten where he came from either.

Whitney moved to the Cup Series in 2010 and found it a tough row to hoe. His start-up team failed to qualify for the first five races, and went through several drivers trying to find the right combination.

Working with a tight budget, Whitney’s cars made 22 starts in 2010 and scored a top-20 finish in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona with J.J. Yeley at the wheel. Yeley and the team split shortly thereafter, but neither found much success while apart. The off-season brought the two back together and new Chevrolet Impalas and some strong engines under the hood brought the team a renewed sense of optimism heading to Daytona.

A sub-par qualifying run left Yeley at the back of the grid for the first Duel and meant he had to race his way into the starting field for the 500.

After a green flag stop for fuel, Yeley was a lap down and looked to be all but eliminated from the 500. But a blown engine and a resultant caution flag changed everything. Yeley picked up the free pass to rejoin the lead lap and darted into the transfer position over the final two-lap dash to the checkered, giving Whitney his first start in the Great American Race.

For Yeley, it marks his return to the 500 after a broken vertebra in a sprint car crash very nearly forced an early end to his racing career.

Dreams do come true. For the Keselowski family, that dream is realized with its two sons lining up in the Daytona 500. For Dusty Whitney, it’s the realization of a vision that took him from the short tracks to the biggest stage in the sport. For both, it proves that the opportunity still exists if you’re willing to reach for it.

On who you want to see win the Daytona 500 and why

2011-01-20T12:07:00.001-05:00

Who would you like to see win the Daytona 500?

That's the question that is going to be asked over and over until the Great American Race reaches its conclusion.

Many fans, understandably, are going to root on their favorite and based solely by the numbers that means the sport's most popular driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will have the most votes. Nothing wrong with cheering on your favorite, whether it's Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, or Travis Kvapil. The good thing is, at least at Daytona, they all seem to have as much chance at hitting the lottery and being up front when the checkered flag falls as everyone else does.

One of the biggest problems I see with the sport is when you ask someone in the media who they'd like to see win and why.

They too will say Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and then go on to tell you they want to see him win because it would be so good for the sport.

Why would a win by Earnhardt, Jr. be good for the sport as a whole? Will one Earnhardt victory have a profound impact on television ratings? Will it increase exposure for sponsors on second- and third-tier teams? Will it increase ticket sales once we hit April, May, June and on to the rest of the season?

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is a fine racecar driver, and despite the trappings of fame and immense wealth, he seems to be a fairly grounded guy. It would be nice to see him win again, especially as the sport reaches the melancholy tenth anniversary of his father's death in the 2001 Daytona 500.

But this sport's overall health, and its current problems, transcend one driver's performance.

Did non-racing fans tune in to watch after Earnhardt, Sr. died? Yes they did. How many of them stayed to cheer on his young son? Undoubtedly there were millions. Those viewers stayed for a while and have moved on. They might return if Earnhardt, Jr. hits a hot streak and wins a handful of races. Most will not.

The sport spent 50 years building an audience, mainly in the southeast but there were strong pockets of race fans all across the country, mainly around areas outside of the southeast where NASCAR would race (such as where I live, near Michigan International Speedway).

We all know it takes a lot longer to build something than to knock it down. NASCAR's recent changes - the Chase, the COT, realigning the schedule and race start times, among others - were all made with the greatest of intentions. But with a large segment of the ticket buying and viewing audience, these changes turned them off to the sport. The cars no longer looked like something they see in their driveway, despite a similar name and headlight decals. The guy who scored the most points over the course of a 36-race season might not be the champion. Races were taken from traditional venues and moved to markets deemed strategically important by marketers, not race fans. And races that used to start early in the day were starting when they should be ending. All of these factors combined to chase away millions of long-time fans.

But the biggest problem is drivers that have little in common with middle class Americans. Fans in the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s could relate to Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarbourough, Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt. They were ordinary men who other than racing cars for a living lived ordinary lives. They connected with fans. They spent time with the fans. They built relationships with the fans.

NASCAR, its drivers, its teams, its sponsors, and all of its constituents must work together if the downward trend in the sport's popularity is going to be reversed. We can't put all of the weight of these issues on the shoulders of one driver not winning races. Simply looking at things through rose colored glasses won't do it either. It's on the shoulders of EVERY driver to reach out and rebuild those bridges with fans. Twitter and Facebook accounts aren't enough. Actual, real interaction with people is what the sport needs. When practice is over, they need to head to the fence and sign autographs and chat with people instead of gather up security guards for a mad dash to the dreaded motorhome lot.

Reconnect with people and find commonality with common people, and maybe what was once the most loyal audience in all of sports can be rebuilt.

On Stewart's shiner and a points revamp

2011-01-18T17:44:00.001-05:00

For mid-January, there is actually quite a bit of racing news breaking lately. It comes as no surprise that Tony Stewart finds himself embroiled in yet another scuffle, but it is a welcome surprise that NASCAR is at least considering a change to its championship format.

First, the Stewart situation.

I must preface my remarks with the statement that I like Tony Stewart. I respect the man's talents and his determination. I appreciate that he supports grassroots racing. But for some reason, he continually finds himself in these situations - situations where he physically accosts someone. Whether it's slapping a tape recorder from a reporters hands or wrestling the radio headset off a track official's head, Stewart has crossed the line from fiery and opinionated to overly agressive and borderline criminal on numerous occasions.

The latest story has Stewart allegedly in a scuffle with an Australian race track owner after a heated discussion over track conditions. Stewart supposedly whacked the track owner, who apparently is a bit of a big fellow, with his helmet and the track owner returned the favor with a poke to the eye, leaving Stewart with a tell-tale shiner.

There will doubtlessly be thousands of words written and said about this incident as SpeedWeeks approaches. Every writer will want to break the story of what happened and get Stewart's quotes to puncuate the story. I'll read them with as much interest as anyone, this is a juicy story and there are still unanswered questions. To me the biggest part of the story is that Stewart finally pushed and someone pushed back. Imagine him knocking Mike Mulhern's tape recorder out of his hands and Mulhern responding by shoving Stewart between a couple of transporters and rapping him upside the head a couple of times.

Obviously NASCAR would outwardly frown on such shenanigans, but in reality it was only a matter of time before Stewart lashed out at someone and they lashed back.

The second big story is that NASCAR, after 35 years, is looking to replace the Latford System and totally revamping its point system.

Apparently the discussion among the sanctioning body and its teams centers on a system that awards race winners 43 points and descends all the way down to one point for finishing 43rd. There's talk of bonus points for winning, leading the most laps and winning the pole, but all of this at this point is pure speculation.

I'll say this: it's a start. In my last post, I called for the elimination of points determining the champion. Race winners from the first 35 races of the season would be automatically invited to the championship race, with a last chance race the day before locking in one more invitee. The final race of the year would pay a huge sum to win (like what the current champion earns) and would be named the overall series champion. You could also tweak it a little and say winners from the first 32 races of the year locked in and have a four-race "Chase" for the championship, but I think one race to decide it fits right into Brian France's "more Game Seven moments" edict.

One thing does need to be said about that as well: I appreciate France's desire to see more of those high-intensity moments in NASCAR. But those moments are not something you can create or manufacture by adding rules or manipulating competition. Those moments are rare, and that rarity is what makes them special. Alan Kulwicki's 1992 championship is special because it wasn't manipulated in any sense. Dale Earnhardt's final victory at Atlanta, a photo finish over Bobby Labonte, is special because over 500 miles Earnhardt managed to get to the line a millisecond before the competition. He didn't have a two-lap sprint to the finish after a late-race caution to artificially tighten the field.

The problem with manufacturing "Game Seven moments" is that once you artificially tighten the competition, those moments that were once dramatic lose any sense of excitement or value to the audience.

When the IndyCar Series was routinely racking up finishes that were decided by ten thousandths of a second at its 1.5-mile oval events, the first few were extraordinarily exciting. The next few were still exciting but the edge had been worn off. Then, it becomes expected and even when it happens it's not as exciting. And when it doesn't, well that entire race was a bore!

This sport is inherently exciting. Revamping the point system is a good thing, especially if it means drivers are out there racing hard to win more and running around to score points less. But manipulating the points and competition to create those Game Seven moments is a bad thing, and will eventually do more harm than good when those moments lose their luster and don't happen.

On choosing a championship, Evernham to Hendrick, Piquet's chances, and a total revamp of the championship format

2011-01-11T19:26:00.001-05:00

A few thoughts as we start to count down to the end of the off-season...

- While I appreciate that drivers like Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards, and Kyle Busch are competitive and want to win every race and championship they can, it's for the best that NASCAR has instituted a rule that forces a driver to choose a championship to chase after. The Nationwide Series has always had Cup driver participation, but it was never meant to be "Cup Lite". Look at the stats, guys like Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Geoff Bodine, and Rusty Wallace may have run Nationwide Series races, but their schedules were always extremely limited and they never chased after a championship.

- I, like many others, find it interesting that Ray Evernham has left ESPN to rejoin Rick Hendrick in what is apparently a non-racing role. I wonder if that is truly the case, or if Ray is there to help behind the scenes and out of the spotlight. In any case, he's earned the right to choose what he does after a highly successful career as a crew chief and an owner. I do hope that he someday does make a return to the television booth; he is a great communicator, very articulate and was a great addition to the ESPN team.

- The open wheel convergence on NASCAR continues as Nelson Piquet, Jr. will compete full-time in the Camping World Truck Series after dipping his toes in the water in a limited role last season. As with every other driver to attempt the switch, the learning curve will be steep. Maybe too steep. Chris Carrier will step in to crew chief, and with 30+ years of experience there may be a chance for success. However, that didn't help the last former open wheel driver that Carrier worked with, former Indy 500 winner Sam Hornish.

- The rumored changes to the Chase have done nothing but inspire a resounding "meh" from me. I get why it was instituted and I get why they want to expand the field. Who doesn't want more drivers with a chance to win it all, right? But the realist in me says why should a guy who is the 12th best after 26 races have a chance to be the champion? In a true playoff system, a wildcard or any other lower seed has one chance to beat the best and if they pull it off, well, more power to them. But in a season that is determined by accruing the most points, shouldn't the driver that actually earns the most points win? Make no mistake about it, Mark Martin wasn't the second-best driver in 2009, he was given hundreds of points by NASCAR and his points deficit all but eliminated.

All of these tweaks to the Chase are the wrong way to go, in my humble opinion. If NASCAR wants to have a true "Game Seven" feel to it's playoff, then a total revamp of the way the champion is determined needs to be implemented. Don't base the championship on points. Base it on wins, and any driver that wins at least one of the first 35 races is automatically invited to the season-ending and championship-determining race. The other drivers aren't done just yet, they have one more chance as Championship Weekend is actually a double-header: a "200-mile" last chance race on Saturday and a winner-takes-all (say $10 million to win along with the Sprint Cup trophy) 300-mile finale on Sunday. It sure would place a lot more of an emphasis on winning during the so-called regular season and it would grab a lot of headlines for the finale, which as it is currently is constituted, barely registers on the radar with most of the sports media.

On the fallacy that Sadler would have been killed if not for the COT

2010-08-03T09:52:00.003-04:00

Having known quite a few racecar drivers in my days, I am pleased that the modern racecar is as safe as it is. No one wants to see racecar drivers, or crew members or anyone else involved in the sport, injured or worse.

But there is a huge fallacy that is being perpetuated by the racing media, one that overlooks years and years of history and even logic.

The belief that drivers involved in crashes in the COT would have been injured, or even killed, in the old car is rubbish. Was Elliott Sadler's wreck at Pocono nasty? Sure it was. Would it have had a much worse outcome in the old car? It's obviously impossible to tell because he didn't have an exact duplicate of the accident in the old car. However, logic and history says he probably would have climbed out, just like he did on Sunday.

There were hundreds of big crashes with the older car throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Granted, there were injuries and yes, there were fatalities - crashes claimed the lives of J.D. McDuffie, John Nemechek, Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Tony Roper, and Dale Earnhardt. However, those were all before head and neck restraints were implemented. Once the HANS device and the Hutchens device were mandated, savage crashes were still commonplace but the injuries that proved fatal for the above drivers were (for the most part) eradicated.

That's not to say that Sadler would have been injured without a HANS device. Journeyman driver Rick Mast had a savage crash at Watkins Glen in 1993, a crash that saw his car smash into the Armco barrier and launch into the air, and he climbed out under his own power moments later. This was in the day before containment seats that ensured the driver's head didn't snap from side to side, before the HANS device, before all of the modern safety enhancements that we constantly hear are the only reason drivers are able to survive these wrecks.

Here is Mast's crash from the 1993 Bud at the Glen via YouTube.

There are hundreds of other videos on YouTube that prove the point.

Is the COT a good thing? Underneath it's ugly and overly aero-dependent skin, yes it is. The safety enhancements of the COT are a welcome addition, no one would argue that. But the evidence is there if those interested enough to look for it chose to find it. The old car, while not perfect, was pretty darn good.

And despite the COT's safety enhancements, the HANS device, and SAFER barriers, it's just a matter of time before we're reading these journalists' reactions to a fatal accident. It could be a week, a month, a year, or a decade, but it will happen. No one wants it to happen, but it's a part of the sport that can never be erased. The human body simply is not meant to travel at 200 miles per hour, no matter how tightly its encased in a seat, wrapped in energy-absorbing materials and then placed in a cocoon of welded steel tubing.

NASCAR's safety record is amazing over its entire history, but virtually all of the improvements that have been made over the years are reactionary in nature. Why? Because no one can predict what is yet to come. It's easy to look back and say 'we should wear full-face helmets' or even 'wouldn't a fireproof uniform make more sense than short sleeved shirts'. Despite all of the research and development going on to prevent it, no one knows what the cause of the next fatal accident will be.

Here is hoping NASCAR doesn't ever give up on that research. But here's also to hoping that the media and the blogosphere that covers this sport comes to grips with reality on this subject.

On the secret penalties and fixing phantom cautions

2010-08-02T20:32:00.001-04:00

It’s been almost a week since NASCAR’s “secret” fines to Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman were announced. In that time, I’ve spent quite a few hours formulating my thoughts so I could coherently express myself. I hope I am able to do that in this posting.

First, I still love NASCAR. Despite disagreeing with the sanctioning body on numerous points, they overall do a good job of running the sport and keeping it moving in the right direction. I also believe that they truly do think the decisions they make are for the betterment of the sport, even if the reality of their decisions don’t make anything markedly better.

Second, I hope the recent flap started by these fines leads somewhere. It could simply be that the NASCAR Foundation has an influx of cash and that’s the end of it. Or, NASCAR could take the comments made by both drivers to heart and make some concrete changes that actually do make the sport better.

Newman has had several major accidents throughout his career, any one of which could have had a seriously negative outcome. Should he be opinionated about restrictor plate racing? Yes. Should he air his dirty laundry in public? Probably not, but drivers have been complaining vociferously about restrictor plate racing since at least 1988 (the year the plates were implemented; coincidence?). Not once in over 20 years of racing in a huge pack has NASCAR shown any real initiative to do away with them and make the racing at Daytona and Talladega less crazy. So can Newman be faulted for speaking out to the media?

Hamlin touched on a subject that thousands of fans – if not millions – have grown weary of in recent years. It’s long been suggested that NASCAR will call a caution when it needs to tighten up the competition for entertainment’s sake. They will poll their spotters around the track and see if anyone can spot any debris. Now, they may actually have good intentions – no one will argue that there should be debris on the track, and no one will say they love to see racecars spread out at one second intervals with no racing throughout the field.

However, perception is reality and NASCAR’s audience perceives these cautions to be bogus, and Hamlin called them on it.

So what can NASCAR do?

When they make the inevitable move to fuel injection they can ensure the drivers have enough throttle response at Daytona and Talladega that they can actually let off the throttle in traffic instead of riding the brakes as they do now. There are other changes, aero changes, that would really help but that is a good first step.

And NASCAR can also do away with the phony debris cautions and still liven up the show. All they need to do is institute, in the rule book so it is there for everyone to see, competition cautions at regular intervals specified at each track. For instance, at superspeedways it could be 100 miles. At short tracks it could be 100 laps. At road courses it could be one-third distance. For example, a competition caution at Bristol would come out only after 100 consecutive green flag laps. The window for a competition caution closes with 50 laps/miles to go. Therefore, if the field goes back to green after a crash with 125 miles left to run at Daytona, there will not be another competition caution since it would come out with 10 laps to go.

All of the possibilities would have to be considered and worked through to make it fair while keeping the race itself entertaining. Old school fans would hate to see the possibility for a caution-free race to go away, but has that come close to happening recently?

At least this way, the teams and fans would both know that if they haven’t seen a caution after a certain number of laps one will be coming out. There will be no conspiracy theories to postulate since the timing of the caution would be mandated by rule. And it might just urge those spotters around the track to only call debris when it is actually seen.

On Carl v. Brad, Part 2

2010-07-19T09:17:00.000-04:00

It's two days after the fact and people are still buzzing about the latest Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski incident at Gateway. Just like the Atlanta incident, people are digging in to support their driver with Edwards' fans saying Brad had it coming and of course Brad's fans saying Carl over-reacted.

Is there a middle ground?

Possibly. But who cares? This brewing rivalry - or is it a festering rivalry - is by far the most entertaining thing to happen on the track in NASCAR racing in years. The fact that these two drivers genuinely dislike each other is fine by me.

That's not to say there isn't blame to go around for what happened on the final lap at Gateway.

Brad's dad, former ARCA champion and NCWTS winner Bob Keselowski, had it pegged on ESPN: Carl flipped out. Now, we had the benefit to replays to see what happened with the nudge in turn one and it's fairly plain to see that Brad's car had a wiggle before banging into Carl. That's what happens when you're racing hard, and Carl has done that more times than one could count. I recall him bouncing off the curb in the Truck race at Martinsville so many times in the fall of 2003 that he had to apologize to virtually the entire field after the race. So while Carl was the "victim" in one sense on Saturday night he's not completely innocent; he's moved his fair share of people out of the way either on purpose or just by driving in over his head.

There's no way being moved up the track calls for hooking someone in the right rear down the straightaway. It is a huge over-reaction, and the crash that it caused destroyed not only Brad's car but several others as well including another Roush Fenway car driven by Colin Braun. Now chances are Braun won't go after his pound of flesh, but Shelby Howard sure should. And, undoubtedly, Brad Keselowski should too.

After the Atlanta race when Brad ended up on his roof, the talk of the NASCAR Nation was how the little punk kid had it coming and afterwards the two drivers settled their differences and patched things up. I never bought it. Sure the two smiled and played nice, but there is some genuine angst between the two and how could there not be? They've scraped fenders several times, and while the incidents at Talladega in 2009 and Atlanta in 2010 that left Edwards with a wrecked racecar were as much his fault as Brad's, it's understandable when he wants to exact his payback. But Carl has gone well past the line of paying another driver back.

Brad has raced Carl hard, which is what he was hired to do. If there is contact, make it an eye-for-an-eye. Carl has over-reacted twice now, crashing Brad at Atlanta at the point on the track where the speeds are at their highest. Remember, even if Brad was 100-percent at fault for that Atlanta crash, the contact was made in the center of the corner where speeds are 50 to 60 miles per hour slower. Sure, Carl went up and over at Talladega but that was his fault - he chose to block Brad who at that point as as far down as he could go and already partially alongside Carl. Brad owes Carl for Atlanta, and now he owes him for Gateway.

While Carl is in victory lane celebrating and talking about how that pesky Keselowski needs to learn his lesson once and for all, Brad isn't saying anything other than what he needs to. But somewhere down the line, that debt that Carl has racked up with two huge crashes will come due. It could come as Carl is trying to solidify his position in the Chase. It could come as Carl is trying to take over the Nationwide points lead. It could be both. It could be somewhere farther off into the future, no one except Brad knows.

The chances of Carl just taking it and moving on are slim to none. And that's okay too, because that means this rivalry will carry on well into the future. Just like Richard Petty and Bobby Allison. And Allison and Darrell Waltrip. And Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine. The sport has gone without a major rivalry for the better part of this decade and maybe even longer, despite every beat writer trying to force a rivalry upon us every time two drivers scrape the paint of each others' fender somewhere.

On how to fix the Nationwide Series

2010-07-06T10:17:00.001-04:00

The talk centering around the Nationwide Series race at Daytona last week focused mainly on one subject: the new-generation racecar and how it helps the struggling second-tier series build its own identity.

There are myriad reasons why the Nationwide Series needs its own identity and just as many ways to make it happen. It needs its own racecars, drivers, and tracks and it needs to be separated from the weekly second-fiddle status at Sprint Cup events.

One only needs to look back to the end of the 1990s to see what a healthy Nationwide Series can be. In 1998, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s first championship season, there were 11 stand-alone races on the 31-race schedule. Tracks like the Nashville Fairgrounds Raceway, Hickory Speedway, Nazareth Speedway, Pikes Peak International Raceway, the Milwaukee Mile, Myrtle Beach Speedway, South Boston Speedway and Gateway International Raceway held stand-alone races. Other tracks like New Hampshire and Watkins Glen that also held Cup races had stand-alone Nationwide races.

Fields were full of drivers that gave the series its own personality. Earnhardt was on his way to Cup superstardom, as was Matt Kenseth. But a strong contingent of full-time Nationwide-only drivers could run with the Cup Series invaders. Jeff Purvis, Buckshot Jones, Randy LaJoie, Phil Parsons, Hermie and Elliott Sadler, David, Jeff, and Mark Green, Jason Keller, Mike McLaughlin, Tim Fedewa, Dick Trickle, Andy Santerre, Elton Sawyer, Shane Hall, Glenn Allen, Jr., Stevie Reeves, and Joe Bessey were just some of the drivers that gave the series its identity with race fans.

Of the 43 drivers that started in the series opener at Daytona in 1998, just seven would run in the Daytona 500 the following day as a full-time Cup driver. Two of those drivers were in cars they owned themselves, including race winner Joe Nemechek. Just five cars were owned by Cup owners: two by Jack Roush, one by Joe Gibbs, one Bill Davis, and one by Dale Earnhardt. Fast forward to 2010: twenty of the 43 cars were owned by current or former Cup team owners or drivers. Thirteen drivers would also run in the Daytona 500. Just 18 of the 43 starters had less than a full season’s worth of Cup experience.

So how can NASCAR rebuild the Nationwide Series’ identity?

It starts with the cars, although the move to the Cup chassis makes this a lot more difficult. Different body styles are essential, although the talk from Daytona is that Ford and Dodge would consider running the new Mustang and Challenger in the Cup Series if allowed. If there is little to no cross-over from Cup to Nationwide, then there is less reason for those Cup drivers to use Nationwide races as test sessions. Preferably the cars wouldn’t look “similar” to their street counterparts but “identical,” but that is another column for another time.

The second component is the schedule. It’s a fallacy that Nationwide races can only succeed if the field is full of Cup drivers. It is essential to separate the two series on a frequent basis. Tracks that don’t host Cup races need to be on the schedule much more frequently. It might be impossible to add the Hickorys and South Bostons of the world back to the schedule, and NASCAR’s France family bought and then shut down places like Nazareth and Pikes Peak. But there are tracks out there that fit the bill, some ovals and some road courses. The recent success at Montreal and Road America prove that road course racing can be a profitable and exciting component to the schedule and there are plenty of short tracks that could be added in exchange for a combo race somewhere. NASCAR also needs to make these stand-alone races geographically distant from the Cup races so much so that it’s difficult enough that no Cup driver would decide to fly in to race.

Cost containment is also essential. There is no reason why it should cost $7-8 million to run a Nationwide season. The participation by Cup owners has inflated the costs dramatically and chased out long-time Nationwide owners like Bill Baumgartner, Clarence Brewer, Frank Cicci, Gary Bechtel, Doug Taylor, and Bill Papke. One of the things that made the series affordable in the late 1990s was the 9.5:1 compression ratio V-8 engines that replaced the V-6 engines that dominated the early part of the decade. These engines were durable and relatively inexpensive to maintain. NASCAR made the change to 12:1 to bring the Nationwide Series engines more in line with the Cup engines and it drove the cost up dramatically. A return to the 9.5:1 engines and a commitment to stay with them would lower the costs and could eventually bring in new ownership to the sport.

In the absence of the above, NASCAR has other options. Limiting the participation by Cup drivers would help. Cup drivers have always ran Nationwide races, but only recently have they decided they would run for both championships simultaneously. That isn’t a healthy thing for the long-term viability of the series. So what NASCAR should do (and they can do this in addition to the above ideas as well) is limit the number of races a Cup-licensed driver can run in a season through new licensing requirements.

Starting in 2011, a Gold license holder (Cup Series) should be able to enter a total of 55 NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series or Camping World Truck Series events. That gives them the entire 36-race Cup schedule plus 19 other races in either the Nationwide Series and/or the Camping World Truck Series. A Silver license holder (Nationwide) could run a total of 35 races – which oddly enough is the exact same number of races on the Nationwide schedule. The Bronze license (Truck) would be good for, you guessed it, 25 races – also the exact same number of races on the Truck schedule. If a Truck driver would like to also run some Nationwide races or a Nationwide driver would like to jump up and run some Cup races, he or she can buy upgrades for one, five, or 10 races but at no time could a Gold license holder buy more starts in a lesser division.

Crew member limits could also be imposed. NASCAR could eliminate the need for specially-trained over the wall crews by a hard limit on the number of team members at a race. Once you have reached your limit, you can’t sign in anyone else to work on your car or go over the wall. No team should need more than 12 people at the track working on a racecar, and that also gives you plenty of people to go over the wall and service it on pit stops.

It is important that NASCAR’s developmental series succeed. Soon, within the next five to ten years, the drivers and even the owners we see racing on Sundays today are going to be at the end of their competitive careers. Where will the drivers that replace them come from? Right now, there isn’t a place for them to race because the Nationwide Series is crowded by Cup drivers and owners. When Jack Roush, Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, Roger Penske and Joe Gibbs decide they are done with NASCAR and retire, who will replace them? When Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin, Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth and Jeff Burton call it a career, who is waiting in the wings ready to take over? The owners that have raided the Nationwide Series for race wins and championships have sacrificed the long-term health of the sport as a whole for short term gain.

On Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin's knee, and start-and-parkers

2010-04-20T15:59:00.001-04:00

It's amazing to me how quickly the tides can turn in motorsports. Not all that long ago, Jeff Gordon was the dominant force in the NASCAR - so dominant that people hated him for it. Things certainly have changed. Now it's Gordon's protege Jimmie Johnson dominating the sport. Johnson's dominance has gone unchecked for so long that people who had once considered Gordon their sworn foe for life were cheering for him to win Monday at Texas.

Is Gordon going through that transition from the driver able to win 6-8 races a year to the driver able to win 1-2 a year the way other former champions like Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt did? It's tough to say for sure, but after Earnhardt won his final championship in 1994 his victory production didn't totally stop but certainly slowed. After 15 wins from 1993 through 1995, he won another eight races before his final race at Daytona in 2001. Gordon hasn't forgotten how to win, after it was just 2007 when he racked up six wins and scored more points on the track than any other driver (although he finished second in the Chase to, who else?, Jimmie Johnson).

Gordon has been in position to win at least two races this season, but hasn't been able to close the deal. Back in the day when Gordon was winning 10 or 13 races a year and running away with the championship, his luck would have held for the final 20 or 25 laps and get him to victory lane. That certainly isn't the case now.

Color me impressed with Denny Hamlin's performance since his knee surgery. It can't be comfortable driving a racecar at high speeds with intense forces pushing and pulling on your body under the best conditions, but to do it with your knee throbbing in pain has to be miserable. I've been burned out on the news of Hamlin's surgery (the Twitter updates and non-stop coverage of the operation was almost laughable) but give credit where it's due: Hamlin definitely gutted it out on Monday and his victory was all the more impressive as a result.

Eddie Gossage may be right. I've never heard of someone calling the start-and-park phenomenon outright theft before, but he makes a very strong case for it. There are no loopholes anyone is jumping through to make it possible though. The rules regarding what happens once you make the race don't say you have to run a certain portion of the event before you're eligible for purse money, and they never have. So it was a matter of time before someone decided they could make a full-time living off qualifying for the races and then pulling off after a few laps and taking home last place money. Gossage said on Sirius NASCAR Radio the other day that this is a new phenomenon, but it's really not. Start-and-parkers have been around for a long time, but they've never been out there to make a profit. Sometimes it was an independent team who needed to pay off a few bills before they could get back to the track and really race for it, but since the purses were a small fraction of what they are now no one really said anything about it. Taking in $4,000 or so isn't such a big deal, but taking in $80,000 raises eyebrows. I wouldn't have a problem with cutting the starting field to 36 in the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series if it eliminates the start-and-park phenomenon. But the economy will do that too once it turns the corner. But the sport will also need to continue to right-size itself before sponsors flock back the way they did in the 1990s. What was once a bargain at $4-5 million (and even at $10 million) is obnoxiously overpriced at $26 million. Bring the cost of competition in line to the real-world return on investment and the start-and-park teams would go away on their own because there would be 50 or more teams legitimately trying to race into the field every week.

On winning despite a bad call, the spoiler, manufacturerd rivalries, and April Fools jokes

2010-04-01T22:11:00.000-04:00

A few random thoughts following the Martinsville NCTWS-NSCS doubleheader...

- I've read a lot of headlines in recent days that give kudos to Mike Ford for the "gutsy" call to bring Denny Hamlin down pit road with 10 laps to go in Monday's Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500. Sure, the end result was that Hamlin won the race, but that was mainly due to luck, not due to Ford's call. In the end, no harm no foul, but I've yet to see anyone come up with the right analysis: Hamlin wins despite being called to pit road with 10 laps to go.

- The Sprint Cup cars do look a lot better with the spoiler back on the rear decklid. Too bad the rest of the car is still hideously ugly. I'm still patiently waiting for the day when the NASCAR brass come to the realization that stock car racing with cars that don't just vaguely resemble something we might see on the street but are identical to what we see on the street is what we want to see.

- Some in the media are desperate to have something interesting to write about. With the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet requiring constant information updates, some crank out words the way some kids in school just to hear themselves speak. Some of these writers constantly write about the latest "rivalry" whenever two drivers have a coming together on the track. Yes the Gordon/Kenseth incident and the Sauter/Hornaday incident added excitement and interest to the sport (just like the Edwards/Keselowski incident at Atlanta did). Now, Gordon and Kenseth have a past (Bristol and Chicago, 2006) so calling their on-track relationship a rivalry isn't too much of a stretch, even if they haven't had a cross word in the past three and a half years. The Sauter/Hornaday situation could brew into a rivalry, but as of now it was just a one-time thing. Rivalries last for years, not a matter of weeks. Richard Petty vs. Bobby Allison in the early 1970s was a rivalry. Allison vs. Darrell Waltrip in the early 1980s was a rivalry. Dale Earnhardt vs. Geoff Bodine was a rivalry. These rivalries were because they were fighting for wins and occasionally ruffling each others fenders and tempers. Denny Hamlin vs. Brad Keselowski has the makings of a rivalry, but it's still too early to tell. If they both become consistent winners, and the signs point to that happening, it will be a good thing for those writers hoping for a real on-track rivalry.

- If you think I overused the word "rivalry" in the above bullet point, well, you can only imagine how many times we've read the words "have at it boys" in the past three weeks. Some have managed to turn this off-the-cuff phrase into an official NASCAR policy! That's how crazy the regulation of the sport has become; actually letting the drivers race and take care of their own interests on the track is now referred to by some as an official policy! What would these people have done when Richard Petty and Bobby Allison knocked the fire out of each other fighting for the win at North Wilkesboro back in 1971. That was the race that they drove each other into the wall about twice a lap for the final ten laps, with Petty winning with a steady stream of smoke pouring off his tires due to body damage and Allison's radiator was punctured and fenders were literally hanging off the car. That wasn't "have at it boys," that was just racing.

- So some in the media feel burned by Texas Motor Speedway's little April Fool's Day prank. All I can say is, well, duh! All one needed to do was look at the calendar and consider the source. Sure, it was technically a day early, but you know when it's the end of March you need to be on guard for these types of things. And it's not like Eddie Gossage and staff haven't done something like this in the past. It's not like this was a typical run-of-the-mill press release either. You see these things in your inbox every day. But once in a while you see something a little odd. I suggest to some in the media not to run with everything they are sent without asking questions. I've seen some press releases in the past that made little sense, so I picked up the phone and gave the sender a ring to ask a couple questions. I think the people who got burned need to lighten up and laugh it off. Enough of the "we'll never run another story from Texas Motor Speedway" and get on with life. Maybe they should ammend that policy to "we'll never run another story from Texas Motor Speedway sent within three days of April Fool's Day."

On media reaction to the Brad K/Carl E incident at Atlanta

2010-03-18T10:51:00.001-04:00

One of the long-lasting memories of the Brad Keselowski/Carl Edwards fandango at Atlanta, in addition to Brad's car flying through the air, will be the media's coverage of the incident.

The accident itself was sensational, and the coverage of the wreck was no less sensational. Highlights were shown on national newscasts and carried on websites that normally cover political intrigue not the ins-and-outs of NASCAR drivers and their raging tempers.

I've tried to read as many of the opinion pieces as possible, many from respected journalists and some from unknown bloggers.

Almost all of them have the same content. Although he didn't deserve to end up upside down, Brad did deserve to be wrecked because of his rough nature on the racetrack and the fact that he's pissed off virtually the entire garage area.

Okay, it's one thing to make that statement when you have facts to back it up. But not one single writer has gone into detail to list the drivers Brad has intentionally crashed over the past two years. Not one writer has gone into detail to list any drivers that are mad at Brad for anything that's gone on over the course of the past two years. But trust them, the entire garage area was cheering as the 12 car sailed through the air into turn one at Atlanta.

I want to know: who feels they've been raced unfairly by Brad Keselowski? Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards might have cause to think so, but if they look at their previous incidents with Keselowski objectively they'd see they are as much at fault (if not more so) than Keselowski.

Too often the writers in the media center parrot what each other are saying. If someone on the other side of the room is saying the entire garage area is upset at Brad Keselowski, it's okay for me to use it in my story - regardless of whether or not there has been any fact checking done to verify that even one driver is upset with Brad.

Hamlin's feud with Keselowski is well documented. Brad hasn't done anything to Hamlin, with the exception of dumping him at Phoenix last November. All he has done is not cut him any slack on the track. That has forced Hamlin into driving over his head and making mistakes, and has resulted in wrecked racecars. Keselowski's past with Edwards is well known too: Carl tried to block Brad at Talladega on the last lap and went for a wild ride as a result. Of course, Brad admits to rough-housing at Memphis last year, where Carl was taken out of a chance for the win, and then they had their run in on lap 40 at Atlanta.

So where are all of the references to other incidents with other drivers? Where did Brad rough up Juan Montoya, who used the Atlanta accident to speak out on the number of drivers waiting to offer up their paybacks to Brad for previous run-ins on the track?

I am not from Missouri, but let's pretend I am for the sake of this argument. I challenge the writers who've written about the supposed long line of drivers waiting to exact their revenge on Brad Keselowski to "show me" the names and offer up details of the incidents.

More on Edwards vs. Keselowski

2010-03-10T14:06:00.004-05:00

I have been scouring the various motorsports web pages for two days trying to find as much info as I can on the entirety of the Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski rumble at Atlanta on Sunday. Most of what's out there simply rehashes what we already have seen and know: Carl and Brad got into it on lap 40, and then Carl came back out and sent Brad on a wild ride with three laps to go. Carl, initially contrite after seeing replays of the first incident, apparently got to thinking about things and decided immediate payback was necessary.

There are a lot of things going on here, both throughout the sport as a whole and in my mind. On one hand, I am a big believer in letting drivers police themselves. I think NASCAR has done a good job getting this back into the drivers hands, but I also think there is way more they can do to let the drivers control what goes on on the racetrack. I am also a believer in paybacks in racing; you wreck me, I wreck you. There's nothing wrong with that philosophy - as long as it's applied correctly.

I wrote about two previous instances of retaliation - Scott Speed vs. Ricky Stenhouse at the ARCA race at Toledo in 2008, and Patrick Sheltra vs. Paul Menard at the ARCA race at Toledo in 2009. Speed's takeout of Stenhouse was textbook; Sheltra's attempt at Menard was the textbook definition of how *not* to exact your on-track revenge.

I've never been a racecar driver, so it's hard for me to get inside of Carl's mind on this. His statement is that he's come together with Brad now four times, and in two of those races Brad has gone to victory lane (Talladega, 2009 and Memphis, 2009). Okay, I can see where Carl has a bone to pick after Memphis. But the Talladega incident that sent Carl up and over and into the catch fence and the initial incident at Atlanta were both Carl's fault, at least from from my point of view tucked safely on the couch in the comfort of my family room. Carl blocked Brad at Talladega, and due to NASCAR's rules mandating where the drivers can and can't race, Brad couldn't go lower. At Atlanta, Brad was down on the yellow line in the middle of the corner and Carl came down. It doesn't matter if it was an inch or a foot - that lane was occupied.

So what exactly is the message Carl wants to get across? Don't race me? If you see me anywhere near you, let me have the lane I want and don't try to pass me?

Brad is doing his job, and to this point, has done it pretty well. His job is to drive that racecar to the best of his abilities. Has he ruffled some feathers? Yep, but I think some of that is because he doesn't take the crap that others have dished to him. The deal with Denny Hamlin is one of Hamlin's making. Had Denny not sideswiped Brad in the Nationwide race at Charlotte in 2008, I doubt we'd ever look twice when those two are near each other on the track. But Brad was wronged - again, merely for racing someone hard, not for any meaningful contact between the two - and he set out to let Hamlin and the rest of the NASCAR drivers know he wouldn't be pushed around. Many of the incidents between Keselowski and Hamlin that have resulted in Denny taking a ride were initiated either by Hamlin himself or by Keselowski simply being in Hamlin's head.

The question this leads me to ask is this: does Carl actually think this is over now?

If I was in Keselowski's shoes the answer would be no. Sure, Carl flipped off Brad's front bumper and now Brad flipped off Carl's front bumper. But the two incidents are no where near similar. The Talladega incident was a product of hard racing for the win and an ill-timed block. The Atlanta incident was a product of an ill-tempered driver making a bad decision to payback an incident that was his fault to begin with. From where I sit, Carl didn't have a reason to spin Brad, much less turn him over.

Don't get me wrong...as a race fan, I like Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, and Brad Keselowski. I've had the pleasure of working with Denny during his initial foray into the Truck Series in 2004. I've been around the Keselowski family since I was 10 years old going to the races with my grandparents. And when I was with TruckSeries.com, I had the pleasure of working with Carl when he drove for the Mittler Bros. and then eventually with Roush - and I even have one of his "If you're looking for a driver you're looking for me" business cards as a momento of those days.

I don't want Carl to change his style on the track. He's a hard charger, one of only a handful of drivers that I would put that title on in today's NASCAR. Sometimes I wish Carl would calm himself down with the extra-cirricular stuff that goes on around him...the door-to-door congrats he offered Dale Earnhardt, Jr. at Michigan a few years back and the fake punch at teammate Matt Kenseth are just a couple of examples. I want to see the Carl that drives in on the outside and squeezes past Jimmie Johnson to win at Atlanta in 2005 or drives in in 20 car lengths too deep at Kansas and rides the wall to try to win, not the Carl that loses his temper and then loses control. The first Carl is exciting and a joy to watch on the track. The second, well, not so much.

I've been surprised at the criticism I've seen about Brad's driving style on message boards and in article comments. He's aggressive and doesn't take any crap. That's a bad thing? Yet people seem to think he wantonly and maliciously goes and crashes people. He's not perfect by any means, but I've yet to see him purposely take someone out without that person first doing something to get on his payback list. Sure, he's made mistakes. But name one driver that hasn't. Even Mr. Four-time Champion Jimmie Johnson has left his share of competitors with crumpled fenders in his wake. Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Mark Martin all have too. So have Harvick, the Busch brothers, Kasey Kahne, and everyone else who straps in to race on Sunday. It's just part of the game, a big part that provides us all a tremendous amount of excitement.

Where does this lead us? Hopefully NASCAR's lack of a penalty is something that doesn't change if and when this incident flares up again. I can guarantee you that the 12 and the 99 will find each other on the track again sometime soon. Brad never really spoke about the situation with Hamlin, he did all of his talking on the track. I doubt we'll hear him do a lot of talking about this dust-up either. And I don't expect him to go blatantly send Carl on a ride into the wall somewhere either. But, I can say with confidence that the 12 won't be giving the 99 any slack - whether it's in the draft at Talladega or if Carl is trying to squeeze into the bottom groove at Martinsville and Brad is there to fill the hole.

I originally opined that Edwards should be slapped with a heavy points fine. After some deliberation, I think I am okay with what NASCAR did (although, really, what is probation?). That is if, and it's a big if, NASCAR reacts the same way if and when the shoe is on the other foot. It wasn't Edwards' intent to put Keselowski on his roof. There is no way he could have known that would have been the outcome. The severity of the outcome isn't the issue. It's the intent that caused it. All Carl wanted to do was send a message - regardless of whether that message was warranted or not. The message was sent and received, now let's see how NASCAR reacts when that message is returned to sender.

On the finer points of retaliation

2010-03-08T09:44:00.000-05:00

For as long as there has been racing with automobiles, there has been one driver upset with another driver. Usually, it's because one has beaten the other, which is as it should be. Sometimes, it's because one driver caused another driver to crash. While there are myriad reasons for what causes a wreck, some crashes are just part of the sport, the result of hard racing for position where an inch is asked for but not given.

That's what happened yesterday at Atlanta on lap 40 when Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski got together in turn one. Keselowski was racing to the inside of Edwards, trying to gain positions on a restart. Edwards, in the middle groove, tried to shut the door on Keselowski's advance. Edwards cut into the low groove that was already occupied by Keselowski's car, washed up the track and slapped into Joey Logano and then the outside wall.

Where does blame lie?

With Keselowski? Brad would have had to dip onto the apron to go any lower. He held his line and didn't slide up the track at all to initiate contact. It's hard to point the finger at Brad for this one.

It's easy to see where Carl is coming from. He unded up on his head at Talladega last year racing against Keselowski. Due to the rules of restrictor-plate racing, Keselowski had to hold his line and not dip below the so-called out-of-bounds line. That's exactly what Brad did, and Carl attempted to throw a block and ended up crashing himself as a result. Edwards also came up on the short end of the stick racing against Keselowski for the win in a Nationwide Series race at Memphis last year. Hard racing for the win sometimes results in bent sheet metal. And, if memory serves, Carl left a trail of bent sheet metal along the way early in his career too.

Retaliation is part of the sport, just as crashing is. It's hard to say you can be crashed and not have the desire to get even. But that relatiation has to be done the proper way. Intentionally crashing someone at the point on the racetrack where the speeds are the highest is a recipe for disaster - although to Carl's credit he did try very hard to crash Keselowski coming out of turn four the lap before. Had Carl made contact coming out of the corner Brad likely would have taken a long slide through the grass, the point made and everyone moves on. As it was, Brad came a few feet from flying into the catchfence roof-first, a situation which is likely to have had dire consequences for the driver and those seated nearby in the grandstands.

So what should the consequences be?

Some, including Brad, have called for a suspension. I initially thought the same way, but as I thought about it, I've changed my mind. Sitting Carl out a week won't change his aggressive ways on the track, and it shouldn't. That's what makes Carl Edwards one of the elite drivers in NASCAR - and truthfully, that's what makes Brad Keselowski a special driver too. Sometimes, when two aggressive drivers come together, sparks fly. Those sparks are a benefit to the race fans.

A monetary fine won't mean a thing to Carl. Today's NASCAR drivers can absorb a million-dollar hit and not feel it. It's a drop in the bucket.

Points should be deducted. More than Carl earned at Atlanta. Not because of his intent - retaliation, after all, is a part of the sport that will never disappear no matter how vanilla the personalities of the sport become. The points should be deducted simply because of the outcome. Sending Brad spinning through the grass off turn four is one thing. Sending him into the catchfence entering turn one (again, the highest speed segment of the track) is another. Taking away points - enough points that his chances to make the Chase are adversely affected - seem to be the only thing that will make any difference in today's points-racing, Championship-heavy environment.

I hope NASCAR doesn't start to go back on the "let 'em race" philosphy due to one on-track incident. Boys will be boys, and only when they cross so far over the line that the line is a faded point off in the horizon should the sanctioning body step in. Otherwise, let them have at it.

On the numerology of going from No. 88 to No. 22

2010-02-26T10:40:00.010-05:00

It's funny how things seem to come full-circle in racing and in life. And it's funny that things that happened over 30 years ago can happen again.
In racing, car numbers often don't really seem to matter much unless of course you happen to be one of the superstar drivers that have become identified by that numeral on your door.

But for virtually every driver out there, they started their racing career with a number of choice. It could have been a number used by their father or grandfather, or it could be a number that just seemed to fit with their personality.

I know as a kid, whenever I dreamed of climbing aboard a racecar at Toledo Speedway, it always was a No. 16 car. That number is my birthday, so it just seemed to be a perfect fit. Plus it seems to be a pretty good choice as it's won a lot of races in the Camping World Truck Series and four championships with Ron Hornaday, Mike Bliss, and Travis Kvapil. Oh, and Greg Biffle seems to do pretty good with it in the Sprint Cup division too.

Way back in the 1970s, a family from up in my neck of the woods fielded a car in USAC and NASCAR stock car competition with the No. 88 on the door. Ron Keselowski didn't have much success in the NASCAR side of things, but he did win a 500-mile USAC race at Pocono with that number on the door. But the No. 88 was a desirable number, and someone eventually came to Keselowski and offered him a tidy sum to buy the right to use the number.

Eventually the No. 88 went to the DiGard team - first Donnie Allison, then Darrell Waltrip and then finally Bobby Allison - and the Keselowskis went short track racing with great success with the No. 29. Ron retired from the drivers seat and took over crew chief duties for his brother Bob. They climbed up from the weekly short tracks of the Midwest to an ARCA championship and eventually back to the NASCAR ranks in the Truck Series. Their No. 29 went to victory lane at Richmond in 1997 with Bob at the wheel and then again in 1998 with Dennis Setzer at Mesa Marin in 1998. After a sponsor-requested change to the No. 1, the No. 29 reappeared with Terry Cook behind the wheel in 2001. Cook scored four wins for them in 2002, and Bob's oldest son Brian won a track championship at Toledo with the No. 29 in 2003.

After 30+ years, a Keselowski again ran a No. 88 car when Brian's younger brother Brad was hired to drive the JR Motorsports Nationwide Series car in 2007. Brad had some great success with that number, winning a handful of races and contendending for a championship in both of the full-time seasons he used the number.

Now, it's time to go back in time to 1982. After ten successful years with the No. 88, the DiGard team had acquired a new sponsor. This was just before the era when a team would simply add another team, so their previous sponsor Gatorade was free to move to another team. The DiGard team had a good relationship with the Gatorade executives and when the company requested to take the No. 88 along with them to a new team, DiGard said goodbye to the number and chose another, this time going with the No. 22 to use on it's newly sponsored Miller High Life cars.

In the first season using the No. 22, Bobby Allison won six races and scored his only NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship.

I think you can see where I am going with this...

After departing JR Motorsports at the end of the 2009 season, Brad Keselowski joined Penske Racing for a double-duty season in 2010. He's driving the team's No. 12 car in the Cup Series and...the No. 22 car in the Nationwide Series.

Some people might not believe in the numerology, and I'm not quite sure I buy into it completely either. But Darrell Waltrip surely did when he won the Daytona 500 in his 17th try on February 17, 1989 while driving the No. 17 car. The numbers surely are aligned for Brad Keselowski to drive to his first Nationwide Series championship in 2010.

On McMurray's return to Earth, Jr.'s continued over-exposure, Danica's finish, and overbearning on-screen graphics

2010-02-22T11:53:00.000-05:00

- Jamie McMurray continued to light up the NASCAR world when he earned the pole on Friday at Auto Club Speedway, just five days after winning the Daytona 500. Many in the media were loving it and proclaiming McMurray the breakout star of the season based on his season-opening performances. As big as winning at Daytona is (even in today's world of spec racecars and cruise control point-and-steer racing), it doesn't really convert to a successful rest of the season. Sure, McMurray followed it up with a pole, but what does a pole really mean any more? Being fast for two miles doesn't mean you can be fast for 500 miles. McMurray's teammate, and fellow front row starter Juan Montoya was just as fast but didn't last the full 500 miles, bowing out early due to engine failure. McMurray came home 17th and despite looking all over the Web all morning, not much can be found on his performance in the race from many of those writers who were touting him after qualifying.

- While McMurray's 17th-place finish was largely overlooked, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.'s 32nd-place result generated more coverage than the drivers that rounded out the top-five. Earnhardt's result is noteworthy, but is it feature-worthy? The media has relied on Earnhardt for page views and click-thrus for too long, and his the over-exposure has turned off many of the sport's faithful followers. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying the media needs to overlook Earnhardt, but how about giving him coverage commensurate with his performance?

- Has any 31st-place finish been received with more ballyhoo than Danica Patrick's run at Fontana? All of the media who proclaimed her to be a stock car success after finishing sixth in the ARCA race at Daytona are now having to backtrack, although I am not so sure that Patrick isn't right where she should be right now. Her goals aren't to go out and lead laps and win races; no, they are to learn how to drive stock cars. She's still learning that, although she's not competitive just yet. Once she learns how to drive the racecar, she can learn how to race the racecar. Anyone who thinks she will show up in Las Vegas and magically become a top-five finisher is kidding themselves. Although she has considerable experience in racing, she has exactly three races in a stock car. Let her learn, and then let's see what she can do. It's like Ricky Carmichael's transition from bikes to stock cars. He obviously knows how to race, and so does Danica, but he has to learn how to drive these vehicles before he can learn how to race them. Once both of them get their sea legs under them in stock cars, both will make a solid addition to the driver corps, although a big part of me wishes Danica would stay in the Indy Car Series.

- Anyone else find the Fox "White Flag" graphics and the headshots of the top-ten across the top of the screen to be too much? I wish the networks would minimize all the on-screen bells and whistles during the race broadcasts. I've never liked the ticker across the top because it obscures too much of the screen and only shows you three positions at a time. I would much rather favor a system that showed the entire rundown, statically, on both sides of the screen. The top-20 on the left side, the second 20 on the right, displayed as the position and then the car number. As positions changed, car numbers would move up or down; those going towards the front highlighted in green and those moving backwards highlighted in red. Occasionally other information could be inserted, such as interval (behind the leader and behind the next position) and average speed. That way, the entire field could be updated continually and without obscuring too much of the screen.

On Mr. Afterthought, passing below the yellow line, the first female(s) since 2008, good things happening to good guys, and may the luckiest guy win

2010-02-15T20:03:00.002-05:00

A few thoughts and questions following Hershey's Milk and Milkshakes SpeedWeeks in Daytona...

-Bobby Gerhart has to feel like Mr. Afterthought following his win in the ARCA race at DIS. Gerhardt took the checkered for the sixth time - an ARCA record - but ask most of the media in attendance who won and they couldn't tell you. Of course, they were all there to watch Danica. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I wish more media would cover the event instead of that one particular angle. Of course, I feel the same frustration every June when many members of the motorsports media proclaim themselves dirt track fans for a night when many of them have never been to a dirt track race at a track other than Eldora Speedway.

- I wonder why Scott Speed wasn't penalized for passing below the yellow line on the final lap of his Duel race? We were only given one angle of his pass (for some reason the camera angle entering turn three, which catches everything that happens on the backstretch wasn't used), and although it was from a distance it was clear that his left side tires we well over the double yellow line. The simple fact that a pass below the yellow line could be missed - or ignored - like this is the perfect example for why that rule should be abolished.

- It's a real shame that the Truck Series race was rain delayed on Friday, but it made for a perfect day-night double header on Saturday. The Nationwide Series race was a thrill-a-minute, with numerous crashes spicing the event from start to finish. The most spectacular was, of course, Dale Earnhardt, Jr,'s wild flip down the backstretch. It was humorous to note that the "Danica Ticker" on the bottom of the ESPN2 telecast proclaimed Danica as the first woman to start a Nationwide Series race since 2008. Technically this may be correct because she took the green flag first, but Chrissy Wallace was also in the starting line-up. I do believe this was fixed before the end of the race, but it was funny nonetheless.

The Truck was was, for me, the highlight of the week. The race was as it is billed, the best of SpeedWeeks. Although the were a lot of accidents and too many trucks behind the wall at the end, the actual racing was as good as it gets at Daytona. It's a shame that the opening lap accident took out as many quality trucks as it did, and it's a shame the mid-race crash that took out Ron Hornaday, et. al happened too. But that's all part of what makes racing at Daytona racing at Daytona.

- Congrats to Timothy Peters on his win in the Truck race at Daytona. It wasn't that long ago that Tim was rideless and then driving for a shoe-string operation out of a two-bay garage behind his house. Sometimes good things happen to good people.

- The Daytona 500 was a pretty decent race. No real "big" big ones, although the delay for the recurring potholes was a real downer. The real shame of the race, at least to me, was that the final 38 laps weren't all run under green. That is a perfect distance to let the field thin out at the front and let the best car and driver get to the front. As it was, the multiple green-white-checkered finish worked perfectly (although I don't like that it's been limited to three attempts - do it how many times it takes!). It's just a shame that the winner of the race wasn't the best car and driver, but the driver who chose the right lane for a two-lap dash to the finish. Such as it is, Jamie McMurray did a great job over those final laps. It was great to see and hear the emotion from him immediately following the race. However, it wasn't so great to see him cut short his interview with Fox "to go be with (his) team." I understand the desire to go be with the team, but the people at home (and the people who pay the freight - the sponsors) want to hear from you too.

On the start of SpeedWeeks, underdogs, fixing the green-white-checkered, and not learning a darn thing in Daytona

2010-02-10T18:03:00.003-05:00

SpeedWeeks is underway, and it's great to have the rumble of V-8 engines in the air again...even if they are choked by those still-dreaded restrictor plates. Through Wednesday's Sprint Cup practice, nearly 20 cars have been damaged so far, with the promise of more to come on Thursday and the rest of the week. As fun as it can be to watch this style of plate racing, there is a part of me (a big part, actually) that would like to go back to the way it was. Sure, waiting for the big one is nerve wracking fun and not knowing who will luck out in the draft on the final lap can be exciting too, but the way the racing was "back when" with the small spoilers laid back as flat as the driver could bear it was exciting too. There's nothing like wondering if someone barrelling into turn one at 200 mph will make it out the other end of turn two - not because someone else took him out, but because he just couldn't handle the car. That certainly isn't a problem in this era of excessive downforce and minimal horsepower.

- I am a big fan of the underdog story. When I worked for TruckSeries.com, I took pride in interviewing not only the guys racing for wins and championships but also the guys struggling to make it into the field as well. There are numerous underdog stories heading into the 500 this year, and with Joe Nemechek scoring a starting spot based on his qualifying speed at least one will make it in the Great American Race. But the one near and dear to my heart is Terry Cook's No. 46 Whitney Motorsports team. Cook is a long-time Truck Series veteran and multiple-time winner in that series. He's making his first attempt at the Cup Series in the sport's biggest event. While Hendrick, Penske, and Gibbs all have hundreds of employees working on building their cars from the ground up, Cook has nine people on the payroll - counting himself (and he's serving as the team general manager in addition to driving). It might seem like a futile exercise to some, but don't begrudge a man chasing after his dream. After 14 years in the Trucks it may have seemed like that dream was out of reach but just six weeks ago Dusty Whitney decided he was going to go Cup racing and Cook got the call. It might not be as far fetched as some believe either; Cook has always raced well at Daytona (he has three top-fives there in the NCWTS) and the car got better throughout the day on Wednesday. He was 34th on the speed chart at the end of the day, not bad for David when he's up against the other Goliaths in the Cup garage. (**Full disclosure - I am doing some PR for Terry and the team so I ought to think it's a great underdog story...but regardless of my obvious bias it is a neat thing to see.)

- So NASCAR is looking at changing it's green-white-checkered rule? That's a wonderful thing. But from what I can gather, they are doing what they do best and taking a simple concept and making it overly complex. How about this: if the caution flag comes out any time in the course of a g-w-c attempt, whether the white flag has been waved or not, you do it over. With the freeze the field rule, the paying customers and the television audience still aren't guaranteed a green-flag finish unless it's done that way. Or, NASCAR could say once the white flag is waved the next flag that is waved is the checkered and let them race back. A change is definitely due, but let's hope it's the right change and not something that doesn't necessarily give a green-flag finish. And for those who want to argue that it took the Truck Series four attempts in that final multiple g-w-c race at Gateway in 2004, I was there that night and I challenge anyone to find someone who watched that race in the stands who didn't feel they got 10 times their money's worth that night.

- I've seen several "what have we learned so far" headlines from some writers postulating on what we've seen so far at Daytona will mean for the rest of the season. They may spend 1000 words theorizing but the simple answer is this: nothing we've seen at Daytona means anything when it comes to the rest of the year. Yes, Danica did well in the ARCA race. Yes, Harvick put his stamp on the Bud Shootout for the second year in a row. Yes, Mark Martin looks strong again and Jr. is back on the front row at Daytona. But this style of racing is so different than what we every week that whatever happens in Daytona is happening in a bubble. Just ask the last three Daytona 500 winners, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman, and Matt Kenseth if their success at Daytona carried over to the rest of the season.

On the most wonderful time of the year, adding laps, and the passing of Mike Addington

2010-01-14T12:32:00.001-05:00

Generally when people think about "the most wonderful time of the year," they recall the classic Christmas carol. Not me. While I love the holidays, even more so now there are little ones to watch tear into their mound of presents on Christmas morning, the most wonderful time of the year is now - when the racing season is starting to kick into gear. It starts this weekend with the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in Tulsa, then continues next week with the Toyota All-Star Showdown in Irwindale, and then we really get a head of steam going with the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the kickoff of SpeedWeeks 2010.

A note to David Newton and any other media member who is critical of Phoenix International Raceway's decision to lengthen the Spring race at the 1-mile oval in the desert: not everyone things long races are boring. Some people actually think extra laps and miles is a good thing, particularly if you're a fan that only has one chance to see a race each season. Can 600 miles at Charlotte drag on too long? Sure. Can 400 miles at Michigan seem long? Sure. But you know what? That's okay. Not every race is a barn burner. Experienced media people should know that. They are entitled to their opinion just like everyone else, but I often wonder to myself why some of these media members chose to follow the sport? Was it just because that's the assignment they drew when they were hired in? Because many of them rarely have anything good to say about the sport. Maybe 375 miles is too many at Phoenix. Why not wait and see before condemning the decision? It's possible that all it will do is add to the laps led total of the winner, as Newton theorizes. It's also possible that someone will dominate the first 312 laps of the race (the traditional race distance at PIR) and then have engine problems or crash out in the final 63 laps. How many times has someone won the Coca-Cola 500, but not been around to see the checkered flag in the race that is the Coca-Cola 600?

Sad news from the Camping World Truck Series world as former team owner Mike Addington passed away last week. Addington's team was always solid on the track, scoring a win with Andy Houston during his rookie season in 1998 and several more the next three years. He also put Travis Kvapil in victory lane a few times before Kvapil left the team to become a champion with Xpress Motorsports. Addington Racing is where Rick Ren came to the forefront as one of the best crew chiefs in the garage, always having trucks that were top-five material and if they were involved in any kind of smash-up on the track Ren and crew got them back out and in contention. Mike Addington was just 50 years old.

On simplification of the rules

2010-01-08T08:23:00.001-05:00

I was in the car the other day listening to Sirius NASCAR Radio, as I often do when getting household chores and errands done. Heading back from Best Buy after buying some computer components I popped on the radio just as Sirius Speedway's Dave Moody was conversing with a listener about some change the listener was proposing to the championship format. The conversation quickly evolved into what the listener would do to change the sport and how the sport could use an "independent sanctioning body."

For the most part, the caller was a little misguided. I think I understand what it is he was trying to say - that the France family has their fingers in every aspect of the sport and that he didn't like it that way - but that doesn't change the fact that NASCAR is an independent sanctioning body. Like the caller, I am sure everyone who has watched the sport has disagreed with one call or another made by NASCAR officials. But that doesn't mean there is another sanctioning body out there that can effectively manage the sport.

Lost in the conversation with the caller is something Moody repeatedly told the caller: "I don't think you understand the rules." It started when the caller was confused on when a driver uses a backup car after a crash in practice or qualifying; apparently he couldn't keep it straight when that driver must start at the tail of the field or when he/she gets to keep the position earned in qualifying. That's neither here nor there in my mind; what I'd like to see is a streamlining of the rules to make the entire sport much easier for everyone to understand.

A race is one of the easiest things in the world to officiate. Even as kids, it simply is the first person to get from point A to point B. Sure, in NASCAR it's slightly more complex since there are 43 teams running and the race can last upwards of four hours. But there are so many rules now that the simplicity that made the sport so beautiful when I was a youngster is gone.

It starts in qualifying with a certain number of cars locked in the field. Once the race starts, there are many proceedures that can confuse fans - like the free pass, no passing to the left on a restart, the commitment line for making pit stops, freezing the field when the caution comes out, and on restrictor plate tracks the dreaded yellow line rule. And on and on.

That's not even getting into the rules governing the construction of the cars and trucks used in the races.

There are many reasons why NASCAR today is better than NASCAR of yesterday. The visibility and ease of access is second-to-none in professional sports. There are still many issues NASCAR has to deal with before the train is pointed back up the hill to the peak it reached in the mid-2000s - the generic car, some bland personalities, and the confusion over race proceedures are just a few of those issues.

Racing is inherently simple. If NASCAR hopes to regain some of the audience it has lost in the past five years, a return to that simplicity will help immensely.

On crashing at the banquet

2009-12-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

Just a quick thought about something I read on SceneDaily.com by my friend Bob Pockrass...

Now, I didn't watch the banquet from Las Vegas but apparently during the NASCAR Images video highlight package they included footage of on-track crashes for the first time in nine years.

Here is what NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston had to say about it:

“We want to tell the story of bumping and banging,” Poston said. “There are moments in races throughout the season where crashes and wrecks are a key part of the story line. … There’s a balance you’ve got to take to make sure you’re not glorifying dangerous situations.”

Here is my take: the reason why NASCAR has fallen off the radar with most people is because it doesn't glorify the danger. All we hear about is the safety features of the new car, the new SAFER barriers, the new and improved safer catch fencing, and on and on. All of those things are all very good and the sport is better for having them. But for the general public, they want to see racecar drivers defying logic, sanity, and yes even death by driving on the absolute outer edge of control at breakneck speeds through dangerous situations to win races.

NASCAR needs to let the world know that in the X-Games world, its drivers are the most extreme athletes out there. Yes, danger is around every corner but it doesn't matter to men like Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon.

Crashing is a part of the game. Some of them are accidents. Some are on purpose. All serve a purpose. Do real race fans watch *just* for the crashes? We all know the answer is no. But there is no need to disguise the fact that they happen and they add excitement to the sport.

On Rick Ren's KHI departure, getting drivers back in touch with the public, and good equipment

2009-12-03T19:36:00.002-05:00

A few things I wonder as the off-season starts to settle in...

-Does the departure of Rick Ren from Kevin Harvick, Inc. have anything to do with the team owner's conversation with the crew chief and driver Ron Hornaday following the race at New Hampshire? Remember, Harvick was incensed that his employee raced him hard for position at the end of that race, believing that he could have challenged Kyle Busch for the win if he could have gotten past Hornaday. I can't help but think that Ren realized that mindset wouldn't change ; afterall it's the same circumstance that prevented Hornaday from being a three-time consecutive champion when KHI's Ryan Newman passed Hornaday on the final lap at Atlanta taking 10 valuable points away and giving the championship to Johnny Benson by just eight points.

-I've listened to Sirius NASCAR Radio a lot throughout the year and one of the most popular topics among members of the media that are guests on the various shows is what needs to be done to show the drivers' personalities to the fans. The theory is that NASCAR got popular back in the 1970s and 1980s on the backs of drivers that exhibited their personality week-in and week-out, so the same thing could happen today. While I have no doubt that the drivers would benefit from showing their true selves more often, it's not a true apples-to-apples comparison. It's nice to know that Jimmie Johnson grew up in a trailer park in El Cajon, but at this point, what does he have in common with Joe Sixpack who saves all year to buy tickets to the closest NASCAR race? Thats' what made the sport what it is: drivers who were very much like the people who sat in the grandstands. You could sit there and think of Bobby Allison as your nextdoor neighbor. Even Dale Earnhardt was seen as an everyman. I am sure motorcoaches have made the lives of NASCAR drivers much easier, but the motorcoach lot is the worst thing to happen to the sport. It insulates the drivers from the general public and keeps them away from the people paying the freight. If the drivers aren't on the track or debriefing with the team in the transporter, they are in their bus. In reality, they should be out signing autographs or mingling with the people who make that motorcoach possible.

-Speaking of Sirius, I heard Chocolate Myers say RCR's new ARCA driver Tim George would finally get a chance to prove himself as he will have his first opportunity to drive good equipment in 2010. No doubt RCR will field great racecars, but George had access to good cars in 2009 too. He drove for Eddie Sharp in '09, the same team that fielded cars for series champion Justin Lofton. The cars George drove for much of the season were previously driven by Michael McDowell and Scott Speed, both multiple winners in their brief ARCA careers. I'd say George had pretty good stuff in 2009 too.

On "the feud", the resurgence of RCR, Hornaday's fourth, and the end of the streak

2009-11-23T12:26:00.002-05:00

The recent flare-up in hostilities between Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski breathed some excitement into what was an otherwise bland end of the 2009 season. Hamlin's frustrations with Keselowski were well noted by the media. Afterall, Keselowski had caused Hamlin to spin and/or crash at least four times over the last year and a half. Members of the media have gone to other drivers asking them to weigh on on the antics, and most have sided with Hamlin - including the so-called Mayor of the NCSC garage area Jeff Burton. But not one member of the media asked any of the drivers to analyze what started the feud, when Hamlin sideswiped Keselowski at Charlotte in 2008 after being raced "too hard."

Burton was quoted in the AP's recap of an incident between Tony Stewart and Juan Montoya:

Veteran driver Jeff Burton said stock car racing could do without the trash talking.

"What this sport needs is good racing. It doesn't need running that mouth," he said. "I think running that mouth is not what it's all about. Good hard racing is what fans want to see."

Good, hard racing? Isn't that what Hamlin was upset about in that Nationwide race back in 2008? If memory serves, Keselowski never made contact with Hamlin that night; he just raced him hard for a position in the top five. When the caution waved and the field slowed, Hamlin drove up and sideswiped Keselowski and ruined the aerodynamics on the nose of Keselowski's car. Is it possible that Hamlin made a career-long enemy in Keselowski that night?

When that incident took place last season, Keselowski was still proving himself on the racetrack. Racing at the front in a Nationwide race with the Cup drivers shouldn't afford you any less respect simply because you are a Nationwide-only driver. If Hamlin didn't want to be raced hard by a Nationwide-only driver with limited experience, he shouldn't have been in the race to begin with. As hard to believe as it may be for some of the Cup guys, there are drivers in the Nationwide Series that are just as capable at running up front as the Cup guys are, and just as aggressive.

It's understandable that Hamlin is tired of getting wrecked. But it's also understandable that Keselowski is never going to give Hamlin an inch on the racetrack. If Hamlin is waiting for Keselowski to come over and apologize for what's gone on over the course of the past 18 months, maybe he should be the one to man up and apologize first for starting the feud in the first place.

Hamlin exacted his revenge on the track on Saturday, spinning Keselowski down the frontstretch and going on to win the Sprint Cup finale the next day.

Personally, I hope the apology doesn't come from either sides. In an era when most of the personalities in the sport are plain vanilla, it's nice to see some open dislike among the residents of the motorhome lot.

*Speaking of Burton, it was nice to see the No. 31 car running near the front again at the end of the race on Sunday. It's been a long season for the RCR organization, but the final month of the year saw some signs of life from the Nos. 29 and 31. A productive off-season could calm the waters with Kevin Harvick, who has made it known he'd like to leave RCR as soon as possible.

* Congratulations to Ron Hornaday at KHI on their second Camping World Truck Series title in three years, and Hornaday's fourth overall. Hornaday was consistently the man to beat all season long, although other teams did show they could match his speed throughout the course of the year. The new pit road rules, which are thankfully on the way out for 2010, continually jumbled the standings every time there was a round of pit stops and arguably cost several teams - including Matt crafton's - a chance at winning more than once throughout the year.

* One of the biggest disappointments of the season has to be the end of the "IronMan" streak for Terry Cook. Ironically Cook's streak ended where it began, at Homestead. Cook started his streak in the season opener in 1998 and he had started 295 consecutive races before being released by the HT Motorsports team after the Texas race. Cook was able to find a start-and-park ride for the Phoenix race to make it to 296, but that team withdrew from the Homestead race and the streak ground to a halt. When Rick Crawford's streak ended in 2005, SPEED made plenty of mention of the fact. Cook barely received mention on the broadcast, which is a real shame.

On fixing the racing at Daytona and Talladega with a history lesson

2009-11-04T10:06:00.008-05:00

It's now mid-week, four days since the checkered flag waved over the Amp Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Internet message boards are still buzzing with armchair analysis of "what went wrong" on Sunday and paid journalists and bloggers alike are offering up their opinions on how to fix the racing at Talladega.

One writer for a major national media outlet said NASCAR promoting 58 lead changes among 26 drivers is like a used car salesman spit-shining a jalopy. Others have said they would rather have watched traffic on the nearest interstate for a few hours. The fans on the message boards are wondering where the excitement went, since they have been lulled into thinking that every race at Talladega is going to feature 14 rows of three running inches away from each other for 188 laps.

Was there anything wrong with Sunday's race? Or are we in an era where our expectations outweigh reality?

Maybe the people writing about our sport need to have some historical perspective.

Not every race at Daytona or Talladega has featured the pack racing we've seen since many of them discovered the sport in the days following Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona in 2001. In fact, in the 1980s these events were usually run single file with several groups of cars spread out around the track running in drafting packs. According to many of our prominent journalists today, the 1983 Daytona 500 would have been a boring race. Never mind that Cale Yarbourough passed on the final lap for the win and there was a three-wide photo finish for second.

That's exactly the kind of racing we need to get back to now.

NASCAR has made today's cars and trucks so stable on the superspeedways that it's almost impossible to lose the draft. Huge spoilers and wings punch an artificially large hole in the air to ensure that everyone stays in one large group. Keeping your car handling well isn't an issue either because the setup you're running is mandated by NASCAR too - they give your your shocks and mandate the springs you run. Of course the horsepower is limited and no one has an advantage there. So it's no wonder everyone is running in one big group. It was only a matter of time until the drivers figured out that it makes sense to ride around patiently for 450 miles and then race hard for the final 50.

If NASCAR wants to truly fix the events at its biggest speedways, it needs to allow the teams to step outside of the box and run setups of their choosing. It needs to take all of the downforce out of the cars and allow the teams to lay their spoilers or wings as flat as their driver can bear it.

In 1984, Dale Earnhardt won at Talladega in a race that featured nearly 70 lead changes. The cars were boxy, the small spoilers on the back were laid nearly flat and the speeds were right at 200 miles per hour. The drivers could slingshot past one another because they didn't have to run flat-out to stay in the draft - they had some throttle in reserve. The driver running in second could get a run on the leader, put the pedal to the metal and go blasting past to take the lead. But that then put him in position to be a sitting duck because the guy now running in second could do the same thing.

NASCAR replicated this style of racing when the Truck Series raced at Daytona for the first time in 2000. The slingshot was back and the race was spectacular. But the Geoff Bodine flip - not caused by aerodynamics, by the way - put a damper on that real quick. When the series returned the next year NASCAR started tinkering with the rules for that series and eventually made the racing identical to what we see in the Cup Series.

What you didn't want to do back then - at all - was touch anyone else. The cars were loose. Very loose. Even down the straightaways they were on the edge of control. Drivers would routinely lose control by themselves at Daytona and Talladega, something that hasn't happened in nearly a decade since NASCAR mandated huge spoilers standing up nearly vertically to plant the back of the cars to the track.

Was it boring watching six cars run together a third of a lap ahead of the next pack of ten cars? No way. Why? Because at any instant, someone could slingshot and they often did. Or, someone could lose it. And they often did. It was unpredictable. And it was being done in cars that looked exactly like you would find in your driveway.

NASCAR's current philosophy that racecars should all look alike and be the same under their skin goes against everything that the sanctioning body stood for during it's first 50 years of existence. (It's also the cause for a large portion of the audience tuning out, but that's an entirely different subject.) You don't need 43 identical cars to put on a great show for the fans.

One only needs to look at the results from the very first restrictor plate race at Daytona in 1988.

Bobby Allison won by a car length in a Buick over his son Davey Allison in a Ford. Third was Phil Parsons in an Oldsmobile, Neil Bonnett was fourth in a Pontiac, and Terry Labonte was fifth in a Chevrolet. Five makes of cars running five distinctively different body styles - all of which looked identical to their street versions with the exception of air dams dropped from the front bumper and spoilers on the decklid - finishing in the top five in the biggest race of the year, all within a second of each other at the end. Imagine that!

Bobby Allison's race-winning Buick at the 1988 Daytona 500Second-place finisher in the 1988 Daytona 500 Davey Allison in his 1988 Ford Thunderbird at Riverside International Raceway

Third-place finisher in the 1988 Daytona 500 Phil Parsons enroute to victory at Talladega in his 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass

Neil Bonnett's 1988 Pontiac Grand Prix at Riverside

Terry Labonte's 1988 Chevrolet Monte Carlo at Riverside

Here's how to fix Daytona and Talladega (and much of the rest of the races on the schedule too):

- Get back to stock appearing bodies. The common body is a failure on the racetrack. The safety features of the CoT can stay, but put the chassis underneath bodies that match the Chevrolet Impala, Ford Fusion, Dodge Charger, and Toyota Camry that we can go and buy. Do what the teams in the 1980s did - add an air dam to the front and a spoiler to the back and go race. No widening the front fenders or twisting up the bodies to maximize aerodynamics in yaw. Downforce is the enemy of good racing.

- Develop smaller engines. Every manufacturer has come out with a brand new 358 cubic inch V-8 within the last four years, despite speeds getting out of control at many racetracks. Why not spend that money developing a smaller engine that would allow teams to run unrestricted at Daytona and Talladega at 180-190 miles per hour. Robert Yates has been a proponent of this since NASCAR announced restrictor plates were going to be used way back in 1988. How much money would it cost to develop a new engine? It's probably a lot, but it's probably a very small fraction of what the industry has spent researching, developing and building restrictor plate engines for four races a year. That's not to mention the cost of throwing away the hundreds (if not thousands) of destroyed racecars in the restrictor plate era.

- Allow the teams to lay the spoiler as flat as the driver's rear end can stand it.

- Allow the teams to run their own setup. Shocks, springs, spoiler angles, rear end gears, transmission ratios - everything.

You'd see single file racing, but it would be white-knuckle, all-out racing. When there was double-file racing (or even three-wide racing) it would mean something. It would be hair-raising. It would be exciting. It would be exactly what NASCAR's fans are begging for.

On media buzzwords, aggressive driving zones, keeping cars on the ground, and Martin's first flip

2009-11-03T10:52:00.001-05:00

The buzz word among the NASCAR media throughout the 2009 season has been safety. You can't read anyone's work without seeing those six letters repeated over and over. Every time there is an accident some writer must make the now-inevitable comment that the car formerly known as the Car of Tomorrow is much safer than its predecessor and that the driver(s) involved would surely be seriously injured - or much worse - in the previous generation racecar.

Once again racing at Talladega generated a couple of spectacular accidents. And once more, every serious NASCAR journalist offers their opinion that Ryan Newman and Mark Martin would surely be injured if their trip to upside-down world happened in the old style car.

Please.

Sure, the new car does a good job protecting the drivers. But to say the drivers involved would have been seriously injured in the old-style car is just plain wrong. Any cursory search of YouTube with "Talladega crash" will show you dozens of instances of cars getting upside down at the 2.66-mile monster and the driver popping out uninjured. From Ken Schrader's wicked tumble down the backstretch in 1995 to Ricky Craven's ride up the turn one banking and into the catch fence to Elliott Sadler's twin tumbles in 2004 and 2005, the old car proved plenty safe.

The real heroes aren't the designers of the CoT; rather they are the people who worked behind the scenes and developed the HANS device and the SAFER barrier.

- So NASCAR has made the entire track at Talladega an "aggressive driving zone". Isn't that what racing is, aggressive driving? Again, the buzzword "safety" pops up and further neuters the sport. I know NASCAR thinks what it's doing is in the best interest of the sport, but in reality it's the exact opposite.

NASCAR and the drivers need to wake up and realize that stock car racing (and any form of motorsport) is an inherently dangerous activity. If the drivers are complaining to the sanctioning body about aggressive bump drafting being too dangerous, well, maybe it's time for those drivers to take the multiple millions of dollars they have earned and retire to the safety of their Lake Norman mansions.

Racing cars should be about the bravest of the brave driving so deep into the corner he doesn't know if he'll make it out the other side. If Jeff Gordon doesn't want to bump draft, he can control it by not doing it. And if he doesn't want someone to bump him from behind, he can run at the back of the pack all day. NASCAR doesn't need to police what goes on on the track any more that it already does - and even that is too much with the ridiculous yellow line rule.

Let the drivers race, and let those that don't want to find some other way to spend their weekends.

- What can NASCAR do to prevent cars from getting airborne at Daytona and Talladega? It's simple. Leave them in the garage. How many millions of dollars have been spent in researching this perceived problem? It's impossible to guess. It will never be solved, either. Whether it's due to aerodynamics (Ryan Newman) or car-to-car contact (Mark Martin) cars will turn over from time to time.

- Some journalist reported on Monday that Mark Martin's flip at Talladega was the first time in his career he's been upside down. Wrong. Martin ended up on his lid in the inaugural Cup race at Sears Point in 1989. Martin lost a tire and spun into the tire barrier in turn 1, which kicked the car up and gently rolled it onto its roof. Martin has never been on his head at Daytona or Talladega before Sunday, but came close when he stood his Ford on it's nose in a wild ride down the backstretch at Talladega in May 1991.

On not all illeglal engines being the same, aggressive driving, closing the deal, and the jinx of the fill-in PR rep

2009-10-27T14:27:00.001-04:00

It wasn't long ago that Carl Long was penalized $200,000 for an engine violation during the All-Star race weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Long was driving a car with a third-hand engine that was destined to run at the back of the pack before the engine mercifully blew apart. NASCAR took that engine for some reason, and discovered it was seventeen-hundredths of an inch over the 358 cubic inch limit. "Illegal is illegal" was the NASCAR stance and Long was hit with the biggest penalty in NASCAR history.

Fast forward five months.

Roush Fenway Racing violated the NASCAR sealed engine rule.

The engine in question won the Nationwide race at Darlington in May, then was sealed to be used again at a later date. Since the engine won a race, after its second race it was to be torn down and inspected according to NASCAR rules. However, before it could be looked over by officials it was torn apart and rebuilt.

Team officials and NASCAR agreed that a clerical error led to the engine being disassembled prior to being inspected. Team officials did not appeal NASCAR's $30,000 fine or 100 point penalties to driver Matt Kenseth or owner Jack Roush.

While it's unlikely the engine was illegal, no one will ever know. A team with unlimited resources is tagged with a $30,000 fine, where the guy scraping along and rolling coins found in the couch cushions to race is pegged for $200 large.

That doesn't seem like a level playing field to me.

-Brad Keselowski didn't do himself any favors with his aggressive nature in winning at Memphis, but kudos go to Mike Bliss and Carl Edwards for their reactions to racing with Kes. Neither whined about the contact, but they simply said they would file it away and remember that the next time they were racing Brad with something on the line. There's nothing wrong with the bump-and-run, as long as you don't complain when it comes back at you. Somehow I have the feeling Brad won't be whining when Carl repays him somewhere down the road.

-Speaking of Keselowski, how cool is it that he won at Memphis? It wasn't all that long ago that Brad had the opportunity of a lifetime - subbing for Ted Musgrave, who was suspended for one race by NASCAR - at, of all places, Memphis Motorsports Park. Brad won the pole, led 62 laps that night, and was in the lead with a handful of laps to go when he was hit from behind and spun out of the lead. He ended up 16th that day back in 2007, but it put him on the radar screen and opened the door for the opportunities that followed.

-Congrats to Timothy Peters on picking up his first career Camping World Truck Series win at Martinsville. Tim's win should give hope to every short tracker out there with visions of making the big time and winning. It's harder than ever, but it can still be done. I had a chance to talk to Tim for a few moments at Iowa while I was on my three-race tour of duty with the HT Motorsports team and he said he drives to the shop from his home in Virginia every day. That's about two hours there, and two hours home. He does it so his guys know how much he wants it. Some (like me!) might think he's crazy, but there is no questioning Tim's commitment to be a winner and it finally paid off.

-Congrats to the HT Motorsports team for finally getting back into the top ten, as David Starr finished eighth and Terry Cook was tenth. I guess we know where the recent bad luck came from since it mysteriously ended when the fill-in PR guy returns to the couch!

On Charlotte attendance and Hall of Fame induction process

2009-10-23T10:19:00.000-04:00

Just a couple of thoughts from last weekend's events at Lowe's Motor Speedway and the NASCAR Hall of Fame announcement...

- Following the recent Fontana weekend, some in the Charlotte media called for the Auto Club Speedway to lose one of its two Sprint Cup races because of all of the empty seats during the Pepsi 500. What's fair is fair. There were many more empties at LMS over the weekend than there at Fontana. So where is the call from that same media outlet that LMS should lose a date? Charlotte has three Sprint Cup weekends and it only approaches capacity on one of them. I would argue that Charlotte doesn't support NASCAR and it should lose one of its dates. One of the best lines I've heard about attendance at Charlotte: "There are blue seats there in turn four that have been there for over ten years now and have never had a butt in them."

- The recent announcement of the first class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame brought no real surprises. However, there is no shortage of debate on who should and shouldn't have been in. One thing is obvious: five inductees per year is not enough. The sport has sixty-plus years of history. There is no way you can do justice to the founding fathers of our sport with just five inductees per year. The voting criteria should allow for the following: the top five in the voting plus any other nominee that receives at least 80 percent of the vote. Surely names like Pearson, Allison, and Yarbourough should be included in that first class, yet they were left out because of the five inductee limit. I'd also like to see the people voting for the Hall of Fame actually have some sort of historical reference for their vote. There are undoubtedly people with votes that never saw Richard Petty race (even on television), and that's a shame.

On phantom cautions ruining the integrity of the sport

2009-10-12T07:59:00.002-04:00

It's the fourth quarter. It's quickly approaching the two-minute warning. Pittsburgh, chasing their seventh Super Bowl title, leads 42-17 over the resurgent Redskins who are looking to pick up the Lombardi trophy for the first time since Joe Gibbs was coach. The ball is Washington's, and they've just moved into field goal range with four fresh downs and two timeouts left. Just as the clock ticks to 2:00, the referee cues his mic on the field: "scorekeeper, please adjust the score for Washington to 39 points."

How many football fans would erupt over the notion? How many would chose not to watch if the NFL blatantly evened the score to give the audience a better show?

The answer is that the NFL audience would be incensed and a very large and significant portion of them would easily find something else to do with their Sunday afternoons.

Manipulating competition is what the WWE does. Sure, professional wrestlers use many athletic moves and must be in tip-top shape (and often use performance enhancing drugs to get into that shape), but their events are orchestrated and scripted. Therefore, true sports fans who watch to see who wins and who loses in a true competitive format don't generally watch professional wrestling.

NASCAR might not script races the way WWE does wrestling matches, but they are closer than ever before. In fact, they are manipulating the competition through the nefarious "debris caution".

There are many problems in NASCAR right now, many that will take a generation of new drivers to fix, but the debris caution is something that can be fixed immediately. But it will take a fresh new attitude by the officials in the tower to make it happen.

The thought is they are giving the fans a better show by bunching up the cars. The reality is they are impacting the competition and driving fans away. Do they want the same audience that the WWE has? Or do they want the once fiercely loyal audience that made the sport a powerhouse back in the 1990s?

When the tower calls for a caution, there needs to be an actual reason for it. Jimmie Johnson leading by seven seconds is not a good reason for the caution flag. Sports fans know that sometimes you get a great game from start to finish, sometimes a boring game gets good at the end, and sometimes it's a blowout from the opening kickoff. The same thing should happen in NASCAR - except for the fact that the powers that be insist on trying to manipulate the competition to ensure every race is a classic.

Johnson did hold on to win after a couple of late twists in the Pepsi 500 - not to mention a huge wreck that never would have happened if not for a phantom caution. One has to wonder what officials like David Hoots and John Darby think about the Indy Car race at Homestead, which went green-to-checkered caution free. Dario Franchitti averaged over 200 miles per hour to win, and he did it through pit strategy by savig fuel to make one less stop than Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon. Imagine that! A race where drivers had to adjust they way they drove based upon actual strategy!

Quit with the phantom yellows. Ensure every call an official makes - whether it's a loose lug nut, too many men over the wall, or debris on track - is backed up by actual verifiable proof. Otherwise, all NASCAR is doing is evening the score. We wouldn't accept it from the NFL, NBA, or MLB, so why should we accept it from NASCAR?

On being almost illegal and over-managed competition

2009-10-05T12:24:00.000-04:00

What is all this talk about cars nearly failing inspection? If you pass, you pass. Now, NASCAR is warning teams the tolerances are too close? Is this really where we are going? Soon you will have cars confiscated for being "too close". Inspection has changed greatly since the 1990s; it used to be in a team presented a car from inspection prior to practice and there was a slight infraction with a measurement the team could work on it and fix it. Now the team faces losing the car and a huge monetary fine. NASCAR has now determined if you present a car for pre-practice inspection illegal, no matter what the infraction may be, that's how you intended to race it and therefore they can penalize you. If you're illegal before the race, go ahead and fix it and make the inspectors happy. If you're illegal after the race, then you should be disqualified. None of this keeping your position and then being fined points and money. You should be removed from the results altogether! The never-ending quest for a level playing field has brought us down a road with cars that are all exactly alike and tolerances that are smaller than the thickness of a dime. Maybe a return to common sense is due here: get back to cars (and trucks) that resemble their actual street counterpart. Running real stock cars (in a racing sense, not in an actual street car sense) again instead of cars that resemble a boxier version of a dirt late model will eliminate much of the fudging teams try on the bodies. And we wouldn't have to hear about cars being *almost* illegal.

What's with NASCAR feeling the need to micromanage every aspect of the competition? In addition to the ridiculous warning to Hendrick Motorsports that their cars are *almost* illegal, the powers that be in the tower feel the need to warn drivers about how they are driving on the track too. Warning Brad Keselowski about his driving after a brush with Juan Montoya is seriously laughable. What's even better is it is being done from afar by people who have never been in a racecar. How about letting the drivers actually get out there and race? If there is an incident, let the drivers figure it out. If it means on-track retaliation, so be it. Drivers have a wonderful way of remembering incidents and policing themselves. And guess what? That usually gives ticket buyers a little extra action too. Now that NASCAR has invented a racecar that doesn't spin out (at least according to Darrell Waltrip) maybe they are trying to ensure that drivers never, ever make contact therefore eliminating all accidents? There are 12 drivers going after a championship. There are 31 that aren't. Maybe the 12 that are need to watch themselves around the 31 that aren't. Afterall, they are the ones with the most to lose, right? Keselowski is doing what is best for him, that's going after wins. No one should be getting in his ear and distracting him from doing that, especially from the tower. NASCAR officials should be there to enforce the rules, not manage the competition.

On ThorSport, Johnny Benson, Logano's flip, and a little irony

2009-09-30T08:25:00.000-04:00

Johnny Sauter dominated the Truck race out in Las Vegas on Saturday. After how well that truck has performed recently - read that as after the addition of Joe Shear, Jr. as crew chief - it shouldn't come as a big surprise. Yet there are still people who are surprised that a team based in Ohio with no real connection to a Cup program can win. They shouldn't be. ThorSport has assembled all of the pieces needed to be a championship contender: they have great trucks, great people, great sponsorship programs, and an owner that refuses to quit. Throughout the years numerous people have told Duke Thorson he couldn't win based in Ohio, and that had only strengthened his resolve. Now he has two teams among the top five in the series standings, and if not for a slow start by Sauter's team he could have two in the top three. No one has scored more points than Sauter in the last six races, and that's exactly why Ray Dunlap predicted early in the year that he would be the champion. He missed the mark a little but not by much. The economics of the series continue to change, but ThorSport remains on very solid ground. Look for Sauter and Crafton to figure very heavily in the 2010 championship battle.

I don't think I want to see him retire from driving quite yet, but as soon as Johnny Benson, Jr. calls it a career behind the wheel SPEED needs to hire him to be the permanent third voice in the NCWTS booth. He did a fantastic job during the three races he worked and the entire series will benefit from having someone with his experience and professionalism handling color analyst duties.

As should be predicted any time there is a significant crash with the "COT", there are columnists and fans alike lighting up blogs and message boards everywhere saying how Joey Logano would most certainly be dead if not for the safety features built into the new car. Yes, Logano's wreck was spectacular and the car did what it was designed to do. But again, must I point out the thousands of crashes in the "old" car in which drivers hopped out and walked away from? It's like every crash in that old car left drivers hobbled or dead, and that's simply not the case. The old car was plenty safe. There are hundreds of clips on YouTube of crashes involving the "old" car - and most of them resulted in no injuries at all. The "COT" was directly responsible for this particular crash too because Tony Stewart couldn't see through Logano's car to know that Bobby Labonte was coming down the track forcing Logano to get off the gas ever so slightly. Spotters are great but no spotter in the world can see something happen in a split second and relay that on to the driver. Drivers should be able to see what's happening in front of them, and that's something that needs to be worked out with the new car.

Anyone else think it was ironic that in the City of Lights the start of the race was delayed because a bank of lights went out?

On Harvick v. Hornaday, Harvick v. Crafton, Johnny Sauter, and nuclear engineers

2009-09-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

My three week run as PR rep for HT Motorsports has come to an end. Congrats to Lori and Danny Rollins on the birth of their son Brody! I had a blast with the team during my short tenure, and it was fun to get to see the new Iowa track and visit old friends in St. Louis and New Hampshire. I only wish the team had a little better luck while I was there...

- So what exactly did Ron Hornaday do wrong at Loudon? He raced hard for a position in the top three? Isn't that his job? Did Harvick ever explain to Hornaday, or maybe put it in his contract, that under no circumstances is Hornaday to race the boss hard for position? It's hard to understand Harvick's thought process here. Sure, everyone wants to win and maybe Harvick could have given Kyle Busch a run for the money had he been able to pass Hornaday. But in order to get up and race for the win, you have to be able to pass the rest of the drivers separating you from the leader. Unfortunately, Harvick couldn't quite get it done. Did he have a fast truck? Yes. Did he have a winning truck? No, because he wasn't good enough and couldn't get there and fight for the win. Should be be upset? No, because he's out there playing in the sandbox. Yes, bring all the fire and desire you can whenever you strap in, regardless of the series or division you are competing in - but also remember that sometimes even Babe Ruth would strike out against minor league pitching talent. Just because you lose in the minors, even if your employee plays a role in it, doesn't mean you should be a total jerk about it afterwards.

- I wonder if Harvick's sponsor for the weekend was happy with his hijinks with Matt Crafton on Friday during practice and then early during the race? Crafton had every reason to be upset with Harvick's antics during practice, and his commentary on the radio to his team earned him a visit from the series director to tell him to chill out. I certainly hope that Wayne Auton paid a visit to Harvick and told him to settle down too. Afterall, something had to have made Crafton that mad, right? And although SPEED didn't cover that practice, its cameras were on and caught Happy harrassing Crafton on pit road a couple of times. Of course, there's also the little matter of Harvick's text message to Crafton immediately after the St. Louis race telling him he better buckle up tight because he was coming to get him in New Hampshire. I understand the competitive spirit and it's certainly easy to get fired up when you perceive a wrong perpetrated against you on the track, but how about showing a little class too?

- If Johnny Sauter had pitted one lap earlier on Saturday, I have little doubt he would have won the race. That team has turned the corner since adding Joe Shear, Jr. as crew chief. After years of struggling to build a competitive program with one truck, ThorSport now has two legitimate contenders week in and week out. And now there's the possibility of a third truck? With many teams on shaky financial footing, ThorSport could be positioned to make a serious charge for the championship with both (or is it all three?) teams in 2010.

- I had a chance to give a pit tour to some guests of David Starr's sponsor, Zachry, during the weekend at New Hampshire. Several of them were involved in engineering nuclear power plants. They were a lot of fun to talk to and had a ton of questions about racing - both current Truck Series racing and some vintage 1980s Cup racing, two of my favorite racing topics. But I had a lot of questions of my own too, I mean, who wouldn't have questions for nuclear engineers, right? I thought about it later on, and this is the power that NASCAR and the drivers have to the general public, but it's amazing that these people who work on and build some of the most technologically amazing structures known to mankind can look at a guy like me and think I have it made in the shade. I mean, afterall, I was merely a fill-in PR dude! A paid spectator that really has nothing to do with making racecars go fast! Meanwhile, they are the ones out there making our country go, and on top of that, they are employees of the company that makes it possible for that race team to go out and compete. In reality, it was me who was in awe of them...

On Iowa Speedway, the ARCA RE/MAX Series on television, and RCR bringing back the No. 3

2009-09-04T14:31:00.006-04:00

A few notes and thoughts while watching practice for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Iowa Speedway...

- It is amazing that no one ever thought to build a track this size before. The length, shape, and banking at Iowa has produced awesome racing for every division that has every competed here. It's a short track that offers superspeedway speeds. But those speeds aren't so high that you can't beat and bang in the corners and trade some paint. Watching the Trucks buzz around as quick as they are, one can only imagine how fast the Indy Cars are when they race here. Kudos to the staff and management for designing and building a wonderful facility. Hopefully when the next round of cookie cutter tracks are built they use this place as the template.

- It's too bad the economics of television don't allow for the ARCA RE/MAX Series short track races to be televised. SPEED covers most of the companion races when ARCA is with Cup or the Truck Series, but the real heart of ARCA lies in short track races at Toledo, Salem, Berlin, and the dirt miles at DuQuoin and Springfield. In a perfect world those races would also be shown year in and year out. Toledo has produced dozens of exciting races over the years and is very television friendly, but for some reason neither Toledo race was televised this year. That's a real shame, considering the fact that last year's season closer there was probably the best ARCA race on television in many years. Some tracks don't have the facilities for a complete broadcast to be produced, but surely there could be something done for those of us hardcore enough to want to watch. For those -- like me -- who care, you can watch streaming video from all non-televised ARCA races by joining the ARCA Nation at www.arcaracing.com.

Austin Dillon sits in the No. 3 Bad Boy Mowers Chevrolet during a break in practice at Iowa Speedway
Charles Krall photo

- It's really neat to see the RCR No. 3 truck out on the track here again. Richard Childress Racing fielded the No. 3 in the Truck Series from 1995 through the 1999 season. Sure, there are some writers out there who are saying watching the No. 3 on the track in any NASCAR division is an afront to Dale Earnhardt's memory. But Dale Earnhardt never drove the No. 3 in the Trucks. When he was involved in the series as an owner, he used the No. 16. Childress used the No. 3 on his Cup cars long before Earnhardt joined the team. Much like Earnhardt's fans believed his family's legacy number - the No. 8 - should have gone with his son when he left the family-owned team I believe the No. 3 is Childress's to do with as he pleases. I think he's honored his late friend by not running that number in the Cup Series, but I also think he has every right to use it in the Truck Series where he is a former champion as an owner. And who knows, maybe one day a Childress family member will bring that number back to prominence in the Cup Series, should grandpa so desire.

On closing the deal eight years later, Chicago Motor Speedway, and improving the racing in the CWTS

2009-08-29T09:53:00.000-04:00

Kyle Busch again dominated the Truck Series, this time in the series inaugural series race at Chicagoland Speedway. It's no surprise to see Busch in victory lane in a Truck but this win had to be especially sweet as it was redemption from 2001. Busch was within a handful of laps away from winning in just his second series start, as a 16-year-old, at the old Chicago Motor Speedway before fuel and eventually tire problems derailed his bid for victory. Not that Busch needs a redemption - afterall, he's since gone on to score 56 total wins among the Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck series - but it puts a nice end to a story that was started just over eight years ago.

Seeing the highlight footage from the two truck races at Chicago Motor Speedway during the SPEED broadcast brought back memories. The track was wedged into property between a residential neighborhood and a solid waste transfer station in Cicero, just a couple of miles from Midway Airport. The track packed them in for a couple of CART Champ Car races, and drew a decent crowd for the first Truck race in 2000. But the attendance for the second Truck race in 2000 set an unofficial record for the smallest crowd to ever witness an official Truck Series event. Some veteran observers trackside estimated attendance at less than a thousand, making the cavernous grandstands that were capable of holding upwards of 60,000 to appear absolutely desolate. One joke going around on race morning in 2001 was that the drivers would go up into the grandstands and shake hands personally with the fans in attendance, and since there were so few of them there it wouldn't take any longer than the traditional driver intros do. It is a real shame the event didn't gain any traction because, despite its location, it was a cool racetrack. It was a tight paperclip, more of a Martinsville clone than even New Hampshire, and the racing was pretty good. It looked like a decent crowd was on hand Friday night at Chicagoland.

NASCAR's best kept secret has been the quality of the racing in the Truck Series. But rules changes in the engines and on pit road have degraded that competition this year. The tapered spacer that restricts horsepower means that drivers can run wide open around virtually every 1.5-mile track on the schedule. So rather than drivers testing themselves to see how deep they can run into the corner, they simply hold it to the mat and guide the truck - almost like a slot car. At Chicagoland, cameras caught some side-by-side racing (usually after restarts), but there was a lot of single-file running with very little racing for position. The pit stop rules that don't allow tire changes and refueling on the same pit stop hurt the quality of the on-track product too. If a team needs tires after a 60-lap green flag run, they must make two pit stops - one for tires and one for fuel. If a caution falls during a round of green flag stops, someone's night is essentially ruined. Hopefully things will change in 2010 and teams won't have to make the choices they are forced to make now. There are plenty of changes NASCAR can make that will improve the quality of the show without increasing the number of people that the teams need to take to the track. Allow four tires and fuel and eliminate the tire carriers. Only allow two tire changes during any one pit stop. Or go back to the way it was with full-blown four-tire changes.

On the surprising maturity of Kyle Busch, comparing win totals, and Jason White

2009-08-24T12:29:00.001-04:00

Just when you thought you had it all figured out, Kyle Busch comes back and shows you he's still the man in charge. First he dominated the late stages of Wednesday night's Camping World Truck Series race, then he makes a huge statement on Saturday night in winning the Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol. Busch is still on the outside looking in as far as the Chase is concerned, but with two tracks that Busch excells at - Atlanta and Richmond - dead ahead on the schedule, Matt Kenseth must feel like a proverbial sitting duck.

But that wasn't the most pleasant outcome of the weekend concerning Rowdy. Busch had the dominant car on Friday night too but was taken out when Chase Austin had a flat tire and tried to make a hard left onto pit road while the leaders were approaching. The crash was a big one and Busch's night was cut short. Busch was mad when he hopped out of the car, but he ignored the cameras and microphones on his way back to the trailer and calmed down. When he came out and did speak it was a shocking display of maturity and diplomacy instead of the verbal dynomite that many expected. Busch has shown he can do it. From a PR standpoint, his sponsors must have been thrilled with what they saw after his unfortunate early night on Friday.

- Note to the broadcasters and anyone else that has caught on to this: Kyle Busch has not exceeded Lee Petty's mark of 54 career Sprint Cup wins. Yes, Busch has 55 career NASCAR National Touring Series wins (that's the Cup Series, Nationwide Series, and Truck Series). But regardless of ESPN's efforts to make this a story the Nationwide and Truck Series wins simply do not carry as much weight as Cup wins do. Busch's win production is incredible, even in the Cup Series alone. Sixteen wins at this stage in his career is awesome. The 55 wins in all three series is equally awe-inspiring. But comparing that total to Lee Petty's career Cup win total is apples and paperclips. Also, keep in mind that Lee Petty didn't have a Nationwide Series or a Truck Series to compete in back in the 1950s and 1960s to bolster his win total.

- It was a nice surprise to see Jason White run competitively at Bristol and lead the race for more than half its distance. White has improved greatly even in the past couple of years and with the depth of the Truck Series field thinner than it has been in recent years it's nice to see some new names make it to the front from time to time. Unfortunately for White his pit strategy was just a tick off and he had to give up the lead, but he did show that he can race with the leaders and not be in over his head. Hopefully that team will have another opportunity to show its strength before the end of the season.

On the continuing Kyle Busch saga, Keselowski's hometown win, and backseat drivers

2009-08-16T11:48:00.001-04:00

The Kyle Busch saga continues.

It's been a long time since the NASCAR community has seen a driver with so much raw talent. Yes, there was Dale Earnhardt in 1979 and Tim Richmond in 1981 and Jess Gordon in 1993. But since then there have been a slew of "good" drivers but no truly "great" drivers.

Then along came Kyle.

He's won more races in NASCAR's top three national series in the past two years than most drivers could hope to win in their career.

When the greats of the sport like Petty, Pearson, Yarbourough, Allison, Waltrip, and Earnhardt were winning there was often controversy, but in general their efforts were applauded and appreciated by the audience.

So when then is Kyle Busch reviled?

Earnhardt was polarizing. You either loved him or hated him. But regardless of which side of the fence you were on, you respected his talent.

That's not the case for Kyle Busch. For the vast majority of racefans, he's the driver they love to hate. I have to suspect there are many in the media corps who feel the same way, though they could never admit it.

Perhaps it's incidents like post-race contact with Marcos Ambrose at Watkins Glen or post-race interviews at Michigan that cause the boo birds to jeer every time Busch is seen, heard, or mentioned.

What is it about those two races that has Busch so upset? Since when is racing someone hard a cheap shot? Did Ambrose do anything dirty in passing Busch entering the inner loop? Did Brian Vickers do anything dirty in chasing Busch down to the apron on the front stretch and taking his entry into turn one away from him? No contact was made in either instance and the result was that Busch was beaten, fair and square. Yet when the microphones appear, Busch becomes petulant and abrasive.

Yes, Earnhardt could lose his temper with reporters, and Waltrip could too. But the difference is once the moment passed they would return to their jovial, respectful selves. Busch has slid down the slope to where he rarely smiles on camera anymore, unless of course it's in victory lane.

Yes, winning is the ultimate goal for racecar drivers. Busch's attitude towards winning is refreshing since many believe a good portion of the starting field in the Sprint Cup Series are merely out there collecting money for their retirement funds. Being a good winner is important but so is being a good loser.

Especially when the race you just lost is in a minor-league series, not in a Cup race.

It would be one thing if Ambrose's dive-bomb into the inner loop at The Glen resulted in a crash or of Vickers' move on the frontstretch at Michigan was a tire-rubbing, fender-crunching body slam. But they weren't. They were clean moves, and Busch lost fair and square.

No one wants Busch to become a sponsor-plugging automaton. It's possible to have personality and give good interviews and still be upset you lost. Busch needs to find that middle ground, especially on Saturdays.

There is nothing lost by coming up to a reporter and saying how hard you were trying to lose and how much you wanted it only to fall short. There's nothing wrong with being upset with seven second-place finishes (remember the "what if those second places were all wins" line?) but when you have a pout on and you act like a school kid who lost the game so he took his ball and bat and went home, well, then there is something wrong with it.

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Congratulations to Brad Keselowski on his surprising win at Michigan, his home track. ESPN paid lip service to the importance of this track to Brad and his family, but as someone who has known the Keselowski family since the early 1980s and is proud to have spent a lot of time with the entire clan in the latter years of their Truck Series involvement, I can say that the ESPN reporters have no real feeling for just how much that win means.

**********

The "Backseat Drivers" experiment during the Nationwide broadcast was interesting. Dale Jarrett showed he can be a very competent play-by-play announcer, and the rest of the cast - Andy Petree, Rusty Wallace, and Ray Evernham - did a decent job throughout. It was interesting but not something I'd like to see every week. One has to wonder if this experiment was done as an audition as Dr. Jerry Punch continues to struggle with generating excitement as lead play-by-play announcer.

On the weather, Hornaday, Iowa, Belleville, and Indy cars

2009-08-04T10:30:00.001-04:00

- What has NASCAR done to anger the weather gods this racing season? How many practices, qualifying sessions, and races have been canceled or postponed due to rain? From my position, it always seems when things are going good - fans are happy, sponsors are lined up at the front door and maybe even trying to sneak in through the windows to get involved, and the racing on the track is excellent - the weather seems to always be bright. Maybe this is Mother Nature's way of letting us all know that she's unhappy with the current state of motorsport too.

- Ron Hornaday has won, this time at Nashville, for the fifth consecutive time in Camping World Truck Series action. Taking nothing away from Hornaday's accomplishment (or crew chief Rick Ren, who now is the leading crew chief winner in the series), but the domination of the series by one driver is doing nothing to increase interest in the series with die-hard fans. While the series is low on entrants out to actually race, it would be nice to see a variety of winners rather than one dominant team and driver. But it's Hornaday's job to get it done, and that's exactly what he's doing. Is it too early to call the championship in Hornaday's favor? Matt Crafton is in second but it's the largest first-to-second spread in the history of the series at this point in the season. Hornaday will have th have the wheels fall off on the first lap in consecutive races if anyone has any hope of closing that gap.

- The Natrionwide Series took to the Iowa Speedway for the first time, and the event can only be categorized as a complete success. Hopefully traffic ingress and egress was better than our first Truck race at Mansfield in 2004. It is amazing to think that 55,000 people showed up for a Nationwide race virtually out in the middle of nowhere. But even more amazing is that Iowa Speedway has attrracted upwards of 20,000 for ARCA races and nealy 40,000 for the IndyCar Series. It's blatantly obvious trhat whatever they are doing in Iowa is working. Congrats to the management team out there for putting on a great show.

- The Belleville Nationals, one of the most prestigious Midget races in the country, went off this weekend. The three day show was plagued by low car counts and - you guessed it - bad weather. There used to be a time when Belleville attracted one of the biggest fields in Midget racing. In 2009, there was barely a full field. Hopefully the economics of short track racing will get back into the green in coming years and events like Belleville regain their status as "must see" races.

- It's not just the USAC fields that are struggling, but its virtually all of the short track world. Car counts are down everywhere and promoters are fighting to get every fan through the front gate possible. It doesn't hurt that today's sports fan equates "NASCAR" with "auto racing", particularly "NASCAR Sprint Cup Series". And it also doesn't hurt that none of the sports networks broadcast live short track racing anymore.

- The Indy Car Series was at Kentucky over the weekend, and if you didn't notice, join the club. The event flew under the radar as the series has been struggling with boring races and trying to build an audience on a new network, Versus. The first part of the race was a continuation of the start of the season, a single-file parade of cars so glued to the track they can hug the white line all the way around the track. The final segment of the race was a barnburner, with unsung Ed Carpenter nearly doing the impossible and knocking Team Penske's Ryan Briscoe off the top of the scoring pylon. Carpenter missed his first win by just 0.016 seconds, or just about a foot and a half. After a season of dull racing and domination by the series' two superteams, the race at Kentucky was just what the open wheel fan needed to re-energize for the run to the championship. But one race does not a revival make - hopefully races at Chicago and Homestead are similarly exciting.

- The IndyCar Series released its 2010 schedule over the weekend, and there were no real surprises but some significant disappointments. It's a shame the series wouldn't leave a hole in the schedule for the new Milwaukee promoters, who seem closer and closer to getting their deal finalized for 2010. It's also a shame that the New Hampshire track wasn't added. It seems the management at NHMS is bullish on the Indy cars when most of the rest of the motorsports world couldn't care less, so why leave them off? It's also a disappointment that the series is now made up of a majority of road and street circuits. There is nothing wrong with road racing, and for much of this season they've been the most exciting races for sure. But for those purists among us, Indy cars are all about high speed oval racing. It's a shame the powers that be in Indianapolis don't get that or have lost their "vision" of that fact. For a series that is struggling to remain relevant, there is no real "wow factor" on the schedule. Sure, the superspeedway races have the potential to be exciting, as Kentucky proved, but they also have the potential to be snoozers, as Texas and Kansas proved earlier in the season. IndyCar needs to revisit everything it's doing, from scheduling to the engine and chassis formula, and it needs to do it immediately. There is a lot wrong in the world of Indy car racing these days, but most importantly the powers that be need to understand that spec racing at the sport's highest levels is not captivating and it is not going to draw in spectators. The Indy 500, and the series of races that lead up to it and support it, should be the ultimate test of automotive ingenuity. F1 is all about technology, but Indy used to be about innovative technology, amazing speeds, and the ability to make it endure for 500 miles. Now it's about 33 drivers in the same car with the same engine and the same tires all going the same speed.

On the Trucks delivering value

2009-08-01T09:11:00.002-04:00

Ray Dunlap published an excellent column this week on SPEEDTV.com about some potential changes that NASCAR could make or in fact may make to consolidate the Camping World Truck Series schedule. These changes, you guessed it, would save the teams money - allowing current teams to stay in business and maybe even recruit new teams into the series.

Dunlap has been around the racing world a long time, from carrying his own video camera to short tracks across the Midwest to produce his own motorsports news program to being the PR guru for ARCA and eventually on to becoming one of the best pit reporters in the business for ESPN and now SPEED. His opinion carries a lot of weight and he has the best interest of the series at heart. Ray is right, NASCAR should look at changing the schedule in the interest of saving teams money - but they also need to change the schedule to deliver teams, and their sponsors, more value.

Do the Trucks have any value at all as a third-tier series in markets that also host Sprint Cup and Nationwide races? Do they have any value at all racing on Fridays of a tripleheader weekend with the Cup and Nationwide cars? When the Truck Series was new and had 50 teams and drivers that were working to climb up the ladder, like it did in 1996 or 1997, the answer would have been yes. Now, with many of the drivers dipping down from the Cup Series to the Trucks and the series struggling to fill fields, that answer is no.

In the early days of the Truck Series, there was value built in to the schedule. Races were held in areas of the country where the Sprint Cup and/or Nationwide cars didn't go. If there was a conjunction race held with the Cup cars it was at a track the Nationwide cars didn't race. There wasn't an oversaturation of any market, and in many cases the Truck Series race was the only national NASCAR race in town.

Places like Bakersfield, Louisville, Portland, Seattle, Flemington, Topeka, Kansas City, and Denver were penetrated by the Truck Series. Costs were inherently lower for the teams because there were no live pit stops and the vehicles themselves didn't need to be aerodynamically slick because every track was a mile in length or less.

Then came the addition of places like Las Vegas and Michigan: big, wide, and fast. That meant the trucks were now going to wind tunnels. And being at tracks that hosted Cup races started to erode the inherent value of the Truck Series.

Eventually the Truck Series schedule morphed from mainly short tracks where the Trucks were the biggest show in town to superspeedways where they were the third-level series, often on the same weekend. The last track that hosted a Truck race and no other national NASCAR series was Mansfield, and it fell off the schedule after the 2008 race. Sponsors who were used to getting exposure in front of thousands of fans in markets that weren't over saturated with NASCAR racing were now being drowned out by the multi-million dollar activation programs by Cup's biggest sponsors.

Cutting costs should be a huge priority for NASCAR. Making it less expensive to race will bolster fields and allow some drivers who are good on the local racing scene to try to reach their dreams to be a NASCAR champion. Engines should revert back to the tried-and-true 9.5:1 compression ratio as they were when the series started. Bodies should become more stock - with stock hoods, fenders, greenhouses, and bed rails and contours in the doors to match the street version of each truck.

And the schedule should be revamped from top to bottom. Certain conjunction events should be kept, but the series needs to get back to its roots and deliver the product to racing fans that can't get to a Cup or Nationwide race. There are dozens of quality short tracks across the country that could host races, as well as numerous quality road courses. Tracks shouldn't have more than one Truck race, meaning second races at Texas and Martinsville should move elsewhere. The tripleheader, currently held at places like Dover, Texas, Phoenix, and Homestead, should be kept to a minimum or even eliminated all together.

The Truck schedule doesn't necessarily need to mirror the Cup and Nationwide schedules. In the late 90s, the series opened in January at Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando, and the crowds were huge and enthusiastic. The Trucks can deliver more value when they aren't competing with - and against - the Cup and Nationwide series. The Truck champion has been crowned at Homestead since 2003, often in front of barren, empty grandstands. NASCAR could move the finale to Las Vegas, where ticket promotions with casinos put upwards of 50,000 people in the stands and give teams and sponsors the value they desire and deserve.

On getting back to real stock car racing

2009-07-30T09:49:00.001-04:00

The Brickyard 400 is in the rear view, and despite some doom-and-gloom predictions following last year's race the tires held up and well over 150,000 fans came out to watch. Television ratings are in, and bucking the double-digit loss trend, ratings were only down six percent from last year's race. There is still some magic about racing at Indianapolis, and the fact that many people showed up or watched on television proves it.

As for the race itself, while it was immensely better than last year, it still left something to be desired. The top of the field was separated by several football fields throughout much of the race and actual passes for position on the racetrack were few and far between. No one expects side-by-side restrictor-plate style racing at Indy, but it is blatantly obvious that the current Cup car does not race well on any type of flat, high-speed racetrack.

Why do long-time fans continue to dream about a return to the "glory days" of the past? No one wants to return to the days when races were won by 14 laps and only 10 cars running at the finish. But would it be so terrible to return to 1995?

As an example, the Brickyard 400 in 1995 was won by Dale Earnhardt. He started 13th out of the 41 starters. It was slowed by just one caution. There were 19 lead lap finishers, none of which got there due to a "Lucky Dog" free pass. Thirty-six of the 41 cars that started were still running at the finish. Nine drivers showed up wanting to race but weren't fast enough to make it in, including two former Indy 500 winners and another former Indy 500 pole winner. The starting field was comprised of teams owned by 36 different people. Earnhardt's winning margin that day was just 0.37 seconds. And he did it in a car that looked almost identical to what Chevrolet offered for sale to the car-buying public. That's the key right there: he did it in a "stock car".

In the past decade, we've seen the NASCAR media speak out on issues and force NASCAR into making changes. There is no more racing back to the caution flag. Head and neck restraints are mandated. Anyone going over the wall on a pit stop must wear a helmet. So where is the outrage from the media that all the cars look the same? Has everyone bought into the theory that spec racing is what the fans really want?

The "CoT" is a good idea but it was poorly executed. Safety enhancements are always a good thing. Making every car identical and only allowing very few adjustments to the cars is a bad thing. NASCAR had allowed the cars to get out of control once they want to common templates in 2002, the didn't resemble anything remotely like a street car and they actually looked more like a dirt late model than a full-bodied stock car.

NASCAR needs to get back to stock cars resembling stock cars. Re-energizing the fans with actual competition between a Chevrolet and a Ford instead of two cars that are exactly alike except for decals will be a good first step. And with manufacturers struggling and cutting back on NASCAR budgets, giving them a chance to get back to racing something that the public can identify with - and maybe even go and buy! - is also a good thing.

On the maturation of Kyle Busch

2009-07-09T18:25:00.002-04:00

I am a believer in Kyle Busch's talent. For my money, there is no one better in the Sprint Cup garage right now. He is aggressive and is mad at the world unless he's sitting in Victory Lane. He's often compared to the late Dale Earnhardt because of his aggessive nature and the reception he receives from race fans all across the country.

Yes, despite his posthumous notation as the most-loved driver in NASCAR history, Earnhardt was for much of his career the most hated driver on the circuit. But at some point, Earnhardt changed. The aggressive nature on the track stayed the same but the short-tempered nature off the track mellowed. And an amazing thing happened: what were once jeers from the grandstand changed to cheers.

Busch has been in the spotlight since 2001 when he ran a limited Truck Series schedule and nearly pulled off a win as a 16 year-old. It's tough to handle the spotlight as a mature 35 year-old, so to imagine an 18 year-old doing it is difficult.

Contrary to Earnhardt, for much of his early career, Busch's accomplishments were lauded. After a rousing battle with a gaggle of Toyotas - including Jack Sprague and Johnny Benson - Busch pulled off an amazing victory in a Truck race at Atlanta. The leaders tried to race off turn four to the checkered flag four wide and it didn't work, and only Busch kept it pointed straight and he took the victory. As he climbed from his Chevy truck the crowd showered him with adoration.

When Busch walks across the stage this fall at Atlanta, many of those fans who appreciated his accomplishment that day are going to boo him just as loudly. What changed?

For starters, Busch is a big winner, racking up 50 wins in the top three national series in a very short period of time. Some fans like a winner, others don't. Those who don't tend to be loud about it. Then there is the fact Busch pilots a Toyota, and like it or not, many of NASCAR's core fans still love to boo anything not seen as good old-fashioned American metal. Then there are those who don't like the chip he carries on his shoulder for the driver that replaced him at Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. It only incenses them more when Busch reminds the NASCAR community that he has outperformed Earnhardt dramatically over the past 18 months.

But I think the biggest struggle Busch is facing now is one within himself. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's something everyone one of us goes through. We all grow up. We all learn from mistakes. We all make the transition from tempestuous kid to street-wise adult. Busch is doing that in front of millions every week.

Being replaced on the biggest and most successful team in NASCAR was a big blow to his ego and self esteem. Despite the successes he's seen since, one can gather there is still resentment there. And with the performance of the driver that was chosen to replace him no where near his own, Busch could rightfully believe that he wasn't replaced by someone who could out drive him but by someone who could out sell him on souvenir row.

It's only a matter of time until that wound closes. They all do. And it's only a matter of time before Busch completes that transformation from aggressive youngster to the world-wise, savvy, and mature "grown up" he's destined to be. His brother has done just that, and despite some rough years early on Kurt Busch continues to gain fans in the grandstands and respect from his competitors.

Busch may be upset at how last Saturday's race at Daytona played out. He really doesn't have anyone to blame but himself. Replays showed over and over that Tony Stewart had pulled alongside Busch's car and once contact was made there was little either driver could have done to prevent the inevitable. As upset as he was, Busch invoked more angre from the fans by walking up pit road (seemingly to go to victory lane to confront Stewart, although I doubted that at the time). Busch never commented on it on Saturday and made imbittered comments on Thursday at Chicagoland leading up to this weekend's race.

Imagine the fan response to Kyle Busch if he had channeled the later Dale Earnhardt after hopping out of his wrecked racecar on Saturday night. Instead of storming up pit road, what Busch should have done is grab the first microphone he saw and told everyone he was okay, was upset he wasn't sitting in victory lane but what everyone had just been a part of racing and that Stewart had simply "rattled his cage a little bit." My guess is the lines in front of the Kyle Busch souvenir trailers would have been enormous and the cheers from the grandstands deafening.

On getting rid of restrictor plates, the finish, TNT, and The King's 1984 Pontiac

2009-07-06T16:08:00.000-04:00

The Coke Zero 400 will be remembered for its thrilling finish. It certainly was exciting, but was it a "great finish"?

Petty vs. Yarbourough in 1984 was a great finish. Even Elliott vs. Wilson in 1988 was a great way to end stock car racing's Independence Day celebration. Where does Shrub vs. Smoke rate?

Unfortanately for those who believe today's style of racing to be more exciting than days gone by, I wouldn't rate it in the "great" category or even as "good". Exciting as it was, it merely highlights the need to change the way NASCAR handles racing at Daytona and Talladega.

Restrictor plates have long since outlived their usefulness. Sure, it's a low-tech way to manage speed. But with each of the four participating manufacturers having developed brand spanking new engines over the course of the past three years, shouldn't that development have been done on an engine that would allow drivers to run at Daytona and Talladega at speeds approaching 190 mph without a restrictor plate?

That development could have been done on a six-cylinder engine with a smaller displacement, similar to what each of the manufacturers run in the street versions of the racecars they put on the track. The biggest problem with restrictor plates is the same as it was when it was first introduced in 1988: there is no throttle response. Drivers have to run wide open all the way around, whereas in the pre-plate days drivers running in the draft could run at half or even three-quarters throttle and maintain speed.

I continue to believe the cars need to have less downforce, which will make them handle differently and will break up the packs that cause the big wrecks. Teams need to be able to choose their own shocks and springs, and they need to be able to work on wing angles and let the driver's butt and bravery determine what is best. Spec racing is boring, and with the COT and all of the NASCAR-mandated shocks, springs, wings, and tire pressures, that is exactly what we have now.

- As for the finish of Saturday's race, yes, it was exciting. But what have we learned from Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch and their failed attempts to block? I think we've learned that drivers running in second will give you one move, but the second one is going to end up with the leader going for a ride.

- I read one long-time writer's comments that Kyle Busch's crash was eerily similar to Carl Edwards' because Busch also became airborne during the wreck. It doesn't take a genius to see that Busch's car only came off the ground as the result of contact with the wall. There was no aerodynamic lift at all in Busch's crash. Sure, he "landed" on Kasey Kahne's roof, but only after Kahne drove underneath the rear of Busch's machine. It's not the same as Edwards landing on Ryan Newman at Talladega.

- TNT continues to set the bar very high for both Fox and ESPN's coverage of NASCAR racing. Ralph Shaheen has done an admirable job of taking over the play-by-play role for Bill Weber, and both Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach are among the best analysts in motorsports. All of the pit reporters are solid too (and kudos to Adam Alexander to hopping in and getting up to speed immediately). ESPN will take over in a couple of weeks and they definitely have their work cut out for them if they want to match TNT. Based on their Nationwide coverage, those who have gotten used to the way TNT does things are going to be somewhat disappointed.

- How cool was it to see the car Richard Petty won with at Daytona in 1984 on the grid before the race? Looking at that car and its similarities to a street version of a 1984 Pontiac Grand Prix, is there anyone who is glad all of today's current racecars look exactly the same?

On reviving the Truck Series

2009-07-02T12:44:00.002-04:00

The rumors of the Truck Series' demise have been floating for as long as I've been a part of it, which this season is ten years. There has always been someone talking about NASCAR shutting it down due to one reason or another. Most have to due with races taking place in front of empty grandstands or because the manufacturers don't support it at the level they do their Cup and Nationwide programs.

Earlier this week, NASCAR's Jim Hunter stated that NASCAR has no intention of shutting down the Truck Series any time soon. That is a nice vote of confidence - but unfortunately there is an inaccuracy in Mr. Hunter's remaining thoughts on the matter. He also said that NASCAR has never given up on a series, but for those of us that remember the Busch All-Star Tour, the Goody's Dash Series, the old NASCAR North Tour, and most recently the four regional touring late model series, we know that isn't the case. So with that in mind, those that love the Truck Series hope that NASCAR is willing to do whatever it takes to breathe life into our favorite form of motorsports.

I do think that NASCAR is committed to the Truck Series. There is value there, to sponsors, to track operators, and even to the teams and of course the fans. But there are things that need to be done to ensure the future is brighter and on a firmer foundation.

Sponsor value has always been a weak link for the Truck teams. Because of the costs of participating, they continue to need to ask for more from sponsors although the value they return hasn't increased at the same rate. Sponsor value has stayed flat, and according to some experts, has even dropped. Why? Because at best, the Trucks are plaing second-fiddle to the Nationwide Series and third-fiddle to both Cup and Nationwide on race weekends. With the demise of the Mansfield race, there isn't a single venue on the schedule where the Trucks are the top attraction. If NASCAR wants to add sponsor value, then it needs to eliminate some conjunction races and take the Trucks back to markets that the Nationwide and Cup cars don't go. Second races at Martinsville and Texas should be moved to markets like the Pacific Northwest and/or the upper Midwest. Other races that have no value, such as the California race, should also be moved elsewhere.

Track operators will benefit from redistribution of the schedule too. More tracks could be a part of the NASCAR family, and fans craving NASCAR action in underserved parts of the country can finally come and see big league racing. And those tracks that continue to hold conjunction races will benefit too since triple-headers will be less common, marketing them as something the fans don't have a chance to see often will help attract customers into the seats.

Teams will benefit because sponsors will again return to the series. As it is now, why would a sponsor come in when the majority of races are held in areas where Cup and Nationwide sponsors already saturate the market? What chance does a small ($2.5-$3 million) sponsor have when trying to activate next to someone spending ten times that much? But that smaller sponsor will find value in markets that aren't already saturated. That's what helped the series flourish in 1995 through 1998. As an example, in 1995 over half the Truck races were held at tracks that didn't host a Nationwide or Cup race. That had dropped to 25 percent in 1999, and now in 2009 there are no races held at tracks that don't have a Nationwide or Cup race.

There are plenty of racetracks out there that could help diversify the Truck Series schedule. Road courses in the Pacific Northwest, a number of good short tracks in the Upper Midwest, and even some venues in Canada that would fit the bill.

Racing at huge cathedrals of speed like Daytona and Charlotte does have value. But so does reaching the grassroots fan at places like I-70 Speedway and Evergreen Speedway, two tracks that are unfortunately long gone from the Truck Series schedule. There are other tracks in underserved markets that should be looked at and added. Then maybe ther Trucks will again be a series that is growing and flourishing instead of simply treading water and fighting for survival.

On Indy cars, double file restarts, Ron Hornaday, and the Nationwide Series

2009-06-28T11:58:00.001-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I've shared my thoughts on the goings-on in the world of American motorsports. I apologize for the absence. That said there was a lot going on over the course of the past two weeks...

- One thing that has bothered me about the state of Indy car racing over the past half decade is the IRL is going down the same path that the CART series did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The owners aren't hiring drivers based on their talent, they are taking drivers with a check they can cash. While it might help their bottom line, it certainly doesn't do anything to build the series. Now, just a year after "reunification" the car count is back down to where it was prior to CART/Champ Car's demise. There are bright spots on the horizon, but there is a long way to go before Indy Car is a picture of health. Events in Texas, Iowa, and Richmond draw impressive crowds, but even long-time venues like Milwaukee are finding it hard to pay the sanction fee.

Indy cars are impressive to watch. They buzz around even the 1.5-mile ovals well over 200 miles per hour. At 3/4-mile Richmond, speeds were over 165 miles per hour meaning lap times were about 17 seconds. That's insane. But the Indy Cars have the same problem that faces NASCAR now: it's glorified spec racing with drivers no one has heard of or cares about. There is talk of more engine manufacturers ready to join whenever the IRL makes a change to their engine regulations (maybe in 2011) but they will all be bolted into the same Dallara chassis. Whatever happened to Indy being the hotbed of automotive engineering and development?

-Speaking of Indy cars, whats with the number of foreign born drivers driving cars sponsored by the US military? I think it's great that the branches of the service think motorsports is a good recruitment tool, and I also think it's great that drivers from all around the globe want to come to America and compete. But shouldn't American drivers represent American servicemen? I like Dan Wheldon, but honestly, is he getting any 18-year-old American kids to join the National Guard? And Raphael Matos surely doesn't represent the target audience for Air Force and Marine recruits. You mean to tell me that John Barnes, owner of Panther Racing, and Jay Penske, owner of Luczo Dragon Racing, couldn't find a young American hotshoe to fill those seats? I can think of a dozen guys driving USAC open wheel cars right now that would fit the bill and would also generate a lot more excitement, sales at the front gate, and television ratings if they were in an Indy car.

- The double file restarts are coming to all of NASCAR's national touring series. I continue to say that it is just a patch to fix a much bigger problem. Did they enhance the competition dramatically at Pocono? Not really, except for a couple of laps following each restart. And at Sonoma, I thought the single file restart would have actually made for a better race up front because Marcos Ambrose wouldn't have had to race for third over and over again, and he could have worked on racing to the leaders instead of repeatedly retaking his rightful position on the track. The fact remains that the new generation car simply isn't racey. The history books will show that when NASCAR instituted it's socialist-like "aero matching" bodies in 2002 is when competition started to decline and fans started to find other ways to spend their Sunday afternoons. If NASCAR suddenly decided to race cars that looked like something you could find on your local dealer's lot, I think you'd find a lot of the attendance and television declines start to reverse.

- Can anyone stop Ron Hornaday? After dominating at Milwaukee, he followed up with another dominant run at Memphis to score back-to-back wins. As tough as Hornaday is, I still think there are going to be a couple of times where his aggressive nature sends him to the garage for repairs (such as what happened last fall at Phoenix). The battle for the championship could turn out to be a classic hare vs. tortise match-up. The hare doesn't always win either: case in point, Travis Kvapil's unlikely run to the title in 2003. Matt Crafton has been impressively consistent so far in 2009 and could find himself in position to challenge for the title if Hornaday does have a speed bump or two in the second half of the season.

- So Kyle Busch's streak of misfortune in the Nationwide Series ended, giving him his first win since the guitar-bashing celebration in Nashville. That sound you may have heard, after all the boo-birds were done of course, was a huge yawn. Busch is the best in the business these days, no question about it. But the fans are tired of Cup guys dipping into the minor leagues and stealing the glory on Saturdays. The Cup owners that have moved into the Nationwide Series are to blame. And one day, when someone like Richard Childress or Jack Roush needs to fill a hole in the Cup Series with a qualified driver, there won't be any because they have chosen not to use their developmental series teams to develop drivers! Sure, Roush runs Erik Darnell and Ricky Stenhouse in partial schedules, but getting to run 15 races a year doesn't help hone the skills needed to race on Sundays at the level needed.

On Texas, Nashville, and Pocono

2009-06-08T20:33:00.001-04:00

It was a busy weekend to say the least, the first of the year that saw the Camping World Trucks, Nationwide cars, and Sprint Cup cars all in action at three different facilities in three different states. The trucks tackled the ultra-fast Texas Motor Speedway, the Nationwide cars rumbled in the concrete canyon that is Nashville Superspeedway, and the Sprint Cup guys were in resort country at Pocono Raceway.

Truckin' in Texas...

For a team that nearly shut down during the month-long break between Martinsville and Kansas, Todd Bodine's Germain Racing organization is extremely strong. Bodine had the worst streak of his Truck Series career with three consecutive wrecks at Martinsville, Kansas, and Charlotte, but that's all out the window as he scored his second win of the season at Texas. Bodine is a threat every time he races on the mile and a half tracks, but that's magnified at Texas where he's now won five times.

The weekend started with a surprise pole winner in Johnny Sauter. Sauter's team, ThorSport Racing, has struggled to get it's No. 13 truck running on par with the No. 88 driven by Matt Crafton for its entire existence dating back to 2004. Now with Sauter behind the wheel it seems that team has come together and is starting to become a weekly contender. Sauter was fifth at Dover last week and finished sixth at Texas in addition to scoring the pole. ThorSport Racing will enter its 300th race at Michigan this weekend on a major high: Crafton finished second at Texas and leads the points while Sauter is leading the rookie points.

The race was extremely clean with just two cautions, one for Dover winner Brian Scott bouncing off the wall and the other for debris. NASCAR has proved it can respond to fan input with the new double file restart proceedures, now it needs to heed the call of the fans and eliminate phantom debris cautions. And if there actually is debris on the track, the televion cameras need to show it to the audience at home to justify the caution.

Ten of the 33 starters were out of the race before 30 laps were complete. I am not a believer in the argument that for a race to be entertaining there needs to be a full field of 43 cars or trucks, but I also believe there needs to be more than 25 out there too. Hopefully the economy continues to recover and we'll get back to having deeper fields in the Truck Series soon.

Terry COok will also be making his 300th series start at Michigan this weekend. Terry didn't have the weekend he was hoping for in Texas and he banged up his favorite speedway truck to boot. No doubt Danny Rollins and crew were busy at work as soon as they could get the rig back to Martinsville to get it fixed for Cook's home track.

Even after scoring his best finish of the season at Texas, fourth, Johnny Benson's season has been one of frustration. Now, the news has broken that Red Horse Racing will park Benson's No. 1 truck due to lack of funding. That is a real shame as Benson is truly one of the good guys of the sport - not in it for the money but in it to do what he does best and that's win races. The real shame of the situation is the announcement comes just before Benson's home race at Michigan. My guess is there will be hundreds of Johnny Benson fan club members that are very disappointed at this turn of events and may not attend as a result. It closes a confusing chapter in Red Horse Racing's history, one that saw it dismiss a driver in David Starr within weeks of the start of the season although he had some sponsorship in his hip pocket in exchange for two drivers, one of which didn't have funding. Granted Benson is the defending champion and the team was banking on that luring in some significant sponsorship dollars. But that didn't happen. Thankfully for the team T.J. Bell is able to pay his own freight but the No. 11 truck is still devoid of any major sponsorship.

Nationwide in Nashville...

We could have all witnessed the best race in Nationwide Series history at Nashville, one with 70 lead changes and a last corner of the last lap pass for the win, and all we would be talking about is the victory lane celebration of winner Kyle Busch. The Gibson guitar given to the winners of all Nashville races is one of the most cherished in all of NASCAR racing. Yet as soon as he laid his hands on his, Busch tried to shatter it into dozens of pieces - supposedly to be shared among his crew. It doesn't matter that Sam Bass - the artist who spent 40 hours painting the guitar - didn't mind seeing his work destroyed because the fans have responded with disgust and disdain for the sport's leading personality. As an artist who has also spent dozens of hours on art for customers that I hope ultimately enjoy my work, I am torn. I hate to see Bass' labor destroyed. But the fact of the matter is the trophy is Busch's and he can do with it what he wants. He simply doesn't care what the people outside the catch fence think. I've heard that Gibson and Bass have been commissioned to do a couple more guitars for Busch, so maybe it's really not that big of a deal. But like Chocolate Myers said today on Sirius NASCAR Radio, Busch may think that the fans all hate him now, but just wait until he knows it for sure. I like Kyle and I like his style, but there's only so much negative PR a driver can cause before those supporting him start to back away.

Cuppers in Pocono...

The big news of the weekend was the new double file restart proceedure. Little did anyone know that we'd all get to see it within the first five laps of the race. After lighting up Pocono with two wins as a rookie, poor Denny Hamlin hasn't had any luck there at all, and that streak continued as his car faltered just a couple hundred feet past the green flag. That set up the first double file restart in a points race in Cup racing history. It is a good idea and does create some good racing for a couple laps, but I'd still like to hear everyone stop saying this is how it's done at the majority of short tracks across the country.

The coverage from TNT was a welcome respite after a tumultuous 13-race stretch on Fox. Even Bill Weber was tolerable, not digging deep down inside to pull on everyone's heart strings with every train of thought as he's done in years past. Kyle Petty has become the best analyst in the sport, and Wally Dallenbach is as solid as ever. The pictures delivered by the cameras and production team were great and not drowned out by graphics. Heck, even Larry McReynolds does a great job on TNT. It would be great if the producers at Fox kept everything under control the way the TNT team does.

The only downside to the telecast was the missed shot of Kasey Kahne's spin on the final corner and not following the story as some drivers trying to stretch it on gas started to run out of gas. It would have been nice to get an update on some of the front runners, particularly as they dropped back in the pack. And there was no replay of Kahne's spin even though we all got to see him come sliding off turn four in a cloud of smoke.

On Carl Long, standard starting times, double file restarts, Fox Sports, and Citizen Journalists

2009-06-03T09:09:00.001-04:00

Some thoughts on some recent off-track news in the NASCAR world...

- It comes as no real surprise that the appeals board denied Carl Long's appeal of penalties levied by NASCAR after the All-Star Showdown at Charlotte. Yes, Long's engine was 0.17 cubic inches over the 358 c.i. limit, and therefore illegal. But is that really worth $200,000? Considering the engine blew up after three laps of practice and was never on the track in qualifying or the race, I say no. I am not suggesting a sliding scale, harsher penalties for bigger teams and smaller penalties for the little guys, but some common sense has to bubble to the surface here. Long was running a used engine that he had no hand in building. Maybe it's time NASCAR penalize the engine companies that supply the engines to the teams instead of the teams themselves.

- Some NASCAR track operators are pushing for standardized starting times, a move that should be applauded and implemented starting with the 2010 Daytona 500. The starting time should also be the time the green flag waves, not the time the pre-race show starts or the national anthem is performed. Standardized starting times should be something like this: daytime races in the eastern or central time zones go green at 1:30 P.M. Eastern; daytime races in the mountain or pacific time zones go green at 4:30 P.M. Eastern; night races - regardless of time zone - go green at 7:30 P.M. Eastern.

- I've been to almost 60 short tracks all across the country, and I can count on one hand the number of tracks that had double-file restarts. Maybe they do it that way in the Northeast where Mike Joy is from, but the vast majority of short tracks have single file restarts.

- An anonymous NASCAR executive reportedly has blamed Fox Sports' ill-conceived gopher cartoon character as the reason why television ratings have declined precipitously over the past two years. I wouldn't pin 100% of the blame on it, but it surely plays a part. The fact that millions of viewers only watched to see one particular driver do well has something to do with it too. The sport saw it's audience grow disproportionately on the back of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Now there is nothing wrong with being a Jr. fan, but the networks banked on Jr. to draw in viewers and by showing him even when he's running poorly it turned off a significant segment of the audience. Now, with Earnhardt running poorly, another significant chunk of the audience that tuned in only to see him run well is gone too. Those viewers may or may not come back when Earnhardt starts to improve on the track. Many viewers who can no longer tolerate Larry McReynolds' constant butchering of the English language and Darrell Waltip's conflict of interest-filled commentary towards his brother and his entire racing team probably won't be back until those two have retired. Fox came into the sport with a bang in 2001 and in many ways has raised the bar when it comes to covering motorsports of all types. But now Fox relies on too much bufoonery and self promotion and too little coverage of the actual event. What we need is much more Dick Berggren and Krista Voda and much less Chris Myers and Digger.

- NASCAR has announced it will support a group of Citizen Journalists to enhance the sports coverage in the media. I read Michael Knight's SpinDoctor500Blog regularly, and he was upset that bloggers and fan sites were given room in the media center at the Indianapolis 500. I enjoy Knight's commentary and have learned a lot from reading his blog archives over the past few months, but I disagree with his stance on this one. As a former track public relations representative, I appreciated coverage wherever I could find it. Granted, not all bloggers are created equal. But like the Supreme Court says about obscenity, you know a good one when you see it. There is nothing wrong with inviting a talented blogger to sit next to a professional journalist in today's modern world. In fact, in some of the media centers I have been in, finding a "real" journalist that is truly knowledgable about the sport (particularly the Nationwide or Truck level) can be a real challenge. Kudos to NASCAR for openly welcoming Citizen Journalists into their media circle.

Talkin' Trucks: Dover

2009-06-02T09:06:00.001-04:00

The Truck Series race at Dover was quite interesting to say the least. Tire problems caused several favorites to drop out of contention and allowed a few new faces to pop up at the front of the field. Brian Scott, who looked like a dart without feathers the first time I ever saw him race in a USAR ProCup race at Mansfield a few years ago, stayed out when the leaders pitted with about 15 laps to go and held onto the lead to collect his first win. Scott has come a long way since that Mansfield race, and under the tutelage of Jeff Hensley he is becoming a weekly contender for top five finishes.

It was nice to see the Xpress Motorsports team back in victory lane, although there really is nothing remaining of the organization that was started by Steve Coulter and then led by Dave Fuge. Under Coulter's leadership, the team scored it's initial victory with Randy Tolsma at Mesa Marin back in 1997. The team went Busch racing for a couple years and then rejoined the Truck Series in late 2001 with Mike Bliss at the wheel. Bliss won five races en route to the championship in 2002. Travis Kvapil took over the ride in 2003, and despite only winning once (at Bristol when leader Kevin Harvick popped a tire coming to the white flag) he too won the championship. Coulter sold the team to Fuge for 2004 and three-time champion Jack Sprague took over and collected a handful of wins too. When GM's sponsorship went away late in 2005 Sprague departed and that allowed Bliss to hop back in and he gave the team it's final victory at Atlanta in 2006.

Ironically, the only two drivers from the state of Idaho to win in Truck Series competition drove for the same team: Xpress Motorsports. Randy Tolsma hailed from Meridian, Idaho while Brian Scott is originally from Boise, Idaho.

What more can be said about Dennis Setzer? Setzer isn't flashy, he doesn't seek out the spotlight, but he does deliver. He gave team owner Dave Malcolmsen his second runner-up finish (Chad McCumbee also finished second for MRD at Charlotte last year) by following Scott and staying out under the last caution. Setzer and this team have no sponsorship and are on a limited schedule, but have shown they are to be reckoned with every time they roll off the trailer.

The HT Motorsports team has delivered this year too, with drivers Terry Cook and David Starr both registering top-five finishes along the way. This weekend it was Starr's turn to battle at the front and he clearly had the fastest truck at the end after stopping for tires. He got mired in traffic and before he could break out Scott and Setzer broke away to a big lead. It's ironic that both of HT Motorsports' drivers, Cook and Starr, were both cast off from different teams in 2008 (Cook split with Wyler Racing with five races left last season while Starr was let go from Red Horse Racing with just four weeks left before the start of the 2009 season) yet both are consistently outperforming their old teams.

It was also a pleasant surprise to see Jason White come home with a top-five result, crossing the line in fourth. White has been a journeyman driver for years, but with the Truck Series grid now evolving with the loss of manufacturer support and some of the bigger teams of years past on the sidelines, White has shown flashes of competitiveness and promise. White also drives a Dodge, which provides zero support in the Trucks this season. Good job by Doug Howe and crew on getting the team's first ever top-five finish.

The save of the year so far: Terry Cook on lap one after getting clobbered by Mike Skinner. Cook was about 30 degrees sideways pointed towards the unforgiving inside wall on the frontstretch at Dover and somehow managed to keep it under control.

Race fans pay their money to buy tickets to see drivers push it hard and run fast. There certainly is no shortage of drivers willing to do that in the Truck Series, even when there are six start-and-parks on the grid. But sometimes running at the edge every lap doesn't get you into victory lane. Kyle Busch and Ron Hornaday are known for keeping the hammer down regardless, and they win more than their fair share that way. But Saturday that strategy cost them both as they had tire issues and slapped the wall. I can recall a time back in 2005 and 2006 that Mike Skinner was untouchable when it came to raw speed but his hard charging style punished the right front tire and he had numerous bouts with the outside wall as a result. With the seeming unpredictability from the Goodyear tires and their durability, that could open the door for drivers that conserve their equipment a little more to pick up some race wins and contend for the championship.

Memorial Day Weekend Racing Roundup

2009-05-28T08:29:00.000-04:00

Some random thoughts from a great Memorial Day weekend of racing action...

- The Indianapolis 500 continues to be the most magical sporting event in the world in this writer's opinion. To see the emotion on the face of winner Helio Castroneves proves it. Sure, Helio would have been emotional no matter what race he won, but it was even more emotional to be at Indy.

-Others have reported that the crowd at Indy was way up, and it might have been, but there were still some patches of empty seats all around the track. I don't know what needs to be done to right the ship, but I am sure IMS management is doing all it can to ensure more and more people come to the 500. I still thing returning the magic to the rest of the month is a big start. Make Indy the bed of automotive innovation it once was and give fans the chance to hear "it's a new track record" from time to time and race fans and casual sports fans alike will return.

- I am a stock car guy to the core but I always get a kick out of attendance at Lowe's Motor Speedway for it's May events. I've had plenty of conversations with people who have relocated to the Charlotte area to be near the hub of the sport and they always tell you how everyone that lives there is totally into stock car racing. If that's the case, why so many empty seats? Now granted, it did rain and that always affects attendance, but if Charlotte truly is the world capital of motorsports wouldn't the die-hard fans there sit through any type of weather to see the sport they can't live without? The truth is these are the same fair-weather fans that couldn't be bothered to drive 90 minutes to either Rockingham or Darlington yet complained loudly when both venues lost their races.

- It's funny how first time winners come in groups. Brad Keselowski won at Talladega and now David Reutimann wins at Lowe's. Last year in the Truck Series there was a stretch of three first time winners in three races. I think it's likely we'll see another first time winner in Cup racing this year but I would be surprised to see it happen again so quickly. My pick for the next winner: Marcos Ambrose.

- There is nothing little about the "Little 500". For those of you unfamilair, it is a sprint car race held annually at Anderson Speedway in Indiana. It is a tight quarter mile bullring, and if you've heard the comment about Bristol being like "jet fighters in a gymnasium", well, Dick Trickle originally said that about driving at Anderson nearly 25 years ago. The race features 33 starters lined up in eleven rows of three, just like the Indy 500 does. There are live pit stops, and even under green there are push trucks out on the track as the cars race past at speed. Dave Steele won his second little 500 passing eight-time winner Eric Gordon with 32 laps to go. How tough is 500 laps around a quarter mile? There were just 11 drivers running at the finish, and most were eliminated in accidents. There were numerous different engine and chassis combinations, just like the Indy 500 used to have back in the day, and some of the cars were built at home by the driver. The coolest of them all was the creation Chet Fillip drove, but unfortunately he was eliminated very early on in a very hard crash in turn three.

- Like many others, I too think it was a very respectful gesture to stop the race at 3 P.M. on Monday in observance of the National Moment of Remembrance. Memorial Day is special for many reasons, especially if you have a loved one that perished fighting for our freedoms. NASCAR takes heat for a lot of the things they do, but this one was a home run even on a day when the weather was problematic.

- I know that in the world of today's technology and instantaneous access to information it makes those in the media work hard to be the first to break a story. I have faced that numerous times myself, trying to gather as much info as I can during the post-race scramble at Truck Series races. I would gather the info - and many times it was raw audio collected from nearly a dozen drivers, writing the stories (and sending in the audio to be edited), and then publish it to the web all within the 60 to 90 minutes following the checkered flag. I would say 99.9% of the time my reports were accurate. One time I can recall there being a discrepancy was at Kansas in 2006 when I reported injuiries suffered by Kelly Sutton in a hard crash that weren't exactly accurate. I hadn't spoken to Kelly or anyone with her team, but I reported what track officials had told the media. It turns out it wasn't right and we made a correction, but that didn't appease the editor who screamed at me over the phone about how important it was to get things right.

Now a slight error in an injury at a third-tier race was a big deal to those of us on that beat, in the grand scheme of the motorsports world it was barely a blip on the radar. Wednesday's "breaking news" that Tony George was ousted by the board of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the subsequent denial by the George family is much bigger. George controls what is arguably the biggest motorsports venue in the world. He hosts events from Indy Car, NASCAR, and MotoGP and he has constantly said he'd like to bring back Formula One. Robin Miller broke the story for SPEEDTV.com. I like Robin, he's in tune with the open wheel world like no other and is just irreverent enough to be a pain in the side to just about everyone. But the fact is Robin was dead wrong on this story. I wonder if my old editor, who is now the editor at SPEEDTV.com, had anything to say to Miller over the story being 100% wrong? Of course it's a lot easier to scream at someone who has been a trackside reporter for four years versus someone who has been writing for 35 years, isn't it?

It should be race week in Mansfield, and it makes me sad that it's not

2009-05-20T11:13:00.007-04:00

It's been a beautiful week in Northwestern Ohio. The weather has turned from the cool, damp days of April to the bright, sunny, and warm days of late May. The buds on the trees have turned to leaves and the alarm clock has given way to nature as the birds loudly proclaim the approaching morning. Personally, life has never been better as our five-year-old daughter becomes more of a young lady every day and our twin boys quickly approach their first birthday.

Yet among all of this happiness, there is a huge tinge of sadness.

For four of the past five years, I had been directly involved in the promotion of Ohio's only national-level NASCAR event, the Camping World Truck Series race at Mansfield Motorsports Park.

That event, as you by now know, was canceled earlier this season and moved to Iowa Speedway.

Last year at this time, and the year before that for that matter, I was neck deep in five hundred phone calls a day. My e-mail box was overflowing with credential requests, questions from my friends in the media corps or with the racing teams, and even from the fans wanting to settle up last minute details for their Memorial Day weekend trip to Mansfield.

This year the phone is eerily silent. My e-mail box is full, but only because I haven't gone through and read or deleted a couple of weeks worth of press releases and spam. I should be sifting through credentials and sorting them into envelopes. I should be meeting with city leaders and police to finalize plans Thursday's festival downtown. I should be running on pure adrenaline and very limited sleep. But I'm not.

I've always said that when my time on the merry-go-round that is NASCAR racing ends, I will gladly hop off and tell everyone who will listen "thanks for the ride". This chapter in my racing career is no different. The memories I have from the events in Mansfield will last a lifetime. From erecting the hospitality village at 1 A.M. in 40 degree temperatures in the pouring rain with only the light from a couple of pickup trucks and an ambulance the night before the first practice in 2004, to speaking to SPEED's producers as a tornado struck the grounds and lifted a section of grandstands onto the racetrack the day before the track opened in 2005; from the ringing in my ears that lasted for days after watching the race from the press box, to watching nearly 40 fully-loaded transporters line up four abreast in downtown Mansfield for Race Fest, to cracking jokes with the media in the press box during the endless rain delay in 2007 -- each moment was precious. For a guy that is still happy buying a ticket and watching a short track race at the top of the grandstands, being integrally involved in the production and promotion of an event of that caliber was the chance of a lifetime.

One of my favorite moments during the NCWTS' run at Mansfield: presenting a painting of the late Bobby Hamilton's No. 18 Dodge to Lori Hamilton and the BHR teams prior to the 2007 event.

Unfortunately, it seems nothing lasts forever.

I am sad because I won't be seeing my friends in the Truck Series this weekend. I am sad the racing fans in Ohio, who waited 49 years and fifty weeks between the last national series NASCAR race in Ohio and the 2004 Truck race at Mansfield, won't have a chance to see an event of that stature again this year. And the likelihood of it happening again any time soon is slim to none.

To all of the fans who came to the festival in downtown Mansfield or to the track for the race, thank you. To the city officials in Mansfield who so graciously supported the track and the efforts to promote NASCAR racing, thank you. To the teams and the sponsors and the media who came, and despite not having a lot of extra space or budget managed to put on and cover a wonderful show, thank you. I hope somewhere down the road we can find someplace else and do it all over again.

The Art of Retaliation - the right way and the wrong way

2009-05-18T12:34:00.002-04:00

It's always interesting when you go and see a sport at the grass roots level. Whether it's a minor league baseball game where managers stress the fundamentals or a minor league hockey game where the brawling takes precedence over the game itself, you tend to get that particular sport in its rawest form.

When you go to a minor league stock car race, whether its a local Saturday night short track or a touring series event somewhere, you're bound to see some excitement. Drivers are learning their craft and learning how to control their emotions as they fight it out fender-to-fender on some short track somewhere.

As could be expected, sometimes the drivers lose control of their emotions. While it's not good for the teams that must rebuild the cars it usually leads to some excitement for those in the grandstands.

When a driver gets put into the wall, sometimes he understands it was an accident. Sometimes he thinks he's been wronged and seeks to exact revenge. Sometimes the payback doesn't come for a couple of races or even the majority of the season. Sometimes the payback comes back before the end of the race.

I don't have a problem with retaliation. If someone truly wrecks your racecar, turnabout is fair play. But there is a right way and a wrong way to pay back that favor.

Exhibit A: The Right Way

Last fall Scott Speed was dumped going into turn three at Toledo Speedway. The guy who dumped him, Ricky Stenhouse, also was challenging Speed for the ARCA championship. It was the season finale, and rather than let the championship be stolen from him and given to the guy who crashed him, Speed made the decision to repay the favor immediately. It was a textbook payback that settled the score.

Exhibit B: The Not-So-Right Way

Sunday, Patrick Sheltra felt like Paul Menard dumped him going into turn one. Sheltra's car was significantly damaged but his crew patched it together enough to get him back out. He undoubtedly was looking forward to being lapped on the track by Menard, but due to a series of cautions the two never came close on the track. That is until the final restart - a green-white-checkered two-lap dash. Sheltra laid back and coasted around the track until Menard caught him in turn three of the final lap. Sheltra took a dive at him and instead of taking Menard out, caused a huge crash that took out Craig Goess who until then had never had a problem with Sheltra.

If you feel the need to retaliate, fine by me. But don't take out people who had nothing to do with the reason why you're mad. Sheltra's crew was seen laughing about the incident, and reportedly laughed about it when confronted by Eddie Sharp Racing team members. ESR is a four-car team, and should they so desire could make life very difficult for Sheltra over the course of the summer. Sheltra's team also tried to play off the incident as if he had a tire going down and that's what caused him to be off the pace and what caused him to swerve into Menard on the last lap.

Do what Speed did: be up front and honest about it. Say "we took him out" and move on. Everyone in the grandstands saw the initial incident and Sheltra's animated response to it on the pit wall as Menard drove past on the next lap. We all knew what to expect once the No. 60 car was back on track.

Busy news week leaves lots to talk about

2009-05-12T16:22:00.003-04:00

It's been a busy week in the motorsports news cycle. From Mark Martin scoring his second win of the year at Darlington to Helio Castroneves winning the pole for the Indy 500 there are great stories all around. Unfortunately, there is also the Jeremy Mayfield story, one that seems to have more questions than answers at this point.

- As for Mark Martin, what more can be said? He is the surprise of the season to this point and is now making himself a solid threat to not only make the Chase but contend for the crown too. Who ever would have thought that the guy that would step up and challenge Kyle Busch as the dominant force at the front of the field would be a 50-year old who has only run a partial season the past two years and previously declared he was retired from the sport?

- The Darlington race has re-evolved into one of my favorites of the year. There was a time, maybe when there were two races at the fabled facility, when I thought the racing had lost it's luster. I had also tired (pun intended) of the tire wear issues that were the big story every time NASCAR came to town for the past several years. Now, with speeds approaching 190 at the end of the straightaways and very little racing room to be had, it reminds me of the Darlington of old. Yes, it's trecherous and mean and a tad on the dangerous side and that's exactly what makes it so appealing.

- It's a shame Kyle Busch lost the Nationwide race on Saturday night in the fashion that he did. He avoided the crash on the backstretch involving Joe Nemechek but picked up some debris and lost a tire as a result. He did the right thing and came down pit road to have the tire changed, but as it turned out Morgan Shepherd crashed on the ensuing restart and the field was instantly frozen and the race was over. Had Busch stayed out, all he would have had to have done was made it to turn one in the lead and he would have won the race. I recall Jack Sprague losing a Truck race at Darlington under similar cirumstances: he had a flat tire on pit road during a rain delay. The race restarted under caution and he came to change the flat, and as soon as he did the skies opened up and the race was declared official. Both are extremely tough ways to lose.

- Busch may be the most intense and competitive driver in the field, but there also needs to be a little perspective added to the mix. It's not like the Nationwide car is his top priority. Winning is great and should be celebrated, but losing should be handled with class. Stomping off in a huff isn't necessarily the most mature way to handle the situation. Sure, there will be those who claim he's very busy and was obviously in a hurry to get to some obligation (much as they said when he left Martinsville after he gave away the Truck race last month). No one is in that much of a hurry that they can't stop and talk to the TV cameras for 30 seconds. I love Kyle for his on-track performance and even for his off-track attitude and demeanor, I'd just like it a little more if he handled defeat a little better, especially when he's dipping into the minor leagues. Can you imagine Bobby Allison or Ken Schrader reacting like that after a tough loss somewhere?

- So NASCAR is going to do some investigation on why their television ratings continue to decrease. No race has had a ratings increase this season and the average throughout Fox's first eleven telecasts is a -11% change. Here is my advice, free of charge, to NASCAR, Fox, and the rest of the sport's television partners: start the races at a regular time. The RACES not the broadcast. Fans should know well in advance when the green flag is going to fly. Everyone knows that when you tune into an NFL game at 1 P.M., you are just minutes away from kickoff. That isn't the case any more with NASCAR. You can tune in at 2 P.M., exactly when the program guide on your digital cable box or satellite box says the race is going to start, and still be subjected to 80 minutes of pre-race yip-yap. Sometimes I want to see the pre-race. Sometimes I want to tune in exactly when the command to fire engines is given. NASCAR needs to do what the NFL does: offer a one-hour pre-race show that starts at 1 P.M. for every daytime race and 6 P.M. for every night time race. That pre-race show should conclude with the Star Spangled Banner. Exactly one hour after the pre-race show starts, the race broadcast should start with the command to fire engines. A brief recap of the weekend - any incidents in practice and qualifying, personnel movements, and major news of the week - can be offered during the time the cars are warming up on pit road. Once the cars roll off, give the complete starting grid. This means no chit-chat with a driver on the pace laps until everyone has had their name and starting position given. Once the line-up is given, the analysts can break down the race (i.e. Larry Mac can give us the FedEx Race Breakdown or whatever it's called). It's a simple formula, and the networks have gotten too far away from it. Ease up on trying to get us to buy your swag at the track or online and give us what we want to see: the actual race itself.

- Good for Helio that he will start the Indy 500 from the pole. I tend to agree with the Indianapolis Star's Curt Cavin: Helio has a very good shot at joining A.J., Big Al, and Slick Rick as four-time 500 winners.

- While talking about the 500, I sure wish we could return to the pre-IRL feel of the race. I miss the innovation that the 500 used to create. There was always some wild chassis/engine combination trying to make the field. There were track record speeds. There was a constant element of danger. While I will always love the 500 for the race that it is, the rest of the Month of May is now meaningless. That said, I am anxiously awaiting the traditional pre-race ceremonies, the command to start engines, the balloons being released, and eleven rows of three to come screaming down the frontstretch and barrell off into turn one at 200 miles per hour.

- Maybe some of the relevance of the Indy 500 would return if the purse increased. Emerson Fittipaldi won a million dollars for his victory in 1989. Now, twenty years later, the race still pays around a million bucks to win. I still think that if the race paid five million to win it would again become one of the most talked about sporting events in the country.

- If Charlotte is as those who live there proclaim it is, the World Capital of all things motorsport, then why is there ever an event at Lowe's Motor Speedway that isn't a sell-out? With all these race fans down there they can't find 100,000 of them to buy tickets? Maybe three Cup races there is an oversaturation? Look at what happened to Darlington as an example: they cut one date and instantly made the other one a must-have ticket. Charlotte and California could easily trim one of their dates and see their remaining events become healthier.

- Is there anyone out there that actually believed the first driver busted for substance abuse by NASCAR would be Jeremy Mayfield? Yes, he's somewhat hard to work with (based on his history with Penske and Evernham), but he never seemed like the type to be doing anything illicit. I know the NASCAR drug czar is going to stand behind the results of the test he administered, and I also know Mayfield is going to proclaim his innocence. This is where the NASCAR system needs to be refined: there are still too many questions to be answered even after the announcement of Mayfield's failed test. What was he on? How valid are his claims that it's a mix of OTC and prescription medications? If he failed his test at Richmond, why was he allowed to participate at all at Darlington? I go back to when Aaron Fike was suspended for shooting up heroin in the back of a rented SUV at King's Island leading up to the Truck race at Kentucky a couple of years ago: at least we knew what he was doing. There is always speculation in situations like this, and in many instances the speculation is much worse than the actual offense. Take Shane Hmiel for instance. He is suspended for life by NASCAR. For what? Is smoking marijuana on a Tuesday of an off-week the same as shooting up heroin two days before a race? But no one knows what Hmiel was doing with any degree of certainty because it's never been released what he was busted for. It could have been pot. It could have crack, or heroin or meth or whatever other poisons people like to inject, smoke, or inhale. The journalist in me wants to know exactly what these guys did wrong, not just vague generalities.

- It's a damn shame the race fans of the state of Ohio don't have a Truck race to look forward to this Memorial Day weekend.

Cars won't stop getting airborne so it's time to strengthen the fences

2009-05-02T15:49:00.001-04:00

Well, you knew it was coming.

A week after the events at Talladega and some writers are still chirping about cars becoming airborne in crashes at the two restrictor plate tracks.

Yes, NASCAR and the track operators MUST do everything within their power to prevent injuries in the grandstands. But as far as the cars becoming airborne, the only way to prevent it is to keep them parked safely in the garages.

What has NASCAR done in recent years to keep them on the ground? In the very first race run with restrictor plates at Daytona in February 1988, Richard Petty barrel-rolled through the short chute at Daytona and did damage to the catch fence there. NASCAR has implemented roof rails to disrupt the air flowing over the cars as they turn sideways, they've added skirts to the sides of the cars, they've actually flattened the sheet metal on the sides of the cars, they've put in lexan side windows, they've mandated roof flaps, and the list goes on and on...

And since that initial restrictor plate race there have been dozens of aero flips or blow-overs, and it's not been limited to just the two plate tracks. We've seen cars in the air at places like Michigan, Charlotte, and Pocono too.

No one wants to see anyone hurt. But professional racecar drivers have accepted that risk. And as a fan watching, I want to see an element of danger. I don't want just anyone driving racecars; I want the best and the bravest. Guys like Cale Yabourough, Bobby Allison, and yes, even the late Dale Earnhardt. It seems the cars have become so safe, so planted to the track via downforce and millions of dollars in engineering, that the drivers are almost like the jockeys lining up for the Kentucky Derby: they're fly weights that are guiding slotcars pinned to the track.

NASCAR should keep researching what causes their racecars to fly in certain situations. But they also need to understand that no matter what is done, nothing will ever fully prevent a racecar from lifting off and flipping through the air.

As much fun as it would be to turn them loose at Talladega without a restrictor plate and see who the bravest of the brave really is, that won't ever happen. But my guess is the millions of fans out there now have as much interest as I do in watching 43 cars drone around at 150 miles per hour planted to the asphalt. So here is our dilemma: let them run 190 and risk them getting airborne from time to time or slow them down to the point where they are virtually guaranteed not to get into the air when they turn sideways and lose the audience.

The answer isn't in keeping the cars on the ground. Truth is it makes for spectacular theater when someone goes for a barrel-rolling ride down the backstretch (as Matt Kenseth did on Saturday) or someone turns over through the tri-oval (as Carl Edwards did on Sunday). The answer is continuing to refine the catch fence and other barriers to prevent debris - even small pieces the size of a lugnut - from reaching the audience.

NASCAR: "Yellow line rule keeps wrecks under control." Okay then, tell us what wrecks were caused because the rule wasn't there

2009-04-28T20:13:00.005-04:00

I read in Terry Blount's latest column on ESPN.com that John Darby says the dreaded yellow line "out of bounds" rule keeps the number of massive wrecks at Daytona and Talladega under control.

"The yellow-line rule has been very effective in controlling some of the huge wrecks we used to have," Sprint Cup director John Darby said Monday. "The rule has at least made the width of the racetrack consistent all the way around, so the competitors know how much real estate there is to use."

And he followed that comment up with this one:

"It (the racetrack) may be 15 lanes wide if you allow the competitors to use the skid pads and everything," Darby said. "But the entrance to Turn 3 is not [that wide]. So it becomes a big game of chicken from going from 15 lanes wide down to three that ultimately created some very large wrecks."

Okay, so the logical follow-up to that question is this: can you offer up instances of accidents caused by drivers racing on the apron and then trying to squeeze back up into traffic? I've seen every restrictor plate race since 1988, and darn if I can't remember that many (if any!).

Sometimes NASCAR takes their time and evaluates situations carefully before making a change. Heck, it's been 21 years since the implementation of the restrictor plate that everyone thought would be a temporary solution to slowing the cars down at the superspeedways. But sometimes they make changes in haste without looking at or fully anticipating the unintended consequences.

Things like the top-35 rule and the yellow line rule were put in place with the best of intentions. But there are always those unintended consequences...

The yellow line might make the track a uniform width, but it also means that in a situation like we saw on Sunday, a driver fighting for the lead on the last lap won't fade under that line and if the driver he's battling keeps on coming he's going to go for one heck of a ride. I don't think the powers that be that decided to suddenly come up with an out-of-bounds rule ever considered that showering the fans with debris could ever happen as a result, but that's exactly what happened. The two drivers involved were doing their jobs and neither was at fault. The yellow line rule was.

So I'd like to see NASCAR offer up some examples. I've seen several accidents happen because too many vehicles were being crammed into too little space between the concrete wall and the yellow line that wouldn't have happened if the driver on the bottom could have dipped below the out of bounds line (the massive Truck wreck entering turn three on the final lap at Talladega in 2006 for example). Now let's hear NASCAR offer up some examples of accidents happening because someone passed below the yellow line down the straightaway and squeezed back up into traffic with just feet to spare before reaching the banking.

Rearview: Talladega

2009-04-27T08:40:00.002-04:00

The most unlikely things seem to happen in the most unlikely of places. There's no reasonable explanation other than the availability of cheap land back in the late 1960s for Bill France's choice of rural Alabama to build the sport's biggest racetrack. And of course, there's no reasonable explanation for many of the sport's defining moments taking place far away from civilization, but that's exactly what happens. There's no question now that the powers that be in NASCAR's home offices would like their grandest stages to be in megatropolises like New York or Los Angeles, but in reality they are the minitropolises of Daytona Beach and Talladega.

The driver's strike at Talladega in 1969 could have had major implications for the sport. Instead Bill France broke the strike and broke the union. The first unofficial and official 200 mph lap in a stock car came there, thanks to Buddy Baker's winged Superbird and later Benny Parsons' slick Pontiac LeMans. Bill Elliott set the all-time NASCAR qualifying record at over 212 mph and that same weekend Alabama's biggest hero Bobby Allison went sailing into the catch fence forever changing the landscape of superspeedway racing.

Brad Keselowski's win is a big deal, no question at all about that. He was only making his fifth start and it was his first Cup restrictor plate race. Brad is going to be around for a long time, but unfortunately his win has been overshadowed by Carl Edwards' flip coming to the checkered flag. On NBC's Today show on Monday, they spoke of the tremendous accident and the injuries in the grandstand but gave no mention to the winner of the race. They did say that Carl was uninjured and actually jogged across the finish line though.

It was a huge relief to see Carl climb out, and it was a great statement by him to cross the line on foot - even if it didn't officially count. His statements after the race were as spot on as any I've ever heard. He didn't do anything wrong going through the tri-oval; he knew Brad was back there and he had to do whatever it took to block. He also knew that Brad couldn't go below that yellow line without forfeiting the win so he tried to force Brad down to the flat apron. But Brad didn't do anything wrong either. He held his ground because he remembered Regan Smith's penalty last October.

Others will blame the track itself or the restrictor plate. There is only one cause of this crash: the yellow line rule. Brad had the momentum, and even if he had to dip below the line he would have cleared Carl and won the race (just like Regan Smith did last year).

The boundaries in racing are natural: you race on any available surface until you lose traction or hit something immovable. So at Talladega, the track would extend from the outer wall down to the grass in the infield - just like it does at Kansas or Charlotte or Texas or Michigan. The yellow line rule is like the pit road commitment cone and the top-35 rule: it's another example of NASCAR over-regulating and over-managing the sport's rules.

The yellow line rule is meant to reduce crashes as drivers race on the apron down the straightaways and then try to squeeze up in line on the banking to make then turn. Has it stopped crashes or has it caused more that it's prevented? It's very likely there wouldn't have been a huge flip and a car nearly into the grandstands if the yellow line rule wasn't in place.

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Everyone says Carl Edwards' flip was reminiscent of Bobby Allison's crash at Talladega in 1987. Allison sailed backwards into the fence and ripped down over 100 feet of the fencing. Edwards's crash reminds me more of Neil Bonnett's flip in the summer of 1993. Bonnett was turned sideways and was hit by another car and it went on a wild tumble into the fence roof first. No two crashes are ever identical, but the flip by Edwards has much more in common with Bonnett's crash than Allison's.

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It seems like just yesterday I was walking into the track at Homestead and was introduced to a very tall and thin young man carrying a briefcase filled with setup sheets and notes. I was working with Amy East at ESPN and her husband Terry Cook was driving for K-Automotive in the Truck Series. I was introduced to everyone on the K-Automotive team - some of whom I had known since I was a kid but hadn't seen since the days Bob Keselowski won the track championship at Toledo Speedway in 1983. I met Brad Keselowski that day, and his job then, as a teenager, was to help his father set up the family team's NASCAR Truck. Brad helped building race winning trucks. Now he's a race winning driver, not only in the Nationwide Series, but as of yesterday in the Sprint Cup Series as well.

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It also seems like yesterday that I approached a young driver who just climbed out of his truck after making his first laps around Daytona in pre-season testing. He couldn't stop smiling then because he simply couldn't believe he had made it to Daytona. Testing sessions always played to a much smaller media throng than the races, and out of the dozen or so of us there to cover that race I was the only one who had ventured over to the Mittler Bros. truck to talk to the young guy behind the wheel. When the teams came back a month later, the Mittlers had lost their driver - Carl Edwards - to Jack Roush. Carl led the race that day, for a little while, before he thumped the wall extremely hard in what was the first of many lessons he learned that year. Now, six years later, Carl is one of the most respected on the track and after hearing his words after the race he has to be seen as one of the most thoughtful and well spoken in the garage area too.

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Many of my friends in the Truck Series used to give me a hard time about the weather up in Ohio during the series' visits at Mansfield. In 2005 a tornado lifted a section of grandstands onto the track the day before practice and qualifying and nearly turned a plane full of crews and drivers onto its top at the airport across the street from the track. In 2007, rain plagued the race and with lightning in the area we had to make the call to evacuate the (aluminum) grandstands and the infield. There was always some conjecture as to what was said on the public address system when the call was made to send everyone for cover, but I am sure it wasn't the "run for your lives there's a tornado coming" that some insist was said. Severe weather at the racetrack isn't a laughing matter because there's tens of thousands of people there and many of them are in campers and have no where to hide should a tornado strike. But once the weather clears and everyone is safe the stories can begin. Like when everyone in the garage huddled in the tunnel at Gateway one year during a particularly hard thunderstorm. Unfortunately some of those same stories are coming out of Kansas this weekend as severe weather struck during the Camping World Truck Series race. For those there, let me know what the announcer there said on the PA system to get everyone seeking cover...

Random ramblings before Talladega

2009-04-24T11:29:00.000-04:00

Just a few random thoughts as we get ready for this weekend's action at Talladega:

-How long will we go this weekend until a car slides out of control on the backstretch onto the area of pavement that used to be grass and hear how many times that car would have tumbled end over end if that area hadn't been paved? Every time a car spins out and slides onto that pavement, one of the experts in the booth tells the audience how it surely would have flipped and cartwheeled had that area still been grass. I've seen every Talladega race since 1986 on the tube. Sure, many cars have flipped through the grass. But many of those flips started on the pavement. Bobby Allison got airborne through the tri-oval in 1987 without coming close to the grass. Same thing with Rusty Wallace in 1993 and Ken Schrader in 1995; both may have ended up in the grass but their cars took flight on the asphalt. And furthermore, there's been dozens of spins onto the grass that didn't result in a huge flip. Paving that area is definitely a great thing because it allows the drivers who do spin out of control some added room to get back under control before hitting something.

-In four NASCAR sanctioned races at Talladega last year, Toyota drivers won them all. Who ever would have imagined back in the days of the Alabama Gang that a foreign manufacturer would one day sweep every event in the heart of Dixie and the drivers make it out of the speedway unharmed? There may still be some jeers from the most hardcore in the grandstands but the evidence suggests that Toyota has been fully accepted within the NASCAR community.

-Imagine if Kurt Busch wasn't able to start the season in the No. 2 car due to illness and missed the first two races. Imagine that his replacement scores a couple of top tens, one of them a solid top-five, and a pole. Imagine that going into the third race of the season he sits second in the points. But Kurt's feeling well enough to drive and he gets back in the car, leaving his replacement rideless. Okay, it's not 100% the same, but a similar story is playing out with Roger Penske's IndyCar team. Will Power replaced Helio Castroneves while the former Indy 500 winner was on trial for tax evasion. Castroneves was eventually cleared of those charges and returned to the cockpit. Penske fielded a third car for Power at Long Beach but will go back to a two-car team for this weekend's race at Kansas. That leaves Power, who is sitting second in points, without a ride for the weekend. He may not have the strongest team in NASCAR, but the allure of driving for Penske Racing in the Indy 500 is so strong that championship caliber drivers are willing to drive a very limited schedule in exchange for the chance to have their likeness etched onto the Borg-Warner Trophy.

-The Sprint Cup awards ceremony has officially been moved from New York to Las Vegas. I for one don't understand why a race fan would care where this event is located. I've been to my share of short track banquets and the Truck Series and Nationwide Series banquet a couple of times. At the short track level it's a chance to get together with everyone you've raced against and grab a couple of cold drinks and retell the stories of the year while a few trophies are passed out to the top drivers. At the NASCAR level it's a gala affair, with a catered meal, black ties and evening gowns. The speeches are scripted and the access to the drivers is carefully controlled during the event itself. I can understand why the drivers would care where the event is held. I can even understand why the media would care since they were also up in the cold in NYC. Whether it's a short track or NASCAR, I just don't get the hullaballoo that some fans make concerning the banquet. All anyone who thinks it's going to be easier to access the drivers in Las Vegas and that it will be cheaper to go there for a week than New York needs to do is see how cheap rooms are at the Wynn during the banquet. My guess is it won't be cheap.

-I had a long conversation with a friend yesterday about the precipitous decline in NASCAR's television ratings over the past couple of years. While I think the fact that NASCAR is now basically a spec-car series and fans want to see different types of cars on track fighting it out (yes, actual STOCK cars!) and my friend disagrees, we do have the same opinion on the broadcasts themselves chasing off viewers. If you tune into any other sport, whether it's football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, or even horse racing, the expert analysts actually offer the viewer in-depth analysis. You can break down how Team A got into the end zone because Team B's defense broke down. You can look in super slow motion at a golfer's swing. You can put an iso-cam on the favorite in the Kentucky Derby and watch as he paces the first half and then breaks through the field down the stretch. We don't get that type of in-depth analysis in NASCAR. Maybe the fans, most of which are long-term viewers, are tired of being spoken to like we're watching for the first time. We know how aero push works. We know know the draft works. We know what tight is and what loose is. Talk to us like we are passionate fans who know the basics. When someone makes a late-race pass for the lead, break it down: show us what he did, how it did it, and why he did it. When you talk to the lowest common denominator, eventually you chase off everyone but those at the very bottom of the ladder. That's what's happening now. Gimmicks like "Digger" and telecasts that offer the viewer nothing substantive aren't keeping people interested. NASCAR and the networks can say they are trying to expand the audience but the fact is right now that audience is contracting.

How the start-and-park phenomenon proves the top-35 rule should be abolished

2009-04-16T10:53:00.000-04:00

It's always interesting when you read a quote about one issue and it makes you wonder why it doesn't apply to a greater whole.

NASCAR has gotten a lot of heat about the prevalence of "start and park" teams in it's lower divisions and more recently in the Cup Series. The teams are not there to race the full distance. Most make a couple of laps and pull into the garage, collecting their sub-40th-place money and head for home. For a team that can routinely qualify for the races, it can be a profitable venture.

Some race fans don't like it. And the noise they've made has put the issue on the radar for some media outlets, and they've asked NASCAR about it.

In a recent NASCAR.com story, the sanctioning body said it has no plans to police the so-called start and park teams. Other stories had quotes from Robin Pemberton saying he would like to eliminate these teams and could conceivably put cars dropping out early through a rigorous inspection to validate their reason to be out of the race.

It turns out NASCAR doesn't really care how long someone stays in competition once they've made the show.

"NASCAR doesn't perceive this to be an issue. It doesn't impact the quality of competition whatsoever. NASCAR has always been about teams having the opportunity to participate in our sport; some teams might not have the full complement of resources to compete at the same level as others, but it's all about having an opportunity."

That's interesting, because there are other rules in place that limit that opportunity. Yep, you guessed it: the much maligned "top-35 rule."

No other rule has taken away that opportunity more than the rule locking in teams based on their position in the point standings.

Every team that shows up to compete should have the exact same opportunity to make the field. Yes, Gunselman Motorsports should have the same chance as Hendrick Motorsports.

There is no doubt that there should be a fall-back provision in place for anyone that falters in qualifying...to a point.

At one time, NASCAR had a wonderful process to set the field. You had a qualifying session on Friday that set the top half of the field, and a qualifying session on Saturday that set the second half. On top of that, there were two provisional positions available for the highest two teams in the owners points that weren't already in the field. That gave you two shots to make it in on speed, and if you weren't in yet but high enough in the points you could still make it. Now, it seems qualifying is nothing more than an afterthought. It shows too as crowds in the grandstand when they roll for the pole are smaller now than they've been in years.

Make qualifying mean something for more than just 8 drivers. It might just reignite some interest in the sport with some of the long-time fans who find other things to do - and other places to spend their money than at the racetrack - on Friday and Saturday.

Fuss over No. 8 being parked should remind the media that numbers aren't permanent

2009-04-09T14:58:00.009-04:00

It's the biggest news story of the Easter off-weekend in the Sprint Cup Series. The organization formerly known as Dale Earnhardt, Inc. has parked the once famous No. 8 car driven by Aric Almirola due to the lack of funding. Everyone has an opinion on it, from ESPN's Marty Smith and SceneDaily.com's Jeff Gluck.

The overriding opinion is that it's Teresa Earnhardt's fault that the number taken to prominence by Dale Earnhardt Jr. is no longer in competition. If only she capitulated to Jr.'s demands and gave him half of DEI or let him take the number to Hendrick, then the hoardes of Jr. fans could see that number grace the speedways to this day.

The NASCAR media knows what generates page views: stories on Dale Earnhardt, Jr. It's easy to go with a story that pits Jr. vs. Teresa because she doesn't grant interviews. So we get one side of the story. And of course, most of the coverage portrays Mrs. Earnhardt as the evil stepmother, which is exactly how the so-called Jr. Nation wants it.

Mrs. Earnhardt had no obligation to allow her stepson to take that number with him when he left the team his father started for another. She was the owner of DEI and it is the team that secures a car's number, not the driver. And why should she give it up? She obviously didn't have a good relationship with Earnhardt, Jr. or his sister Kelley. When was the last time you did a favor for someone who didn't like you? Especially when that favor would generate that particular person untold millions of dollars and give you nothing in return?

When DEI started as the team Dale Earnhardt drove for in his Busch Grand National races back in the mid 1980s, it used the No. 8. It was his way of honoring his late father Ralph. When Earnhardt picked up Goodwrench sponsorship, it was originally on the No. 8 in the Busch Series. When that sponsorship carried over into the Cup team with Richard Childress, only then did Earnhardt change to No. 3 with his own team.

When Earnhardt, Jr. made his first Busch start at Myrtle Beach in 1996, it was in a No. 31 car. He raced six more times in a No. 31 and twice in a No. 7 in 1997. He moved into the No. 3 in 1998 and 1999 and won two championships. The first time he raced a No. 8 in a NASCAR series was in his limited Cup schedule in 1999.

Sure that's the number he rose to the top of the sport with and the number he used to become a fan favorite. But he didn't use it until four years into his NASCAR career. And he wasn't the first to use it and he wasn't the last to use it.

Contrary to what Jeff Gluck says in his SceneDaily.com column, NASCAR drivers have never been permanently identified by their numbers. Seriously, is there anyone in the NASCAR Nation that would ever permanently identify Reed Sorenson as "The 43"? Some drivers in today's post-modern era have had the same car number in every race they've ever competed - such as Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson - but those types of career-long driver/owner relationships are the exception, not the norm. Most drivers change teams throughout their career. And when they do, they rarely get to pick the number that adorns the side of the car.

Look at the top of NASCAR's all-time winners list and only one of the current top five had the same car number in every one of his wins: Richard Petty. David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, and Cale Yarbourough all won races with numerous car numbers. Even Dale Earnhardt won with other numbers than the No. 3; his first championship came in a car with the No. 2 on it and he even won races in a Ford with the No. 15 on it.

It's a shame EGR had to park the No. 8 team for now. Sure, there is little doubt that car would still be on the track if Jr. was still driving it. Even if Budweiser chose to leave for another team, Jr. could have attracted sponsors and that team would still be marching forward - such as it was.

But that didn't happen. Earnhardt chose to leave. And he chose to leave the No. 8 behind.

Just like Darrell Waltrip left behind the No. 11 when he left Jr. Johnson. Or when David Pearson left the Wood Bros. and they kept their famous No. 21.

It's Mrs. Earnhardt's right to keep requesting the No. 8 from NASCAR. Until she choses to relinquish the right to that number she can do whatever she wants with it, including choose not to put it on the racetrack.

NASCAR vs. NCAA a fair comparison?

2009-04-08T13:13:00.001-04:00

Today I read a column by one of my favorite writers (and someone I am proud to call a friend), Bob Pockrass. In his SceneDaily.com blog, Pocky says it is unfair to compare a blowout like Monday's NCAA basketball final to a NASCAR race. And furthermore, it's unfair to expect NASCAR fans to put up with a blowout the way a stick-and-ball follower does.

Pockrass makes some good points and it's hard to argue with his logic, particularly when he says NASCAR needs to work harder to be better than the other sports. But they have to be careful not to work too hard. And sadly, that's exactly what they've done for much of this decade.

I've written about it before. Not every sporting event can be a classic. Photo finishes are exciting because they don't happen every week.

The reason we see such a lack of drama at the front of the field in NASCAR races these days is because NASCAR has artificially manipulated the competition in an attempt to create it. They have gone away from what was a successful formula - racing stock cars that still had commonality with their street-legal cousins - to highly regulated spec racing with cars that look nothing like anything currently on the street. The rules stifle creative thinking. And to top it all off, many organizations have made poor driver decisions and we're faced with the biggest dearth of talent in the modern era. Cars we can't identify with, prepared identically, driven by many drivers with bland personalities with no particular reason to be there all leads to a collective yawn by the audience.

NASCAR wants us to believe every race is the Super Bowl. The pagentry we see in every pre-race show with drivers and their wives or girlfriends posed with their hands over their hearts as they listen to the national anthem and watch as some military jet flies overhead leads one to believe they are seeing just that: an event of epic scale. Never mind that there are maybe four or five events on the schedule that truly deserve that annotation.

NASCAR racing used to be about rough and tumble everymen manhandling a metallic beast for three or four hours and the first one to the finish line gets the glory. Now, it's glitz-and-glamour pretty boys driving cars that are so planted to the ground that seemingly anyone can do it. And, has been proven by the lack of recent performance by the sport's current biggest superstar, you don't have to win to enjoy all the glory.

Maybe that's why NASCAR fans complain. Not that there's a bad race now and then. I think most true racing fans understand that not every race is going to come down to 10 cars in a pack fighting for the lead on the last lap. And the also understand that it's unrealistic to expect it. It's that the sport they love has been taken out from underneath them and has been changed to something virtually unrecognizable to what we saw even just ten years ago.

NASCAR would be better off to understand that not every race needs to be a photo finish and not every championship needs to be decided by one position on the last lap of the last race of the year.

Back in the mid 90s, there were weekly rules changes, giving one manufacturer an extra inch here and taking away a half an inch there. Eventually, it left the cars virtually unrecognizable and led us down the path we're on now. Make the cars look like "stock cars" again, and the teams work their magic and find what works best for them.

Imagine if the NCAA told North Carolina or Michigan State that they had to use a 5'10" point guard, a 6'2" forward, and a 6'8" center. Also imagine them saying these new rules were to "level the playing field". That's where we are now in the NASCAR world. NASCAR mandates springs, gears, spoiler angles, and has every body on every car look exactly alike (with the exception of headlight decals and a few minor differences in the rear windows). All to level the playing field. It seems to me that the loud complaints that NASCAR racing is boring started to get louder when all of these changes were implemented.

What will the NCAA do as a result of the blowout in the championship game? Can we expect them to move in the three-point line? Maybe lower the rim height to 9'6"? Shrink the court length by ten feet? My educated guess is they won't make a single major modification to the way the game is played, the score is tabulated, or the way the champion is decided.

Good for them.

Gordon back in victory lane and other weekend motorsports notes

2009-04-07T07:37:00.002-04:00

There is no doubt that Jeff Gordon has not lost the competitive fire after a winless 2008. Kicking off the season with five top-ten runs in the first six races, Gordon broke a career-worst winless streak with a dominant win at Texas Motor Speedway. Prior to Sunday, Gordon had been held winless at Texas for 16 races. With the turnaround in performance in the 24 team since the start of the season, it almost seemed prophetic that Gordon would go to victory lane at the track that had so long denied him.

Now that Gordon has the monkey off his back, maybe the media will move on to his other streak: the number of years since his last title. Gordon racked up four titles in quick succession: 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001. He has been shut out since then, although he has scored the most points on the racetrack for two of the seasons since the Chase has been implemented.

If you look at the history of the sport's most prolific winners and champions, there was a time in their career that the explosive number of wins per season tailed off. The recent numbers we've seen from Gordon suggest that he has reached that point in his career. It's been since 1999 that he's won more than six races in a season, although he did win 6 times in both 2001 and 2007.

Other than an anomolous 2005 when he finished 11th in the standings, Gordon has still been a strong points racer. Since his fourth title in 2001 he's finished in the top five in the point standings four times, finishing as the runner-up behind Jimmie Johnson in 2007.

Gordon should again be a threat to win the title in 2009. Winning at Texas is a great first step but there are still 19 races left before the Chase starts. Gordon needs to stay consistent but he also needs to click off more wins, particularly once the Chase begins. Bonus points given with each win not only seed the drivers in the Chase but can mean the difference between winning and being an also ran in the post season.

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Everyone following the Nationwide Series this season has seen the struggles of the No. 88 team and it's promising young driver, Brad Keselowski. Brad won two races in 2008 becoming the newest driver to break through to the road to stardom. Many observers infer that the quick rise to success and driving for the sport's biggest name have put Brad in a bad position and the added pressure is what's causing his early season struggles in 2009.

Brad's family is no stranger to the world of motorsports. His father Bob is an ARCA champion and a winner as a driver, owner, and crew chief in the Truck Series. His mom has been involved in running the family racing team since Bob was running the short tracks in the midwest and his older brother Brian is an ARCA winner too. Racing is the family's nature.

I've known Brad since he was a lanky kid helping with the setups of the family-owned No. 29 truck in 2001. He moved on to the driver's seat in local late models in 2003 and took over the family truck in 2004. Most of his big-league racing had been with teams without major funding but he was spotted by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and picked to replace Shane Huffman in the middle of the 2007 season.

There has been a quick but logical progression in Brad's career. Sure, the pressure is a lot more now than three years ago but the best drivers in the business relish having pressure to perform.

What Brad needs to do is remember who he is - he's Brad, not Dale, Jr. A lot of media think since he drives for JR Motorsports, the two drivers must be a lot alike. They might have a lot in common, but they are two different people. If Brad stays true to who he is and where he came from - and all signs point to him doing just that - then the pressures of big-league racing won't be a problem. It's the same pressure his father felt as a driver and as a team owner and crew chief.

Racing is a game of ups and downs. Prior to Texas, Brad's year had been all downs. A good run at Texas has him pointed back in the right direction. He needs to keep doing what he's been doing and the results will improve.

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The IndyCar season opener at St. Petersburg was an interesting race. The final rundown shows the top five drivers representing five different teams. Justin Wilson, who lost his ride with Newman-Hass-Lanigan Racing after last season and driving for Dale Coyne - a long-time owner that has never won a race - was just 14 laps away from victory when he was passed on a restart by Ryan Briscoe.

Briscoe himself was a castaway; he was dumped by Chip Ganassi after a lackluster 2005 season. Ryan Hunter-Reay finished second for Vision Racing, the team's best finish. RHR spent the entire off-season looking for a ride after losing his seat at Rahal-Letterman Racing and was signed to drive the Vision car just a week prior to the start of the season.

It was an accident-filled race, with the first wreck coming on the initial green when Tony Kanaan hit polesitter Graham Rahal causing a melee in the first turn. Others involved in wrecks throughout the day included defending series champ Scott Dixon, Ed Carpenter, Danica Patrick, and Raphael Matos.

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Lightning indeed struck twice as Brawn F1 picked up where it left off in Australia by capturing the team's second straight Grand Prix. Jenson Button, who was nothing more than an afterthought for much of his F1 career, qualified on the pole and was leading when a monsoon struck in Malaysia. Officials waited out the storm for a short while before calling the race official. Interestingly, they only award half points when a race is canceled after just half the distance is completed. It will be interesting to see how that affects the championship later in the season.

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I attended the USAC Mopar National Midget Series race at Columbus Motor Speedway on Saturday night and saw Darren Hagen have his way with the field, leading all 40 laps en route to victory. The Columbus track is a nice facility although the flat, circular third-mile proves tough to pass on in just about every class that competes there. The only driver that was able to make a pass on the outside was fast qualifier Bobby East, but it took him all 40 laps to move back to sixth position after dropping two spots on the initial start. Inclement weather forced a cancelation of Sunday's scheduled event at Anderson.

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Patrick Sheltra was the news after the ARCA RE/MAX race at Daytona for the wrong reasons. He was slammed by Larry Hollenbeck in what will end up being one of the most spectacular crashes of the year. He spent some sheet time recovering from the wreck, but it didn't take him long to get back into the swing of things once back in the racecar as he claimed his first career series victory on Sunday at Salem Speedway.

Only 31 cars were on hand for the second race of the ARCA season. Long-time car owner and nine-time champion Larry Clement was not one of them as he has been forced to cut back his schedule due to sponsorship issues. It is a sign of the sad state of the sport overall when a cost-effective series like ARCA can't attract full fields.

Unfortunately, the Salem race was not televised. ARCA is probably the most versatile stock car series in the country, racing on superspeedways, some of the most historic short tracks in the country, fairgrounds dirt miles, and even a road course. Yet the races that make the series different are not televised. Hopefully once the economy turns around, SPEED will see the value in showing fans those dirt miles and the short tracks.

Rearview: Martinsville

2009-03-30T19:30:00.000-04:00

The first two-thirds of the spring short track season is now in the books with back-to-back races at Bristol and Martinsville. With the Virginia paperclip in the history books it should come as no surprise that Jimmie Johnson celebrated his first win of the year. He now has won five of the last six there and six of the last ten. In what was probably one of the most well executed races of his career, Johnson took the lead with 15 laps to go in a great side-by-side duel into turn three with Denny Hamlin. Contact was made and both cars slid up the track and both drivers did a great job keeping them pointed in the right direction. Johnson might be seen as too vanilla for some (including yours truly) but he did a masterful job on Sunday.

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Hamlin probably could have given Johnson a shot down the backstretch on the cooldown lap and then got out of his car and said what a dirty move it was that cost him the lead. But he didn't. A lot of people think Hamlin didn't pay his dues and that his rise to Cup was too quick. By conducting himself the way he did over the final 15 laps and in the post-race interviews, Hamlin is showing to be a coolheaded pro and more than deserving of his ride.

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For those wanting to see Kyle Busch make a mistake, Martinsville ought to have been your favorite weekend of the year so far. He overdrove turn three on Sunday and spun out, taking Scott Speed with him. On Monday, during the rain-delayed Truck race, he got into a late tussle with Kevin Harvick fighting for the lead and dinged the left rear fender into the tire. Trying to fix the damage without a trip to pit road, Busch scrubbed the inside backstretch wall. In doing so, he crossed the commitment line to pit road although he had no intention of pitting. NASCAR, rightfully so, penalized Busch to the tail end of the longest line. Say what you want about the commitment line (I think it's one of the most unnecessary rules ever implemented in NASCAR) but it's there and Busch crossed it. Since he did, the ruling was fair and just.

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Speaking of the commitment line, I laughed when I saw Hermie Sadler try to explain where it is located on NASCAR RaceDay. Sadler told the audience the commitment line is very close to the entrance to pit road, marked with an orange box painted onto the track that would ordinarily be an orange cone, and that it's very tricky because it doesn't give a lot of warning for the teams pitting inside turns three and four. It was a great piece...except that Sadler was really describing the line that tells the drivers they need to be running at pit road speed. The commitment line is about 150 feet back up the track at the end of the inside wall. Hopefully Sadler had it figured out by the time he strapped in for Monday's Truck race.

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Scott Speed was justifiably upset after being taken out by Busch's unforced error early on. He said following the race that it was the second time Busch had taken him out this year and was looking forward to a nice dinner or something from Busch as restitution. In all fairness to Busch, the first incident at Las Vegas was more like Busch crashing and Speed getting caught up in the aftermath. The incident on Sunday at Martinsville wasn't on purpose either, but Speed's anger is much more justified - particularly because he was running second when it happened.

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Isn't it odd how bad luck seems to find the same drivers week in and week out? Guys like Robby Gordon, who are otherwise talented and fast, but can't seem to get through a 500-lapper without flat tires and contact from other drivers putting him into the spin cycle.

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How about BrawnF1 picking up the win in the team's debut in Melbourne? The former Honda factory team nearly went out of business before former Ferarri designer Ross Brawn stepped in to purchase the team and keep it afloat. It's only the second time since 1975 that a team won a Grand Prix in it's debut. To put it into perspective, it would be something similar to someone buying out the assets of Bill Davis Racing on January 1 and then going on to win the Daytona 500.

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It was interesting to see Jason White race his way towards the front during the Truck race on Monday. White has been around the Nationwide and Truck series for almost a decade but has never driven in top-notch equipment. His current team might not be the most well-funded in the series but they are showing a commitment to be around for the long run. White's good run came to an end after a run-in with Matt Crafton. White moved Crafton out of the way in turns one and two, and Crafton immediately repaid the favor in turn three sending White around. It's no surprise because racing with the veterans at the front is a tough business but if White can show he can do it on a more regular basis he'll start to earn their respect. A nudge like the one he gave Crafton is the price of doing business at Martinsville when you're racing at the front, but so is giving the untested newcomer a trip in the spin cycle.

So who does owe the fans?

2009-03-27T11:43:00.000-04:00

The other day I posted my thoughts on what NASCAR owes the fans. Very simply, I wrote all they owe those of us who consider ourselves fans of the sport is an event that is officiated fairly and the rules are applied evenly among all of the entrants.

NASCAR may not owe the fans much, but that doesn't mean the fans should be overlooked. So who does owe the paying customer?

1. The racetracks. First and foremost the tracks owe the fans since in reality that's who the fans are giving their hard-earned money. The fans pay the tracks by buying tickets and concessions, and they make tens of millions of dollars per event. As a thank you, the fans should receive more than just a pat on the back on the way out the gate. Too often, the fans are hit with exorbatant ticket prices (some tracks even charge processing fees per ticket!), concession prices, and even hit them with a parking fee when they get there. It's one thing to pay a fee to park a motorhome in the infield, it's a bit much to ask the average ticket buyer who just wants to come in and watch the race with his family or friends to pay $10 just to park. The tracks should keep ticket prices in check and they should keep prices for food and drinks reasonable. Should a simple hamburger and 20 ounce soft drink cost $12.00? No it shouldn't. The tracks should also ensure there are activities in and around the track that allow the drivers to interact with the drivers. Autograph sessions planned and advertised well in advance are a good way to allow Average Joe a chance to meet his favorite driver, but the possibilities are limitless. At the Truck race in Mansfield the downtown street festival we threw every year brought in a dozen drivers, show cars, interactive displays, and all of the team transporters. Through the track's cooperation with the city, it didn't cost the track anything and the city only had to pay for the safety services (extra police and closing the roads) and it attracted thousands of people downtown for several hours. Some other tracks have similar events but it wouldn't hurt if all of them did.

2. The drivers. We hear about their new private jets and their cushy extistence in the motorhome lot, which is often guarded as tight as Fort Knox to ensure any misguided race fan doesn't end up there to bother for an autograph. We see the millions of dollars they make, even if they run 40th every week. We hear about all of the demands on their time but few of those demands involve the people paying the freight. Sure, they take care of their sponsors. But why are the sponsors here? To have their message spread to a large and loyal audience! The drivers need to be much more accessible to the fans. They shouldn't be forced to do it either, it's something they should want to do. These are the people buying gaudy, overpriced T-shirts and jackets to show their loyalty to you. They have every die cast ever put on the market on display in their living room. Their loyalty to their drivers has put millions of dollars in the drivers' pockets. Instead of hiding in those million-dollar motorhomes (that have been paid for in part by the people they hide from) the drivers should be out mingling with the fans more than they are. Take a page from Robby Gordon's book and go spend a Saturday night on the golf cart riding through the campgrounds and spend some quality time with the people who make the sport go around.

3. The television networks. The networks are how most of the people watch the sport and is the only means of doing so for the vast majority of the audience. Journalistic standards should be met. The commentators should report on the event and avoid attracting any additional attention to themselves. All participants should be involved in the coverage of the event, not just those running among the top ten. If someone running 34th drops out, the audience should be told why. No one is suggesting every car receive equal coverage - those running up front deserve to be shown more. Announcers should be impartial. Anyone with an ownership interest in a team should not be able to comment on an event in which that team is participating. Announcers shouldn't be wearing apparel with sponsor logos on them. Rather than being the show, as many of them want to be, the announcers need to do what they were hired to do and describe and analyze the action on the track. It's fine to have fun doing it, but the shenanigans and buffoonery that's passed off as professional commentary by some of them needs to go.

Does NASCAR owe the fans?

2009-03-25T09:01:00.002-04:00

Every year there are numerous blogs posted by racing fans out there stating NASCAR owes them something. Whether it's a photo finish every week or a tight points race, there is always some fan who thinks because he buys a ticket or turns the channel onto a NASCAR race that he is owed something.

I am from the opposite school of thought.

The only thing NASCAR owes the fans is a race where all 43 competitors are subjected to the same rules and enforcement.

The fans aren't guaranteed a photo finish in the Daytona 500. They aren't guaranteed 50 lead changes every week. They aren't guaranteed rumpled fenders and heated tempers at Bristol or Martinsville. They aren't guaranteed an autograph and they aren't guaranteed their favorite will win or even run near the front. They aren't guaranteed anything!

That's what sports is all about. If you knew going in that the Steelers would win by 35 points over the Browns, would you go? Maybe if you're a die hard Steelers fan, but for the rest of us knowing what's going to happen ahead of time goes against the fabric of what sports is all about. You buy your ticket or tune in on television to see what happens and who wins.

Sometimes you go to the ballpark and you get a game with seven homers and a 14-13 final score. The game might even be settled by a bottom-of-the-ninth grand slam. But the very next night, the same two teams could play and end up with a two-hitter and a 1-0 final score. Do the fans from the second game deserve some sort of refund because they didn't get the same game as the fans on the first night?

I don't follow stick and ball sports too much, but I do follow them enough to know I don't read too many blogs from fans wanting their money back after a 1-0 game.

There are still bloggers out there complaining that they were "ripped off" by NASCAR because the Daytona 500 was rain shortened. Was I disappointed? Sure, who wouldn't be? It's the biggest race in the sport and to have it be ended short is a bummer to say the least. Did NASCAR rip us off? No. (The discussion about the 3 P.M. start is for another time...) Since when is NASCAR in control of the weather and how long any particular rain shower will last?

It seems some are mad there aren't more wrecks and heated tempers at Bristol. The new track there isn't like the old track - there is room to race and room to pass. The old track was a terrible racetrack. The narrow groove led to caution after caution and kept the actual racing to a minimum. It's funny, the people who complain the racing is bad at California now complain that actual racing at Bristol is boring!

Racing isn't about wrecks and lost tempers. If that happens as a result of close competition that's one thing. But to expect it as "the show" is something else entirely. Like I said earlier in the week, if that's the only reason you tune in, there are demo derbies at thousands of county fairs all across the country.

NASCAR does a fairly good job at giving us what they owe us: an event governed fairly and equally among all the competitors entered. As long as the rules are the same for the guy qualified 43rd as they are for the guy on the pole, that's fine with me. Whatever the drivers deliver on the racetrack once the green flag drops is fine with me because I understand sometimes it will be a barn burner and sometimes it might enduce a yawn or two.

Smith's misstatement could lead to PR fiasco

2009-03-24T11:06:00.001-04:00

I read a post on the NASCAR Insiders site yesterday that opened my eyes a little. I had read the blurb about Lowe's Motor Speedway president Marcus Smith's status as a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and much like everyone else thought, "that's interesting" with a little chuckle and moved on.

But after a couple of days - and not seeing this story touched after the initial coverage of it - I started to wonder why the story doesn't warrant more follow up from the media hordes that follow NASCAR on a weekly basis. Particularly since Bristol is an SMI track and we all know how Bruton Smith loves to work the media during his race weekends. (Although, strangely, there was a distinct silence from the Smith camp over the weekend at Bristol...)

You can try to dismiss the inclusion of the word "graduate" in any communication from SMI, whether it's a press release or its annual report, as an oversight. That's possible, but that also assumes no one that proofread those communications (including, presumably Marcus Smith himself) found the mistake. Having crafted hundreds of press releases myself, I generally have as many sets of eyes look at it as possible before I send something out to the media. Whether it's a client catching something they'd like changed or a colleague who finds a typo, I have had numerous errors fleshed out and changed before I hit the send button.

Once, embarrassingly, I confused a sponsor's name with that of a competitor's product. Both were similarly named, and unfortunately, I didn't catch it until it was sent. I fell on the sword and sent out a revised release with a note of correction and an apology. I didn't misrepresent any fact, but I did make a factual error. It falls upon the writer to correct it, and I did.

I also know people who spend months working on annual reports for publicly traded companies. Every fact - whether it's a financial statement or a statement of someone's credentials - is looked at intensely and verified over and over. The SEC does not like to see mistakes in these filings and there is a large team of people whose only job through most of the winter is to ensure the information in that report is one-hundred percent accurate. Not 99.9%.

SMI is a public company. I don't pretend to understand any of the rules that govern how they can communicate with the public (there are complex rules because anything they say can influence their stock price). However, I do know that misrepresenting facts in a press release or an annual report can cause the company serious problems such as fraud charges and huge fines from regulators.

It may be a simple mistake. And those are the easy kinds to fix. Simply send out an update to the media with a quote from Marcus Smith saying "we goofed up, I did not graduate although I attended for four years and completed all of the requirements for graduation. I simply did not file the paperwork and did not participate in the graduation ceremony." Boom, done. Simple as that.

As someone who did file the paperwork and did participate in a college graduation ceremony, I can tell you it's not something you would forget. Of course this was back in the day prior to Internet access, so I had to wait in long lines to file the paperwork so maybe that's why I remember it, but if you ask me I can tell you that yes, I did graduate.

I wouldn't have to go back and have to ask the University of Toledo for any sort of clarification. Smith not giving an answer and saying he was "checking with the university" seems shady and disingenuous. If one of the loud voices in the media center wanted to pick this one up and run with it, it could become a major PR disaster for the track and SMI as a whole.

Rearview: Bristol

2009-03-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

Historically, the racing at Bristol Motor Speedway is close and intense, with too many cars in too little space. The combination left many drivers with frayed nerves and hot tempers. But if the recently completed weekend at Bristol is any indication, the era of the 15-caution flag race at Bristol is over.

The old concrete surface was a single-groove nightmare that didn't allow the drivers to race at all. The only way to pass was to move someone out of the way, and using the bumper often meant sending someone spinning into the wall.

The new surface and it's compound banking allows for two and even three-wide racing. There is still plenty of hardnosed racing and some bumping and banging, but the number of wrecks has dropped dramatically. I've always hoped for the return of a layer of asphalt at Bristol (because it's a better racing surface) but I have no real complaints about the new concrete at Bristol. However, many so-called fans are upset because there are fewer crashes. There are thrill shows at most short tracks and county fairs where cars are smashed beyond recognition. Crashes are a part of racing, but like anything in sports, you aren't guaranteed to see them. If that's the reason why you're watching racing at Bristol, you're better off taking your family to the demo derby at the county fair.

The racing is reminiscent of the old Bristol when drivers could run high or low all day long. The CoT is the limiting factor right now; once the car is more developed it will make for even better competition front to back.

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It's about time that a JGR driver closed the deal at Bristol, isn't it? How many laps has the three-driver team led at BMS without going to victory lane? To no one's surprise it was Kyle Busch who drove to victory lane. Busch let one get away on Saturday when a wheel got loose on pit road. If Busch's relatively short history in the sport tells us anything it's that he needs little motivation to win, and any little misstep along the way only drives him harder. When that wheel rolled away on Saturday it ended his chance to win that race but it served notice to the Cup guys on Sunday that it wasn't going to be their day.

Busch took a backhanded poke at Dale Earnhardt, Jr. following his win, stating he would rather win races and hear the jeers of the crowd than be the fan favorite and not get to victory lane. Of course that's just going to further fan the flames from Jr. Nation, but the numbers don't lie. Since Busch vacated Hendrick Motorsports to make room for Earnhardt, he has scored ten wins and 20 top-five finishes in 41 races. In contrast, Earnhardt has one win and ten top-five finishes. In all of 2008, Casey Mears (the driver who took over Busch's ride in the No. 5 car) picked up just one top-five and six top-ten finishes.

Jr. Johnson used to say it's easier to slow someone down than speed him up when he would talk about how he wanted his drivers to drive. Busch may have been hard to handle - his comments after winning the first CoT race at Bristol in 2007 are an example - but he gets the job done as well as anyone in the sport right now and he's only going to get better. Rarely does Rick Hendrick make a mistake, and I doubt he would ever admit as much, but keeping Mears and letting Busch go to JGR is one of the biggest errors in judgment in the history of his race team.

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For all the heat Earnhardt, Jr. takes because of his choice in crew chiefs I think he's right to lash back at the media and tell them to lay off. Never in the sport's history has one driver been critiqued as heavily as Earnhardt. It's still a mystery to some why he's quite as popular as he is. There is no doubt that Earnhardt is a good driver, and he still has time to become a great driver. But with each week that passes and he's not out performing Jimmie Johnson of Jeff Gordon, the chances of him becoming one of the sport's elite drivers lessens. Regardless of what his fans want or what the media says, the comfort between driver and crew chief is the single most important aspect of building a successful team. Earnhardt says he wants Tony Eury, Jr. calling the shots for him and until Earnhardt changes his tune there won't be a change on top of the pit box.

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For a short while it looked like a couple of the little guys might have a good day at Bristol. Dave Blaney and Todd Bodine ran well in the very early laps but before the race hit lap 75 both had been spun out and were behind the wall. These teams might not have the biggest budget, and it's likely they wouldn't have been able to run to the end of the race anyhow, but it's nice to see them be able to compete with the best in the business even for a short while.

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Marcos Ambrose showed he's the real deal with a solid top-ten finish on Sunday. I had a lot of fun with Marcos during his rookie year in the Truck Series and could tell even then that he would have a solid future in the sport. It's interesting to watch his progression, from the Trucks to Nationwide and now Cup. Considering he had a successful career in Australia before coming to America one could easily see how he might have wanted to jump directly into a Cup car, but he started from scratch and learned from the ground up and now he's reaping the rewards. It's a good lesson for some of the young kids out there who think success in Legends cars or Bandoleros means they deserve a shot at a Nationwide ride.

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The racing world might have been shocked by Justin Allgaier's fifth-place finish on Sunday. Don't be. He's a terrific short track racer with a lot of experience on the highbanks at places like Salem and Winchester. He won at Salem and Toledo last year on his way to the ARCA championship. He'll do quite well in the Nationwide car this year and if Sam Hornish and/or David Stremme continue to struggle he could be on the fast track to a Cup ride soon.

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It's a shame to see the troubles of the No. 28 team. Travis Kvapil has done a solid job behind the wheel but the team has never been able to find the sponsorship to keep the team going. Once he fell out of the top-35 it was a clue that the team wouldn't continue to run that car without sponsorship. Unfortunately, his teammate Paul Menard also finds himself out of the top-35 and faces the prospect of missing races unless the Yates team can pick up the performance of that car very soon.

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It's a shame to see Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix announce it will cease operations in April. The track has been there for 50 years and its closing should tell racing fans everywhere that their short track could be next. If you like watching NASCAR racing on television, do yourself a favor and visit your local short track. Almost every short track in the country runs some sort of special event throughout the year that gives you the most bang for your buck - whether it's a long-distance feature (some tracks run 100 or 200 lappers a couple times a year), or a special touring series event (such as USAC, the USARacing Pro Cup Series or the ASA Late Models), or even something crazy like a school bus figure-8 race - there's always something cool to check out. Most tracks average a hundred cars or so spread out over three divisions and give you a solid three to four hours of entertainment for ten or fifteen bucks.

Off-week Odds and Ends

2009-03-16T08:21:00.001-04:00

I heard a discussion on Sirius NASCAR Radio the other day about what the listeners felt made a good race. That's a great topic because there's no real right or wrong answer because what's good for me might not be good for the guy sitting next to me.

For the majority of race fans out there, a good race is one in which their favorite driver does particularly well. It might not be a win, but a top-five or even a top-ten finish. For some drivers even making the race and finishing somewhere near the lead lap with the car in one piece is a good day and their fans also go away happy.

The hosts, Rick Benjamin and Chocolate Myers, asked the fans their thoughts and almost to a person they said that passing makes a good race. Some said they thought restrictor plates should be used more because the races at Daytona and Talladega always are exciting with the endless passes for position. Most also said they thought races at Pocono and Fontana were boring because the cars get too spread out.

One of the best races I ever watched in person was at little quarter-mile Anderson Speedway. It was the 1994 Anderson 400 for the old ASA. Twenty-six cars started for 400 laps around the bullring. For those who don't know it, Anderson is the track that Dick Trickle first described as "flying jet fighters in a gynmasium". The action is close and there isn't a lot of room to move if trouble breaks out in front of you.

According to many, if you looked at the stats this could be seen as a "boring" race. Winner Steve Holzhausen led all 400 laps. No lead changes to some means a boring show, right? Not in this case. Mike Eddy was pounding on the back door for much of the race and chased hard the last 100 laps, finishing second by less than a car length. There was a lot of short track bumps and thumps along the way too. some of the drivers that could have challenged Holzhausen found the going a little rough and spent some time in the infield for repairs.

Passing doesn't necessarily equate to a good race to me. In my eyes, restrictor plate racing tends to get to be a little boring because the best cars don't necessarily finish up front. The action seems fake to me because of the numerous rules set to keep all of the cars in one big pack. It's just not my cup of tea.

To me a good race has the following: a competitive race at the front; action and competition through the field; drivers running hard from green to checkered; and maybe a few plot twists and unexpected occurrences along the way.

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A quick note to Chocolate Myers, who was discussing the chances for victory by teams that lease engines from other teams: he had said that the first driver to win with a leased engine was Joe Nemechek who won at Kansas in 2004 with MB2 Motorsports. Engine leases have become popular in recent years as many smaller teams can no longer afford their own engine departments. However, engine leases date back decades. In 1984 Richard Petty picked up wins No. 199 and 200 with engines leased from the DiGard team.

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We've seen a lot of talk lately about the start-and-park phenomenon that has now seemingly infiltrated the Cup Series. It's been a part of the Truck and Nationwide series for many years and now that the economics are making more sense, it's taken hold in the Cup Series too. I don't understand the outcry from the fans. If you watch 43 cars take the green flag and on lap 20 there are 41 running, can you really tell the difference?

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It's neat to see the Mattioli family and the ARCA RE/MAX Series name the recently announced Mansfield race after the late Tim Richmond. The Richmond family was from Ashland, which is 20 minutes from Mansfield. Richmond also had a lot of success at the Mattioli's Pocono track, winning a couple of times there including his final career victory in 1987. It would be neat to see the Richmond family in attendance and see one of his old cars come out of the Hendrick museum and be displayed to the fans. Hopefully the Mattiolis can make that happen.

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I have yet to have one kid tell me "I really like that cartoon gopher on Fox." So why do we continually read comments from bloggers and journalists that say the character has found a following with children? And if the character is so popular with kids, why isn't it showing up in the ratings?

Smith Throwing Stones from the Proverbial Glass House

2009-03-10T09:07:00.001-04:00

Sirius NASCAR Radio's Dave Moody has a great column this week on Bruton Smith's comments about Homestead-Miami Speedway and NASCAR's decision to host its championship weekend in south Florida.

Smith is one of the more outlandish characters in NASCAR racing; he's always brash and never shies away from controversy. In fact, he often likes to start one when things are a little slow in the NASCAR news circles just to get his tracks a little more publicity.

I won't mention Smith's comments here. He has his reasons to say those things and if you can chew gum and walk at the same time you probably can see right through them. He needs to do what he can do to paint the best picture of his facilities as he can. Afterall, he has shareholders to answer to and they don't like seeing all the empty seats at the two flagship properties in the SMI portfolio, Charlotte and Atlanta.

Smith can rail against Homestead or any other track on the Sprint Cup schedule all he wants, but he needs to remember the old addage about pointing fingers at someone else - there are always three more pointed right back at yourself.

Homestead doesn't have 120,000 seats. It has somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000. And each one of them is full for the Sprint Cup finale. Atlanta, meanwhile, has the aforementioned 120,000 seats. Most in the media would agree that on a good day they have 70,000 on hand for a Sprint Cup race. The claims of 94,000 this past weekend are almost certainty inflated, although there is no doubt that the speedway's $39 ticket promotion worked and did put more people in the grandstands than other recent races at AMS.

Charlotte is another story. Located in the self-proclaimed hub of the motorsports world, the Charlotte track runs three Sprint Cup races every year with thousands of empty seats at each. Those seats have been empty when the country was rolling along in good economic times. How empty will they be when the country finds itself deep in a recession?

Smith's tracks aren't the only struggling to sell tickets. All of the tracks that overbuilt their grandstands during the boom times in the late 1990s and early 2000s now find themselves with an abundance of inventory on Sprint Cup weekends. Michigan and Dover, two tracks that had impressive streaks of sellouts until the past couple of years, now struggle to sell all of their tickets. But both manage to put in well over 100,000 to their two Cup races each year.

Why don't we hear from the track presidents at the facilities that do sell all their tickets deriding the SMI facilities that don't? Why doesn't Jeff Boerger, for instance, speak out about taking away one of Atlanta's dates and moving it to Kansas? After all, Kansas sells out every year and Atlanta hasn't sold out since Alan Kulwicki clinched the 1992 championship there.

I like the SMI facilities. Atlanta is a great track and is comfortable to work at, either in the media center and press box or on pit road. Las Vegas is beautiful and Smith's renovations have made it one of the sport's showplace venues. Bristol's makeover into the Colloseum of Motorsports is something to behold. The motorsports community anxiously awaits to see what Smith has planned for New Hampshire and Kentucky, both recent additions to the SMI family.

But how about making sure your own house is in order before you get critical about someone else's? If Atlanta had been selling out for the past decade and only started having problems selling tickets due to the economic downturn that would be one thing, but those problems have been there for years. Fix those problems and then start worrying about what everyone else is doing.

Rearview: Atlanta

2009-03-09T13:56:00.001-04:00

The spring Atlanta weekend is always one of my favorites of the entire year. Just like Las Vegas, I always enjoyed the original layout at Atlanta but also enjoy the current layout too. The asphalt at Atlanta has aged over the past 12 years and it makes it virtually impossible to build a tire that will last as long as tank of gas will. The drop-off in times from the start of a run to the end of a run sometimes reaches three seconds, and that's why you saw everyone on pit road for tires with a green-white-checkered finish on Sunday. It's the same shape but it's certainly not the same track that saw Geoff Bodine blister a 197+ mph lap back in 1997.

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Was there any doubt that Kurt Busch would pass Carl Edwards and claim the win during that two-lap dash to the finish? Edwards only took two tires and was hoping for a repeat caution to give him the win, but it didn't come. Edwards showed exactly how talented he is by muscling his car alongside Jeff Gordon - who had four fresh tires - for almost a lap and a half before settling back into third.

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Brian Vickers was in contention for the win until the final caution flag and ensuing pit stop. Although he didn't get off pit road as well as everyone else, he has to be pleased with the performance of his team on the intermediate tracks to start 2009. Vickers' first win at Talladega is still seen by many as a tainted victory after contact between himself and Jimmie Johnson took out Johnson and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and he's certainly a candidate to pick up another win, especially on a 1.5-miler.

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The final yellow came out due to rubber debris shed off Robby Gordon's car in turn two and down the backstretch. Gordon obviously knew he had a problem and had slowed dramatically. Why not get the car down below the white line and allow that tire to come apart out of the racing groove?

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Atlanta always produces some of the best three-wide racing of the year. So why do television directors chose to show us lap after lap of the leader running a couple of seconds ahead of the rest of the field?

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It's not too often that a former Indianapolis 500 winner and a Daytona 500 winner crash together, but that's exactly what happened when Sam Hornish and Bill Elliott wrecked on Sunday. Elliott won at Daytona in 1985 and 1987 while Hornish won at Indianapolis in 2006. I wonder what the players from the SuperBowl in 1985 were doing during the 2009 SuperBowl. No doubt that none of them were playing; yet NASCAR's "SuperBowl" winner from 22 years ago was in the field for this year's running.

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It's refreshing to read comments from David Pearson over the weekend. Pearson has maintained a low profile in recent years and maybe we're starting to understand why. Pearson doesn't like the fact that the cars are all the same and NASCAR mandates what shocks and springs the teams have to run. I still maintain that there is a correlation to the introduction of common templates and the drop in television ratings and at-track attendance. Yes it's impossible to go back to true stock cars, and I don't think anyone wants that, but it certainly possible to go back to cars that look stock. The competition among manufacturers is a big part of what drove the sport through the 1980s and 1990s and the fact it's no longer a viable aspect of the sport is a reason why a lot of fans have seen their interest wane.

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I am all for safety on the racetrack, but enough with the debris cautions. It's predictable that any time a round of green flag stops is approaching in the Camping World Truck Series - particularly when the field is spread out - that a piece of debris will be spotted and the caution will come out. SPEED cameras never showed whatever debris was found during Saturday's Truck race. The new pit stop rules seem to work well under caution but the Fontana race showed green flag stops lead to tough choices and some odd strategy. It sure seems like the way to prevent those tough choices was to throw competition cautions and allow the field to pit under yellow. The old ASA had competition cautions if there was a 100-lap green flag run. Of course races rarely went that long without a legitimate caution but at least they were up front about what they were doing. Either show the debris or call it what it is, a competition caution.

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There weren't a lot of on-track incidents over the course of the two days of racing action as the Atlanta track offers a lot of room and multiple grooves. But many of those incidents that did occur on Saturday and Sunday seemed to involve many of the usual suspects. If these guys continue to perform like they have been, the races at Bristol and Martinsville should have a record number of yellows.

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Elliott Sadler was half a lap away from winning the Daytona 500. Where has he been since? The good news is he did pick up his best finish since Daytona on Sunday, but the bad news is was still a 20th-place run. If that doesn't prove how little the racing at Daytona has in common with every other track on the schedule, nothing will.

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Terry Cook has opened the Truck season strongly, taking home a third at Daytona and a fifth at Atlanta. It's the first time in his career he's started the season with two top-fives in the first three races. Cook hasn't missed a Truck race since the last race of the 1997 season, and like many other drivers in the series right now is looking for added sponsorship. With the number of full-time teams markedly lower than last season, team owner Jim Harris has to be looking at picking up some top-fives and contending for a win or two this season. Although Cook dropped out with a punctured oil cooler at California, teammate David Starr ended up fourth giving Harris a top five finish in each of the season's first three races. Billy Ballew (Kyle Busch) and Steve Germain (Todd Bodine) also have three top fives in three races.

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Chad McCumbee doesn't have any guarantee he'll be racing every week but he's sure making a case for it on the racetrack. He followed up a third-place run in California with a sixth-place finish in Atlanta. McCumbee and crew chief Bobby Dotter are a perfect match; both are excellent at getting the most out of their equipment, even if they don't have the resources of some of the larger teams.

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The third caution on Sunday was for one of the most unusual reasons I've ever witnessed in an auto race. The gasman for the No. 47 team, Jimmy Watts, crossed pit road into the grass to retrieve a loose tire. He had to venture about halfway out to the racetrack to get the tire and that drew the yellow. He was suspended for the remainder of the race and is waiting to hear if there are any more reprocussions from the incident. Many will get a laugh from it, and some will go the opposite way and say he shouldn't ever be allowed to work in the garage again. I venture to guess NASCAR made their point on Sunday and we don't have to worry about anything like this happening again any time soon. It's easy to judge it as a boneheaded move (and it was) but unless you've experienced what's going on in the heat of the moment it's difficult to understand. I'm sure he wanted to prevent a caution from coming out, but regardless of what happened the yellow was going to come out. I understand he's a firefighter in Mooresville as well, and after watching him venture out next to the racetrack with cars zooming by at 180 miles per hour climbing up a ladder to battle a blaze shouldn't sound too scary.

Gardner would be a worthy inductee into NASCAR HoF

2009-03-04T09:02:00.002-05:00

The construction on the gleaming new structure is rapidly reaching its conclusion. The office building next door is reaching new heights every day and will soon be ready for occupancy. Commemorative bricks are being sold to fans so everyone that walks through the doors can read that John Q. Public was there when Dale Earnhardt won the Daytona 500 in 1998 or some other memorable moment in NASCAR's history.

Soon, there will be the matter of who receives the honor of induction to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

There is little doubt that people like Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Cale Yarbourough deserve induction. NASCAR's founder, Bill France, Sr. should also have his bust on display. Owners like Rick Hendrick and Leonard Wood should also eventually be so honored.

There is an entire generation of participants - both drivers and owners - that are often overlooked because of simple timing. They weren't around during the romantic, formative days of the sport and they aren't seen on television now when someone who runs 40th every week can make more in a single year than many made after 20 years of racing every week.

The 1970s and 1980s produced some of the most intense competition - real competition - that the sport has ever seen. Teams were allowed to exhibit creativity. Cars looked like their street counterparts and aerodynamics didn't hold them to the ground. Drivers used brute force to guide their cars around the racetrack and speeds seemed at most impossible and at the very least insane.

Drivers like Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt were discovered during this era. Others, like Pearson and Yarbourough, wound their careers down. The King saw his last days of competitiveness during this time. It was a golden era in the sport's long history.

It was also during this time that one man's racing team helped start the transition from good ol' boys racing on Saturday nights to professionals representing not only their team and their sport to multi-million dollar consumer corporations.

Sure, NASCAR had moved away from the dusty bullrings of the southeast in the early 1970s and had transitioned to superspeedways. But many of the participants had retained their short track mentality. Contracts didn't exist. Sponsorships were often week-to-week, and usually came from a local auto dealer or some other automotive-related product.

That all changed in 1976 when DiGard Racing signed Gatorade to be the team's sponsor.

The team had already signed Darrell Waltrip to a long term contract the previous year. The green-and-white colors with the orange lightning bolt over the rear wheels soon became iconic as Waltrip won 25 races in a Gatorade car over the next five years.

Waltrip also found out that a contract meant what it says when he was forced to buy his way out of it to leave the team in 1981. DiGard replaced Waltrip and went on to further success with Bobby Allison, scoring the win at Daytona in 1982 and following it with a championship in 1983.

All told, DiGard scored 43 wins at the Cup level. That might not seem like a lot compared to Hendrick and Roush, both of whom have won double or even triple that number. But in the days of competing against Petty Enterprises and Jr. Johnson with one car, 43 wins is an incredible number.

Many of DiGard's ideas are carried on today. Sponsorships are activated in supermarkets across the country. Show cars travel millions of miles to thousands of destinations. Teams run multiple cars and have dedicated research and development departments. Teams lease engines to other teams.

And Waltrip, who at one time was as outspoken against DiGard Racing as anyone in the garage area following his acrimonious departure from the team, knows that he wouldn't have had the type of career or made the millions of dollars he did if not for team owner Bill Gardner. Waltrip also knows that virtually every driver in the garage area today owes a large part of his fortune to the Connecticut businessman that revolutionized team ownership in NASCAR.

Gardner might not be the most famous owner to come and go in NASCAR. Many of today's fans probably don't know who he is; afterall, he last entered a Sprint Cup race in 1987. And he may not be worthy of the first class in NASCAR's Hall of Fame - in fact, he might not be in the first six or eight classes.

But there should be little doubt that Gardner - the man who helped corporate America discover our favorite sport - is worthy of induction to NASCAR's Hall of Fame.

Rear View: Las Vegas

2009-03-02T10:34:00.004-05:00

The third weekend of NASCAR's 2009 season is in the books and it's one for the history books. Sure, Matt Kenseth's bid to become the first driver to sweep the first three races of the season came up drastically short but the record number of yellows in both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races will ensure the fans' memory of the weekend will last much longer than last weekend's events in Fontana.

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It's hard to maintain any enthusiasm for the Nationwide races. The series regulars have been overshadowed by Cup interlopers for so long that it's really like watching a Cup race. So when many of the Cup regulars took themselves out of contention with mistakes on Saturday it allowed many drivers who never get a mention on a broadcast to contend for a top ten. Although Cup drivers took the first three positions it was great to see drivers like Jason Leffler, Michael McDowell, Brendan Gaughan, and Justin Allgaier in contention at the end. Although he is a Cup driver the high attrition rate allowed Jeff Burton to drive a wrecked racecar to tenth at the end too. Just outside the top ten were Scott Wimmer, Kenny Hendrick, Morgan Shepherd, Kenny Wallace, and Tony Raines, all driving for independent and under-financed stand-alone Nationwide teams. In fact, positions eleven through 19 on Saturday were filled with Nationwide-only drivers and teams.

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It was surprising to see so many drivers take themselves out due to wrecks on Saturday. Kyle Busch, David Ragan, and Denny Hamlin all crashed on their own. Each was driving a car capable of winning. Busch pushed too hard early on and got loose under another car and took out polesitter Scott Speed. Rather than all of the buffoonery in the booth during practice coverage, it would be interesting to see SPEED's experts look at the aerodynamic differences between the spoiler of a Nationwide car and the wing on a Sprint Cup car. There were numerous instances of a car getting loose underneath another in the Nationwide race and fewer instances in the Cup race. Hamlin's crash late in the race was particularly brutal because neither he nor Mike Bliss could do anything to prevent it.

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RacingOne.com's Pete Pistone believes there were very few seats to be had on Sunday for the Shelby 427, but I disagree. While the crowd was definitely large, there were indeed thousands of empty seats in turns three and four, including entire sections of seats near the fence. It's hard to see those on television because they are camouflaged to appear full. I understand why everyone pays attention to how many people are in attendance at each event - especially with tracks angling for dates - but this argument is probably not going to be decided in a down economy. Empty seats will be seen at virtually every stop on the tour, particularly at tracks that have expanded their grandstands in recent years. It used to be heresy to think there might be a race at Michigan or Dover that would have empty seats but that's exactly what happened last year. Now even Las Vegas has found it's hard to sell out. Does that mean Bristol could also see some empties in a couple of weeks?

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Late in the race Darrell Waltrip pontificated whether Kyle Busch would be credited with winning from the pole or winning from 43rd after taking the green flag at the back of the pack due to an engine change. There were other drivers that qualified in odd-numbered positions that had to drop to the back so Busch wasn't at the tail end of that line when the green waved. Regardless of where he was when he took the green flag, Busch is credited with starting from the pole position so he becomes the first Cup driver to start first and finish first at LVMS.

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It's not too often you see Jeff Gordon make a mistake but that's exactly what he did trying to get to pit road under green late in the race on Sunday. Not only did his miss pit road but he locked the brakes up in doing so and then blew out the left front tire trying to get back to pit road. But in true Rainbow Warrior fashion, his team was able to make repairs to his car and keep him in contention. How often did Gordon have problems in the late 90s only to see Ray Evernham and crew rally on pit road and get Gordon back in contention to win? Gordon didn't pull it off on Sunday but to finish that well in a car that had been seriously damaged is a credit to the driver and the team.

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We saw Dale Earnhardt, Jr. throw away his chances at Daytona with an unforced error on pit road and his teammate Jimmie Johnson did it at Las Vegas by sliding through his pit during his last green flag stop. I wonder if Rick Hendrick will rent out a non-Cup racetrack somewhere just so his drivers can practice getting on pit road and getting properly into their pit stalls? Sure, Vegas has a difficult pit road entry but who said racing was supposed to be easy? And besides, there were many drivers that didn't have any problems at all getting onto pit road this weekend.

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Richard Petty Motorsports has crashed back to earth following an unlikely run at the front in Daytona. AJ Allmendinger and Reed Sorenson were 33rd and 34th respectively. Sorenson crashed on his own in the middle stages of the race. The only bright spot for the team was Kasey Kahne who finished eleventh after doing a masterful job of avoiding a crashed Aric Almirola on lap 144. I wonder if this team will make it through the season without a driver change. Team owner George Gillett already tried to improve his situation in the off season but a lawsuit meant he had to keep a driver he wasn't happy with. I remember a time when drivers were fired for non performance all the time. I bet the team's new contracts will all have a clause in them that allow just such a thing.

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Both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races went well beyond their television windows as a result of the record number of caution flags. The Cup race went off the air sometime past 8:30 on the east coast, delaying the start of Fox's Sunday night primetime lineup. If the network's primetime lineup gets delayed often enough it could be the way we get back to a reasonable start time for Cup races.

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I've been a Mark Martin fan for his entire career, dating back to his championship days in the ASA. I expect Martin will be competitive in the No. 5 this season, but what exactly makes people think he will be a contender for the championship in that car? He wasn't ever able to score a championship during the peak of his career and that's when he was clearly the No. 1 driver for the Roush team. Now he's over 50 and can easily be seen as the fourth driver in a four-driver lineup. I don't think the No. 5 is or ever has been an R&D effort but that's not quite a championship caliber ride just yet.

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It was humorous to hear Mike Joy revise history somewhat with the tale on how Kyle Busch became known to some as "Wild Thing". Joy is usually the last one of the Fox crew prone to unnecessary hype and he is dead on in his recollection that Busch was extremely fast but somewhat out of control when he made his Cup debut at LVMS in 2004. And there can easily be comparisons made to how Busch was then and the fictional pitcher played by Charlie Sheen in the movie Major League. But those comparisons weren't made then. I had never heard of Busch referred to as "Wild Thing" until early last year when Darrell Waltrip tried to pin that tag on Busch for his spectacularly aggressive nature while winning several races. For most of Busch's career in NASCAR he's been known as "Shrub" since he is Kurt Busch's little brother. I'd like to hear Joy's recollection on how Tony Stewart came to be known as "Smoke".

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It sure did take a long time for the ServiceMaster track crew to clean up the mess after Paul Menard crashed on lap 270. I wonder if that's an indication on how long an actual ServiceMaster crew would take to clean up a routine spill in an office somewhere.

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Jeff Gluck of NASCAR Scene asks in his blog following the Vegas race if Kyle Busch could be the greatest of all time. There is no doubting Busch's talent, and his win totals in all three of NASCAR's top divisions bear that out. It used to be that winning in all three divisions was a difficult task, but Busch has managed to do just that in just three weeks so far in 2009. But the greatest of all time? Jeff Gordon was once seen as a lock to match Petty and Earnhardt in the championship column but has recently found it hard to win races. Three years ago that sounded absurd. Right now the planets are aligned and Busch is having his way with the competition. But let's hold off a while before we annoint him as the next coming of The King. It's hard to say what's going to happen in two years much less then next 15.

Up and Down Day for Hometowners

2009-02-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

It always seems like certain drivers become the center of attention whenever their chosen racing series heads to their home track. Back in the day, Michigan drivers Bob Senneker and Mike Eddy would always battle it out at their hometown tracks. Senneker would rise to the occasion at his home track at Berlin, while Eddy was the man to beat at Tri-City. If the "wrong" driver happened to win, the officials almost felt like there would be a mutiny in the grandstands by riotous fans.

In later years, Johnny Benson was tough at Berlin too. In fact, for 19 consecutive ASA races at Berlin a Michigan driver went to victory lane. Now, Benson is a perennial favorite when the Trucks go to his other home track, Michigan International Speedway. He has three top-five finishes and was just a couple of inches away from his second win there last June.

So it's no surprise that the Las Vegas drivers jumped up and took the spotlight at their home track on Friday. But it was an up and down day for the hometowners.

Brendan Gaughan's day started on the up end of the spectrum but ended down in the dumps. He was fastest in the morning Nationwide practice, his first attempt in NASCAR's second series at his hometown track. But then two hours after setting the fastest lap in the first session, Gaughan's day went up in smoke as he wrecked in turns three and four, doing heavy damage to his car. He's now faced with the daunting task of qualifying and racing his backup car, or the repaired primary, without any practice laps.

Conversely, Kyle Busch's day started off poorly but ended spectacularly. He had engine failure in the early moments of the first Cup practice and missed most of the session as the team replaced the burned out bullet. Once it was time to qualify, his early day problems were nothing but a memory as he blistered the track record to take the pole for Sunday's Shelby 427.

It will be an all-Busch front row as 2004 series champ Kurt Busch claimed the second position in qualifying. The older Busch has been off the radar in recent years, particularly after moving to the Penske operation. In contrast to his days with Roush, Penske has reigned in the brash and outspoken kid and turned him into a polished and professional adult. The only thing that has been missing has been the same level of performance, and the new Dodge engine could put Kurt Busch back at the front of the field on a more routine basis.

Kyle will be forced to take the green at the tail of the field due to the engine change, but will line up at the front of the field on the grid and on the pace laps. While he might not technically take the green flag from the pole, the qualifying results give hometown Vegas fans their first all-Vegas front row in their own race in the track's history.

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It was noted on the SPEED broadcast of Cup practice that Roush Fenway Racing has signed 35 sponsors for its program in 2009. Is there anyone better at creating viable sponsor programs than Roush's marketing team? He even manages to create programs with competitors (such as Con-way Freight in the NCWTS and R+L Carriers in a limited Cup role) and seemingly leave everyone happy. The best sponsorships don't just involve companies writing a check to the race team, but they include opportunities for the sponsors to directly create added revenue from their racing involvement, and Roush knows this. Many other team owners do too, but not all. Particularly in this challenging economy, the days of a company simply writing a check just to see it's logo on a racecar are over.