Saturday night, I watched an historic race. It wasn't historic in the sense that anything remarkable happened, that some record was finally broken, or that some unlikely winner stumbled into Victory Lane at the end of the night. Instead, it was most likely the final time one of NASCAR's top series will visit the track, ending a tradition stretching back to 1982. And don't get me wrong, if I thought history were marching in the right direction, I wouldn't be so melancholy over this move.
But I'm unconvinced.
Regardless of the names it's held in the last few seasons, the track outside Indianapolis, Indiana will always be Indianapolis Raceway Park to me. (It may be, yet again; after the announcement a few weeks ago, supposedly Lucas Oil is reconsidering their naming rights.) IRP was never to be confused with the larger, more prestigious Indianapolis Motor Speedway a few miles away. Instead, it was a proving ground, hosting minor-league stock car and open-wheel races and showcasing dragsters on the adjacent quarter-mile drag strip. The kids who cut their teeth wheeling midget cars around IRP harbored hopes of, one day, being asked to drive an IndyCar around the Brickyard. Some, like Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman, ended up fulfilling those dreams in NASCAR instead.
But not all that long ago, the worlds of NASCAR and Indy rarely intersected. There were a few drivers who made the transition now and then; Mario Andretti was an Indy driver who won a race or two in NASCAR, and others like Tom Sneva would try their fortunes in stock cars while making a career in open-wheel racing. But the closest NASCAR teams would come to racing their "taxi cabs" at the Brickyard would be a string of races in the 1970s at the now-closed Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California, a near-carbon-copy of the rectangular Indy layout that was shuttered in 1980.
A few miles outside of Indianapolis, though, sat the short track in Clermont, Indiana. And while the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was too prestigious to allow anything but Indy cars on the pavement, Indianapolis Raceway Park was a good fit for the Busch Series, not all that far removed from the short-track Sportsman division of years past. IRP had a date on the inaugural Busch Series schedule in 1982, with Morgan Shepherd taking the checkers that year.
Since then, IRP has held a summer date on the Busch schedule. For years, it was another stand-alone showcase date for the Busch Series teams to strut their stuff on the familiar short tracks. Then, in 1993, rumblings were heard of the unthinkable, a stock-car race on the hallowed Brickyard. In 1994, talk became reality with the inaugural Brickyard 400. The Saturday spectacle drew eighty-five cars, teams from the Winston Cup ranks as well as hopeful visitors from the ARCA and Winston West Series, all hoping to be among the forty-three drivers who would be first to race a stock car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Down the road a bit from Indianapolis, the Busch Series teams convened for what was now a Friday-night prelude to the Brickyard 400. The NASCAR SuperTruck Series would join the pre-race Indy festivities in its first full season in 1995, with a Thursday-evening preamble to the Brickyard 400.
And such was the role of IRP. Trucks two nights before the Brickyard 400, Busch the night before, and sprint cars thrown in wherever they might fit. While the media circus revolved around days of practice, qualifying, the IROC Series and eventually the Brickyard 400, real no-holds-barred short-track racing held court at IRP.
And then, as happens often these days, rumors started to fly that NASCAR was looking to move the Nationwide Series race from IRP to IMS, as a true support event for the Brickyard 400. The speculation revolved mostly around the assumption that NASCAR wanted to bring its two premier series to IMS to bolster the Brickyard 400's image. Since 1994, the Brickyard 400 has undoubtedly been one of NASCAR's marquée events, if only for the sheer prestige of racing at Indianapolis. The race itself has often been dull, the result of racing stock cars on a flat track designed a hundred years ago for testing Indy cars. In 2008, the race was a disaster, with unprecedented tire wear forcing NASCAR to throw frequent competition cautions so teams could change tires. Add the wildcard of a tough economy that has opened vacancies in the grandstands of traditional sell-outs like Bristol and New Hampshire, and it's easy to see the factors that keep the Indianapolis grandstands emptier than anyone would care to see. But for years, think of how we heard that Bruton Smith was buying tracks so he could start his own rival stock-car circuit. Speculation is only speculation until the press releases hit the airwaves.
And a few weeks before this year's Brickyard weekend, the press release hit the airwaves. The 2012 Super Weekend at the Brickyard, as it's being billed, will feature two Grand-Am Road Racing events on Friday, the Nationwide Series on Saturday, and the Sprint Cup Crown Royal 400 on Sunday. The press release promises "non-stop racing excitement" on both the oval (for the NASCAR races) and road-course (for the Grand-Am series) layouts, a first for Indy on the same weekend. The press release proclaims this to be a great new tradition of racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The press release touts all of this as a "great value for the fan."
Somehow, the excitement of close-quarters competition, the tradition of thirty years at IRP, and the value of seeing a better race at a fraction of the ticket price were all forgotten when that press release was typed.
I just don't see this being a winning move for anyone. From the standpoint of NASCAR's and IMS' goals of raising the prestige of the weekend and selling more seats, I think this will result in a minor increase if anything at all. First, we're talking about NASCAR's highest division racing at one of the most famous oval tracks in the world. There's little that will elevate opinion of the Brickyard 400, er, Crown Royal 400 any more than its current plateau. It's not as if there weren't already support races in place for the Brickyard 400, even if they were held at other tracks. As for selling more tickets, is it that likely that an undercard series and an unrelated road-racing series are going to drive more ticket sales for the Cup race? Many fans buying tickets for Nationwide races do so because they're diehard fans who are already going to Sunday's race, or they can't afford Sunday tickets and opt for the cheaper of the two events. Neither of those alternatives can guarantee more ticket sales. And even if twice as many fans buy IMS Nationwide tickets as bought tickets for this year's Kroger 200 at IRP, imagine how empty the grandstands at Indy will look with forty or fifty thousand fans in the seats. Those empty seats won't justify an Indy race date for very long.
And from the standpoint of the competitors, this move seems equally ill-advised. The Nationwide/Busch race at IRP served as a reminder of what the series was all about, providing a step up from local and regional racing for capable drivers, and offering a step up to the big leagues for the most talented of those drivers. The short tracks were part of the Nationwide Series' identity, a familiar scene for drivers gaining experience with the larger tracks, and more suitable for teams with modest resources. Some of those tracks were "outgrown" in the '90s due to unsafe pit areas for the teams, but IRP has kept up with the times. By moving this race, we're trading an exciting, challenging short track race for a dull event on a track the likes of which many of the drivers have never even seen before. This makes it nearly certain that one of the visiting Cup drivers (probably Kyle Busch, as many are talking of limited schedules in the Nationwide Series next year) will come away with the trophy and prize money. About the only benefit to the teams and drivers may be the privilege of racing at Indianapolis at all.
The same thing happened years ago in Nashville. The Nationwide Series and Truck Series (and, before the mid-eighties, the Winston Cup Series as well) raced for years at the famed Nashville Motor Speedway, a short track nestled in downtown Nashville. In 2001, the track was replaced on the schedule by the modern Nashville Superspeedway, a one-and-a-third-mile concrete tri-oval just outside of town. By all accounts, the new speedway was more modern and surely a nicer facility than the downtown bullring. But the grandstands never filled out over ten years of racing, and just this week as I was penning this entry, Dover Motorsports announced they would not sanction any 2012 races at Nashville Superspeedway. The Fairgrounds track, which has changed ownership, management and names more times than I can remember, clings to life, but probably outside of the scope of NASCAR's big three series.
That's why I feel like writing IRP off the schedule, trading the classic short-track racing for a little more name recognition, is a mistake. I want to say that this idea probably made sense in the mythical NASCAR boardroom, evaluated by executives with calculators and spin doctors weaving fantasies of attendance numbers. But at the same time, I look back at what happened with Nashville, and I can't help but wonder how anyone could think it was a good plan with such a recent counterexample to judge by. With a marquée event like the Brickyard 400, support races are not the answer to ticket sales. I think the answer is more likely to fall between the poor economy, lackluster racing, and a general "down" cycle for the sport.
Moving this race to Indianapolis Motor Speedway is symbolic of the same kind of creative destruction that impacted the Craftsman Truck Series in its early years. At first, the Trucks were a third-tier national series, designed to be friendly to the relatively low-buck team. There were no "hot pits;" teams would have a halftime break to make adjustments or tire changes. This saved teams from paying for professional pit crews, and allowed the series to stop at small tracks that did not have formal pit roads, visiting a number of markets for which the Busch Series and Winston Cup Series were just too large. Many teams made it through the first season with one or two trucks, a few key pit crew members, and a lean budget. But after a few years, after the early championships had been won by teams with Cup-level resources, the Trucks started visiting larger tracks, and soon exchanged their halftime breaks for hot pit-stops. Old favorites like I-70 Speedway in Missouri, Mesa Marin Raceway in California and Flemington Speedway in New Jersey fell off the schedule, and more dates fell in line with Cup and Busch Series races at the same tracks. It elevated the profile of the series, but at a price to some of the early series staples, and a price to the series' identity.
And so the Nationwide Series exchanges a classic short-track staple for a higher-profile date, another speedway race to tax the resources of the teams without a Sprint Cup ringer behind the wheel. We're being told it's an answer. If it's an answer, though, I think it's an answer to a question that was never even asked in the first place.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Strange Highways
Back in 1998, before anyone had come up with a term for writing an online journal, I'd written this column that I'm pretty sure no one ever read about a rather controversial finish to a NASCAR road race at Watkins Glen. And as I watched events transpire last night at Road America, I started thinking of that day's crazy twists and turns once again.
I really like NASCAR road racing. Most of my friends laugh at the thought of NASCAR drivers, paid to turn left for a living, trying to turn right. The fact is that most of the top drivers have attended one road-racing school or the other over the years, or teams have hired road-course specialists as driver coaches. But then you have to factor in that even a modern NASCAR-legal stock car with power steering and nimble handling is not a purpose-built sportscar, and that NASCAR drivers at slower speeds will get physical when necessary. For every smooth, slick display of driving at a road course, you get the '09 Montréal Nationwide Series demolition derby, er, race. It's still a far cry from the days when there were five guys contending for a win and thirty-five others just trying to get their points and get back to an oval.
And that's why NASCAR road racing is fun. Unlike a lot of the cookie-cutter ovals on the schedule these days, there are plenty of opportunities to pass. It unlocks a test of a driver's flexibility, and puts even more strategy into the pit crew's hands. And since handling, not aerodynamics, is the key to speed, the drivers can get a bit physical if needed, and a banged-up car won't spell the end of the day.
Since I've been watching NASCAR (and actually, since 1989, when Riverside International Raceway was closed up and turned into a shopping mall), NASCAR's top series has raced at only two road courses, the twisty Infineon (Sears Point) Raceway in California and the legendary Watkins Glen International nestled in the Finger Lakes of New York. The Nationwide Series has had a little more variety. For years the Busch Series held their lone road-course event at Watkins Glen, until the track was replaced by a second Daytona race in 2002. The series had no road course dates until 2005, when the schedule boasted companion event to August's Cup race at The Glen and a race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. In 2007, a third road race was added at Montréal, Québec's famed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Mexico City would not return for the 2008 Nationwide Series schedule, but Montréal was very well received in '07 and has been on the schedule ever since.
At the end of the 2009 season, ownership and funding had left the future of the Milwaukee Mile in doubt, and to keep a race in the Wisconsin area, a race was scheduled for 2010 at the nearby Road America facility in Elkhart Lake, WI. Road America is the longest road course on the NASCAR schedules, with each circuit measuring about four miles. The 2010 race at Road America was successful enough to encourage a return in 2011. Adding to the drama was the fact that, as with the year before, the Sprint Cup teams were racing at Infineon the same weekend. With Cup regulars unable to compete for the Nationwide championship, most elected to stay in Sonoma for the weekend, leaving their seats open for plenty of road-course specialists to try their hand at NASCAR racing.
Road-course specialists, often referred to as "ringers" (though not necessarily in a pejorative way), have a long and storied history of involvement in NASCAR. A team not chasing the driver's championship might opt, at a road race, to put a driver behind the wheel who has a career of running road courses. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. In practice, it doesn't always work out so well. A stock car has a much different feel from, well, just about anything designed for road-course racing. And the teams that aren't chasing the driver's championship are usually not exactly the top teams. Of the six road-racing specialists trying to qualify for the Save Mart 350 at Sonoma today, only one, Boris Said, had a car that resembled anything competitive. (I'm not counting drivers like Robby Gordon or Juan Montoya who, though they are road-course specialists, are now full-time NASCAR drivers.) In the Nationwide Series, this is a bit less true; especially with the usual Cup double-dippers opting to race solely at Infineon Raceway, this meant their top-notch cars were in need of drivers for the weekend. Penske Racing tapped Jacques Villeneuve for the #22, Kevin Harvick put Max Papis in the #33, Ron Fellows took the wheel of the JR Motorsports #7, and Michael McDowell (an ARCA winner and former NW/Cup regular, but by way of the Star Mazda Series) took over for Kyle Busch in the #18 Toyota. Carl Edwards was planning to join McDowell at Road America, but after fellow Roush driver Billy Johnson practiced Edwards' car on Friday, Roush and Edwards elected to focus on Sonoma and keep Johnson in the #60 all weekend.
The ringers showed their hand in qualifying, with McDowell, Fellows, Papis, Villeneuve and Johnson all qualifying in the top five. And as the race started, as fans, we were treated to a display of why these guys were picked to race such fast cars. McDowell set sail in the #18, while behind him, Max Papis and Jacques Villeneuve raced aggressively for second and third. Ron Fellows alternated between second and fourth, sometimes in front of the dueling Canadian and Italian, sometimes behind them waiting for both of them to slip. The blocks, the passes, the precision and sometimes the patience, and with Villeneuve particularly the aggression, made for a great early display of racing as the ringers left the series regulars in the dust.
The catch with ringers, of course, is that they're still subject to the same NASCAR penalties as any other driver, and particularly susceptible when they are unaware of a penalty in the first place. Early on, Andrew Ranger (another Quebeçois driving for New England-based NDS Motorsports) was caught speeding on pit road, impeding his progress toward the front. Billy Johnson had troubles on pit road and lost track position under caution, then blew an engine later in the day.
Even the frontrunners were bitten. First, Max Papis was black-flagged for using too many pit stalls to merge into his own. I could see the penalty on a busy pit road, but on an empty pit road, it seemed unwarranted. I was a bit reluctant to say that he even used as many pit stalls as the broadcast team alleged. Papis was bumped to the back of the field for his transgression on the restart.
And on an ensuing restart, Jacques Villeneuve cut down behind the leader crossing the start-finish line, drawing a penalty for "changing lanes before the start-finish line." David Ragan received a penalty for the same action at Daytona, trying to push Trevor Bayne to victory, and Johnny Sauter was black-flagged in the closing laps of the Truck race at Texas for a similar violation. It's one thing to me if a driver were blocking, but on the restart the front two cars were several car-lengths in front of the rest of the field. Ultimately, it meant Villeneuve was back in the field for a penalty, and Ron Fellows was alone out front.
Papis and Villeneuve would eventually overcome their penalties. Villeneuve's championship-caliber pit crew got him back out quickly in the next sequence of pit stops. Max Papis' KHI team went with a strategic gamble, leaving the old tires on the car and topping off fuel to save time. Ultimately, Papis and Villeneuve emerged on the track together, staging another aggressive duel as they carved through slower cars trying to work on fuel strategy. While Papis and Villeneuve battled, Michael McDowell chased down his teammate Brian Scott, who at one point led McDowell by ten seconds while trying to conserve fuel. McDowell carved six seconds from that lead in one lap, then passed Scott the next lap to take the lead with seven laps to go. Ron Fellows was still a way back, with Papis and Villeneuve seeking redemption behind him.
And then Doug Harrington, another road-course ringer in slightly less-capable equipment, went off course in the Kink, leaving debris and sponsor banners strewn across the backstretch with two laps to go.
On the restart, McDowell and Fellows sat on the front row, with Brian Scott and Max Papis behind them. Villeneuve restarted fifth. As the teams came down the frontstretch, Villeneuve pulled out to his right, using the apron of the pit road exit to stage a pass on Brian Scott. The problem is that the pit lane exit merges about where Villeneuve pulled out to pass. Villeneuve hit the grass, then merged back into traffic. It was an Ayrton Senna sort of move; Villeneuve was committed to his pass, and it was up to everyone else if they were going to crash or not.
It wasn't up to them after all. Villeneuve clipped Brian Scott, and Scott's spinning car nudged Max Papis off the track. Papis spun nose-first into the outside wall, his yellow Chevrolet coming to a stop in the gravel pit outside of turn one. "Mad Max" was understandably upset; "I told you the 22 [Villeneuve] was going to do something stupid," he told his crew over the radio. "Great move, Jacques." Both Scott and Papis were dragged out of the gravel pit, and Papis angrily drove his battered car to pit road, where the team tore away the front end sheet metal and sent him on his way a couple laps down.
The second restart pitted McDowell's fast Toyota against Fellows' blue Chevrolet again. In third and fourth place were Turner Motorsports teammates Justin Allgaier and Reed Sorenson, both of whom had run consistently in the top ten, but never threatened the ringers for the win. Neither would be likely to replicate Villeneuve's charge. And then, on the restart, Justin Allgaier got a run into the first turn, passing Ron Fellows for second. McDowell held the lead through the following turns, even as Justin Allgaier closed in on McDowell's bumper.
And that's where the next road-course specialist fell apart.
McDowell blocked Allgaier's sudden charge through turn four, but skated to the outside as they exited the corner. Allgaier cleanly ducked inside and passed McDowell for the lead. McDowell fell back to second, then in the next corner, lost control and skidded to a stop in the grass. The caution flew as cars continued to collide in turns five and six, with Steve Wallace and Eric McClure coming to a stop in the turn and Wallace inexplicably getting out of his car to inspect the damage as cars raced through the mess.
What happened to McDowell? McDowell, of the successful seasons in the Star Mazda Championship and now seated in the best car in the Nationwide Series garage area? It looked as if McDowell had simply overdriven his car in the hopes of keeping the lead. It was the kind of reaction I would expect if McDowell had Jacques Villeneuve breathing down his back. But Justin Allgaier? Justin Allgaier isn't the sort of driver known for intimidation. In another few turns, McDowell would have had the lead back. Instead, he was now eighteenth with minor damage to his Toyota. (Michael would later tweet that he hit fluid on the track through the turns, fluid that may have come from Max Papis' ailing car.)
So now, Justin Allgaier held the lead with one restart left. Justin was about the last driver I expected to see in the lead this late in the going. In the interest of full disclosure, I've been a fan of Justin since he went full-time in ARCA, making me a bit biased on how I wanted this to turn out. But I can even acknowledge that Justin's not known for his road-racing prowess. In his previous five road races in the Nationwide Series, he finished seventeenth at Watkins Glen in '09 and ninth at Montréal in '10, with his other three finishes (two of those, admittedly, due to car failure) outside the top thirty. He does have an ARCA victory at New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2008, but that was a rain-shortened race won on strategy. Either way, I was just hoping for a good points day. Now, here he was leading with two laps to go.
On that restart, Justin looked like he had the field covered if he had enough fuel to make it to the end. Reed Sorenson was holding off Ron Fellows, but neither was able to close in on Allgaier. In fact, when some cars got together and sent Aric Almirola into the gravel trap in turn five, it looked like Justin had it for sure. Almirola was going nowhere fast, so all they had to do was throw the caution and Allgaier could limp on fumes to the finish. But the caution never came. Justin came around turn fourteen, took the white flag, but no caution. Turn one, no caution. Turn two, no caution. Almirola was still sitting in the gravel pit as Allgaier came up the uphill straightaway...and then the caution came out. Over half a lap to go.
And entering turn five, Allgaier's car wouldn't fire. Out of fuel, as...Ron Fellows passed him for the lead?
When the yellow flag came out, Allgaier slowed immediately to caution-flag pace, to stretch his fuel. Reed Sorenson, in second, did the same. But Ron Fellows stayed in the gas and passed Sorenson for second under caution. The video replays showed the corner worker waving the yellow before Fellows completed the pass. When the field came up on Allgaier's stalled car, Fellows came around at speed, passing Allgaier and pulling away from the field and up to the pace car, a good distance ahead. At first, the assumption was that Sorenson, too, had run out of fuel. In fact, he was running, and pulled alongside Fellows when the field finally did reach the pace car, showing his dissatisfaction.
The field crossed the finish line behind the pace car, with Reed Sorenson alongside Ron Fellows, both drivers waving in victory. The broadcast team said that NASCAR had flagged Fellows the race winner, and cut to Jennifer Jo Cobb pushing Justin Allgaier's car back to the pits. Then, the cameras cut back to Sorenson, who was doing donuts on the frontstretch; NASCAR had reversed their decision, and determined that Sorenson was indeed the race winner. It was the third victory for Turner Motorsports in 2011, and in an interesting twist of fortune and fate, in each victory, the winning car (Mark Martin in the #32 at Las Vegas, Allgaier at Chicagoland, and now Sorenson) had led only one lap all day.
Depending on who you cheer for, that last two-lap stretch was one that ranged from strange to downright absurd. As a racing fan, I knew that withholding that last yellow flag was meant to give the fans the most racing they could safely give them, rather than throwing an early yellow and locking the field in for one full pace lap. As a Justin Allgaier fan, I remembered all those cautions thrown over the years for spins or off-course excursions that would prove to be inconsequential, and wondered why they couldn't have thrown the yellow flag as soon as it was evident that the #88 was stuck in the sand trap (in other words, as soon as he got into the sand trap).
And what of Fellows? I like Ron Fellows as a long-time NASCAR road-course specialist, a guy who has been working with General Motors as long as I can remember. But I'm still not sure what he was thinking, passing Reed Sorenson under yellow. I have to assume he thought that Reed was out of fuel. I don't feel like Ron earned the victory in this one, and yet, I'd have rather seen him in victory lane than Reed, who I think of as a displaced Cup driver more than a Nationwide Series regular.
Allgaier was gracious on pit lane, calmly lamenting the bad turn of fortune but praising his team's performance all day. The same was not to be said for Fellows, who disappeared before a post-race interview could be conducted. Disappointingly, interviewers elected not to chase after Jacques Villeneuve, Brian Scott or Max Papis, the latter two of whom expressed their dissatisfaction with Villeneuve on pit road after the race was over.
Road courses are a bit of a wildcard on the NASCAR schedule, and Road America was all of that yesterday. Questionable calls on NASCAR's part, questionable actions on drivers' parts, a couple drivers no one would expect to contend and one of them coming away with the victory. We'll see if Sears Point can offer more of the same today.
I really like NASCAR road racing. Most of my friends laugh at the thought of NASCAR drivers, paid to turn left for a living, trying to turn right. The fact is that most of the top drivers have attended one road-racing school or the other over the years, or teams have hired road-course specialists as driver coaches. But then you have to factor in that even a modern NASCAR-legal stock car with power steering and nimble handling is not a purpose-built sportscar, and that NASCAR drivers at slower speeds will get physical when necessary. For every smooth, slick display of driving at a road course, you get the '09 Montréal Nationwide Series demolition derby, er, race. It's still a far cry from the days when there were five guys contending for a win and thirty-five others just trying to get their points and get back to an oval.
And that's why NASCAR road racing is fun. Unlike a lot of the cookie-cutter ovals on the schedule these days, there are plenty of opportunities to pass. It unlocks a test of a driver's flexibility, and puts even more strategy into the pit crew's hands. And since handling, not aerodynamics, is the key to speed, the drivers can get a bit physical if needed, and a banged-up car won't spell the end of the day.
Since I've been watching NASCAR (and actually, since 1989, when Riverside International Raceway was closed up and turned into a shopping mall), NASCAR's top series has raced at only two road courses, the twisty Infineon (Sears Point) Raceway in California and the legendary Watkins Glen International nestled in the Finger Lakes of New York. The Nationwide Series has had a little more variety. For years the Busch Series held their lone road-course event at Watkins Glen, until the track was replaced by a second Daytona race in 2002. The series had no road course dates until 2005, when the schedule boasted companion event to August's Cup race at The Glen and a race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. In 2007, a third road race was added at Montréal, Québec's famed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Mexico City would not return for the 2008 Nationwide Series schedule, but Montréal was very well received in '07 and has been on the schedule ever since.
At the end of the 2009 season, ownership and funding had left the future of the Milwaukee Mile in doubt, and to keep a race in the Wisconsin area, a race was scheduled for 2010 at the nearby Road America facility in Elkhart Lake, WI. Road America is the longest road course on the NASCAR schedules, with each circuit measuring about four miles. The 2010 race at Road America was successful enough to encourage a return in 2011. Adding to the drama was the fact that, as with the year before, the Sprint Cup teams were racing at Infineon the same weekend. With Cup regulars unable to compete for the Nationwide championship, most elected to stay in Sonoma for the weekend, leaving their seats open for plenty of road-course specialists to try their hand at NASCAR racing.
Road-course specialists, often referred to as "ringers" (though not necessarily in a pejorative way), have a long and storied history of involvement in NASCAR. A team not chasing the driver's championship might opt, at a road race, to put a driver behind the wheel who has a career of running road courses. On paper, it makes a lot of sense. In practice, it doesn't always work out so well. A stock car has a much different feel from, well, just about anything designed for road-course racing. And the teams that aren't chasing the driver's championship are usually not exactly the top teams. Of the six road-racing specialists trying to qualify for the Save Mart 350 at Sonoma today, only one, Boris Said, had a car that resembled anything competitive. (I'm not counting drivers like Robby Gordon or Juan Montoya who, though they are road-course specialists, are now full-time NASCAR drivers.) In the Nationwide Series, this is a bit less true; especially with the usual Cup double-dippers opting to race solely at Infineon Raceway, this meant their top-notch cars were in need of drivers for the weekend. Penske Racing tapped Jacques Villeneuve for the #22, Kevin Harvick put Max Papis in the #33, Ron Fellows took the wheel of the JR Motorsports #7, and Michael McDowell (an ARCA winner and former NW/Cup regular, but by way of the Star Mazda Series) took over for Kyle Busch in the #18 Toyota. Carl Edwards was planning to join McDowell at Road America, but after fellow Roush driver Billy Johnson practiced Edwards' car on Friday, Roush and Edwards elected to focus on Sonoma and keep Johnson in the #60 all weekend.
The ringers showed their hand in qualifying, with McDowell, Fellows, Papis, Villeneuve and Johnson all qualifying in the top five. And as the race started, as fans, we were treated to a display of why these guys were picked to race such fast cars. McDowell set sail in the #18, while behind him, Max Papis and Jacques Villeneuve raced aggressively for second and third. Ron Fellows alternated between second and fourth, sometimes in front of the dueling Canadian and Italian, sometimes behind them waiting for both of them to slip. The blocks, the passes, the precision and sometimes the patience, and with Villeneuve particularly the aggression, made for a great early display of racing as the ringers left the series regulars in the dust.
The catch with ringers, of course, is that they're still subject to the same NASCAR penalties as any other driver, and particularly susceptible when they are unaware of a penalty in the first place. Early on, Andrew Ranger (another Quebeçois driving for New England-based NDS Motorsports) was caught speeding on pit road, impeding his progress toward the front. Billy Johnson had troubles on pit road and lost track position under caution, then blew an engine later in the day.
Even the frontrunners were bitten. First, Max Papis was black-flagged for using too many pit stalls to merge into his own. I could see the penalty on a busy pit road, but on an empty pit road, it seemed unwarranted. I was a bit reluctant to say that he even used as many pit stalls as the broadcast team alleged. Papis was bumped to the back of the field for his transgression on the restart.
And on an ensuing restart, Jacques Villeneuve cut down behind the leader crossing the start-finish line, drawing a penalty for "changing lanes before the start-finish line." David Ragan received a penalty for the same action at Daytona, trying to push Trevor Bayne to victory, and Johnny Sauter was black-flagged in the closing laps of the Truck race at Texas for a similar violation. It's one thing to me if a driver were blocking, but on the restart the front two cars were several car-lengths in front of the rest of the field. Ultimately, it meant Villeneuve was back in the field for a penalty, and Ron Fellows was alone out front.
Papis and Villeneuve would eventually overcome their penalties. Villeneuve's championship-caliber pit crew got him back out quickly in the next sequence of pit stops. Max Papis' KHI team went with a strategic gamble, leaving the old tires on the car and topping off fuel to save time. Ultimately, Papis and Villeneuve emerged on the track together, staging another aggressive duel as they carved through slower cars trying to work on fuel strategy. While Papis and Villeneuve battled, Michael McDowell chased down his teammate Brian Scott, who at one point led McDowell by ten seconds while trying to conserve fuel. McDowell carved six seconds from that lead in one lap, then passed Scott the next lap to take the lead with seven laps to go. Ron Fellows was still a way back, with Papis and Villeneuve seeking redemption behind him.
And then Doug Harrington, another road-course ringer in slightly less-capable equipment, went off course in the Kink, leaving debris and sponsor banners strewn across the backstretch with two laps to go.
On the restart, McDowell and Fellows sat on the front row, with Brian Scott and Max Papis behind them. Villeneuve restarted fifth. As the teams came down the frontstretch, Villeneuve pulled out to his right, using the apron of the pit road exit to stage a pass on Brian Scott. The problem is that the pit lane exit merges about where Villeneuve pulled out to pass. Villeneuve hit the grass, then merged back into traffic. It was an Ayrton Senna sort of move; Villeneuve was committed to his pass, and it was up to everyone else if they were going to crash or not.
It wasn't up to them after all. Villeneuve clipped Brian Scott, and Scott's spinning car nudged Max Papis off the track. Papis spun nose-first into the outside wall, his yellow Chevrolet coming to a stop in the gravel pit outside of turn one. "Mad Max" was understandably upset; "I told you the 22 [Villeneuve] was going to do something stupid," he told his crew over the radio. "Great move, Jacques." Both Scott and Papis were dragged out of the gravel pit, and Papis angrily drove his battered car to pit road, where the team tore away the front end sheet metal and sent him on his way a couple laps down.
The second restart pitted McDowell's fast Toyota against Fellows' blue Chevrolet again. In third and fourth place were Turner Motorsports teammates Justin Allgaier and Reed Sorenson, both of whom had run consistently in the top ten, but never threatened the ringers for the win. Neither would be likely to replicate Villeneuve's charge. And then, on the restart, Justin Allgaier got a run into the first turn, passing Ron Fellows for second. McDowell held the lead through the following turns, even as Justin Allgaier closed in on McDowell's bumper.
And that's where the next road-course specialist fell apart.
McDowell blocked Allgaier's sudden charge through turn four, but skated to the outside as they exited the corner. Allgaier cleanly ducked inside and passed McDowell for the lead. McDowell fell back to second, then in the next corner, lost control and skidded to a stop in the grass. The caution flew as cars continued to collide in turns five and six, with Steve Wallace and Eric McClure coming to a stop in the turn and Wallace inexplicably getting out of his car to inspect the damage as cars raced through the mess.
What happened to McDowell? McDowell, of the successful seasons in the Star Mazda Championship and now seated in the best car in the Nationwide Series garage area? It looked as if McDowell had simply overdriven his car in the hopes of keeping the lead. It was the kind of reaction I would expect if McDowell had Jacques Villeneuve breathing down his back. But Justin Allgaier? Justin Allgaier isn't the sort of driver known for intimidation. In another few turns, McDowell would have had the lead back. Instead, he was now eighteenth with minor damage to his Toyota. (Michael would later tweet that he hit fluid on the track through the turns, fluid that may have come from Max Papis' ailing car.)
So now, Justin Allgaier held the lead with one restart left. Justin was about the last driver I expected to see in the lead this late in the going. In the interest of full disclosure, I've been a fan of Justin since he went full-time in ARCA, making me a bit biased on how I wanted this to turn out. But I can even acknowledge that Justin's not known for his road-racing prowess. In his previous five road races in the Nationwide Series, he finished seventeenth at Watkins Glen in '09 and ninth at Montréal in '10, with his other three finishes (two of those, admittedly, due to car failure) outside the top thirty. He does have an ARCA victory at New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2008, but that was a rain-shortened race won on strategy. Either way, I was just hoping for a good points day. Now, here he was leading with two laps to go.
On that restart, Justin looked like he had the field covered if he had enough fuel to make it to the end. Reed Sorenson was holding off Ron Fellows, but neither was able to close in on Allgaier. In fact, when some cars got together and sent Aric Almirola into the gravel trap in turn five, it looked like Justin had it for sure. Almirola was going nowhere fast, so all they had to do was throw the caution and Allgaier could limp on fumes to the finish. But the caution never came. Justin came around turn fourteen, took the white flag, but no caution. Turn one, no caution. Turn two, no caution. Almirola was still sitting in the gravel pit as Allgaier came up the uphill straightaway...and then the caution came out. Over half a lap to go.
And entering turn five, Allgaier's car wouldn't fire. Out of fuel, as...Ron Fellows passed him for the lead?
When the yellow flag came out, Allgaier slowed immediately to caution-flag pace, to stretch his fuel. Reed Sorenson, in second, did the same. But Ron Fellows stayed in the gas and passed Sorenson for second under caution. The video replays showed the corner worker waving the yellow before Fellows completed the pass. When the field came up on Allgaier's stalled car, Fellows came around at speed, passing Allgaier and pulling away from the field and up to the pace car, a good distance ahead. At first, the assumption was that Sorenson, too, had run out of fuel. In fact, he was running, and pulled alongside Fellows when the field finally did reach the pace car, showing his dissatisfaction.
The field crossed the finish line behind the pace car, with Reed Sorenson alongside Ron Fellows, both drivers waving in victory. The broadcast team said that NASCAR had flagged Fellows the race winner, and cut to Jennifer Jo Cobb pushing Justin Allgaier's car back to the pits. Then, the cameras cut back to Sorenson, who was doing donuts on the frontstretch; NASCAR had reversed their decision, and determined that Sorenson was indeed the race winner. It was the third victory for Turner Motorsports in 2011, and in an interesting twist of fortune and fate, in each victory, the winning car (Mark Martin in the #32 at Las Vegas, Allgaier at Chicagoland, and now Sorenson) had led only one lap all day.
Depending on who you cheer for, that last two-lap stretch was one that ranged from strange to downright absurd. As a racing fan, I knew that withholding that last yellow flag was meant to give the fans the most racing they could safely give them, rather than throwing an early yellow and locking the field in for one full pace lap. As a Justin Allgaier fan, I remembered all those cautions thrown over the years for spins or off-course excursions that would prove to be inconsequential, and wondered why they couldn't have thrown the yellow flag as soon as it was evident that the #88 was stuck in the sand trap (in other words, as soon as he got into the sand trap).
And what of Fellows? I like Ron Fellows as a long-time NASCAR road-course specialist, a guy who has been working with General Motors as long as I can remember. But I'm still not sure what he was thinking, passing Reed Sorenson under yellow. I have to assume he thought that Reed was out of fuel. I don't feel like Ron earned the victory in this one, and yet, I'd have rather seen him in victory lane than Reed, who I think of as a displaced Cup driver more than a Nationwide Series regular.
Allgaier was gracious on pit lane, calmly lamenting the bad turn of fortune but praising his team's performance all day. The same was not to be said for Fellows, who disappeared before a post-race interview could be conducted. Disappointingly, interviewers elected not to chase after Jacques Villeneuve, Brian Scott or Max Papis, the latter two of whom expressed their dissatisfaction with Villeneuve on pit road after the race was over.
Road courses are a bit of a wildcard on the NASCAR schedule, and Road America was all of that yesterday. Questionable calls on NASCAR's part, questionable actions on drivers' parts, a couple drivers no one would expect to contend and one of them coming away with the victory. We'll see if Sears Point can offer more of the same today.
Friday, June 24, 2011
When "Classic" Loses Its Luster...
I was up at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend. This time, it wasn't for anything NASCAR-related. Instead, I joined my best friend Carmine for a couple hours of motorcycle racing, something far more up his alley than mine. The weekend's action, branded as the 88th Loudon Classic, has traditionally been one of the cornerstones of Laconia Motorcycle Week, an annual celebration of motorcycles that draws visitors from across the country to New Hampshire's Lakes Region to share their passion with other motorcycle enthusiasts. Bike Week is a controversial staple of New Hampshire tourism; critics point to the stigmas of gang behavior and lewd activity that follow motorcycle culture, and supporters praise the opportunity to share their love of motorcycles in a welcoming atmosphere. (To be fair, the event is much tamer than it was when I was a kid.)
The atmosphere of the Loudon Classic has changed, too. In its heyday, the Loudon Classic was an AMA-sanctioned race, the oldest motorcycle race in America. At one point, the Loudon Classic welcomed 35,000 fans to the track. This weekend, the track estimated attendance at just under 10,000 over two days of racing. Plenty of reasons could have been cited; the race was a week later than last year, there wasn't much advertising, and even the Classic itself was moved to Saturday under concerns that fans would want to head home Sunday for Father's Day.
The biggest change, of course, is that the AMA no longer sanctions the Loudon Classic, having withdrawn sanctioning some years ago due to safety concerns about the track. The motorcycles race on New Hampshire Motor Speedway's road course, a temporary 1.6-mile layout that incorporates parts of the oval and a lengthy loop outside the backstretch. The concern was that the premier AMA sportbikes were simply too fast and powerful for a compact temporary track. With the current AMA Pro Road Racing circuit competing at large purpose-built road courses like Road America and Laguna Seca, the NHMS road course seems a bit outclassed.
The loss of the AMA sanction is nothing new. But without the backing of a national body like the AMA, the prestige and the excitement of featuring some of the world's best motorcycle racers is missing. Instead, the weekend's events are locally-sanctioned and feature local talent. Even the "Loudon Classic" itself was little more than a twenty-lap race, halted after fourteen laps when the red flag was thrown for an incident on the track. It would be like hosting a few privateers in a short race at Indy Raceway Park and telling everyone it was the Indy 500.
And so on Sunday, a bunch of professional motorcycle racers showcased their skills to a nearly-empty grandstand. We were only there for a couple hours, but in that time I can say there were a lot more cars and motorcycles going than coming, and not much traffic from the south on Route 106 headed to the track. As for the on-track action, Carmine and I enjoyed ourselves, but I can say with some certainty that neither of our girlfriends (who, admittedly, are not racing fans) were terribly entertained. I would venture to say there was a greater buzz of activity in the pit area, where the friends and family of competitors would surely be hanging out.
So on a race weekend where the emptiness of the grandstands eclipsed the quality of the racing in my memory, one has to wonder, how much longer can this go on?
It's a dark question that has come up in motorsports more times than I can remember in the last ten years. Motor racing of any sort is an expensive endeavor for all involved. For the teams, the costs are high, the risks are high, and at anything but the highest echelons of motorsport, the winnings are a pittance. For track owners and promoters, one can only imagine the cost of operating and insuring a facility where people go dangerously fast separated by about fifteen feet and a chainlink fence from a bunch of drunk fans watching people go dangerously fast. The key, of course, is the presence of the fans. Fans buy tickets and support the venue. Fans support the sponsors that pay the bills for the teams.
Empty grandstands don't buy tickets. Empty grandstands don't support sponsors. And in any spectator event, whether baseball or hockey or motor racing, empty grandstands will only be tolerated so long. When Rockingham Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Auto Club Speedway could no longer fill the grandstands, they had race dates written off the schedule, moved to tracks where seats were selling out. Even the venerable Darlington Raceway, a longtime staple on the NASCAR schedules, lost a race date when ticket sales were weak. Sentimental ties and history only last so long. This is, after all, a business.
How long can history alone save the Loudon Classic?
Part of the problem is that the Loudon Classic's place on the Bike Week itinerary is shaky at best. The origins of Laconia Motorcycle Week trace back to the days of the motorcycle "gypsy tours" that stopped in Laconia for a long weekend, while travelers organized motorcycle races and hillclimbs. From those races came the Loudon Classic, though the races were an element of the rally itself. Since then, Bike Week has gained its own identity, after struggling to break the negative stigma of gang-related fights and activities that colored some events in the mid-1960s. These days, Bike Week is more a celebration of biker culture, of tattoos and leather and southern rock and country and tricked-out cruiser motorcycles. The hub of the action is Weirs Beach, a strip in Laconia lined with bars, restaurants, live music and the boardwalk arcade that opposes the pier on Lake Winnipesaukee. For most Bike Week attendees, the fact that there are sportbikes racing a few miles south of Laconia never falls on the radar; it's a different sort of culture. Bike Week and the Loudon Classic are no longer two integral events; they're just two events that happen to fall on the same week on the calendar.
And as a stand-alone event, the Loudon Classic is far from a star-studded affair. I don't mean that to be critical of grassroots and local racing. But from a promotions standpoint, and I say this as a fan and not someone who's attended the RPM sessions in Daytona, if you're going to promote a big annual event, you want there to be something notable about it. A few weeks ago, I went to Star Speedway in Epping, NH, for a touring-type Modified race that was scheduled to draw some of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour drivers, including Ted Christopher. I don't normally go to Star's weekly shows, but having TC, Ryan Preece and Mike Stefanik (who actually was a no-show) on the night's card put my butt in the grandstands that Saturday night. On any other night, you're most likely to attract the diehards and the fans who know someone on the track that evening.
By contrast, the events scheduled for the Loudon Classic weekend featured a combination of sidecar racers, Legends cars, plus the Loudon Road Racing Series and American SportBike Racing motorcycle events. That's a fine card to draw the local diehard fan base and the friends-and-family attendees. But if you want to draw big numbers, you need something to draw casual fans. To his credit, NHMS general manager Jerry Gappens, who took control after Speedway Motorsports bought the track, has been courting the AMA to see if they would entertain a return to NHMS. The AMA left over safety concerns with the track, though, and it seems unlikely to me that Speedway Motorsports is going to put a lot of money into improving the temporary road course at a venue that makes most of its money from three big weekends of oval-track racing, especially considering the capital improvements they've made across the track grounds since 2008. But Jerry Gappens has a point, that the success of the Classic will be dependent upon more than the friends and family of a few local racers.
Maybe one alternative, though it may be a bit far-fetched, could be rechristening the Loudon Classic as an open-competition motorcycle race. Put up a high-profile purse, and invite not only veterans and rookies from the local motorcycle clubs, but also ASRA racers from other regions, AMA racers and maybe even a couple MotoGP stars. This is the sort of formula behind The Dream at Eldora Speedway, a race that pays enough money and fame to win that dirt racers from across the country flock to Eldora in hopes of qualifying, never mind winning. Actually, it's probably more similar to the Prelude to The Dream all-star race held a few days before The Dream. I'm guessing that most professional motorcycle racers would hesitate to put their careers on the line to race in a non-points, winner-takes-most contest. But I think that having a driver with the name recognition of, say, Valentino Rossi would go a long way toward putting butts in the seats.
Either way, if nothing changes, I can't imagine this event staying on life support much longer. Jerry Gappens went on record in the Union Leader saying that he doesn't want to be "the guy who ends the longest running motorcycle race." I sympathize with Jerry; as a track manager and promoter, he has the challenge of drawing fans to each and every event and keeping NHMS in the news. If he has to write a poorly-attended race off the schedule, there will surely be some fan backlash. But race tracks are expensive to operate for a weekend, and even with reduced staff and only key services open (the track's concession booths were closed on Sunday), there have to be enough ticket sales to justify keeping the track open. Ultimately, it's going to be a business decision; a race cannot run at a loss forever.
It's surely a tragedy when someone holds a race and no one shows up to watch. But it could be a bigger tragedy if the race disappeared off next year's schedule and no one noticed.
The atmosphere of the Loudon Classic has changed, too. In its heyday, the Loudon Classic was an AMA-sanctioned race, the oldest motorcycle race in America. At one point, the Loudon Classic welcomed 35,000 fans to the track. This weekend, the track estimated attendance at just under 10,000 over two days of racing. Plenty of reasons could have been cited; the race was a week later than last year, there wasn't much advertising, and even the Classic itself was moved to Saturday under concerns that fans would want to head home Sunday for Father's Day.
The biggest change, of course, is that the AMA no longer sanctions the Loudon Classic, having withdrawn sanctioning some years ago due to safety concerns about the track. The motorcycles race on New Hampshire Motor Speedway's road course, a temporary 1.6-mile layout that incorporates parts of the oval and a lengthy loop outside the backstretch. The concern was that the premier AMA sportbikes were simply too fast and powerful for a compact temporary track. With the current AMA Pro Road Racing circuit competing at large purpose-built road courses like Road America and Laguna Seca, the NHMS road course seems a bit outclassed.
The loss of the AMA sanction is nothing new. But without the backing of a national body like the AMA, the prestige and the excitement of featuring some of the world's best motorcycle racers is missing. Instead, the weekend's events are locally-sanctioned and feature local talent. Even the "Loudon Classic" itself was little more than a twenty-lap race, halted after fourteen laps when the red flag was thrown for an incident on the track. It would be like hosting a few privateers in a short race at Indy Raceway Park and telling everyone it was the Indy 500.
And so on Sunday, a bunch of professional motorcycle racers showcased their skills to a nearly-empty grandstand. We were only there for a couple hours, but in that time I can say there were a lot more cars and motorcycles going than coming, and not much traffic from the south on Route 106 headed to the track. As for the on-track action, Carmine and I enjoyed ourselves, but I can say with some certainty that neither of our girlfriends (who, admittedly, are not racing fans) were terribly entertained. I would venture to say there was a greater buzz of activity in the pit area, where the friends and family of competitors would surely be hanging out.
So on a race weekend where the emptiness of the grandstands eclipsed the quality of the racing in my memory, one has to wonder, how much longer can this go on?
It's a dark question that has come up in motorsports more times than I can remember in the last ten years. Motor racing of any sort is an expensive endeavor for all involved. For the teams, the costs are high, the risks are high, and at anything but the highest echelons of motorsport, the winnings are a pittance. For track owners and promoters, one can only imagine the cost of operating and insuring a facility where people go dangerously fast separated by about fifteen feet and a chainlink fence from a bunch of drunk fans watching people go dangerously fast. The key, of course, is the presence of the fans. Fans buy tickets and support the venue. Fans support the sponsors that pay the bills for the teams.
Empty grandstands don't buy tickets. Empty grandstands don't support sponsors. And in any spectator event, whether baseball or hockey or motor racing, empty grandstands will only be tolerated so long. When Rockingham Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Auto Club Speedway could no longer fill the grandstands, they had race dates written off the schedule, moved to tracks where seats were selling out. Even the venerable Darlington Raceway, a longtime staple on the NASCAR schedules, lost a race date when ticket sales were weak. Sentimental ties and history only last so long. This is, after all, a business.
How long can history alone save the Loudon Classic?
Part of the problem is that the Loudon Classic's place on the Bike Week itinerary is shaky at best. The origins of Laconia Motorcycle Week trace back to the days of the motorcycle "gypsy tours" that stopped in Laconia for a long weekend, while travelers organized motorcycle races and hillclimbs. From those races came the Loudon Classic, though the races were an element of the rally itself. Since then, Bike Week has gained its own identity, after struggling to break the negative stigma of gang-related fights and activities that colored some events in the mid-1960s. These days, Bike Week is more a celebration of biker culture, of tattoos and leather and southern rock and country and tricked-out cruiser motorcycles. The hub of the action is Weirs Beach, a strip in Laconia lined with bars, restaurants, live music and the boardwalk arcade that opposes the pier on Lake Winnipesaukee. For most Bike Week attendees, the fact that there are sportbikes racing a few miles south of Laconia never falls on the radar; it's a different sort of culture. Bike Week and the Loudon Classic are no longer two integral events; they're just two events that happen to fall on the same week on the calendar.
And as a stand-alone event, the Loudon Classic is far from a star-studded affair. I don't mean that to be critical of grassroots and local racing. But from a promotions standpoint, and I say this as a fan and not someone who's attended the RPM sessions in Daytona, if you're going to promote a big annual event, you want there to be something notable about it. A few weeks ago, I went to Star Speedway in Epping, NH, for a touring-type Modified race that was scheduled to draw some of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour drivers, including Ted Christopher. I don't normally go to Star's weekly shows, but having TC, Ryan Preece and Mike Stefanik (who actually was a no-show) on the night's card put my butt in the grandstands that Saturday night. On any other night, you're most likely to attract the diehards and the fans who know someone on the track that evening.
By contrast, the events scheduled for the Loudon Classic weekend featured a combination of sidecar racers, Legends cars, plus the Loudon Road Racing Series and American SportBike Racing motorcycle events. That's a fine card to draw the local diehard fan base and the friends-and-family attendees. But if you want to draw big numbers, you need something to draw casual fans. To his credit, NHMS general manager Jerry Gappens, who took control after Speedway Motorsports bought the track, has been courting the AMA to see if they would entertain a return to NHMS. The AMA left over safety concerns with the track, though, and it seems unlikely to me that Speedway Motorsports is going to put a lot of money into improving the temporary road course at a venue that makes most of its money from three big weekends of oval-track racing, especially considering the capital improvements they've made across the track grounds since 2008. But Jerry Gappens has a point, that the success of the Classic will be dependent upon more than the friends and family of a few local racers.
Maybe one alternative, though it may be a bit far-fetched, could be rechristening the Loudon Classic as an open-competition motorcycle race. Put up a high-profile purse, and invite not only veterans and rookies from the local motorcycle clubs, but also ASRA racers from other regions, AMA racers and maybe even a couple MotoGP stars. This is the sort of formula behind The Dream at Eldora Speedway, a race that pays enough money and fame to win that dirt racers from across the country flock to Eldora in hopes of qualifying, never mind winning. Actually, it's probably more similar to the Prelude to The Dream all-star race held a few days before The Dream. I'm guessing that most professional motorcycle racers would hesitate to put their careers on the line to race in a non-points, winner-takes-most contest. But I think that having a driver with the name recognition of, say, Valentino Rossi would go a long way toward putting butts in the seats.
Either way, if nothing changes, I can't imagine this event staying on life support much longer. Jerry Gappens went on record in the Union Leader saying that he doesn't want to be "the guy who ends the longest running motorcycle race." I sympathize with Jerry; as a track manager and promoter, he has the challenge of drawing fans to each and every event and keeping NHMS in the news. If he has to write a poorly-attended race off the schedule, there will surely be some fan backlash. But race tracks are expensive to operate for a weekend, and even with reduced staff and only key services open (the track's concession booths were closed on Sunday), there have to be enough ticket sales to justify keeping the track open. Ultimately, it's going to be a business decision; a race cannot run at a loss forever.
It's surely a tragedy when someone holds a race and no one shows up to watch. But it could be a bigger tragedy if the race disappeared off next year's schedule and no one noticed.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Blue Oval's Back
I was reading a recap recently of the 1992 Daytona 500. Davey Allison, driving for Robert Yates, won the 500 that year. But what impressed me most was the prevalence of competitive Ford teams. Allison, in a Ford, was followed by Morgan Shepherd, Geoff Bodine and Alan Kulwicki, all in Fords. Polesitter Sterling Marlin and teammate Bill Elliott, both of whom were crashed out of the 500, were in Fords, as were Mark Martin and Wally Dallenbach. All told, there were 14 Fords in that race. Three key title contenders—Elliott, Allison and eventual winner Kulwicki—were driving for Ford teams. If you were a fan of the Blue Oval, it was a good time to be one.
The last couple seasons, though, it hasn't been as satisfying to be a Ford fan.
NASCAR, of course, is different from many motorsports in the sense that manufacturer involvement is secondary. In Formula 1, many fans cheer for Ferrari and McLaren and Renault without a consideration of who the driver is; the guy behind the wheel just gets the championship equipment across the finish line. Australia's famed Bathurst 1000 is an annual contest between Ford and Holden (GM's Australian marque). In NASCAR, where manufacturer support drifted in and out amid changing times and economies, some teams became recognized for their manufacturer of choice, but fans overwhelmingly cheer for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and not for his Chevrolet.
For what it's worth, I'm a GM guy. My family always used to buy American. Given that we weren't a mechanical family, I based my judgments off of looks, and on that front, Dodge and Chevy had Ford beat by miles. Of course, at the time, Dodge had no NASCAR entries, so I sided with Chevrolet. It helped that Dale Earnhardt drove a Chevy. When I got my first car years later, I described it as a 1996 Chevy Monte Carlo Z34 in Earnhardt black.
Yet despite the fact that my favorite driver of my youth, and several other favorites of the time, drove Chevrolets, there was always a driver or two that I liked behind the wheel of a Ford. The most consistent, probably, was Dave Dion. "Dynamite Dave" is also from New Hampshire, a New England short-track legend who was often called on to race at marquée short-track races across the country because, unlike most weekly short-trackers, he raced a Ford. He even ran 12 races in the Winston Cup Series, with a top-ten finish in 1980. In the mid-1990s, he raced in the Busch North Series, the most prestigious touring division in New England at the time. When Dave Dion won the 1996 championship in his orange-and-black #29 Thunderbird, he was one of only two Ford drivers in the top-35 in points, and the only competitive one of those two.
By contrast, at the 1996 Daytona 500 in the Winston Cup Series, twenty-four Ford teams qualified for the race (another few had missed the starting lineup). Eight of the top-ten finishers were in Fords. Five of the top-ten in the season-ending points were Ford drivers. Jack Roush had three teams for Mark Martin, Ted Musgrave and Jeff Burton; Robert Yates had two with Dale Jarrett and the recovered Ernie Irvan. Rusty Wallace was Ford's winningest driver for the year with five wins. Ricky Rudd and Geoff Bodine also scored wins for Ford, and Michael Waltrip won the Winston all-star race with the Wood Brothers.
A lot can change in a few years, never mind in thirteen years.
As the NASCAR boom of the 1990s carried through to the 2000 season, many of the traditional Ford teams faded away. Bud Moore's legendary #15 suffered through the loss of a promising rookie and a failed merger before closing shop. Geoff Bodine sold his team, which became a Chevrolet team in 1999. Ricky Rudd closed his own team in 1999 and went to drive for Robert Yates. Bill Elliott sold his team after 2000, with his team becoming the first factory Dodge team when Chrysler returned to NASCAR in 2001. Melling Racing, the Ford team that Bill Elliott drove for when he won many of his races and his 1988 championship, also became a Dodge team. Penske Racing switched to Dodge in 2003. Brett Bodine had bought Junior Johnson's successful #11 team for 1996, but closed the doors in 2003. Robert Yates retired and sold his team to son Doug, who worked closely with Jack Roush on Ford engine development. Meanwhile, Roush, through acquisition and development, had become Ford's primary NASCAR team, with championships in 2003 with Matt Kenseth and 2004 with Kurt Busch.
Ford had been forced to cut factory support, too. With the economy faltering, Ford pulled factory support from the Busch/Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series. Some independent teams continued to campaign Fords, but only Roush Racing campaigned competitive efforts, planning to close its last Truck Series team after the 2009 season commitments ran out. (Roush sought outside help, partnering with Fenway Sports Group for outside funding.) With the relationship between Jack Roush, Roush Engineering and Ford Motorsports going back to Roush's days in road racing, it made sense for Ford to put their eggs in one basket at Roush Fenway Racing, especially in terms of the development of the FR9 engine program.
And so at Daytona in 2009, Matt Kenseth was one of eight full-time Ford teams in the race (the Wood Brothers were in the race too with longtime Ford driver Bill Elliott, but they were only running part-time). Matt won the 500 and the next week at California. When teammate Jamie McMurray won at Talladega in the fall of 2009, it was only Ford's third win of the season. One of those eight full-time teams had folded after a few races when sponsorship never materialized. That left Jack Roush's five teams, one car for the former Yates powerhouse, and one for Hall of Fame Racing, a venture by some retired football players who partnered with Yates for the 2009 season. The Wood Brothers' cars were lackluster in a part-time effort, and with NASCAR setting a cap on team sizes in the Cup Series, Roush would be forced to dissolve one of his five teams at season's end. McMurray's team, which had not performed since Kurt Busch won the 2004 championship, was the frontrunner for elimination. Carl Edwards, who won nine races in 2008, went winless in 2009, and Matt Kenseth struggled after winning the first two races of 2009, missing the Chase for the Championship for the first time.
The 2010 season started out with promise for Ford fans, though. At the end of the 2009 season, it was announced that Richard Petty Motorsports—the team that began as Bill Elliott's one-car operation and was bought by Ray Evernham to become the first Dodge team in 2001, then merged with a struggling Petty Enterprises after the 2008 season—was switching to Ford. Kasey Kahne, an early Ford development prospect before defecting to Evernham's #9 team, would be in a Ford again. AJ Allmendinger had campaigned a Ford in a few races in 2009 as a warm-up. Paul Menard, who drove for Yates Racing in 2009, brought his sponsorship to RPM for 2010. Meanwhile, the Yates Racing assets, shades of what had been a contending team only nine or ten years before, were bought by restauranteur Bob Jenkins, who switched his three-car Front Row Motorsports team over to Ford. Among FRM's drivers were David Gilliland and, on a part-time basis, Travis Kvapil, both of whom drove for Yates Racing. Roush's fifth team was bought by a Vermont businessman named Bill Jenkins, who kept the #26 and hired crew chief Frank Stoddard and driver Boris Said, both of whom worked together for No Fear Racing testing Roush equipment.
There was promise, and it was largely unfounded. FRM's fortunes were dictated largely by rookie driver Kevin Conway, who brought sponsorship to the team; when the sponsorship failed to bring the promised payments, he was released and Kvapil took over. One of FRM's teams was penalized harshly for a rules infraction at Pocono, setting them even further behind the curve. Latitude 43 Motorsports, the team that bought Roush's #26 car, ran poorly and ran through several drivers before quietly closing shop at season's end. Things were no better for the well-funded teams; AJ Allmendinger was the best performer for Richard Petty Motorsports. Kasey Kahne struggled in the #9 Ford, with rumors early in the season that he would leave for greener pastures. Things got grave at the end of the season, when it was revealed that RPM was delinquent on their debts to Roush Fenway Racing, from who they got their chassis and engines. Photos circulated of the team haulers parked outside Texas Motor Speedway alongside two white Roush Racing haulers; the Roush haulers had the cars and engines RPM needed for Phoenix, and they would not be released until payment was made. There was speculation that the team could fold altogether.
In fact, it was June before a Ford tasted victory lane in either the Cup or Nationwide Series; Carl Edwards finally did so at Road America in the Nationwide Series. Roush's cars were mostly on target, but not in victory lane on the Cup side. Ford did get to victory lane in the Cup Series, at last. Greg Biffle won at Pocono, and again at Kansas. But it was Carl Edwards winning at Phoenix and Homestead that suggested that Ford had finally turned the corner.
Then came Daytona, and a surprise win not only for rookie Trevor Bayne, but for the Wood Brothers, a Ford team since anyone can remember. Fords ran well all day long, and in fact, Bayne held off Roush teammate Carl Edwards to win. The third place car was the Ford of David Gilliland of Front Row Motorsports, more of a fluke for sure, but a great run for the team, all the same. David Ragan had made his play at the win, but an ill-timed restart cost David a shot at the win. Three weeks later, Carl Edwards had a win at Las Vegas, poles at Phoenix and Bristol, and a second-place finish to Kyle Busch at Bristol to back up the pole.
It was around that time I started to think about a Ford resurgence blog entry. It would have been easy to do the same at Daytona, with Ford sweeping the top three and running up front all day. But plate races, as we shall be reminded at Talladega, are notorious wildcards. Ask Phil Parsons, Greg Sacks, Bobby Hillin or any of the other drivers whose Cup careers were defined by the one career win at a plate track. It's after a couple intermediate-track races that it truly shows through. Most of the schedule these days is on intermediate tracks, the mile-and-a-half cookie-cutter D-ovals built in the late 1990s. To put an exclamation point on this note, this weekend at Texas, Carl Edwards broke through again for Ford, winning the pole and race in the Nationwide Series on Friday, the first win for the new Ford Mustang in the Nationwide Series. David Ragan won the pole for the Cup race, but it was Matt Kenseth who led 169 laps to win last night's 500-miler, his first since 2009. Finishing behind him in the top ten were his three Roush teammates and Marcos Ambrose, who took over the #9 this year for RPM. (Ambrose, who ran Toyotas for JTG-Daugherty Racing the last couple seasons, was one of Ford's top drivers in his native Australia before he came to the United States.)
It seems that, between engines and aerodynamics and team dynamics (Kenseth, for one, has struggled since his longtime rival and crew chief Robbie Reiser became Roush's team manager), the Ford teams are starting to get their act back together. It's not just showing in some intangible "oh, they ran great until..." observation. It's showing in the win column, and it's showing in the points standings. Carl Edwards leads the Cup points, Matt Kenseth now sits fourth, and while Roush's other drivers are mired with Ambrose in the lower teens, they are still overcoming some early-season misfortune. Last night's race could be a step in the right direction. (Of note, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. leads the Nationwide Series points with a pole and five top-tens in six races, after spending much of last year dodging criticism that he was not worthy of his Roush equipment.)
Ford critics, myself included, have often remarked on the famed blue oval by saying "well, at least they circled the problem." If they can keep this streak going, maybe they've finally fixed it.
The last couple seasons, though, it hasn't been as satisfying to be a Ford fan.
NASCAR, of course, is different from many motorsports in the sense that manufacturer involvement is secondary. In Formula 1, many fans cheer for Ferrari and McLaren and Renault without a consideration of who the driver is; the guy behind the wheel just gets the championship equipment across the finish line. Australia's famed Bathurst 1000 is an annual contest between Ford and Holden (GM's Australian marque). In NASCAR, where manufacturer support drifted in and out amid changing times and economies, some teams became recognized for their manufacturer of choice, but fans overwhelmingly cheer for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and not for his Chevrolet.
For what it's worth, I'm a GM guy. My family always used to buy American. Given that we weren't a mechanical family, I based my judgments off of looks, and on that front, Dodge and Chevy had Ford beat by miles. Of course, at the time, Dodge had no NASCAR entries, so I sided with Chevrolet. It helped that Dale Earnhardt drove a Chevy. When I got my first car years later, I described it as a 1996 Chevy Monte Carlo Z34 in Earnhardt black.
Yet despite the fact that my favorite driver of my youth, and several other favorites of the time, drove Chevrolets, there was always a driver or two that I liked behind the wheel of a Ford. The most consistent, probably, was Dave Dion. "Dynamite Dave" is also from New Hampshire, a New England short-track legend who was often called on to race at marquée short-track races across the country because, unlike most weekly short-trackers, he raced a Ford. He even ran 12 races in the Winston Cup Series, with a top-ten finish in 1980. In the mid-1990s, he raced in the Busch North Series, the most prestigious touring division in New England at the time. When Dave Dion won the 1996 championship in his orange-and-black #29 Thunderbird, he was one of only two Ford drivers in the top-35 in points, and the only competitive one of those two.
By contrast, at the 1996 Daytona 500 in the Winston Cup Series, twenty-four Ford teams qualified for the race (another few had missed the starting lineup). Eight of the top-ten finishers were in Fords. Five of the top-ten in the season-ending points were Ford drivers. Jack Roush had three teams for Mark Martin, Ted Musgrave and Jeff Burton; Robert Yates had two with Dale Jarrett and the recovered Ernie Irvan. Rusty Wallace was Ford's winningest driver for the year with five wins. Ricky Rudd and Geoff Bodine also scored wins for Ford, and Michael Waltrip won the Winston all-star race with the Wood Brothers.
A lot can change in a few years, never mind in thirteen years.
As the NASCAR boom of the 1990s carried through to the 2000 season, many of the traditional Ford teams faded away. Bud Moore's legendary #15 suffered through the loss of a promising rookie and a failed merger before closing shop. Geoff Bodine sold his team, which became a Chevrolet team in 1999. Ricky Rudd closed his own team in 1999 and went to drive for Robert Yates. Bill Elliott sold his team after 2000, with his team becoming the first factory Dodge team when Chrysler returned to NASCAR in 2001. Melling Racing, the Ford team that Bill Elliott drove for when he won many of his races and his 1988 championship, also became a Dodge team. Penske Racing switched to Dodge in 2003. Brett Bodine had bought Junior Johnson's successful #11 team for 1996, but closed the doors in 2003. Robert Yates retired and sold his team to son Doug, who worked closely with Jack Roush on Ford engine development. Meanwhile, Roush, through acquisition and development, had become Ford's primary NASCAR team, with championships in 2003 with Matt Kenseth and 2004 with Kurt Busch.
Ford had been forced to cut factory support, too. With the economy faltering, Ford pulled factory support from the Busch/Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series. Some independent teams continued to campaign Fords, but only Roush Racing campaigned competitive efforts, planning to close its last Truck Series team after the 2009 season commitments ran out. (Roush sought outside help, partnering with Fenway Sports Group for outside funding.) With the relationship between Jack Roush, Roush Engineering and Ford Motorsports going back to Roush's days in road racing, it made sense for Ford to put their eggs in one basket at Roush Fenway Racing, especially in terms of the development of the FR9 engine program.
And so at Daytona in 2009, Matt Kenseth was one of eight full-time Ford teams in the race (the Wood Brothers were in the race too with longtime Ford driver Bill Elliott, but they were only running part-time). Matt won the 500 and the next week at California. When teammate Jamie McMurray won at Talladega in the fall of 2009, it was only Ford's third win of the season. One of those eight full-time teams had folded after a few races when sponsorship never materialized. That left Jack Roush's five teams, one car for the former Yates powerhouse, and one for Hall of Fame Racing, a venture by some retired football players who partnered with Yates for the 2009 season. The Wood Brothers' cars were lackluster in a part-time effort, and with NASCAR setting a cap on team sizes in the Cup Series, Roush would be forced to dissolve one of his five teams at season's end. McMurray's team, which had not performed since Kurt Busch won the 2004 championship, was the frontrunner for elimination. Carl Edwards, who won nine races in 2008, went winless in 2009, and Matt Kenseth struggled after winning the first two races of 2009, missing the Chase for the Championship for the first time.
The 2010 season started out with promise for Ford fans, though. At the end of the 2009 season, it was announced that Richard Petty Motorsports—the team that began as Bill Elliott's one-car operation and was bought by Ray Evernham to become the first Dodge team in 2001, then merged with a struggling Petty Enterprises after the 2008 season—was switching to Ford. Kasey Kahne, an early Ford development prospect before defecting to Evernham's #9 team, would be in a Ford again. AJ Allmendinger had campaigned a Ford in a few races in 2009 as a warm-up. Paul Menard, who drove for Yates Racing in 2009, brought his sponsorship to RPM for 2010. Meanwhile, the Yates Racing assets, shades of what had been a contending team only nine or ten years before, were bought by restauranteur Bob Jenkins, who switched his three-car Front Row Motorsports team over to Ford. Among FRM's drivers were David Gilliland and, on a part-time basis, Travis Kvapil, both of whom drove for Yates Racing. Roush's fifth team was bought by a Vermont businessman named Bill Jenkins, who kept the #26 and hired crew chief Frank Stoddard and driver Boris Said, both of whom worked together for No Fear Racing testing Roush equipment.
There was promise, and it was largely unfounded. FRM's fortunes were dictated largely by rookie driver Kevin Conway, who brought sponsorship to the team; when the sponsorship failed to bring the promised payments, he was released and Kvapil took over. One of FRM's teams was penalized harshly for a rules infraction at Pocono, setting them even further behind the curve. Latitude 43 Motorsports, the team that bought Roush's #26 car, ran poorly and ran through several drivers before quietly closing shop at season's end. Things were no better for the well-funded teams; AJ Allmendinger was the best performer for Richard Petty Motorsports. Kasey Kahne struggled in the #9 Ford, with rumors early in the season that he would leave for greener pastures. Things got grave at the end of the season, when it was revealed that RPM was delinquent on their debts to Roush Fenway Racing, from who they got their chassis and engines. Photos circulated of the team haulers parked outside Texas Motor Speedway alongside two white Roush Racing haulers; the Roush haulers had the cars and engines RPM needed for Phoenix, and they would not be released until payment was made. There was speculation that the team could fold altogether.
In fact, it was June before a Ford tasted victory lane in either the Cup or Nationwide Series; Carl Edwards finally did so at Road America in the Nationwide Series. Roush's cars were mostly on target, but not in victory lane on the Cup side. Ford did get to victory lane in the Cup Series, at last. Greg Biffle won at Pocono, and again at Kansas. But it was Carl Edwards winning at Phoenix and Homestead that suggested that Ford had finally turned the corner.
Then came Daytona, and a surprise win not only for rookie Trevor Bayne, but for the Wood Brothers, a Ford team since anyone can remember. Fords ran well all day long, and in fact, Bayne held off Roush teammate Carl Edwards to win. The third place car was the Ford of David Gilliland of Front Row Motorsports, more of a fluke for sure, but a great run for the team, all the same. David Ragan had made his play at the win, but an ill-timed restart cost David a shot at the win. Three weeks later, Carl Edwards had a win at Las Vegas, poles at Phoenix and Bristol, and a second-place finish to Kyle Busch at Bristol to back up the pole.
It was around that time I started to think about a Ford resurgence blog entry. It would have been easy to do the same at Daytona, with Ford sweeping the top three and running up front all day. But plate races, as we shall be reminded at Talladega, are notorious wildcards. Ask Phil Parsons, Greg Sacks, Bobby Hillin or any of the other drivers whose Cup careers were defined by the one career win at a plate track. It's after a couple intermediate-track races that it truly shows through. Most of the schedule these days is on intermediate tracks, the mile-and-a-half cookie-cutter D-ovals built in the late 1990s. To put an exclamation point on this note, this weekend at Texas, Carl Edwards broke through again for Ford, winning the pole and race in the Nationwide Series on Friday, the first win for the new Ford Mustang in the Nationwide Series. David Ragan won the pole for the Cup race, but it was Matt Kenseth who led 169 laps to win last night's 500-miler, his first since 2009. Finishing behind him in the top ten were his three Roush teammates and Marcos Ambrose, who took over the #9 this year for RPM. (Ambrose, who ran Toyotas for JTG-Daugherty Racing the last couple seasons, was one of Ford's top drivers in his native Australia before he came to the United States.)
It seems that, between engines and aerodynamics and team dynamics (Kenseth, for one, has struggled since his longtime rival and crew chief Robbie Reiser became Roush's team manager), the Ford teams are starting to get their act back together. It's not just showing in some intangible "oh, they ran great until..." observation. It's showing in the win column, and it's showing in the points standings. Carl Edwards leads the Cup points, Matt Kenseth now sits fourth, and while Roush's other drivers are mired with Ambrose in the lower teens, they are still overcoming some early-season misfortune. Last night's race could be a step in the right direction. (Of note, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. leads the Nationwide Series points with a pole and five top-tens in six races, after spending much of last year dodging criticism that he was not worthy of his Roush equipment.)
Ford critics, myself included, have often remarked on the famed blue oval by saying "well, at least they circled the problem." If they can keep this streak going, maybe they've finally fixed it.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sorry For Showing Passion
June 25, 2000 was a pivotal date in NASCAR history. That was the day that Jimmie Johnson, driving a Busch car at Watkins Glen, lost his brakes on lap 45. The car caught air, sailed over the gravel trap, and slammed into the first-turn fence, coming to a dead stop. (Here's video, though it's not mine.) Jimmie climbed from the car, unhurt, and saluted the crowd. It was a near-miss, but why pivotal? Because it was the last time Jimmie Johnson showed emotion.
One advantage of being a relatively-unread blogger, and not a journalist, is that I can be a little opinionated. Those friends I have who also like NASCAR (all three of them) know I'm not a Jimmie Johnson fan. When he and Herzog Motorsports were winning in ASA, I wanted to like Jimmie. When he announced he would be racing for Hendrick Motorsports in Cup after a lackluster Busch career, I lost interest. Since then, Jimmie's had his share of success, no doubt. But what I dislike more than his streak of unbeaten championships is his seeming lack of personality and emotion.
I realize that this is an interesting opinion from someone whose favorite active Cup driver was lampooned in post-championship commercials for having the demeanor of a robot.
But there's a difference between a shy, aloof camera presence and a seeming lack of emotion. The latter is the feeling I get from Jimmie Johnson. There's no question that he loves winning. But his approach is too controlled, too muted, too censored. I want to see a driver who treats every win like it's his first. I want to see a driver who can't stand finishing second. I want to see the guy who got wrecked under caution throw his helmet at the other car and ask him what he was thinking. No one remembers Richard Petty's victory-lane speech in the 1979 Daytona 500; they remember what was going on on the backstretch with the guys who almost won.
And for a fleeting instant this weekend, we were treated to that kind of passion from Jimmie, the kind that's so rare you can't help but wonder if he was a political-science major. Late in the going at Martinsville, with a car in the top five and ready for a win, Jimmie was tagged for speeding on pit road. Jimmie and his crew insisted they were in the right; NASCAR disagreed, and the penalty dropped Jimmie out of the top ten. By race's end, he was only able to fight back to eleventh. After the race, Jimmie argued to the press that he had not sped down pit road, that he had kept below the 5-mile-per-hour margin on the 30mph speed limit. He felt NASCAR had timed him wrong in a pit road segment, that with the team's calculations, there was no way he could have been speeding. He tweeted that NASCAR should post pit-road speeds for the fans as a measure of transparency.
And then today, he took it all back. Sorry for being wrong. Sorry for the complaining. Sorry for questioning NASCAR's judgment. Sorry for the tweet.
Translated, it sounds more like: "Sorry for speaking up. Sorry for being controversial. Sorry for getting caught. Sorry for showing passion."
Pit road speed limit in NASCAR is a tricky thing. For a number of reasons, NASCAR stock cars are not equipped with a speedometer. Pre-race pace laps are set at the pit road speed limit for the track, and the teams take a tachometer reading during pace laps (for instance, 3000rpm in second gear). Years ago, officials would time a car between segments on pit road to determine pit road speed. Now, digital telemetry can determine a car's precise speed. To account for not having an accurate speedometer in the cars, there is a five-mile-per-hour buffer on the speed limit. But if you're not cheating, you're not trying...so most teams will use every bit of that buffer they can.
Moreover, the teams know where the timed segments of pit road are. As such, a driver will accelerate into his pit and out of it, as long as he can keep pit road speed when timing begins. Johnson's team had calculated this to a science. On Sunday, in the segment in question, Johnson was clocked at 35.53mph. Pit road speed limit at Martinsville is set at 30mph, plus the 5mph margin of error. NASCAR released those numbers to the public, much as they did when Juan Montoya argued a speeding penalty at Indianapolis when he was dominating the race in 2009. Jimmie and his team pushed the envelope, and they went over the line a little. NASCAR was watching, and they called them on it. Jimmie disagreed with the call, and he said so.
But that doesn't call for an apology. An apology for that is basically an apology for caring, for showing passion, for wanting another one of those grandfather-clock trophies for his living room. I don't want to see the eleventh-place finisher shrug off the finish and say he did okay in the points and he'll have a better week next week. I want him to say he didn't agree with the penalty and he didn't come to finish eleventh. I'm not saying that Tony Stewart's early-career "swat the journalist's tape recorder and walk away" approach is the right answer, either, but all I'm asking for is sincerity. I'd rather see true happiness in a winner's eyes, and true determination in everyone else's eyes. I don't want some watered-down "it's okay" politically-correct response. It's not genuine.
There's the other aspect that Jimmie hinted at in ESPN's article today—that NASCAR could fine him for his comments on Twitter, as it was revealed they had privately done last year to two drivers who questioned NASCAR's officiating in post-race tweets. Come on, Jimmie...you're the five-time defending champion with a squeaky-clean public persona and a history of parroting the company line. Saying "NASCAR called that one wrong" is a little different from suggesting the finish was manipulated for ratings.
After the 1996 World 600, in which Kyle Petty was penalized several laps for aggressive driving that resulted in a major wreck, car owner Felix Sabates argued that Dale Earnhardt would not have been penalized in the same circumstances. The next week at Dover, Petty's Pontiac arrived at the track painted black with a silver body stripe down the rocker panels and white lettering outlined in red, mimicking Earnhardt's Goodwrench #3. In tiny letters on the door, a block of text read "Todo es justo en amor y carreras," roughly translated, "All is fair in love and racing." Sabates argued that, since his car looked like Earnhardt's, NASCAR would turn a blind eye. It caught attention, though not a lot as Petty ran poorly most of the day and Earnhardt won. But the statement was made, replica die-cast cars were sold (of which I own one), and as far as I know, no fines were ever levied.
Suddenly, in an era when a driver feels the need to apologize for showing sincerity, the Kyle Petty protest car seems so long ago.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
By Any Other Name...
There's a lot in a name. When that name is part of a legacy, it opens doors, doors that may not only have been locked, but concealed altogether. We experience it in business, in academics, and of course, in sports. In Super Freakonomics, it was reported that the single biggest factor determining kids who succeeded in becoming Major League Baseball players was having a father who also played in the majors.
Such is the case in motorsports, too. A talented stock car driver faces three limitations: talent, sponsorship, and opportunity. Given enough talent, enough funding, and a ride at the right level, the sky is the limit. But for a kid whose father is already in the sport, especially if that father has had any measure of success, those opportunities tend to come along more readily. A kid racing weekly at Lee USA Speedway, forty-five minutes from my apartment, is not going to be noticed by the big teams down south. He will have to seek out touring-series rides and sponsors to make the jump to the big leagues. By comparison, Chase Elliott is fifteen years old and has a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports, including a ride in the K&N Pro East Series (which, coincidentally, lowered its minimum age to 15 this year). Chase, of course, is the son of a guy named Bill Elliott who has a Winston Cup title and a few wins under his belt.
And so it is in NASCAR, where the surest way to get a big-league ride is to have a grandfather or a father or a brother who had a big-league ride, and had some degree of success. In the early days of the sport, drivers like Richard Petty and Buddy Baker got their first opportunities driving their fathers' hand-me-down cars, proving their talents in the big leagues before rising to national prominence. Later on, a wave of second-generation drivers swept the sport. Some, like Davey Allison and Dale Jarrett, carried on their fathers' winning traditions in the big leagues; others, like Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, were known for their fathers' success at the local level and dared to dream larger. Of course, having a fast father is no guarantee of success; Rusty's brothers Mike and Kenny never won in Winston Cup, and Rusty's son Steve remains winless after four full seasons in the Nationwide Series.
Perhaps the hardest act to follow, though, is being an Earnhardt. Richard Petty may have more wins than Dale, but Richard's success came in a different era. Petty Enterprises brought superior cars to every race; few teams could afford to keep pace. That's not to suggest Richard Petty lacked talent; he just had the advantage of superior equipment, too. Moreover, most of Richard's success took place off the TV camera. Many fans probably visually remember only two of Richard's wins; one is the 1984 Firecracker 400, and the other is the 1979 Daytona 500, where Richard got very little TV time while Cale Yarborough kept hitting Bobby Allison's fists with his helmet on the backstretch.
Dale Earnhardt, by comparison, was from a different, more competitive era. He had great equipment, but so did Tim Richmond, Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison and Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt knew the limits of his car, and how far he could push the limit before he was out of control. When in control, he was aggressive and tenacious. Ten years after his passing, fans still remember Earnhardt wrecking Terry Labonte at Bristol in 1995 and 1999, or Dale driving from eighteenth to the lead with five laps left at Talladega in 2000, or the famed and incorrectly-named "Pass In The Grass" at The Winston in 1987. Earnhardt took no prisoners and made no apologies.
Despite their successes, the Petty name doesn't carry the same expectation as the Earnhardt name. Kyle Petty's career was but a shadow of his father's, yet he only got some commentary that he was too unfocused to succeed in stock cars. But the Petty name had also become less potent after Richard's retirement, with the #43 only showing flashes of brilliance afterwards. After Adam Petty's tragic death in 2000, the Petty name was just a relic of the past, and narrowly escaped being wiped off the circuit altogether after last season.
By contrast, the Earnhardt name remains strong. Ralph Earnhardt was a force behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt was a legend behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was a championship race team with a winning record. Even Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for all the criticism he shoulders, has his share of Busch Series championships and Winston Cup victories, despite the fact that being Dale Earnhardt's son is an impossible act to follow. Dale's other son, Kerry, was not as successful, but prior to Dale's death, he had racked up a fair number of ARCA wins, opening the door to what would be a long list of second-rate rides before he announced his retirement in 2007.
It would be unthinkable to imagine an Earnhardt making the headlines for anything but winning.
And then, there's Jeffrey Earnhardt.
The younger of Kerry's two sons, Jeffrey made his NASCAR touring debut in a family-owned car, driving in the Busch East Series for DEI in 2007 and finishing fifth in points. The next year, he was teamed with Trevor Bayne and Jesus Hernandez as part of a three-car DEI program. Despite similar results, he was pulled from the car two races from the end of the season. Rumors flew that Jeffrey had been benched because his father Kerry, now working as a consultant for DEI, felt he was focused too much on his extracurricular life and too little on working on the car.
Jeffrey made a few Nationwide starts in 2009, then ran a few Truck Series races last year for Rick Ware Racing. During the offseason, Jeffrey was announced as the fulltime driver of RWR's #1 Truck team, with sponsorship from longtime RWR sponsor Fuel Doctor. The team survived the Daytona carnage to open the season with a top-ten finish, putting Jeffrey third in points leaving Daytona. Two top-twenty finishes have left Jeffrey in tenth in points early in the year, far ahead of expected contenders like Brendan Gaughan and Travis Kvapil.
Then, this Tuesday, RWR announced that Earnhardt would not be in the #1 Truck at Martinsville this weekend. The reason? Apparently, teams had reported to owner Rick Ware that Jeffrey and his agent were shopping around for a new ride, discussing bringing along Ware's Fuel Doctor sponsorship. Jeffrey, presumably through his agent, denied the charges, claiming that he had been told the team could no longer run Jeffrey in the #1 without sponsorship, hence he was looking for a new and stable ride.
I admit, I sort of saw it coming. Last year, Fuel Doctor sponsored Ware's #47 truck with Brett Butler behind the wheel. Butler lost the ride mid-season, after being rotated to a second truck, due to "lack of sponsorship." Seeing as Fuel Doctor remained on the truck through the season (and for Jeffrey Earnhardt's starts), I wondered what sort of sponsor RWR was dealing with. Fuel Doctor had also announced sponsorship of Timmy Hill's rookie efforts in an RWR-owned Nationwide car this season. All told, it sounded like RWR was trying to stretch a sponsor dollar between teams, expecting drivers to bring along additional money to secure the ride. And if the RWR truck team needed Jeffrey to bring his own sponsor portfolio along, I could see him losing the ride once the funding fell short.
But at the same time, if the allegations were true and Jeffrey were shopping the sponsorship around to a new team, one has to wonder what sort of agent would think it were a good idea to start with. Especially with the past rumors regarding Jeffrey's work ethic, this seems like a good way to burn a lot of bridges before ever crossing them. That's just basic business.
And never mind that...where else would he go? There are no competitive Truck teams with an open seat, and the only ones with an opening are demanding sponsor dollars, lest they be reduced to start-and-parking. Former series champion Mike Skinner had difficulty landing a ride before the season started; how would Jeffrey Earnhardt fare with no real credentials to flaunt but his name? Not to suggest that RWR is a top team, but at this point in the year, Jeffrey has completed all but two laps and sits ahead of a number of veteran drivers struggling through bad luck. A ride with potential beats a ride that doesn't yet exist.
Interestingly, RWR and Jeffrey released a press briefing Wednesday evening that they have settled their differences, and Earnhardt will drive the RWR truck at Martinsville and beyond while they search for additional sponsorship. Only time will tell how long this will last; scars like that have a way of lingering, and if a better driver became available, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeffrey on the free-agent list within a couple months.
But then, you have to step back and wonder, if Jeffrey Earnhardt were Jeffrey Key (keep in mind that Kerry only changed his name back to Earnhardt a few years before his father's death) - or if he were a driver by any other name - would he have kept the ride after Tuesday's debacle? Would he have had a shot at the ride at all?
Such is the case in motorsports, too. A talented stock car driver faces three limitations: talent, sponsorship, and opportunity. Given enough talent, enough funding, and a ride at the right level, the sky is the limit. But for a kid whose father is already in the sport, especially if that father has had any measure of success, those opportunities tend to come along more readily. A kid racing weekly at Lee USA Speedway, forty-five minutes from my apartment, is not going to be noticed by the big teams down south. He will have to seek out touring-series rides and sponsors to make the jump to the big leagues. By comparison, Chase Elliott is fifteen years old and has a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports, including a ride in the K&N Pro East Series (which, coincidentally, lowered its minimum age to 15 this year). Chase, of course, is the son of a guy named Bill Elliott who has a Winston Cup title and a few wins under his belt.
And so it is in NASCAR, where the surest way to get a big-league ride is to have a grandfather or a father or a brother who had a big-league ride, and had some degree of success. In the early days of the sport, drivers like Richard Petty and Buddy Baker got their first opportunities driving their fathers' hand-me-down cars, proving their talents in the big leagues before rising to national prominence. Later on, a wave of second-generation drivers swept the sport. Some, like Davey Allison and Dale Jarrett, carried on their fathers' winning traditions in the big leagues; others, like Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, were known for their fathers' success at the local level and dared to dream larger. Of course, having a fast father is no guarantee of success; Rusty's brothers Mike and Kenny never won in Winston Cup, and Rusty's son Steve remains winless after four full seasons in the Nationwide Series.
Perhaps the hardest act to follow, though, is being an Earnhardt. Richard Petty may have more wins than Dale, but Richard's success came in a different era. Petty Enterprises brought superior cars to every race; few teams could afford to keep pace. That's not to suggest Richard Petty lacked talent; he just had the advantage of superior equipment, too. Moreover, most of Richard's success took place off the TV camera. Many fans probably visually remember only two of Richard's wins; one is the 1984 Firecracker 400, and the other is the 1979 Daytona 500, where Richard got very little TV time while Cale Yarborough kept hitting Bobby Allison's fists with his helmet on the backstretch.
Dale Earnhardt, by comparison, was from a different, more competitive era. He had great equipment, but so did Tim Richmond, Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison and Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt knew the limits of his car, and how far he could push the limit before he was out of control. When in control, he was aggressive and tenacious. Ten years after his passing, fans still remember Earnhardt wrecking Terry Labonte at Bristol in 1995 and 1999, or Dale driving from eighteenth to the lead with five laps left at Talladega in 2000, or the famed and incorrectly-named "Pass In The Grass" at The Winston in 1987. Earnhardt took no prisoners and made no apologies.
Despite their successes, the Petty name doesn't carry the same expectation as the Earnhardt name. Kyle Petty's career was but a shadow of his father's, yet he only got some commentary that he was too unfocused to succeed in stock cars. But the Petty name had also become less potent after Richard's retirement, with the #43 only showing flashes of brilliance afterwards. After Adam Petty's tragic death in 2000, the Petty name was just a relic of the past, and narrowly escaped being wiped off the circuit altogether after last season.
By contrast, the Earnhardt name remains strong. Ralph Earnhardt was a force behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt was a legend behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was a championship race team with a winning record. Even Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for all the criticism he shoulders, has his share of Busch Series championships and Winston Cup victories, despite the fact that being Dale Earnhardt's son is an impossible act to follow. Dale's other son, Kerry, was not as successful, but prior to Dale's death, he had racked up a fair number of ARCA wins, opening the door to what would be a long list of second-rate rides before he announced his retirement in 2007.
It would be unthinkable to imagine an Earnhardt making the headlines for anything but winning.
And then, there's Jeffrey Earnhardt.
The younger of Kerry's two sons, Jeffrey made his NASCAR touring debut in a family-owned car, driving in the Busch East Series for DEI in 2007 and finishing fifth in points. The next year, he was teamed with Trevor Bayne and Jesus Hernandez as part of a three-car DEI program. Despite similar results, he was pulled from the car two races from the end of the season. Rumors flew that Jeffrey had been benched because his father Kerry, now working as a consultant for DEI, felt he was focused too much on his extracurricular life and too little on working on the car.
Jeffrey made a few Nationwide starts in 2009, then ran a few Truck Series races last year for Rick Ware Racing. During the offseason, Jeffrey was announced as the fulltime driver of RWR's #1 Truck team, with sponsorship from longtime RWR sponsor Fuel Doctor. The team survived the Daytona carnage to open the season with a top-ten finish, putting Jeffrey third in points leaving Daytona. Two top-twenty finishes have left Jeffrey in tenth in points early in the year, far ahead of expected contenders like Brendan Gaughan and Travis Kvapil.
Then, this Tuesday, RWR announced that Earnhardt would not be in the #1 Truck at Martinsville this weekend. The reason? Apparently, teams had reported to owner Rick Ware that Jeffrey and his agent were shopping around for a new ride, discussing bringing along Ware's Fuel Doctor sponsorship. Jeffrey, presumably through his agent, denied the charges, claiming that he had been told the team could no longer run Jeffrey in the #1 without sponsorship, hence he was looking for a new and stable ride.
I admit, I sort of saw it coming. Last year, Fuel Doctor sponsored Ware's #47 truck with Brett Butler behind the wheel. Butler lost the ride mid-season, after being rotated to a second truck, due to "lack of sponsorship." Seeing as Fuel Doctor remained on the truck through the season (and for Jeffrey Earnhardt's starts), I wondered what sort of sponsor RWR was dealing with. Fuel Doctor had also announced sponsorship of Timmy Hill's rookie efforts in an RWR-owned Nationwide car this season. All told, it sounded like RWR was trying to stretch a sponsor dollar between teams, expecting drivers to bring along additional money to secure the ride. And if the RWR truck team needed Jeffrey to bring his own sponsor portfolio along, I could see him losing the ride once the funding fell short.
But at the same time, if the allegations were true and Jeffrey were shopping the sponsorship around to a new team, one has to wonder what sort of agent would think it were a good idea to start with. Especially with the past rumors regarding Jeffrey's work ethic, this seems like a good way to burn a lot of bridges before ever crossing them. That's just basic business.
And never mind that...where else would he go? There are no competitive Truck teams with an open seat, and the only ones with an opening are demanding sponsor dollars, lest they be reduced to start-and-parking. Former series champion Mike Skinner had difficulty landing a ride before the season started; how would Jeffrey Earnhardt fare with no real credentials to flaunt but his name? Not to suggest that RWR is a top team, but at this point in the year, Jeffrey has completed all but two laps and sits ahead of a number of veteran drivers struggling through bad luck. A ride with potential beats a ride that doesn't yet exist.
Interestingly, RWR and Jeffrey released a press briefing Wednesday evening that they have settled their differences, and Earnhardt will drive the RWR truck at Martinsville and beyond while they search for additional sponsorship. Only time will tell how long this will last; scars like that have a way of lingering, and if a better driver became available, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeffrey on the free-agent list within a couple months.
But then, you have to step back and wonder, if Jeffrey Earnhardt were Jeffrey Key (keep in mind that Kerry only changed his name back to Earnhardt a few years before his father's death) - or if he were a driver by any other name - would he have kept the ride after Tuesday's debacle? Would he have had a shot at the ride at all?
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Making Mediocrity An Art Form, NASCAR-Style
At last, it's Bristol weekend. Admittedly, my NASCAR viewing is sporadic since I only have the most basic of cable packages, but the half of the Bristol race I watched yesterday (on a streaming feed) was the second time I'd seen live racing on TV since Trevor Bayne crossed the finish line at Daytona. Life is busy. But we all make room for Bristol, because Bristol is one of just three short tracks on the schedule. I'd trade most superspeedways for the claustrophobic bullrings, the tracks Dick Trickle once compared to "flying a jet plane in a gymnasium."
Of course, the critics complain that Bristol has never been the same since they resurfaced it a few years back, trading the one-groove slam-bang concrete for a progressive surface that lets cars race and pass each other without crashing each other out. It's hard to judge any race in which Kyle Busch leads 268 of 300 laps, but I'd still take the Bristol high-banks over next week's California.
What caught my blogging eye this week, though, was a peek through the Nationwide Series standings before the fourth race of the year. My eyes fell on a couple names mired deep in the pack, names who had made all three races, but apparently finished poorly in all of them. They're this year's start-and-parkers.
A start-and-parker, for the casual fan, is a driver who qualifies for a race, sometimes very well, and starts that race. And after a few laps, they return to the garage area, claiming some mechanical problem with the car. The day is done, they collect last-place prize money, and load the car up for next week. Where they might try to race. Or they might just pit for that "vibration" or "brake problem" that slowed them the week before, and the week before that, and a couple weeks before that, too. Start-and-parkers have been around in some form for ages; when there's a short field, teams will sometimes enter a backup car to fill out the field, collecting last-place prize money. It was sort of a win-win; NASCAR got their full field, and a low-budget team collected an extra check. And for some low-budget Cup teams, it was the only way to maintain credit for attempting all the races with a budget big enough for a part-time schedule. There were some exceptions; Joe Nemechek was criticized in 2004 and 2005 for running a full-time start-and-park team with Jeff Fuller, and two ARCA teams ran full-time start-and-park teams in 2001 to pay the tire bills for their primary cars. But as long as fields were full, NASCAR looked the other way.
Then one team came along and made a mockery of the system. In 2008, a new team called MSRP Motorsports filed two Nationwide entries at Daytona. The team was owned by for driver-turned-broadcaster Phil Parsons and Randy Humphrey, but that was all anyone knew; there was no team Web site, and Parsons would shrug off interview questions about his team. The questions were in regards to team performance; Parsons' two full-time teams failed to finish a single race in 2008. It wasn't just bad luck that brought the cars to the garage after five or ten laps week after week with brake or ignition troubles.
Parsons continued the charade in 2009, starting a Cup team (PRiSM Motorsports) to shadow his Nationwide Series operation. The MSRP Nationwide teams combined for two finishes in 2009 and 2010, both races where drivers with sponsorship started the cars; otherwise, they parked in every race, sometimes qualifying just outside the top-ten. The PRiSM Cup team ran about as well, making a full-race effort only when sponsored, and parking before the first pit sequence the rest of the time. After the 2010 season, it was announced that the Cup team would run part-time in 2011, attempting to finish the races. Not a word was said about the Nationwide team, but with the Car of Tomorrow chassis being phased in for 2011, it was doubtful that MSRP would field a new car in 2011. So much for the full-time start-and-park teams, we thought.
Enter Ed Rensi.
Back in the late '90s, former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi started an ARCA team for young driver Billy Venturini. Venturini was replaced by Jeff Finley, who followed the team to the Busch Series where he was replaced by veteran Kenny Wallace to get the team on track. Bobby Hamilton, Jr. joined the team in 2002, and in 2003 they had a breakthrough season with four victories and a strong fourth-place points run by season's end.
Since then, it's been a struggle. Hamilton went winless in 2004, was replaced by Mike McLaughlin and then Ashton Lewis, then a few other part-time drivers. Hamilton returned to the team in 2008, starting all but two races and scoring only two top-ten finishes all season. In 2009 and 2010, Eric McClure brought some sponsorship money to the team, but ran miserably. In a few years, Team Rensi Motorsports went from one of the most promising Busch-only teams to a backmarker that was dependent upon Hamilton's personal money to finish the 2008 season.
Last year, Kevin Lepage, a Vermont veteran on the downswing of his career, announced he would pilot the Rensi #24 Ford. In the press release, he explained how he was pleased to be racing, not just start-and-parking as he had resorted to since 2008. Rumors had it that Rensi would enter a second car for Kelly Bires, a promising driver whose big chance in one of Dale Jr.'s Chevrolets was cut short twice in 2010, once by sponsorship and then when Tony Eury fired him a few races into the season. Meanwhile, as Eric McClure moved his sponsorship dollars to another team, he lamented how he had rarely had enough money to buy tires in 2010, forcing him to nurse the car to a poor finish on worn rubber.
Lepage and Bires showed up at Daytona in 2011, and within five laps, Kevin Lepage was limping toward the garage area in his #24 Ford Mustang. Bires was not too far behind. Lepage made a few more laps, but his debut was a bit concerning for a driver who had promised to race in 2011.
And like MSRP Motorsports, it wasn't just bad luck. After three races, Kevin Lepage had completed only 40 of 520 total laps. Kelly Bires had completed 29 laps...total. At Bristol, Kevin crashed in the third practice session Friday. Shortly afterwards, the #24 team withdrew their entry. Their backup car, after all, was the #25 car...the car that completed two laps on Saturday before parking the car due to "handling problems."
And so we have a rising-star team that has become something of a punch line this year. Ed Rensi has not been shy about the financial problems of the series; he said years before that he had lost sponsorship from McDonald's because they insisted on putting a Cup driver in their car. Yet how encouraging is it to a sponsor when a team cannot bother to attempt more than a few laps each week? The Rensi cars have some sponsorship - from a Web site that claims to leverage local sponsors for small teams - but the fenders of the Rensi cars have been sponsorless for the most part. And what sponsor would want to support a car that disappears ten laps into the race? Worse yet, by withdrawing from Bristol, Lepage eliminated his shot at a guaranteed start based on race attempts. If they were to secure a sponsor, it would be a long, hard road from here. Bires is no better off, a tough break for a driver who was pegged as a championship hopeful before the 2010 season. There is a Team Rensi Web site...but all it promises is that the team will be "racing" in 2011. Parking a car after a mile of driving is not racing.
I don't think there's any doubt that this business of racing is expensive. Junior Johnson once said that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing was to start with a large one. In the last five or six years, we've seen the departure of such long-term, visible NASCAR sponsors as Kodak and General Motors, with others like Interstate Batteries, DuPont and Budweiser scaling back their programs. Even Jack Roush has had difficulty selling sponsorship programs; his Nationwide programs are largely sponsorless, and early in the 2010 season he was struggling to find backers for Matt Kenseth's season.
But this is about making mediocrity an art form. It's about finishing last with a purpose, being out there to collect a paycheck instead of trying to earn that paycheck. It's about qualifying for a race with no intent to race, while other teams with a desire to compete go home early. It's a shame, really.
As a parting note, the start-and-park battle got exciting in a neighboring garage stall Saturday as well. Before the season, Jennifer Jo Cobb had signed on with Second Chance Motorsports to run in the Nationwide Series, pooling Second Chance's small team with Jennifer's Truck Series pit crew and her marketability. Immediately before the race yesterday, Jennifer informed Rick Russell, team owner, that she refused to start the car, nor would her pit crew pit the car. When the press caught up with Jennifer, she explained that ten minutes before the race, she was told that she would be parking the car within a few laps, and if she did not, he would order NASCAR to black-flag the #79 Ford. Moreover, she would not be in the car at California. Jennifer insisted that she would not start-and-park her car to collect a paycheck, and quit minutes before the race. Rick Russell insisted that Jennifer and team knew of the start-and-park arrangement when they arrived at the track. He managed to put another driver in the car Saturday, too...who made four laps and returned the car safely to the garage area. Ultimately, it cost Jennifer Jo Cobb her ride. She claims another owner "has her back," and judging by a brief relationship with the Baker-Curb team last year, I could see her stepping into the #27 car. But the Baker-Curb team has been starting-and-parking since Daytona, where their car crashed out early on. Jennifer markets herself well and has her own apparel companies, but that might not be enough funding to get her back on the track for more than a few carefully-planned laps.
Maybe there is justice, though. Phil Parsons' #66 Toyota, the car he insisted would run full Cup races in 2011? They blew an engine early on at Bristol today and finished dead last.
Then one team came along and made a mockery of the system. In 2008, a new team called MSRP Motorsports filed two Nationwide entries at Daytona. The team was owned by for driver-turned-broadcaster Phil Parsons and Randy Humphrey, but that was all anyone knew; there was no team Web site, and Parsons would shrug off interview questions about his team. The questions were in regards to team performance; Parsons' two full-time teams failed to finish a single race in 2008. It wasn't just bad luck that brought the cars to the garage after five or ten laps week after week with brake or ignition troubles.
Parsons continued the charade in 2009, starting a Cup team (PRiSM Motorsports) to shadow his Nationwide Series operation. The MSRP Nationwide teams combined for two finishes in 2009 and 2010, both races where drivers with sponsorship started the cars; otherwise, they parked in every race, sometimes qualifying just outside the top-ten. The PRiSM Cup team ran about as well, making a full-race effort only when sponsored, and parking before the first pit sequence the rest of the time. After the 2010 season, it was announced that the Cup team would run part-time in 2011, attempting to finish the races. Not a word was said about the Nationwide team, but with the Car of Tomorrow chassis being phased in for 2011, it was doubtful that MSRP would field a new car in 2011. So much for the full-time start-and-park teams, we thought.
Enter Ed Rensi.
Back in the late '90s, former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi started an ARCA team for young driver Billy Venturini. Venturini was replaced by Jeff Finley, who followed the team to the Busch Series where he was replaced by veteran Kenny Wallace to get the team on track. Bobby Hamilton, Jr. joined the team in 2002, and in 2003 they had a breakthrough season with four victories and a strong fourth-place points run by season's end.
Since then, it's been a struggle. Hamilton went winless in 2004, was replaced by Mike McLaughlin and then Ashton Lewis, then a few other part-time drivers. Hamilton returned to the team in 2008, starting all but two races and scoring only two top-ten finishes all season. In 2009 and 2010, Eric McClure brought some sponsorship money to the team, but ran miserably. In a few years, Team Rensi Motorsports went from one of the most promising Busch-only teams to a backmarker that was dependent upon Hamilton's personal money to finish the 2008 season.
Last year, Kevin Lepage, a Vermont veteran on the downswing of his career, announced he would pilot the Rensi #24 Ford. In the press release, he explained how he was pleased to be racing, not just start-and-parking as he had resorted to since 2008. Rumors had it that Rensi would enter a second car for Kelly Bires, a promising driver whose big chance in one of Dale Jr.'s Chevrolets was cut short twice in 2010, once by sponsorship and then when Tony Eury fired him a few races into the season. Meanwhile, as Eric McClure moved his sponsorship dollars to another team, he lamented how he had rarely had enough money to buy tires in 2010, forcing him to nurse the car to a poor finish on worn rubber.
Lepage and Bires showed up at Daytona in 2011, and within five laps, Kevin Lepage was limping toward the garage area in his #24 Ford Mustang. Bires was not too far behind. Lepage made a few more laps, but his debut was a bit concerning for a driver who had promised to race in 2011.
And like MSRP Motorsports, it wasn't just bad luck. After three races, Kevin Lepage had completed only 40 of 520 total laps. Kelly Bires had completed 29 laps...total. At Bristol, Kevin crashed in the third practice session Friday. Shortly afterwards, the #24 team withdrew their entry. Their backup car, after all, was the #25 car...the car that completed two laps on Saturday before parking the car due to "handling problems."
And so we have a rising-star team that has become something of a punch line this year. Ed Rensi has not been shy about the financial problems of the series; he said years before that he had lost sponsorship from McDonald's because they insisted on putting a Cup driver in their car. Yet how encouraging is it to a sponsor when a team cannot bother to attempt more than a few laps each week? The Rensi cars have some sponsorship - from a Web site that claims to leverage local sponsors for small teams - but the fenders of the Rensi cars have been sponsorless for the most part. And what sponsor would want to support a car that disappears ten laps into the race? Worse yet, by withdrawing from Bristol, Lepage eliminated his shot at a guaranteed start based on race attempts. If they were to secure a sponsor, it would be a long, hard road from here. Bires is no better off, a tough break for a driver who was pegged as a championship hopeful before the 2010 season. There is a Team Rensi Web site...but all it promises is that the team will be "racing" in 2011. Parking a car after a mile of driving is not racing.
I don't think there's any doubt that this business of racing is expensive. Junior Johnson once said that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing was to start with a large one. In the last five or six years, we've seen the departure of such long-term, visible NASCAR sponsors as Kodak and General Motors, with others like Interstate Batteries, DuPont and Budweiser scaling back their programs. Even Jack Roush has had difficulty selling sponsorship programs; his Nationwide programs are largely sponsorless, and early in the 2010 season he was struggling to find backers for Matt Kenseth's season.
But this is about making mediocrity an art form. It's about finishing last with a purpose, being out there to collect a paycheck instead of trying to earn that paycheck. It's about qualifying for a race with no intent to race, while other teams with a desire to compete go home early. It's a shame, really.
As a parting note, the start-and-park battle got exciting in a neighboring garage stall Saturday as well. Before the season, Jennifer Jo Cobb had signed on with Second Chance Motorsports to run in the Nationwide Series, pooling Second Chance's small team with Jennifer's Truck Series pit crew and her marketability. Immediately before the race yesterday, Jennifer informed Rick Russell, team owner, that she refused to start the car, nor would her pit crew pit the car. When the press caught up with Jennifer, she explained that ten minutes before the race, she was told that she would be parking the car within a few laps, and if she did not, he would order NASCAR to black-flag the #79 Ford. Moreover, she would not be in the car at California. Jennifer insisted that she would not start-and-park her car to collect a paycheck, and quit minutes before the race. Rick Russell insisted that Jennifer and team knew of the start-and-park arrangement when they arrived at the track. He managed to put another driver in the car Saturday, too...who made four laps and returned the car safely to the garage area. Ultimately, it cost Jennifer Jo Cobb her ride. She claims another owner "has her back," and judging by a brief relationship with the Baker-Curb team last year, I could see her stepping into the #27 car. But the Baker-Curb team has been starting-and-parking since Daytona, where their car crashed out early on. Jennifer markets herself well and has her own apparel companies, but that might not be enough funding to get her back on the track for more than a few carefully-planned laps.
Maybe there is justice, though. Phil Parsons' #66 Toyota, the car he insisted would run full Cup races in 2011? They blew an engine early on at Bristol today and finished dead last.
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