POST-SEASON MISCELLANEA
While we wait for the roughly eighty days
before the next Daytona 500 to elapse, there are still stories in motorsports
worth discussing. Some comments on miscellanea within the sport:
For only the third time in NASCAR’s
history, the presidency has changed hands. It has done so in smooth fashion, and
without the outright cheating of Al Gore’s dazzling display of vainglory in
Florida. It began in 1948 with William Henry Getty France – the Getty stuck on
because his father had an admiration for the famed 19th century millionaire J.
Paul Getty. It continued in January 1972 when the keys to NASCAR were turned
over to William Clifton France. And in November 2000 the keys have been handed
over to Mike Helton, aided by Brian and Jim France.
In making the announcement, Billy France
acknowledged that health concerns have been considerably more serious than one
might have thought – France noted a cataract was removed from one eye. In
turning over the reigns of NASCAR, France leaves it with a leadership group that
leaves one feeling decidedly mixed.
On Helton’s plate are a phalanx of issues
the sport must deal with – competition or lack of it; costs; safety; money, who
gets it, how much will they get, and where it comes from; the haves-have nots
gap among teams; tires; the racecars; the tracks – basically you name it and
it’s a concern for NASCAR.
Helton’s handling of these issues in the
past is a mixed bag of success and frustration. Overall the changeover is
probably for the best, but the new leadership of NASCAR needs to better address
these issues so the sport can continue to prosper.
In a number of year-end best/worst-of
pieces the issue of the length of the schedule has popped up several times.
Generally the expression has been that the coming schedule of 36 point races and
two All-Star sweepstakes events and a plethora of testing is simply too long.
But is it really?
The biggest gripe is that the longer
schedule will overtax already stressed race teams – crew burnout has become a
tautology in discussions of the schedule. Yet it seems no one has ever asked if
the issue is legitimately a concern for the sanctioning body or if it is
strictly a team issue. In a piece in PitNow just before the end of the 2000
season David Smith of RCR noted that his team tested 27 times in 1987 when the
team had only sixteen men total. Similar testing regimens were adapted by
Raymond Beadle, Jack Roush, and others, and the teams handled it fine.
When the schedule issue comes up we come
to the nauseating issue of which tracks should lose a Winston Cup date. The
proper question is this – by just what justification should ANY track lose a
date? Certainly I can’t think of one. I like certain tracks more than others –
Daytona, Talladega, Pocono, Rockingham, the old-style Atlanta and the
now-defunct Ontario Motor Speedway are my favorites – but all the tracks have
qualities that justify keeping them on the Winston Cup tour. Those with two
dates thus give fans a greater opportunity to see the race in person than those
with just one date.
One note – NBC’s Dick Ebersol has
suggested that NASCAR will add second dates to Fontana and Vegas in two or three
seasons, presumably for the autumn portion of the schedule.
There’s been considerable discussion about
recent corporate shenanigans with DaimlerChrysler and possible effects on its
Winston Cup Dodge program. While they certainly bear watching, my guess is there
will be less effect than some pessimists seem to think – Dodge’s program has not
yet raced in anger and the enthusiasm for the brand’s return is quite obvious.
An intriguing new angle to Dodge’s return
was shown in a late November National Speed Sport New interview with Bill Davis.
Davis said he’d have preferred that Dodge’s effort be limited to three teams –
presumably his own, Petty Enterprises, and Ray Evernham – and that information
gathered by this Dodge triad will be "proprietary information" and
thus not be shared with Mopar’s "Johnny Come Lately" due of Chip
Ganassi and Mark Melling.
Now Lou Patane of Dodge Motorsports has
shown a talent for extracting cooperation among Dodge’s Truck teams and has been
working to maintain such cooperation within the burgeoning Winston Cup effort.
Nonetheless, the prospect of a potential split in the Dodge camp adds an
interesting wrinkle.
If a split does occur – with Evernham,
Petty, and Davis on one side and Ganassi and Melling on the other – it will
certainly see benefits from intensified inter-team competition and also
drawbacks – i.e. the Dodges fighting each other more than the GM and Ford
squadrons. The net effect, of course, can’t be known right now, but it still
bears watching.
My early picks for the 2001 title –
– #20 Tony Stewart – JGR is the best team
in the sport right now and Stewart has all the momentum on his side with his
spectacular season – only an at-times horrid opening quarter stopped him from
contending for the title.
– #99 Jeff Burton – Though less powerful
than in 1999, Burton still piled up the points and won four races, and has
momentum on his side still.
– #18 Bobby Labonte – Though I doubt he
can repeat in 2001, he still has the momentum of his title run.
Right now those appear to be the three
strongest contenders for the 2001 title.
Darrell Waltrip was asked at Tachzone if
there are too many rules. While a good question, it’s also something of an
inadequate one. Is it a case of too many rules, or having too many rules that
arguably don’t work?
"Aero push? I’ve lived with aero-push
all my life," Waltrip said, "I just didn’t know what it was. That’s
just part of racing."
Maybe, but it remains that the cars
Darrell drove in his heyday did not suffer from it the way today’s cars do, and
thus the cars Waltrip drove for DiGard and Junior Johnson tended to run much
better in traffic than today’s aero machines do.
So should the sport go back to something
akin to "run watcha brung?" In some sense it should, but foremost it
needs the cars to be able to race in dirty air – to thrive in dirty air, if you
will.
Matt Kenseth officially won the Rookie of
the Year award. There has been a bit of controversy in this, because Dale
Earnhardt Jr. won two races while Kenseth won just once. Overall, Kenseth
finished more races than Junior, while Junior raced harder which at times got
him in trouble. It’s probably for the best that Kenseth won the Rookie title,
but it shows again how racing effort has taken an unjustified back seat to the
best average finish.
Only 79 days to go before Speedweeks……