The Bastard Son of NASCAR

Sssh! Once again, the best kept secret in Daytona this year
has nothing to do with Ray Everham’s sandbagging, or Hendrick Motorsports
bending the rules, or Robby Gordon thanking his lucky stars his name isn’t
Pruett, or Greg Biffle’s impending cakewalk through the Busch Series, or the
fact that the DEI drivers are focused on telegenics or the fact that Dale
Jarrett’s car IS coyote ugly. Once again, THE BIG SECRET is that the fastest
car in Daytona is a Truck.

Between NASCAR’s less than industrious efforts to market
their best and most competitive series, and the popular racing press continuing
to blow taps over the Tough Trucks, is it any wonder that by the time the flag
drops on the Big Show, the buzz will be about the great race that almost nobody
watched? The race that had slingshot passing, fender banging, and lead changes
that most will see only in highlight reels. We will see those highlight reels
provided the collective networks can agree on reciprocity of race footage. The
problem is, those evil Trucks find home on a CABLE network, again. The Trucks
got left out of the network deal, and one must wonder if this was by design.

The inception of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series was a
thing called Winter Heat almost seven years ago now. It was novel, it was cute,
but it wasn’t anything to get excited about, right? Is that why Roush, DEI,
Hendrick, and Childress were there at the beginning? Only Roush and Hendrick
still see it for what it really is, and continue to use it as a developmental
program for both technology and talent. DEI and Childress extracted their
combined three championships out of that series and moved on.

The Truck Series has also moved on. It has moved from the
novelty series with halftime breaks on bullring tracks desperate for any race,
to the real deal with hot pit stops at races at major venues. It is good racing,
cut and dried, as evidenced by the fact that graduates of that series move into
the top levels and hit the ground running. Note to Ray Everham: The all Dodge
front row at the Big Show is indeed a showing of your hard work, but remember
that the return of Dodge to NASCAR really happened in the Truck Series FIRST at
the hands of Bob Kesowloski and Richard Petty. If not for those efforts, you
might still be nursemaiding what’s left of the Rainbow Warriors following the
defections to Yates Racing. So how about it Ray? How about a Truck team next
year? You can afford it.

For all that the Trucks have brought to the other series,
what thanks do they get from NASCAR? NASCAR gave them Daytona, thinking maybe
those rolling bricks couldn’t do much on the superspeedways. Hedging that bet,
they took one of the best shows, Bristol, off the Truck schedule. The Tough Ones
responded by putting on THE show at Daytona in 2000, a show that the popular
press could only define in terms of Geoffrey Bodine’s spectacular wreck.
Beyond that, the Trucks gave us everything the Cup cars promised, and more…at
10AM Friday morning when nobody was watching. That must have scared the hell out
of NASCAR as it made the boy wonders in Cup and the yawner of a race they
displayed the following Sunday, look timid. The Trucks will have to settle for
Vegas, Texas, and California for now as the thought of the Trucks at the High
Banks of Dega would be just too embarrassing. You see, the Truckers race for the
right reasons. They are hungry. They are classic mix of cagey veterans like
Ruttman, Hamilton, and Cope, the establishment, now in the guise of Jack
Sprague, Dennis Setzer, and Rick Carelli with the graduation of Biffle, Wallace,
and Houston to Cup, and a host of yet to be recognized talent, as was Kurt Busch
in 2000, poised to make their marks in a Tough Truck. Look out for Carlos
Contreras in 2001, the best kept secret at Petty Enterprises.

The evidence continues to roll in that it is the intent of
NASCAR to set up the Truck Series to lose. The network television deal renders
this series as cable also rans. Why not change these Thursday and Friday dates
to daily doubles? Why not run the Trucks the same day behind the Busch cars at
Daytona? Certainly the major racing venues can handle this logistically, but
that might find the golden boys of Cup inconvenienced in some way? And what’s
with this Thursday/Friday thing, Trucks/Busch, at IRP. Give them the Brickyard!
Tony George won’t mind.

Let’s review here. NASCAR left the Trucks out of the
network television deal, continues to schedule dates on Thursdays and Fridays,
no longer has partner events with the ASA, partners the Trucks with IRL dates,
and in 2001, has exactly one partner date with the Busch cars at the Milwaukee
Mile. Are these the actions of a sanctioning body that is supporting a racing
series? Why stop there, NASCAR? Let’s just run the Trucks on Mondays against
Monday Night Football and Raw is War. That will boost both ticket sales and
television ratings, now won’t it? It just doesn’t make sense. Craftsman, the
series sponsor, has signed on for the future, but it begs the question, by their
very actions, if NASCAR has signed on for the future of NCTS. It doesn’t look
that way, does it?

What’s really going on here? One might speculate egos
running NASCAR. Perhaps the Cup Establishment, (need we mention names here?), is
feeling threatened? Feeling they might lose part of the limelight to the Tough
Trucks? It’s not like the Busch Series where the Randy LaJoies and the Jeff
Greens know their place. We only get a few of them (Busch grads), a year, and by
and large, they take a long time to get here, and they go away when they fail.
But these Truck guys, sheesh! They’re out there racing around on a Cup chassis
and a Cup motor skinned as a Truck! And they use their bumpers! They don’t
care about aero packages, they just want to win. As Jeremy Mayfield found out
last year at Pocono, we have that unwritten rule in Cup that says you don’t go
around an oval making the Establishment uncomfortable. Mr. Mayfield found that
he was No. 1 in Mr. Earnhardt Sr.’s book. And a bleak future for Kurt Busch,
NCTS runner up in 2000, who jumps to the #97 unsponsored Cup effort in 2001. In
his limited run in 2000, he made it known early on that he is aggressive,
hungry, and has no intent on putting his talent on hold while on bended knee to
the Establishment. No doubt, he will be back in a Truck by the time the green
flag falls on the Pepsi 400.

If we look at the three series now sanctioned by NASCAR, they
have very distinct personalities. The Cup boys have evolved into the Beverly
Hills 90210 racing series. What? Me work? How many times do we have to hear
about how much Mark Martin hates restrictor plate racing? It’s part of your
job, Mark. If you don’t like the movie…? Tony Stewart and his lack of
affinity for the racing press? You work for a former Super Bowl winner, teamed
with a Winston Cup champion, and have a billion dollar sponsor on your car. What
part of visible don’t you understand? One has to wonder how long Dale Jarrett
would last working for anyone other than Robert Yates. If it’s not the car, it’s
the track, or the pit stops, or the other drivers. It’s never about you. Just
who promised you that rose garden? It wasn’t Joe Gibbs. And lastly, Junior
Earnhardt. You aren’t the King. Richard Petty is.

So what we have here is what’s growing into the Prima Donna
Racing Series that deserves Mary Kay, and not Winston as a sponsor. For the most
part. It seems to be getting worse every time a Stacy Compton or a driver of his
thirst comes in from the Trucks Series and makes an actual effort.

The Busch Series is perhaps another well kept secret. It is a
mix of “been there, done that, hated it” castoffs from Cup, and new blood
from all over the racing community who want to dip their toes into the major
leagues. It’s the Club Med of NASCAR: Good equipment, good money, national
exposure, major venues, and Sundays off.

And then we have the working class, the Truckers. Over the
years, NASCAR has used them to do the dirty jobs. They blaze the trails of the
unknown for the Cuppers by running debut events at tracks like Gateway and
Chicago. One has to wonder what nefarious scheme NASCAR has in mind for the
running of the Trucks at the Lady in Black in 2001. The past three years has
shown that nothing they do for the Truck Series comes without a price or a heavy
ulterior motive. The season gets shorter and exposure ebbs. If NASCAR is
committed to the Tough Ones, they don’t show it. And the Tough Ones don’t
much care. These guys like to race. It’s what they do. They are the closest
thing to Saturday Night Thunder we have seen in many years. Where else in NASCAR
can a guy put it in the wall in two, apply a dose of sledgehammer bodywork, and
finish in the top five? You’ll never hear a Trucker whine about the weenie
wrapper that blew his qualifying effort, but then, these guys aren’t whining
weenies.

A member of the racing press has gone public with the
prediction that the NCTS will not be in existence in 2002 as the economy takes a
tailspin. Wrong on both counts. The only economic threat of any significance is
a tax cut that might reduce the amount of gravy for those feeding at the public
trough, many as they are. The NCTS will be back in 2002, and hopefully not under
the banner of NASCAR. There is too much talent and investment for the
participants to walk away just like that. Most importantly, there IS a fan base
no matter how much NASCAR and the popular press try to ignore it, for whatever
agenda they wish to push forward, that loves this brand of racing. That fan base
may look to the American Speed Association as a savior for the Trucks.

The ASA, a racing series that has given rise to no names like
Kulwicki, Martin, Wallace, and Benson, has gone to great lengths to keep that
series affordable on both sides of the track. They may, with AC Delco, embrace
the Truckers in the guise of the AC Delco Challenge Truck Series in 2002. True,
tracks such as Hawkeye Downs and Minnesota aren’t Daytona and Bristol, and
there is no doubt that NASCAR would go to great lengths to keep AC Delco Trucks
off of staples of the NASCAR circuit should the Trucks choose not to die
gracefully. It wouldn’t matter if NASCAR did black ball them. The Tough Trucks
are about RACING, and these guys will, and do, put on a good show whether its
100,000 watching at Daytona, or 25,000 at Milwaukee.

Funny how the one series in NASCAR that is the embodiment of
its very roots in terms of the type of racing that is employed is also its
bastard son. We get mixed signals from NASCAR about the Tough Trucks, and it’s
time for NASCAR to make a commitment, at least more of a commitment than that
God awful chunk of HTML they call a web site. Then again, if they “redesign”
NCTS the way they did the web site…the race is over…