Post-Awards RacinDeals

POT SHOTS: Several people
who spoke at the Winston Cup Awards Ceremony (it’s not a banquet
anymore), took shots at various people. Here’s some of the ones I
noticed.

"He is finally, officially, the most
popular driver."
Theresa Earnhardt, taking a shot at the NMPA’s "Most Popular
Driver Award" that was won posthumously by Dale Earnhardt.
If souvenir sales are any indication of who’s popular and who’s
not, Earnhardt’s $30,000,000 a year should be a big indicator.

"I began wearing it at Talladega and
it’s so comfortable I didn’t want to take it off."
Tony Stewart, taking a shot at NASCAR’s ridiculous mandate to
wear a head and neck restraint device

"The addition of Ryan (Newman) and his
team running in every race will be beneficial in that we’ll have
a ton more data and input that’ll help everybody involved."
Rusty Wallace, taking a (cheap) shot at former teammate Jeremy
Mayfield

(Thanks to the StockCarFans newsletter for the above quotes).

SPONSOR MENTIONS: One of the big complaints about
the awards ceremony was that it took everyone so long to mention all their
sponsors. While this might be a necessary evil, I think I have a solution. What
if the TV network broadcasting the ceremony scrawled all the drivers’ sponsors
at the bottom of the screen as they were giving their speech? Sure, TBS (or
whoever) would have to bite the bullet and not try to gouge those sponsors for
money, but that would free up the drivers to thank the folks who really put them
there, the crew.

It’s just a thought.

REAL AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:
How about a laurel, and hardy congratulations to Bobby Hamilton
Racing for giving Brian Rose a real shot in the Craftsman Truck
Series next year. Rose will be driving a third team for BHR. Rose
wasn’t hired because his skin was one color or another; he was
hired because he showed potential in his previous 15 truck starts.

SECURITY: So, the Secret
Service is going to be in charge of security for the Super Bowl
in January. They’re expecting a "whopping" 70,000 fans
at the Superdome in New Orleans.

That’s all well and good, and hopefully the
security measures will prevent some nut case from doing anything.
But there’ll be nearly 3 times that many people at another
sporting event just a couple of weeks later. Why are we not
seeing reports of the Secret Service providing security for the
Daytona 500?

For that matter, why did we hear about
aircraft (including blimps and helicopters) being prohibited from
flying over sporting events… except NASCAR races?

This is just another example of the lack of
respect that motorsports, in particular NASCAR-sanctioned
motorsports, gets from the general public.

DO THE CREW CHIEF SHUFFLE: Big news this week is
that two high profile crew chiefs are stepping down, and two Roush teammates are
swapping entire crews, including the crew chiefs.

While some people may question these moves, an
organization that isn’t changing isn’t growing. Standing on your laurels (hey,
that’s twice in one column) won’t win you two championships in a row. Ask Yates
and Gibbs.

THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME: Jack Roush claims that
NASCAR doesn’t want parity, that they have some pecking order in the way they
want the wins to come down. Hmm, well, then I guess that could explain why
Roush’s teams languished in 2001, comparatively speaking. NASCAR obviously
wanted Chevrolet to win the manufacturers title, and they had to make sure that
the Chevrolet teams had an advantage.  As a matter of fact, NASCAR
explicitly enacted rules just to make sure that Roush’s teams in particular were
at a disadvantage. I’ll bet they were even harder on the Roush cars in
inspection just so that those teams had less practice time on race weekends. I
wouldn’t be surprised to learn that NASCAR big wigs routinely met in order to
try to figure out ways to keep the Roush cars out of victory lane in 2001,
although in a Jeff Burton’s case they messed up a couple of times. Yeah, Roush’s
unsuccessful year in 2001 wasn’t Roush’s fault; it had to be someone else’s.

SPONSOR MADNESS: I just looked at NASCAR’s web site
to see who manufacturers their official vehicles. They have two: a pace car and
a truck. Pontiac’s Grand Prix is the official pace car, and Ford Trucks are the
official truck of NASCAR.

Huh? Didn’t Roush say that NASCAR had an agenda regarding
manufacturers? Ford won 11 races this year, Pontiac won 4. I guess Ford paid
more for their sponsorship than Pontiac, at least in Jack Roush’s world.

Speaking of official this and that of NASCAR, have you
ever looked at their sponsor page? The Ford/Pontiac combination certainly seems
weird, but how about having an official "communications" company, and
an official "telecommunications" company? And then they have an
official soft drink along with an official sports drink.

I wonder how much money is being drawn away from team
sponsorship because of all these "official" sponsors?

CASHING IN: For a fellow who is so overly critical
of NASCAR, Ed Hinton certainly doesn’t have any problems making money off of the
sport’s popularity, or Dale Earnhardt’s death. Hinton has a new book out about
the sport, and I wouldn’t buy it if it were the only book about stock car racing
available. Hinton and
the Orlando newspaper are the ones that originally wanted to see Earnhardt’s
autopsy photos. Who knows where those pictures would have ended up (perhaps in
Hinton’s book?) if they had been successful.