New Hampshire Postscript, Pocono Preview
Having digested the varied coverage of NHIS, some follow up observations:
That a fundamental change is occurring with Winston Cup drivers was shown in
several incidents. A reporter at NHIS tried to ask a well-known Winston Cup
driver – who has won at least one championship – some questions after the race,
and that driver stalked past the reporter like he wasn’t even there. Now this
isn’t the first time such an incident has occurred – and likely not the first
time this particular driver acted that way to reporters – but it still is worth
noting that five or more years ago this driver would have stopped and answered
questions without problem.
There was also Tony Stewart. After crashing he walked to the garage and apparently
gave an obscene hand gesture to the crowd, a boorish act on his part and further
sign of a growing lack of respect for race fans.
And there was the drivers’ criticisms of the racetrack. Though there was some
breakage of the asphalt in Four, the drivers tended to exaggerate it, and also
tended to treat the issue of rubber buildup as though it is unique to NHIS. It
of course is not, and the number of cautions at NHIS is hardly alien to most
bullring-type tracks, a fact lost on John
Sturbin and Jeff
Owens.
Sturbin dredges up comparisons to the controversy over Texas in 1997-8,
ignoring that that controversy stemmed from a track prepared in comparatively
slapdash fashion and which today is no more raceable (or safe) than it was at
the beginning. If anything, New Hampshire’s races have consistently been more
competitive than Texas’ Winston Cup events. Sturbin also dredges up the New
Hampshire 300 of 2000, the race run with restrictor plates – he claims "not
a single pass was made for the lead." He is wrong – Bobby Labonte passed
Jeff Burton on two different laps, and Burton beat him back to the stripe both
times.
Some have suggested that NHIS use concrete for the turns, except that
concrete is worthless as a racing surface – and did anyone else notice how the
IRL cars at the concrete-surfaced Nashville Superspeedway had the same problems
out of the groove that the Cup guys at NHIS had?
That the Grand National North and Modified drivers all raved at how racy the
track was shows yet again what really needs to be changed – not the racetrack,
but the cars (and tires) racing on it. It is not, contrary to Dale Jarrett, a down force
issue, but a horsepower, drag, tire width, and stagger issue. Nor is it a
problem with the groove – it is the aero-push problem, the general problem of
cars that displace so little air and are so dependant on channeling it for down force
that they are unraceable.
Contrary to Jeff Owens, not changing anything to the track before September
is no mistake, because the track is not the problem. Owens gripes about how
eight drivers in title contention suffered problems, and that "to return
without fixing the problems could cost someone a shot at the championship,"
as if that shot won’t or can’t be lost somewhere else.
NASCAR has every business racing at New Hampshire, an outsized short track in
a strong market with excellent fan draw. The critics should stop blaming the
track and blame the real culprit – the racecars.
The drivers don’t deserve the track to be fixed, because there is nothing
there to fix. The drivers deserve to blame their cars for the problem, and to
fix that.
Speaking of Nashville, much obfuscating ink has been spilled over Deborah
Renshaw, the racer at Nashville fairgrounds who was DQed recently – after
several other drivers pooled money to file an official protest. Much has been
made about how she is a woman and the drivers who protested are men.
Two facts are worth noting – Renshaw has a teammate (a male) whose car was
also protested. Second, did anyone notice how easily Renshaw folded under
pressure? She quit the series, but came back only after intervention from the
sanctioning body itself.? That indicates she doesn’t have the toughness to race
at that level.
I haven’t seen her race – what little has been written about her as a racer
betrays more than a hint of what looks like exaggeration – but if she’s not
tough enough to withstand something like that protest (I regularly see guys get
DQed or fined at Stafford, and they come back the next week all the same), can
we really think she’s up to racing?
One more comment – I’ve seen drivers, such as Stacy Botticello at Stafford,
who gave their male counterparts far greater justification for
"conspiracy" and who haven’t been treated close to what Deborah
Renshaw got.
Back at New Hampshire, wasn’t it a few years ago that Ron Bouchard was
effectively forgotten in racing?
Well, he and Ken Bouchard are starting to make a bigger splash in New England
racing circles. Ken is driving on the Featherlite Mod Series and also some
SK-class Mod shows at Thompson (at which he owns a race driving school), while
Ron is sponsoring two cars on the Mod Tour – Kenny’s, and also Eddie Flemke.
Granted blood is involved in both (Ron’s wife Paula is Eddie’s sister), but it
isn’t farfetched to imagine Ron sponsoring more Mods in coming years.
So now we go to Pocono. The same problems that plague the sport everywhere
else may pop up here – aero-push, no draft to work with, tires that don’t allow
drivers to lean hard on them lap after lap, too much horsepower, shifting, which
interferes with ability to pass, etc. New Hampshire may ignite something given
how many lead changes occurred – I certainly hope so.
Driver changes, actual or potential, are all the rage in the headlines. Jerry
Nadeau returns to the Petty #44 after a superb run at New Hampshire, and given
how quickly he clicked with Greg Steadman before this could be interesting.
With Nadeau returning to Petty, Johnny Benson comes back to the Morton-Bowers
#10 Pontiac. Benson has been up and down this year, and with Pontiac’s effort
possibly being disbanded, time may be running out for this team.
Stacy Compton has apparently lost the A. J. Foyt ride to Mike Wallace, and
given A. J.’s past this may not be the last driver change to a team that really
does not look destined to last.
The Ricky Rudd soap opera is missing only one thing – sex scenes. It has
everything else – contradictory accounts, reported fistfights over post race
parties, stories of $2 million-or-get-someone-else demands, and seemingly no one
having any firm knowledge of anything. Rudd may be en fuego at Pocono after
losing there in June, as he has been pretty en fuego all season.
Also losing his ride after 2002 is Joe Nemechek, who has never really clicked
with Hendrick’s #25 despite the presence of his long-time crew chief Brain
Pattie. Of ex-drivers of the #25, Schrader has been competitive but has no wins,
Craven was all but out of the sport but got a reprieve from Cal Wells (and
turned it into his first win), Randy LaJoie bombed after a stellar fourth at
Martinsville, and Wally Dallenbach was relegated to NBC after 2000, though he
comes back to driving for three races in Tommy Baldwin’s #6 Dodge. So the odds
on Joe are historically unsettling.
Another bizarre soap opera is one with Steve Park – just as it appeared he
was burning his bridges with DEI, he’s now talking returning next year. But can
they really recover the magic of before?
Casey Atwood isn’t in the Silly Season yet, but his ARCA assignment at Pocono
is a risk – if he doesn’t win, what will that say about him at the Winston Cup
level?
While NASCAR returns to the beautiful Poconos, the IRL debuts at the rolling
hills of Cambridge Junction, Michigan. And the series has an increasingly tense
point battle. The fight is between Penske Racing and Sam Hornish of Panther
Racing, and the last few weeks have seen Hornish gain ground, and he has shown
more consistent muscle on the big ovals than Penske Racing all season, other
than Indy.
The other muscle team has been Cheever Racing, smarting over a costly weekend
at Nashville and a spat of bad blood between team owner and rookie Tomas
Scheckter. While Scheckter’s crashes can hardly be attributed entirely (or to
any particular level, for that matter) to poor driving judgment on his part, the
frustrating is obvious and the heat is on to run well at MIS.
After the huge battle for the lead at Fontana, Michigan should be even
better, and among the dark horses that suddenly isn’t so dark is Airton Dare.
The winner at Kansas in A.J. Foyt’s #14 has really come to life since his
stellar third at Texas, this despite a monetary shortage in Foyt’s team that saw
a pooling of crews for Eliseo Salazar’s return to the cockpit at Nashville.
The other big story is Al Unser Jr. And it is a story that graphically shows
how much racing has degenerated to the level of the other pro sports. It used to
be that a race driver would never get caught drinking to sickness, but now we
have the spectacle of the very best race driver of any discipline of the last
decade plus – to the tune of two Indy 500s, a CART championship, multiple IROC
wins and titles, and a one-race NASCAR stint that could have won the sport’s
biggest race) acknowledging being a drunk and thus checking into rehab.
Who would have ever thought they’d see the day when this would occur?</p