Between The Rock And Hard Places
We’re down to three.
Traditionally the American 400 at Rockingham came a week before the Dixie 500
at Atlanta, but this year the opposite is the case. While Homestead and
Talladega have seen heavy Cup testing this past week, it is The Rock that
beckons.
Tony Stewart is the favorite going in, though he’s yet to win at Rockingham
in seven career starts. Mark Martin’s first Winston Cup win came here in 1989,
but he has run out of gas to some extent lately and more attention is focused as
far as a challenger to Stewart on Jimmie Johnson, whose title hopes were
derailed at Atlanta.
It speaks about the weakness of the Latford point system that the title chase
is dependant on breakage by Stewart for anyone else to have a chance at the
title now. Of course quite a few teams, with title hopes unrealistic or gone,
are using the last few races to experiment for 2003. If one such team explodes
forward in the last few races, that can affect the title chase right now as well
as next year.
While Stewart is the title leader, the team to beat is Roush Racing, winners
of eight events and of the Carolina 400 in February. No driver has dominated the
year, but this team has clearly done so, winning a full third of the season’s
events. Kurt Busch’s breakthrough has been one of the bigger stories of the
year, especially considering his public feud with Roush in latter summer over
engines.
Matt Kenseth’s point position is strikingly poor for the winner of the most
races this season. It certainly isn’t bad, but to win four races but not be a
factor in the title hunt is curious, especially compared to Mark Martin, winner
of just one race but second in points.
Still on the outside looking in is Jeff Burton, winless since Phoenix last
year and inconsistent enough that it’s become difficult to gauge just where the
team is in terms of potential to win. Given their history the potential for more
wins is there, making their lack of success all the more puzzling.
The big wreck at Rockingham in February came when Casey Atwood was given a
cheap shot by Jeff Gordon and got T-boned by Kyle Petty and Buckshot Jones. Not
only were three Dodges and several other cars wrecked that day, it signaled the
beginning of an end for Casey Atwood with Ray Evernham that wasn’t helped by
Atwood’s provisional for the American 400.
The story going into the American 400 is Atwood’s increasingly public divorce
from the team. Several stories had him fired right away, though it appears he
will finish out the year in the #7. Making it all the murkier and worse for
Atwood are Jim Smith’s growing legal problems over alleged illegal dumping in
California, and signs that Evernham will sever his relationship with the Ultra
Motorsports team – a team he bought into without consulting Atwood before
placing him with it.
It’s left Terry Atwood to sum up his son’s situation with his team:
"It’s been a mess."1
A mess indeed, and it has left the Nashville driver with one obvious option –
returning to Clarence Brewer’s Grand National team, despite insistence that he
will keep up Winston Cup efforts.
It’s also signaled a disturbing trend in racing – refusal to try and develop
new talent that doesn’t come in and win the first race off the bat. People will
point to Atwood and say he failed where Jimmie Johnson, Jamie McMurray, and Ryan
Newman succeeded – forgetting that Atwood, like Buckshot Jones (also prematurely
axed from Cup this season) still has more Grand National wins than Johnson,
McMurray, and Newman.
What Atwood and Jones show is that not all drivers get the same quality of
opportunities that the wonder boys get. Johnson and Newman got top-drawer
factory rides and got massive help in getting to the front by their
organizations; Atwood and Jones were thrown into developing outfits and had to
develop alongside their teams largely on their own. Atwood in particular has
never really gotten much help from the team organization – there was the
above-mentioned switch to the #7, a clear demotion; there has been the general
lack of effort directed toward improving his team by the top management; they’ve
gone through several crew chiefs but Evernham has never really worked with the
team to get it better.
Irrespective, it will be some time before Atwood gets another real shot at
Winston Cup.
How much more nonsensical can polemics related to Texas’ lawsuit against
NASCAR get? Consider Don Hamm’s ham-fisted assault.2
Hamm attacks NASCAR’s contention about SMI seeking to enrich itself at the
expense of the sport, claiming that SMI led the way in "holding down the
cost to the fans" supposedly by working with area hotels to keep prices
down – though it doesn’t look like it’s done much good. Hamm cites SMI as
"the first to make major track improvements and make huge expenditures for
repaving, additional seating, and fan comforts." He forgets that SMI tracks
started repaving at the same time as Michigan and Rockingham in 1994, hardly
qualifying them as "the first." As for their fan comforts, Hamm
approvingly cites the copycat efforts of other tracks in that regard, forgetting
that such efforts haven’t really made the tracks better – they weren’t bad at
all before they tried to emulate the absurd opulence of Charlotte, and now that opulence
has made them totally colorless. Pocono, for one, was livelier when it didn’t
look like Charlotte back in 1989-90.
Then there is the real source of SMI’s campaign of track improvement –
Richard Howard, the man given the track by the courts after Bruton bankrupted
it. Howard’s efforts made Charlotte a motorsports mecca; all Bruton did was
build on that, to an absurd degree.
And nowhere is there any mention of SMI’s closure of North Wilkesboro, by far
the most graphic example of greed at the expense of the sport seen in the last
decade-plus. This leads to the second sentence, where Hamm further goes
ballistic. Hamm explodes when NASCAR notes that its approach to stock car racing
is pro-competitive and so forth. Hamm spits that "if they truly wanted
competitive and safe racing, they would stop all the aero-tweaking." This
is laughable, because it is "all the aero-tweaking" that is necessary
to get competitive racing. Hamm also screams that NASCAR should be banning wind
tunnel testing, without bothering to explain how they can even try such.
Hamm’s piece degenerates into a lengthy slam at Billy France, even to
claiming that TV coverage of the 1979 Daytona 500 was a fortuitous break for the
sport rather than an example of Billy France being a great promoter or
innovator, never mind that it was Billy France who got that coverage to begin
with.
"It was Bruton Smith and Humpy Wheeler who were the true innovators in
fan comforts, track lighting, modern seating, and respect for the fans."
They were? It was Bristol Int’l Raceway (when it was owned by Larry Carrier) and
Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway that modernized track lighting, and SMI’s mania
for night racing (copied by other tracks) has been detrimental to area short
tracks, plus night racing isn’t more competitive than day racing in any event.
"The fans complain about the cookie cutter tracks and ISC turns a deaf
ear." First of all, it was Bruton who pioneered the cookie-cutter tracks by
making Atlanta and Texas twins of Charlotte. This led other builders like those
at Las Vegas to conclude that the 1.5-mile quad-oval was the optimum design.
Bruton’s own success is what made the cookie-cutter tracks.
Second, the complaints about the tracks center on the racing, but they ignore
the real problem – the racecars. It’s an old story, to be sure, but it remains
the truth.
Hamm talks about ISC’s "incestuous" relationship to NASCAR,
forgetting that ISC was limited to four tracks before Bruton began his
track-buying and building binge in the mid-1990s with a clear intent at
acquiring greater power than NASCAR. Can Hamm or anyone else name one track that
lost Winston Cup dates because it was purchased by ISC? We can, though, name one
track that lost its dates because it was purchased by SMI (North Wilkesboro) and
two others (Rockingham and Pocono) that SMI probed to buy in order to close
down. ISC in effect saved several tracks from SMI predation, and that certainly
qualifies as pro-competitive.
And what of the Gatorade-Powerade deals? Gatorade was dropped as NASCAR’s
sports beverage for Powerade, but Gatorade is back, with ISC’s racetracks.
"Control of ISC and NASCAR is monopolistic." Really? Is that worse
than having no one in charge? Did ISC prevent Las Vegas from getting a Winston
Cup date? New Hampshire?
How about Indianapolis? Remember the blood feud between the Frances and the
Hulman/George family for many years? You don’t? You should – it was what led Big
Bill to build Daytona in the first place. Indy and Daytona spent years not
getting along. Their relationship obviously changed since the passing of Anton
"Tony" Hulman.
So it is with Bruton. It was Bruton’s belligerence that led to this recent
feud and is what weakened, not strengthened, his need for a second Texas date –
leaving the issue alone would have been more productive than the campaign he
began. Bruton and NASCAR cooperated fine for years, and thus there was no need
for this feud.
We may see a proliferation of multiple-sponsor racecars. Andy Petree Racing
may get Ken Schrader back to its team with Federated Auto Parts and other
sponsors combining to meet the $16 million needed to campaign Winston Cup. The
Petty #44 will go for a similar "pooling" arrangement, which should
help sponsors wanting involvement in NASCAR that can’t afford the $16 million price tag
by themselves.
Though it should help the teams in question, it also shows the greater than
ever need to cut costs in the sport.