Bill Simpson’s Dog and Pony Excuses
When NASCAR revealed that Jeremy
Mayfield’s lap belt partly tore in his Delaware 400 crash, Simpson growled that
"they can put on all the dog and pony shows they want……it’s just more
food for the lawsuit." So confirms that something utterly unnecessary will
transpire – a lawsuit by Simpson against NASCAR.
Simpson has steadily become more and more
difficult to take seriously in the year since the Earnhardt crash. He has
insisted that NASCAR must clear his name, yet his conduct over the year has been
to inflict damage to his name himself. Simpson used the same tired
"character assassination" accusation he’s used almost from Day One of
his spat with the sanctioning body.
In the past year we have seen four
documented examples of belt breakage – David
Hutchins, a Pro Stock racer at Seekonk Speedway, Dale Earnhardt, Mike
Harmon, and Mayfield. I doubt Simpson thinks they all installed their belts
"the wrong way" as Earnhardt did, and given that Earnhardt’s method of
belt installation had worked fine in previous years, Simpson’s assertion that it
was installed improperly loses a lot of its weight – apart from that Simpson
kept supplying Earnhardt with his products despite allegedly warning him about
his method of installing the belt.
Simpson insists that the problem is with
the structure of the race cars – "Until NASCAR goes back to what those cars
were two years ago with the soft front ends, they’re going to keep having these
problems." Well, two-plus years ago the sport saw a rash of serious
injuries and the death of an ARCA driver at Atlanta with softer-front chassis.
Simpson claims the cars "are very dangerous. Not only am I saying it, I’m
going to prove it."
Oh. Bill Simpson is going to prove it –
just like he was going to prove that a videotape showed EMTs cutting Earnhardt’s
belt at Daytona. You remember that one, don’t you? If you don’t, you aren’t
alone – Simpson hasn’t even mentioned that alleged tape since he first claimed
it existed.
Predictably, the Orlando Sentinel’s story
includes a promotion of the Myers report asserting that belt failure did not
contribute to Earnhardt’s death, never mind that NASCAR’s report shot that down
in flames, and that even a cursory examination shows that belt failure DOES
contribute to driver injury and deaths.
Now Simpson is going to file suit against
NASCAR. It is worth remembering that he himself admitted to instigating this war
of words by calling Billy France and blaming him and NASCAR for Earnhardt’s
death. His in-your-face accusation then was insulting and wrong, and his
excuse-mongering since has been almost desperate. He appears to be the only
person around who won’t admit that his belts can and do break.
His excuse-mongering even extends to
tires. "Why didn’t they put our a report about all those tires (at
Dover)?" Bill Simpson asked – as if there is any similarity between a
common occurrence (blown tires) and an occurrence that is not supposed to happen
(belt breakage). Moreover, the sport already knows what it needs to know about
these tire failures.
And so Simpson intends to proceed with a
lawsuit against NASCAR. That he has lost all his battles with them this year
doesn’t bode well for his case, but it still bodes ill for the sport. Why he
cannot bring himself to admit that his products are not foolproof and they can
and do fail is beyond me. But his own dog and pony act continues to insult
people’s intelligence and can only do harm to the sport.
The other big story after Dover was the
sudden end of Mike Skinner’s tenure at Richard Childress Racing. Needing surgery
and a sufficient healing time to be ready for Daytona, Skinner has quit RCR.
The mouth has long been put on Skinner
about how he couldn’t win with RCR in Winston Cup. That he didn’t is more a
mystery than a reason to berate him, for there were certainly plenty of races
where he had the ability to win. Skinner deserves a top-drawer ride that will
treat him as a legitimate driver, not as a second string as it seems pretty
clear he was treated as with Childress.