Fanatical RacinDeals

FANATICISM RUN AMOK: With all the hate mail
I’ve gotten from one or two people this week, you’d think I
insulted the Pope or something. I guess that’s one of the risks
of running a site like this where you post opinions. Some people
can’t handle it, and take it out on the author. I’ve probably
received 50 or 60 emails from a couple of people that have moved
from the annoying phase to the harassing phase. I actually
suspect that they’re just from one person with however many email
accounts AOL lets their subscribers have.

Regardless, I’m not backing down on my
assertion that the most popular driver award is a farce. It’s
about as meaningful as Rick Flare being 15 time World Champion in
wrestling. Some people have taken my comments to be an attack on
Bill Elliott, and they couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s
an attack on a meaningless award; I don’t really care who wins
it, because it doesn’t matter.

Speaking of Bill Elliott "fans,"
early this week I asked his fan club to look at some of the email that’s been
sent to me, to give them a chance to acknowledge that they don’t
condone this sort of behavior. I’ve yet to receive a reply.

All I’m saying is that the emperor has no
clothes when it comes to the most popular driver award. Sorry, but if that offends you, too bad.

LENGTH OF THE SEASON: I think the optimum
length for the racing season is one race. They should just run
the Daytona 500 and go home. That would give the teams enough
time to test, plus time off that the news media is telling us the
crews need. Sponsors could be found a lot easier because they’d
only have to put up enough money for one race. I’d bet you could
field a very competitive car for a million bucks.

Course, with this solution, the fans, who
are the ones who ultimately pay those drivers’ and teams’
salaries, would miss out on a lot of racing. But you have to
understand that we’re "burning" out people with a 38-event
season. The message we’re getting loud and clear is that the fans
don’t really matter.

Yes, this is the only real solution.

THANKS, JEREMY AND MIKE: Looks like Penske
will be changing Ryan Newman’s number from 02 to 12. Why? So they
can use the car owner points that were accumulated in the 2001
season by Jeremy Mayfield and Mike Wallace for the rookie. I sure
hope NASCAR doesn’t let them do this, since it’s patently obvious
that this is a brand new team. With the employees of the #12
being locked out, it’s a slap in their face as well.

OLD ENOUGH FOR A LICENSE, BUT NOT OLD
ENOUGH TO DRIVE: I’m not sure how I feel about this. NASCAR has
raised the minimum age for a pit crew member and driver to 18
from 16 in its major touring divisions. Actually, the age has
been 18 in Winston Cup since 1998 when the government forced
tobacco companies to settle the lawsuits.

The age problem surfaced in the truck race
in California when 16-year old Kyle Busch was not allowed to run
because the race weekend sponsor was a tobacco company. If all
drivers and crew members had to be 18 to get into the pits, that
problem would not happen in the future.

But the problem with just a blanket age
cutoff is that extremely talented "kids" like Kyle
Busch will have to wait an extra couple of years before moving up
to the big show.

That’s where I’m not decided. I got to see
Casey Atwood make his first Craftsman Truck Series start at
Nashville Speedway a few years ago, and he became the youngest
driver at the time to make a race. Then he became the youngest
driver to win a Busch Series pole (too young to consume the
series’ sponsor’s product), and later he became the youngest
driver to win a Busch Series race. If he’d not had a chance to
enter those races, then he probably would still be running
Saturday nights at Nashville.

But, drivers coming into the big leagues
too early could be a problem as well. While some show a lot of
maturity at a young age, others might need those extra two years
at the local level to get that maturity.

What would be better than raising the age
to 18 would be to have a driver go through the process of proving himself, first
on short tracks then on longer tracks… much like they do now. You can’t just
make Talladega your first NASCAR race; you have to have experience first on
shorter tracks. Seems to me that this system works pretty well.

RUTTMAN GETS THE SHAFT, AGAIN: Proving that
no good deed (or season) goes unpunished, Joe Ruttman will not be
back at Bobby Hamilton Racing next year. With the sponsor going
away, apparently BHR felt that they needed a "young"
guy to attract another sponsor, and have hired Robert Pressley to
drive the #18 next year.

At least they didn’t wait until after the
awards banquet to let him know.

FIXING UNBROKEN THINGS: NASCAR has
announced a slew of new rules in the past few days to silence the safety
critics… because that’s all they’ll do. Helmets, minimum age, and belt
mounting all are really not going to do much, with the possible exception of the
belt mounting rules. But even with the belt mounting having to be approved, what
will it fix? If a freak accident is going to happen, it’ll happen.

But at least maybe those folks at the
Orlando paper will find something else to talk about now.