I Shot An Aero, and The Punch Line To A Bad Joke
"The political warfare in the Winston Cup garage over aerodynamics
escalated……" So notes Mike
Mulhern.
And so continues the battle that has become more heated than some of the
racing. James Ince is there again, whining that no one brought their best cars
at Atlanta, and Greg Zipadelli seconded this in regard to the Dodges,
nonetheless vowing he won’t "throw a race like some of those Dodge teams
did because I’m afraid of getting (a rules penalty). I’m getting paid to win and
I don’t give a damn, we’re going to beat these guys in spite of this
disadvantage."
Zippy also calls the Dodge boys "lying thieves" in reference to
2001 wind tunnel numbers and the two-inch kick out the Dodges got which was
subsequently shaved to one inch. He then asks, "If those Dodge guys think
the Pontiac is so good, why did they throw away all their Pontiacs and
change?"
Now I’m curious as to which Dodge teams threw their Atlanta 500 away so they
wouldn’t get a NASCAR rules penalty. Sterling Marlin is the point leader, and
needs to gain more points to stay there, so scratch him as a suspect. Jimmy
Spencer hasn’t won since 1994 and still stings over questions about the legality
of those two wins, so he has obvious motive to go for the win. Ward Burton is
also in the point race and doesn’t gain from tossing the race. Ray Evernham’s
fleet needs to get back to the front after a slowish start. Petty Enterprises
showed considerable comeback form at Vegas and Atlanta and know they have to
build on that to keep racing. Casey Atwood in the Smith/Evernham #7 is in the
hot seat after a surprisingly poor start, with a crew chief change already
consummated and a potential driver change over the horizon.
Maybe it was Mark Melling’s team that threw their race – no wait, they need a
sponsor before they can return to the racetrack. As for those teams that threw
away their Pontiacs (or Chevrolets in SABCO’s case), they were teams that won
with GM but were nonetheless getting shafted by GM in engineering help and knew
they’d get a lot better deal with Dodge. So offhand I can’t think of any Dodge
team that threw their race as Zippy claims.
Ince notes that Stewart’s Pontiac raked down force to the front to help it
turn. He then claims the need to "take back some of that stuff they’ve
given the Ford and Dodge….there is so much kick out on the front of these cars
that the air is so dirty that all the cars out there are doing weird
things." Taking back kick out won’t make it better, James – blunting the
front ends with air-displacement rails will. Remember those 1995-7 wind tunnel
tests? Ford’s MN12 Thunderbirds always won on front down force because they
sported blunter noses.
One other interesting detail in this story – NASCAR apparently is hunting the
leakers of the wind tunnel numbers. Plumbers, anyone?
The good news story of Darlington was Steve Park. Some noted that the last
time a driver came back from injury, Ricky Craven won the pole (at NHIS in 1998)
and now with Park coming back from injury Craven does the trick again. While
Craven’s Ford won the pole, it was Chevrolet that stole the show in qualifying,
timing three cars in the top five and four in the top ten; the rest of the top
ten was a good mixture of Fords and Dodges.
Chevrolet also showed two of the fastest speeds in Happy Hour while Dodge had
two of the top ten, Ford had three, and Pontiac had the other two.
Nonetheless, Jeff Burton’s Ford led wire to wire in the Grand National Rebel
200, and Jeff Green made the point about how the Fords have the edge and so
forth. So on it goes.
Remember all those nauseating tales of how Jeff Gordon and then-Miss Winston
Jennifer Brooke Sealey fell so madly in love in Daytona’s victory lane in 1993?
Remember how Gordon gave her a ring and asked for her hand after Neil Bonnett
and Rodney Orr’s deaths at Daytona in 1994? Remember all those shots of Jeff and
Brooke in victory lane and at the racetrack in general and how in love they
looked?
Now the punch line of this bad joke has been sprung – Brooke has filed
for divorce, citing "the husband’s marital misconduct."
Georgia Newman, one of Brooke’s lawyers, vows to ensure Brooke gets well
compensated, slyly noting how Jeff became filthy rich during their marriage.
From reading the list of monetary demands in the divorce filing, one graphically
realizes just how far from your father’s NASCAR we’ve come – a $9 million
beachfront property, maids, a Porsche, airplanes…..is this NASCAR or Dynasty?
Of course in the past other drivers have gone through divorces, but I can’t
recall any other NASCAR driver who so made his marriage an integral part of his
image. The PR machine that serves Gordon and Gordon himself in varied interviews
over the years constantly noted Jeff and Brooke’s love and so forth.
But there was always an undercurrent of fraud in this deal. The possibility
that NASCAR and RJR may have known of Jeff and Brooke’s dating during the 1993
season – during which Brooke was Miss Winston and thus forbidden by rules from
dating drivers – and thus in effect condoned rule breaking by a young driver
already being pushed as the sport’s next megastar has never really gone away,
especially given that other drivers at the time knew something was going on –
Brooke herself acknowledged in a 1996 Circle Track interview how Kyle Petty once
accosted Jeff in his trailer and demanded, "Whose wife are you
dating?"
On those rare occasions when asked about the two of them having children,
Jeff’s answers always came off as evasive – which among other jokes led to
cracks about whether he and Brooke even knew how. "Marital misconduct"
also doesn’t jibe with Gordon’s much-vaunted religious image – and when the dirt
inevitably comes out specifying just what marital misconduct was occurring,
Gordon’s image will take still more punishment.
In any event, the punch line of the bad joke that is Jeff Gordon’s image – an
image that has been made into the sport’s quasi-God – is both funny and rather
morbid, as the dirt will eventually start showing on something presented for
years by the PR machine as a fairy tale come true.
Finally, some pondering of the potential that Dallas Cowboys head cowboy
Jerry Jones will buy into Andy Petree’s team – Jones reportedly would switch the
team to Fords if he purchased majority ownership, and in such an event, one
might wonder about Petree himself, who has been one of the best Chevrolet crew
chiefs for many years. One rumor that has crossed my path is that, if Jones
purchased into APR and thus switched to Ford, Petree would sell all his stake in
the team and go back to just being a crew chief or team manager again – perhaps
with Richard Childress’ team, which right now looks like it could use a team
manager of Petree’s caliber.