POCONO, THE SEQUEL

AOL TV: Somewhere amongst
all those commercials on TBS, they managed to show a few laps of the race at
Pocono. It’ll be interesting to see the score TBS gets on Perfect
Paranoia. My initial impressions are that they ran a LOT of commercials. I
usually channel surf when commercials come on, and usually the race broadcast is
back on when I remember to go back and check. But time after time, I’d come back
right as they were coming back from commercial.  Maybe they were charged a
ton of money by Pocono for the TV rights and had to get it back somehow. If
that’s the case, I wonder if that’s a precursor of things to come next year?
NBC, TBS/AOL, and Fox will have to make up the revenue some way.

FIVE WEEK OLD KARMA: Wow. What a finish at Pocono
to an otherwise ho-hum race. Dale Earnhardt must be thinking that there are
racing gods, except that he got bit by the same bug that got Jeremy Mayfield.

THESE TIRES ARE BETTER: I don’t know what the deal
is with the tires this year. Goodyear seems to think they’ve got a great tire,
and none of the teams are willing to risk criticizing them. But you had three
top cars taken out because of tire failures. Mayfield was politically correct
when he said they must have run over something, but you know in the back of his
mind he’s got to be wondering about the tires. Maybe it’s just me, but it sure
seems like the tires have been a big factor in a lot of races this year. Since
Goodyear has an exclusive deal with NASCAR now, it doesn’t look like they’ve got
any incentive to build a better, but SAFER tire.  (BETTER: a tire that
lasts as long as a fuel run.) I’d bet there are a lot of drivers that would be
happy to go back to a bias-ply tire.

CALLING ALL CHEVYS: Chevrolet led only about 20
laps at Pocono. And that was by the top two Chevy drivers. They just didn’t have
a chance. I can’t believe that GM thinks this is better for them than a common
template, but apparently they do, since they’re resisting it so much. I guess
it’s better to have a "true" Chevrolet that’s bad than a
"fake" Chevrolet that’s good.

TACKY: Just how tacky is it for the NMPA to have as
the only picture on their web site the incident where Tony Stewart is showing
his displeasure at Kenny Irwin a couple of years ago? This is the same group
that sponsors the bogus "most popular driver" award, in which Bill
Elliott fans across the country stuff the ballot box.

TACKY, PART TWO: I came across another racing web
site (which shall remain nameless; they apparently can’t afford the $70 to
register their own domain name). This site has no information on who’s writing
the stuff or who runs it. I’m almost convinced it’s run by someone who doesn’t
like stock car racing. His "links" to the "about" and
"email" pages are sophomoric jokes that are apparently designed to
trick people into rebooting their computer or believing their computer has a
problem. That doesn’t give much credibility to the stuff that appears on the
site.

DRIVERS AS ATHLETES: There’s no question about it.
Race car drivers are bone fide athletes. But I wonder why NASCAR Online decided
to run a poll on who’s the best off-track athlete among a list of five drivers?
And who in the world could vote for anyone other than Michael Waltrip? I’m not
aware of the other four candidates running any marathons lately.

DUTTON’S DISCOVERY: I like and respect Monte Dutton
as a motorsports reporter. But his latest commentary is way off. There are
already too many comparisons people try to make between professional wrestling
and Winston Cup racing. We don’t need the one he proposes.

He seems to think that NASCAR’s popularity depends on
having one team be dominant in the series. That gives the other teams something
to shoot for, and it gives the fans a team to boo or to cheer. "It’s hard
to boo or cheer a driver with one victory in 18 races," he says. Huh?

This is a tangent to the "make fans" I’ve
written about. Maybe for those people who are "make fans" it’s hard to
cheer for one driver or another (especially if they’re not driving the right
make). But I think true race fans have a favorite driver and they cheer for that
driver when he’s winning and even when he’s not.

Dutton seems to be equating multiple winners with a boring
racing season. I don’t know where he gets that idea. Having 13 or 15 or even 30
winners in a season doesn’t in and of itself make a season boring.

What makes a season boring (to me) is when you have each
race dominated by one or two drivers. That’s pretty much what we’ve had this
year. Instead of one driver stinking up every show, we’ve had different drivers
stinking up the show.

He also thinks it’s appalling that the top three drivers
in points haven’t won a race since early in the year. A points championship
should be decided on the overall performance of a team, not just the number of
wins a team has. Is a driver with 15 wins and 15 dnf’s a better driver than one
with 5 wins and 30 top tens? I don’t think so.

NUMBERS: I read on the CompuServe
Motorsports Forum the other day where someone thought that the #42 should be
given back to Kyle, because both Lee and Kyle Petty ran it.

As we saw last week, Kyle thinks different. His number
from now on is 45. I can’t think of a better tribute a father could give to his
son.

CHAD GETS SHAFTED: What do you get when you put a
talented driver in a piece of junk car and he can’t finish well? Add in a crew
chief who doesn’t listen to the driver’s input on the race setups, and you get
Chad Chaffin, who was released from the 77 Busch Grand National team last week.

I talked to Chad a few months ago, and he was frustrated
by the situation. They were good at qualifying, but they couldn’t get the race
setup right. Part of that came from the crew chief, Jimmy Means, who apparently
refused to try anything Chad wanted.

It looked like the 77 team was going to be a big break for
Chad this year, since he had a "contract" to run the season. If the
owners of the 77 find out from Mike Wallace how bad the car really is, I doubt
they’ll hire Chad back (like the 30 car did with Hermie Sadler).

Chad deserves a better shot than he got, and he deserves
better treatment than he got. I hear through the grapevine that he may be making
a Craftsman Truck attempt shortly. Perhaps if he gets in a good truck, he can
show his stuff.  Personally, I think he’d be great in the #27 Busch car
next year.