Okay, so the makers of Not Another Teen
\nMovie will realize where I got the idea for the title of this piece. So yell at
\nme for using the Not Another title – it’s still a pretty appropriate usage. With
\nall the other Year-end awards columns, it was inevitable from this corner,
\nwasn’t it?<\/p>\n
So here is the inevitable Another Year-end
\nAwards Column –<\/p>\n
BEST RACE<\/b> – By far the best race
\nwas the Daytona 500. It had the most lead changes of any NASCAR race this year
\nand was almost the only race to live up to the hype about how any team can win.
\nIt was certainly the kind of race the sport needs more of. A close second was
\nthe Alabama 500 in October, another ferocious slugfest that, unlike the two
\nDaytonas, did not end in a team-order victory.<\/p>\n
WORST RACE<\/b> – A pitifully high
\nnumber of candidates, but the vote goes to the National 500 at Charlotte.
\n"The fans got cheated," was Tony Stewart’s summation of a race where
\nthe top three were spread over ten seconds of racetrack. Inability to close up
\nand pass plagued the racing all year.<\/p>\n
IN-BETWEEN RACE<\/b> – There were also a
\nnumber of races with too few lead changes but nonetheless also quite a bit of
\ncombat for the win. The vote goes to the Pocono 500; here Jeff Gordon, Dale
\nJarrett, and Ricky Rudd engaged in some downright exciting combat for the lead
\nover the course of 500 miles amid three of the sport’s tightest and trickiest
\nturns.<\/p>\n
HOAX OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Remember the
\nStock Car Reporters website? Second place goes to Shawna Robinson.<\/p>\n
BEST TEAM <\/b>– The RAD Alliance, three
\nindependent teams working together and who all saw great success.<\/p>\n
FINISH OF THE YEAR<\/b> – #21 vs. #43 –
\nElliott Sadler over John Andretti at the Southeastern 500 at Bristol. Second
\nplace goes to Robby Gordon’s win over Jeff Gordon at the New Hampshire 300.<\/p>\n
PSEUDO-CONTROVERSY OF THE YEAR<\/b> –
\nThe anger over sponsor airtime freeloading on TV – on CGIs of racecars FOX
\nairbrushed out sponsor logos that didn’t buy time on the Daytona Shootout
\nbroadcast and got wrongly hammered for it – when NBC didn’t call Charlotte Motor
\nSpeedway by its sponsor name, Rootin Tootin Bruton deployed some trucks near
\nNBC’s trucks threatening to tow them off the property – though it later came out
\nthat the trucks Bruton sent were not up to a tow job – Cracker Barrel whined
\nthat it didn’t get enough plugging on TV, even though it got plenty of such on
\nradio and in print.<\/p>\n
FAILURE OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Goodyear’s
\nhard compound tire. It was unraceable, unreliable, unwanted.<\/p>\n
COMEBACK OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Dodge. A
\ncorollary goes to Sterling Marlin, Dodge’s point man in points.<\/p>\n
LOBOTOMY OF THE YEAR<\/b> – To Dale
\nJarrett after his condescending lecture on CNN\/SI about fans being patient and
\nknowing what it takes to make a good pass – Jarrett, there is no such thing as a
\nbad pass or too many of them.<\/p>\n
LOSER OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Jeff Gordon for
\nrefusing to run IROC and for citing worthless "quality time" reasons
\nbehind this. Second place goes to Michael Waltrip.<\/p>\n
DALE WHO?<\/b> – This award goes to
\nKevin Harvick, for taking over the Goodwrench car, winning with it, and acting
\nas much like a first-class expletive deleted as the old Goodwrench driver.<\/p>\n
WHICH LABONTE?<\/b> – Terry proved his
\ndays are numbered this year.<\/p>\n
PROVED WHAT?<\/b> – Dale Junior said his
\nTalladega win proved his Firecracker win was not the result of suspicious
\ncircumstances – except that he led half the laps in 100 more miles at Talladega
\nthan he did at Daytona – i.e. the Talladega win made the Daytona win more, not
\nless, suspicious.<\/p>\n
BAD IDEA OF THE YEAR<\/b> – The
\nChicagoland and Kansas Speedways. The IRL took to Kansas and to a lesser extent
\nChicagoland quite nicely; NASCAR couldn’t race to save itself at either track.
\nSecond place goes to the stupid yellow line rule at the plate tracks, a rule
\nwhose idiocy was shown by Tony Stewart.<\/p>\n
OFF THE WAIVER WIRE<\/b> – Robby Gordon
\n– from chump with Morgan-McClure to near-winner with Jim Smith to winner with
\nRCR.<\/p>\n
OUCH AWARD<\/b> – To Steve Park,
\ncrunched badly in a bizarre Darlington accident and recovering for resumption of
\nracing in 2002. Steve has been banged up badly before in Winston Cup.<\/p>\n
MOTOR MOUTH AWARD<\/b> – Jaws Waltrip,
\nwho said a lot all year – little of it sensible, though. Second place goes to
\nJimmy Spencer, who is outspoken but usually drivelous at the same time.<\/p>\n
IDIOT MOVE OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Bobby
\nLabonte running Bobby Hamilton to the wall at Talladega in October.<\/p>\n
SHAFT JOB OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Andy
\nHouston, whose career was shot by less than stellar leadership by his team
\nowner.<\/p>\n
PASS OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Little noticed,
\nbut at the New Hampshire 300 John Andretti passed three abreast up the middle.<\/p>\n
MINI-TREND OF THE YEAR<\/b> – Winston
\nCup drivers are running road races at Winston Cup tracks with increasing
\nfrequency. Kyle Petty and John Andretti won a supporting road race at Watkins
\nGlen during the NASCAR weekend in August; the Earnhardts scored a victory in the
\nDaytona 24. In this year’s Daytona 24 Kyle and John will be joined by Kevin
\nHarvick, Robby Gordon, Tony Stewart, Rick Carelli, and Wally Dallenbach; Junior
\nmay also return.<\/p>\n
WORST MOVE OF THE YEAR<\/b> – The
\nEarnhardts deliberately not trying to pass Mikey Waltrip at the Daytona 500;
\nsecond place goes to Mikey deliberately not trying to pass Junior at the
\nFirecracker.<\/p>\n
PHOBIA OF THE YEAR<\/b> – The sport’s
\nsafety overkill campaign. Too much effort was made on peripheral solutions while
\ncore problems – i.e. race speeds and pit crowding brought on by pit-road closure
\n– went unchecked, and the sport as a whole forgot a cardinal rule of life – when
\nyou worry about getting hurt, that is when you get hurt; when you worry about
\ncrashing i.e. the so-called "big one", that is when you crash.<\/p>\n
WHINE OF THE YEAR<\/b> – That the
\nschedule has too many races. It manifestly has too few races.<\/p>\n
BREATH OF FRESH AIR OF THE YEAR<\/b> –
\nThe Petty team. They never complained, they never made excuses, they just kept
\ndigging.<\/p>\n
THE REAL IRONMAN<\/b> – Kevin Harvick,
\nrunning the full GN and Winston Cup schedules and being a season-long factor in
\nboth.<\/p>\n
GAS PAIN AWARD<\/b> – Jerry Nadeau at
\nthe Dixie 500.<\/p>\n
MOST OF A BAD OPPORTUNITY<\/b> – Mike
\nWallace with the lame duck Penske #12 team; several excellent efforts couldn’t
\nsave the team.<\/p>\n
\n
So much for 2001. Now it’s on to 2002, and
\nwe should hope for a genuinely exciting season with a new record for different
\nwinners and a return to the kind of racing the sport needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay, so the makers of Not Another Teen Movie will realize where I got the idea for the title of this piece. So yell at me for using the Not Another title – it’s still a pretty appropriate usage. With all the other Year-end awards columns, it was inevitable from this corner, wasn’t it? So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}