On the road to corporate respectability that NASCAR has chosen and so carefully cultivated, and the NHRA sure seems to be following in lock-step, the stock car sanctioning group has gone too far to clean itself up. Look at how Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch – too of the roughest cob, punk-ass racers to come up the ranks to the top – have become poster guys for the Peace Corps. After Busch took Stewart out of the 500; when the latter clearly had one of the cars to win, one would have thought the Stewart we have all known and admired a bit in the past (the one who slapped reporters’ tape machines under transporters), would have come unglued when the TV cameras and mics caught up with him.
But no, the NASCAR Mind-Meld is complete and he was so gentlemanly about his fellow competitor (probably better called a “stock holder”) that most long-time observers thought it had to be a look-alike stand-in mouthing his words. I know I thought I was watching a rerun of The Twilight Zone – thinking some alien force had taken over Stewart’s mind and made him spoon out such pabulum.
NASCAR has always used the Daytona 500 to set the inspection tone for the year – Smokey Yunick called it the game of “cat and mouse” between the teams’ ingenuity and the inspectors’ capabilities. This year NASCAR seemed to be particularly eager to “maintain the integrity of the sport” and make sure that all those corporate dollars coming
ADVERTISEMENT
But I maintain this is the complete opposite of what they should do, and here is a chance for the NHRA to lead and not follow. “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” or looking for the “unfair advantage” credos should not be swept under the respectability carpet in the NHRA. It’s still part of the rough appeal of drag racing; indeed any motorsports. Push to the edge if you are a racer; define and pull racers back from the edge if you are the inspectors. You need both in racing – but NASCAR is pulling racers so far back (see its coming COT; Car of Tomorrow) they have killed their competitive soul – or at the minimum replaced it with a collective one with no personality.
The NHRA has an opportunity to celebrate its racers’ ingenuity. They should have an “Innovators’ Hall of Fame” on the Manufacturers’ Midway of every national event with some of the impressive legal, and not-so-legal attempts teams tried to win. I mean, if a team is caught with the sort of overt attempt to beat the rules like doping the fuel or soaking the tires, or injecting nitrous oxide, etc. – I think the NHRA should have a press conference at the event and explain with charts and PowerPoint presentations just how clever the offenders were, darn it, but we were smarter (this time), and just want you all to know what they did, how they did it, and why we’re sitting them down for a few rounds or races.
Pushing the edge is as American as drag racing. Celebrate it, don’t hide from it.
Recent Stories
