Loud Music is a $40 Fine

About nine o’clock on Sunday night, I realized I’d completely missed the Phoenix Cup race. As it turns out, I didn’t miss much. Jimmie Johnson won again and virtually clinched the title. Here are a few random thoughts I’ve had about the race and the season.

• Top Dog: You’ve got to wonder what Jeff Gordon’s thinking. It’s been 40 races since he won. Have we seen a changing of the guard at Hendrick Motorsports? Remind me of when Roush started pushing Mark Martin out for his younger drivers like Kenseth and Busch.
• Retire already: What is it about motorsports that makes drivers who are past their prime think they can still win races? Kyle Petty, Mark Martin, Bill Elliot, Kenny Schrader, and much as I hate to say it, Sterling Marlin all really need to rethink their involvement in the sport’s highest level. Yeah, I know Martin’s going to “run for the championship” next year in a Hendrick car. While I’d actually like to see him win it, I don’t think it’ll happen. I don’t see Hendrick giving him the same equipment he’s giving Johnson.
• Is this the US? The race Sunday was a 500k race. I guess that sounds more impressive than the “CHECKER O’REILLY AUTO PARTS 311 PRESENTED BY PENNZOIL”. But still, this is the US. Make the race 300 miles like those at that gawdawful New Hamshire track.
• What’s Yer Point: Kyle Busch has to be cussing NASCAR for that new gimmicky points system. It’s gonna cost him a bunch of money. Under the old system, he’d probably end up finishing third. Under this new scheme, he could end up anywhere from 7th to 12th. NASCAR needs to fix what wasn’t broken to begin with.
• Mergers and Acquisitions: There’s a lot of talk about different teams merging and otherwise getting new ownership money. Before they do that, they ought to ask Ray Evernham and Richard Petty how that’s working out.
• No Testing For You: NASCAR has indicated that they’re going to possibly ban testing next year, at least for the first part of the year. This is in order to help cut costs for the teams. Here’s an idea: if you want to cut costs, limit the number of teams per owner (whether real or on paper) to two. Right now there are three or four owners who pretty much stink up the show. If your favorite driver isn’t driving for one of those teams, he doesn’t have a realistic chance of winning.

Next week is the last race of the season. I remember when I counted the days from the last race of the year to the Daytona 500. NASCAR has changed so much in the last few years that it’s just not much fun to watch anymore. And based on this year’s TV ratings (which are mostly flat or lower than last year’s), I’m not the only one NASCAR is losing. They’ve got to know that some of the stuff they’re doing is turning fans off. I don’t have the answer, but I know the product they’re putting out now can’t compare to even the mid-90’s. We’ve already seen some of the lower tier sanctioning bodies go out of business (ASA comes to mind). If I were a NASCAR stockholder I’d be concerned.

Chase This – NASCAR couldn’t have done a better job of keeping Kyle Busch from winning the championship if they’d tried. A driver who would still be in the hunt under the old system is now pretty much out of the race. The new system came about because people complained that the driver with the most wins wasn’t winning championships. Guess that’s gonna happen again this year. Will those same people complain now? I doubt it. This chase format has so many problems it’s not funny.

TV Coverage – ESPN shows how much respect it has for the Nationwide Series by broadcasting it on ESPN Classic, a network that maybe three people in the country get. I understand that it’s going to be simulcast on the Speed channel; yeah, that’ll help. NASCAR should specify in the TV contracts what networks the races should be shown on.

Qualifying Rain-outs – There have been more qualifying sessions rained out this year than in any other year going back to the last 50’s. Why is it that NASCAR couldn’t postpone qualifying a day? Or even have same day qualifying? Go to a one-day show format. The teams that aren’t in the top 35 deserve a shot at the race. And don’t get me started about having 35 provisional starting spots… seems like a few years ago, everyone complained about seven provisionals.

Time’s Up – Somewhere around here, I still have a hat I got from the Dodge announcement at Talladega in 2000 that they were coming back into the Cup Series. The front of the hat said “It’s Time”. Now that it looks like GM is going to gobble up Dodge, it’s unclear what will happen to those consumer brands. As to what GM will do with the Dodge brand on the race track? I think we can look at GM’s past to figure that out. How long has it been since you saw a Pontiac, Oldsmobile, or Buick on the race track? GM still sells those brands (at least I think they do), but they pretty much made everyone not in a Chevy have to make the choice of going to a new body style. It’s not good to give folks those kinds of choices; sometimes they go with a competitor.

Petty Politics – What’s the deal over at the Petty’s? Kyle doesn’t seem to know, and isn’t he the president or something? Maybe that was before they got those other investors, since he doesn’t seem to know from week to week if he’ll be driving the car. Face it: the Petty operation hasn’t been up to competitive levels in decades. That includes the cars and  Kyle. Bobby Hamilton was a breath of fresh air for that organization, and they managed to get a couple of wins with him as the driver. I think they’ve had one or two wins since him, but they’ve pretty much been a back marker for a long time. And now there’s talk about a Petty merger with DEI. This definitely ain’t your father’s NASCAR.