| | | | | | | | |  | | | | The constant whining about the cars has to stop. - Andy Belmont
ARCA Car owner and former NASCAR driver Andy Belmont shares his insight on what the crews in the shops are working on and talking about.
Much has been written these last few days about the drivers-and-owners-only meeting that was held last weekend at the Michigan Speedway, regarding the drivers whining about the new COT car. NASCAR president Mr. Mike Helton addressed the elite group and suggested that the negative comments about the cars needed to stop.
Here is my take: It’s about time!
We are told it was a short meeting. To the point. He didn’t ask folks to stop being themselves or to not be personable. He just asked them to remember where they are.
If you have ever been summoned to the NASCAR trailer, you would understand. Mr. Helton is stern when he needs to be and your buddy most of the time. In successive weeks we have had our tails chewed fairly hard, then the following weekend, Helton himself picked us up in his personal vehicle and gave us a ride. He is a good guy in an unenviable position. Someone has to be the heavyweight and he is the right guy. He is NASCAR’S version of Pete Rozelle or Paul Tagliabue of the NFL.
Each and every week in the top level of NASCAR, 43 cars take the green flag. That's 43 drivers in a country of some 300 million people. This is a country with just shy of 1,000 race tracks of all kinds. Grass-roots racing feeds the hopes and dreams of many children that they can grow up to be a Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart. To be John Force or Warren Johnson, to be Danica Patrick.
Put this into some sort of perspective if you will. Since its inception, the 600 Racing Company alone has sold some 12,000 "Legend" series race cars. That is 12,000 race cars for kids of all ages to learn on. Some will run that division forever, most will try to graduate and become the next David Ragan, Joey Logano, Reed Sorensen and so on.
There are so many forms of racing in our country. Go-karts, World Karting Association, quarter midgets, Quarter Midgets of America. So many kids whose parents have mortgaged the family fortune so the kids can race. "Groceries or a new right rear tire?" Moms and Dads at all levels, some working two and three jobs, trying to help their kid make it in racing, to be a driver or a mechanic or an engineer. More than one family has gone broke trying to get their kid to the top.
Over there at the top ... as you wander through the infield, over there is the Motor Home compound. This is no trailer trash area. These are million-dollar motor coaches, some forty or so of them parked together. Transported there by "coach drivers" who drive them, clean them, stock them and leave, so the modern-day NASCAR driver has his own place for solace or whatever.
Not far from the Motor Home compound there is a helipad. Some of the drivers have their own helicopters for the short jaunts. The plane lot is not far away. Watch for the police escort entrance to the track: A NASCAR driver is somewhere in the mix, arriving from his personal aircraft of some sort.
What we are trying to put across here is that the constant whining about the cars has to stop. Everybody gets the fact that the new car is different. It is hard to drive, perhaps that is a given. Change in itself causes controversy.
So all of the races haven’t been barn burners. Remember Jeff Burton leading every lap at New Hampshire some years back? No matter how hard people work on that competition issue alone, in all eras there have been good races and bad ones too. Remember Petty and Pearson crashing across the line in the mid '70s Daytona 500? That was awesome! GO see it again and again at Daytona USA. Ned Jarrett once won a race by eleven laps at Charlotte. Now that must have been a snoozer! There were no bloggers then, so it wasn’t as big a deal.
Let’s look back…..If you will, imagine a different era. The cars were incredibly more dangerous and ten times as hard to drive as today’s chariots. Minimal if any fire suits, a street car bucket seat, no head rest, no neck restraint, no power steering, no window nets, no cool boxes, no cool suits or whatever. It would be hard for me to imagine A. J. Foyt, Richard Petty or David Pearson bitching to big Bill France. It just wouldn’t happen. If it did, it never got to the media. NASCAR became successful being ruled by one leader, a dictator perhaps, but a successful one that made the sport of racing stock cars an entertainment medium that people have made lots of money off of.
The drivers tried to form a union, tried to boycott. The show went on without many of them. (Talladega '69 I think it was.) Those who sat out had long-term issues to deal with. Some careers were completely derailed. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.
The bottom line here is that today’s top level drivers have it made. So quit your bitching. | | | Permalink | Comments (1) | | | | | | | | | | | | |
