Halfway Next Time By at Daytona

Posted on June 30th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Halfway Next Time By at Daytona

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

Here’s a little poser from the Department of Racing Riddles: What do Wednesday and the Coke Zero 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race have in common? To anyone who works the traditional 40-hour week, it isn’t all that hard to figure out.

The typical Monday through Friday schedule, or “The Grind,” as it is affectionately known to those who are a lot more familiar with it than they’d really like to be, is frequently compared to a mountain or, for our purposes here, a hill.

The working man or woman, AKA “The Drudge,” stands at the bottom of the hill each Monday morning — a momentous day as it sets the tone for the entire week — gazing up at the monster that simply seems too high to scale.

Monday, though, is really not so bad. It is a day devoted to giving blow-by-blow accounts of your weekend activities to your co-workers, and listening to theirs in turn.

You check your accumulated e-mail and return your phone messages, and then, almost before you’ve had time to notice that it has begun, the day has ended. You’re halfway up the hill.

Tuesday is a bit of a tougher slog. This is the day when we tend to hunker down at our desks, make our lists and projections, and set our goals. It isn’t the most glamorous day of the week, but it certainly can be a productive one. And when it ends, the summit is within reach.

Wednesday is widely considered the most pivotal day of the week. It is the day when our perspective shifts. The foundations that were established on Monday and Tuesday provide a firm and steady path to the top of the hill.

We stop looking behind us; we focus on what’s ahead. Wednesday gives us the motivation we need to push through to the end. This is why we call it “over the hump” day.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season follows a similar pattern.

Monday is great. Speedweeks is always a terrific time to check out everybody’s new stuff, and catch up on all the news (and the gossip, of course). This includes the most momentous race of the year — the Daytona 500 — and early season excitement at tracks like Bristol and Martinsville.

There are plenty of interesting goings-on as teams jockey for position, not only during actual events, but also for places on particularly significant lists such as the Top 12 in driver standings or the Top 35 qualifiers.

Almost before we realize the season has truly begun, nine races have passed.

Tuesday marks the time when, after those initial positions are established, two team goals take center stage: To either maintain your position, or improve it. It is a period of hard work and difficult races, like the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway and the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. It is nose to the grindstone time.

Then, you look up and see it, right there at the top of hill.

I had to smack myself in the head a couple of days ago when I realized with a start that the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway marks the midway point in the 2009 racing season. Where did the time go? Like Wednesday, it just snuck up on me somehow.

The importance of race number 18 of 36 cannot be overstated. It’s like that day during a vacation when you realize it might be prudent to start putting a few things back into the suitcase.

Your focus turns toward the things you haven’t done yet, the goals you need to accomplish before the trip is done. Time is running out, and you’d better get cracking.

Truly, the Coke Zero 400 is NASCAR’s version of Wednesday, its “over the hump” race, with one major difference.

When we hit that turning point in the workweek, we madly want it to just be over, already. But in NASCAR, when we realize the season is halfway gone, we tend to cringe rather than crow.

We just don’t want it to end.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

A Piece of the Rock and Roll

Posted on June 22nd, 2009 by GrayBoy

A Piece of the Rock and Roll

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

A piece of the rock and roll

You really have to hand it to Kyle Busch. The most exciting young racer to come along in many years, he has demonstrated his determination to the world by tackling pretty much every racing series you can think of, and beating all of them at their own game.

And on June 6 at Nashville Superspeedway, young Master Busch showed the world something else. When he hoisted the winner’s trophy — a Sam Bass-designed Gibson Les Paul, pretty much the holy grail of electric guitars — over his head and brought it crashing down onto the pavement, just as he said he would, he demonstrated his integrity.

Yes, Busch is a guy who definitely knows how to keep a promise. With style.

It was a brilliantly unexpected move, reminiscent of the glory days of rock and roll. Nearly five decades have passed since Who guitarist Pete Townshend first began systematically annihilating his guitars on stage.

“To me, it wasn’t violence or random destruction,” Townshend said in the Who biography ‘Before I Get Old.’ “It was art.”

Since then, the practice has become sort of a rock and roll rite of passage. You have to admit it must be a great way to alleviate all that pent up adrenaline that comes hand in glove with a live performance. Sort of like a turbo Tae Bo class.

Something like a trillion people shrieked with delight when Adam Lambert performed with KISS on this year’s American Idol season finale. The performance culminated with — and you probably already know this because I’m betting you watched it, too — a guitar was smashed on stage.

And the crowd went wild.

When Busch smashed his guitar on the NASCAR stage, the crowd also went wild. But most of the shrieks didn’t sound all that delighted. The move has been called everything from disrespectful to shocking, and then some.

Now let’s all take a deep breath … and stop pointing our accusatory fingers at Kyle Busch. On the most basic level, it doesn’t matter one little bit what we think of his trophy treatment. He won the race, and was given the trophy, so it was his property to do with as he wished.

What he wished to do was share it.

There’s a back story here, you see. Kyle Busch had never before won a race at Nashville in NASCAR’s three national series. In stock car racing terms, that’s the equivalent of waving a five-pound pork chop in front of a very hungry dog. Busch promised his team that if they did in fact win the race, he would “disassemble” the trophy and share it with all of them. Sort of like their own piece of the rock and roll.

He followed through. It was a gutsy move and a pretty darned spectacular one.

Should Busch have shared his back story on the front end, so NASCAR Nation would have been prepared for what seemed to be a random act of victory? Maybe, although increasingly it seems to me that even in his triumphs, and they are many, he can never really win where fans are concerned.

Then, instead of offering up the apology everyone seemed to be demanding — for doing what he wished with his own rightfully-won property — Busch expressed disappointment with his effort.

“Well, rock stars break guitars all the time but I’ve never seen a NASCAR driver do it. I just wanted to break it apart and spread it around with the crew,” he said. “It didn’t break according to plan so I guess we’ll take it the shop and cut it up so all of the guys can have nice, smooth pieces … I’ll order another one for myself and one for Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief).”

And that’s exactly what he did.

The artist, who watched as Busch tried to reduce many hours’ worth of work into musical shrapnel, had this to say, according to The Sporting News:

“When I took a picture with Kyle as I traditionally do, the first thing he said to me was that there was no disrespect to me or the trophy or the speedway or any of the sponsors. He just said that he told his guys that he was going to give each one of them a piece of the trophy whenever he won the guitar.

“That was his way, in the spirit of rock and roll to break the guitar like a KISS concert and share it with all the guys on the team. That made me feel a lot better. As a person that loves rock and roll the way I do and appreciates a good show, Kyle Busch put on a great show in victory lane and shocked the world.”

I’m just crazy about Kyle Busch. I love to watch the guy and to listen to him. He keeps things interesting. When you always expect the unexpected, you are never disappointed.

As I watched that guitar heading southward, I just shook my head, laughed a little bit and offered a small prayer of thankfulness for youthful exuberance. We could use more of that these days.

Kyle Busch’s definition of a Victory Lane celebration is his own to create. I didn’t find this one to be particularly shocking or horrific or anarchistic or any of those other pejoratives that are being tossed around so freely all of a sudden.

In every sense of the word, it was smashing.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Knaus’ Questions Provide Winning Answers for Johnson

Posted on June 15th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Knaus’ Questions Provide Winning Answers for Johnson

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

I have lots of conversations with women — due to the fact that I am one — about all the so-called “normal” things women care about. You know, stuff like purses (great), shoes (great) and the Cubs’ chances of making it to the World Series this year (not so great).

Then we move on to discussions of various members of the opposite sex, and their relative merits or lack thereof. Why is it, we wonder, that the only person on earth who has managed to find someone with the elusive combination of Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now is … Jimmie Johnson?

Yes, you heard me correctly. Whether your shopping list calls for a minor chassis adjustment, a fraction of a second’s worth of speed or a Sunday afternoon reservation at ultra-exclusive Chez Victory Lane, Chad Knaus, crew chief for Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s team, is the right man for the job.

My first personal experience with Knaus came when I was working at Darlington Raceway. NASCAR had mandated that all tracks hosting Sprint Cup Series race weekends install Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barriers, commonly known as soft walls. Soft walls are a safety measure; they help to absorb impact when a stock car makes contact with a racetrack’s retaining wall.

SAFER barriers reduce the width of a racetrack by about two feet. That isn’t a big deal at most places, but at narrow old Darlington, it’s a substantial percentage of the racing surface.

Darlington Raceway installed the SAFER barriers in 2003 and sent out a press release to let everyone know what was going on, and that was that … until a couple of weeks later, when my phone rang. It was Knaus, politely asking if I would be so kind as to take photos of the new walls from several different angles, and e-mail them to him.

I said certainly I would, and casually commented that his was the first call I’d had asking for pictures.

The response I got was similar to what might happen if you asked a teenager to loan you a hundred bucks. The classic combination of deer and headlights comes to mind. Knaus was dumbstruck. I might as well have been speaking Chinese. His brain simply could not process the fact that there was free information to be had regarding a track where his team came to race each season, and no one else had asked for it.

No one else ever did. And Jimmie Johnson swept both races at Darlington the following year. Coincidence? Maybe.

Last year, during Champion’s Week in New York City, it seemed that I bumped into Knaus at every turn. The particular incident I remember best was something very small. A group of guests was having dinner in the kitchen of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and one of the menu items was something called pumpkin gnocchi.

We don’t really eat a lot of gnocchi down here in South Carolina, and in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you it isn’t one of my favorites. It’s a little bite-sized dumpling type thing, which to me probably tastes a whole lot like a slug would taste, if you were inclined to eat a slug. Which I am not.

I was also pretty sure the pronunciation was something that would rhyme with “blotchy.” I was wrong, but I never would have known that, because I never would have asked.

Knaus, on the other hand, made the call. Before enjoying his serving of gnocchi, he politely asked the chef the correct name of the dish — “nyokey,” which rhymes with hokey pokey. And that’s what it’s all about.

Certainly, Knaus has paid his dues and climbed the NASCAR ladder steadily to get to his current spot on the top rung. From 1993 to 1997, he worked with Ray Evernham on Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 team at Hendrick Motorsports before leaving to take a job at (then) Dale Earnhardt, Inc.

After a couple more moves in the next two years, he landed with Evernham once again, in the fledgling Dodge program. In 2002, he was offered a job back at Hendrick Motorsports as crew chief for a rookie driver by the name of Jimmie Johnson. The rest, literally, is NASCAR history.

The ride hasn’t always been a smooth one. Knaus is a guy with a lot of nicknames, ranging from “The Magician” to “Cheatin’ Chad,” depending on which side of his fence you happen to be standing. Some consider him an innovator, while others accuse him of having a flagrant disregard for the NASCAR rulebook.

Either way, there’s no disputing the fact that whatever he’s doing is definitely working. In 2008, he became the first crew chief in NASCAR history to win three consecutive Cup Series championships.

Think about that one for a minute. In six decades of racing, this feat had never been accomplished. There’s a reason they’re called “firsts.”  They only happen once.

So the next time the No. 48 car seems to come out of nowhere to win a race — and that happens fairly frequently — take time to remind yourself of the reason why Chad Knaus seems to be the guy with all the answers.

He isn’t afraid to ask the questions.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

What If NASCAR’s Legends Return to Racing?

Posted on June 3rd, 2009 by GrayBoy

What If NASCAR’s Legends Return to Racing?

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

The occasional verbal spasms of silliness from other sports sometimes serve to remind me of one of NASCAR’s very best traits: Loyalty.

My car has been in the shop recently so I haven’t had access to NASCAR Radio, which is pretty much the only channel I ever listen to. That’s probably because I’m afraid someone will say my name on the radio and I might miss it. I’m so inherently uncool that I still get excited about stuff like that.

My most recent dose of racing perspective came to us courtesy of the NFL. Here’s what happened.

I was on the way to work, listening to the morning show on the local ESPN Radio affiliate, when doggone if I didn’t hear a familiar sound — the voice of Fran Tarkenton.

Tarkenton, also known as “Frantic Fran,” is a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback who played for the New York Giants and spent some time as a broadcaster on Monday Night Football, but is best known for his years with the Minnesota Vikings.

Another famous quarterback, Brett Favre, is now rumored to be giving serious consideration to donning the Viking yellow and purple and hitting the gridiron for “just one more” season. This after a much ballyhooed retirement from the Green Bay Packers, where he was basically a franchise player, followed by a very public change of heart.

Some pushback from the Packers, however, sent Favre to the New York Jets. He did OK until shoulder pain adversely affected his performance in the second half of the season. In May 2009, he asked for and was granted a release from the Jets, freeing him to sign with any team.

Since this isn’t a football column, here’s the bottom line. Tarkenton disapproves of Favre’s annual “will he or won’t he” carousel routine. “I think it’s despicable,” he said. “ … I kind of hope it happens, so he can fail.”

This is the point where we circle back around to NASCAR. Because I’m guessing — no, I take that back, I KNOW — that if one or more of our greatest drivers, the guys that have brought as much enjoyment to fans and had as much success in NASCAR as Brett Favre has in football, were to announce that they were coming back for another season, random parades would break out all across America and new caps and T-shirts would be available on the Internet in a matter of hours.

The very best example that comes to mind right now is Mark Martin, who announced his retirement, then modified it to semi-retirement, then came back to race fulltime, to find his way back to Victory Lane, and to be in contention for a championship in 2009. What a story.

I absolutely have the courage of my convictions on this one. Imagine a scenario where someone like Rusty Wallace or Dale Jarrett decided to mount a comeback effort, thinking they weren’t quite done yet, after all.

Can you picture Cale Yarborough describing their actions as “despicable?” Would he go on record as saying, “I kind of hope it happens, so they can fail?”

Hardly. Most likely, Yarborough would be on the phone looking for sponsors so he could be the next guy in line for a ride, with David Pearson and Ernie Irvan in hot pursuit.

These drivers would receive standing ovations at every racetrack in America. Their souvenir sales would go through the roof. They would be rock stars. Like misty-eyed yuppies at a James Taylor concert, all of us would be grateful for “just one more.”

Would other drivers be as competitive in their “later years” as Martin has proven to be? Probably not, but I don’t believe this to be a competition issue. I feel it’s more about respect.

And it isn’t exclusive to sports. I haven’t a clue in the world why guys like Wayne Newton and Neil Diamond are still hauling on the spandex and singing their hearts out, but they still play to sold-out houses. Bono, Rob Thomas and Chris Daughtry certainly don’t seem to begrudge them for it.

Even if they are no longer able to win it, they have earned their right to stay in the game.

NASCAR staunchly supports its past while steadily advancing into its future. There’s a reason why Dale Earnhardt, Sr. still sells more merchandise than some of the current young Cup Series drivers do. Stars may wane, or fade away completely, but our admiration and appreciation for them never goes away. Always, we can see that glimmer of their brilliance still shining, from the corners of our eyes.

Cale Yarborough, by the way, retired before I became a NASCAR fan. I never got to see him race. If he, or Wallace, or Jarrett or whoever else, decided to give it another go, it would be amazing.

To paraphrase the appropriately nicknamed Mr. Tarkenton, whose opinions are indeed a bit frantic for my taste — I kind of hope it happens. I’d love to seem them succeed.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Tony Stewart: Fiery, fast and fearless

Posted on May 26th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Tony Stewart: Fiery, fast and fearless

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

It would be disingenuous to pretend that there haven’t been any somewhat less than positive things going on in the NASCAR community in recent weeks, ranging from surprising suspensions to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s perplexing inability to remember exactly where his pit box is located.

I wouldn’t judge Junior too harshly on that one, by the way. I routinely lose my car in parking lots and have to hit the panic button to find it. Stuff happens.

Anyway, the point is there’s been a lot to talk about. What worries me, however, is that I’m afraid we may be talking about the wrong things.

The best story of the past several weeks — of the entire season, if you ask me — can be summed up in two words: Tony Stewart.

A lot of racing conversations I have begin with the words, “I’m really not a Tony Stewart fan, but…”

Then we take a walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Clichés and throw around phrases like “fire in the belly” and “drive the wheels off a race car” and “isn’t afraid of anything”.

Well, OK, all that’s true. Stewart definitely has the “fire in his belly,” which I get sometimes, too, but usually only after I eat too much Mexican food. (He might want to think about bringing an antacid sponsorship on board to help with that. It works for me. Just a suggestion.)

Tony Stewart is a proven winner in anything you’d care to mention. He has championship trophies from the World Karting Association, the United States Auto Club (USAC) series, the Indy Racing League (IRL), and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

He certainly can “drive the wheels off a race car,” although I remain unconvinced that’s a good thing in the stock car racing arena. The cars just seem to go faster when their tires are securely attached.

He landed a pretty decent job in 1999 when Joe Gibbs Racing put him in a Cup car full-time. Predictably, he drove the wheels off it, winning Rookie of the Year honors and then going on to win Cup Series championships in 2002 and 2005.

Let’s stop for a moment and compare this to something that might happen in your own world — if you lived in a dream world, that is. What we’re basically talking about here is a guy who was given the top job in his company, did exceptionally well at it and was handsomely rewarded for his achievements in every way that matters.

Talk about a best-case career scenario. If I’m that guy, I’m planting myself in that seat so tightly that Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne and James Bond combined couldn’t pry me out of it, and those guys are pretty competent at their own jobs. Scarily so, one might say.

But since he “isn’t afraid of anything,” Tony Stewart relinquished his cushy seat voluntarily.

The biggest-name driver at one of the biggest-name teams in all of NASCAR announced in July 2008 that he had asked to be released from his contract at JGR, and the request had been granted.

Stewart, fans learned, would move to Haas CNC Racing, and would assume ownership of half the team, to be renamed Stewart-Haas Racing.

This set some Stewart fans to nervously nibbling their nails. He started the 2009 season with no owner’s points, although the fact that he was first in line for past champion’s provisionals guaranteed him a spot in at least the first five races.

He didn’t have to use a single one of them, however, and stayed solidly in the top 10 in driver standings all the way up to the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on May 16.

That night, with fire in the belly and a racecar he drove the wheels off of, Stewart won his first race — but most certainly not his last — as a driver/owner and took home a check for $1 million. It was his first all-star race win in 10 tries.

Stewart made a gutsy choice at what a lot of people might have considered the very pinnacle of his career. At a time when most of us would have stayed put, he made a move. At a point when most of us would have played the safe bet, he took a gamble.

Maybe Tony Stewart really isn’t afraid of anything. In his shoes, would you be?

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Conquering Coca-Cola 600 is Crowning Achievement

Posted on May 18th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Conquering Coca-Cola 600 is Crowning Achievement

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

A particular woman I know, who stubbornly continues to labor under the assumption that she is funny, has been known to comment more than once that she’s had marriages that didn’t last as long as a 500-mile race at Darlington.

OK, it’s me. I am that annoying person who routinely cracks herself up. But relax; I didn’t mean it.

What I really meant to say was that I’ve had marriages that didn’t last as long as the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.

Most people know this, but just as a refresher course, there were four races back in the 1980s that were plucked from the schedule and given the designation of “The Crown Jewels of NASCAR.”

Crown jewels are artifacts of the reigning royal family of their respective countries. They belong to monarchs and are passed down the line to the next sovereign to symbolize the right to rule. They may include actual jewels such as crowns, scepters and rings, or other objects like swords or documents or even ceremonial garments.

Other types of artifacts are a little less fancy, but no less valuable. How about “Lucille,” B.B. King’s legendary guitar? The original draft of the song “Imagine,” scribbled in John Lennon’s own hand, is in my mind one of music’s greatest treasures. The bat Hank Aaron used to send home run number 715 soaring over the fence is in modern terms comparable to King Arthur’s mighty sword Excalibur, to belong only to someone with the physical and emotional fortitude required to wield it.

The legacies of each of NASCAR’s crown jewels, the reason fans and the racing industry alike consider them so valuable to the sport, are obvious and I have never heard even one person argue their merits, or dispute their inclusion on this very exclusive list. Here they are, in no particular order.

First, of course is Daytona, the richest track on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit.

Money does talk, but sometimes it pontificates. Daytona International Speedway is like that. Not the oldest oval track on the circuit, or even the largest (Talladega edges it out by a nose), still the Daytona 500 trophy is the most ecologically correct of any race winner’s reward, because it is the greenest.

Ask the proverbial man on the street to describe stock car racing in one word, and the adjective you’ll probably hear most often is “fast.” Fittingly, the second jewel in the NASCAR crown is Talladega Superspeedway, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ fastest track. Even the mandated use of restrictor plates hasn’t hindered the speeds at ‘Dega. In an interview following the race in April, winner Brad Keselowski said his car had been clocked at a top speed of 204 mph.

Talladega gives fans the thing they desire most. If you routinely experience an overwhelming need for speed, you have found a home.

Darlington Raceway and its recently resurrected Southern 500 is jewel number 3. History, tradition and respect get the nod here. If Darlington were a movie star, she would be Lauren Bacall, or Katherine Hepburn. Every man pursues her with the intensity and focus of a laser beam, usually ending up sweaty and disappointed at the race’s end. She’s a classy old broad, with a timeless appeal.

Jewel number four is Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Coca Cola 600, the longest race in NASCAR. Drivers approach the 600 like runners approach the New York Marathon. They train for it.

They may also approach it like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie approached the Alamo, but with a happier ending for at least one of them.

The keyword that comes to mind when you think about the Coca Cola 600 is fortitude. I remember one year when I watched the first 20 laps or so of the race, then went to the grocery store, stopped by the mall for a new pair of cross trainers, went home and tested out the cross-trainers on the treadmill for a couple of miles, took a quick shower, walked the dog around the block, applied antibacterial ointment and Barbie Band-aid to the blisters acquired from the new cross-trainers and then hit the sofa to watch the end of the race.

The problem with that plan was that the race was only half over.

My puny but reasonably healthy self was “worn slam out,” as the folks back home would put it. I truly cannot imagine how the drivers must have been feeling right about then.

Former pro basketball superstar Bill Russell once said, “Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory.” To bring it into a clearer NASCAR focus, the Coca Cola 600 is the rough equivalent of driving flat-out from Charlotte to Chicago with no air conditioning, bathroom breaks or a nice leisurely stop at Cracker Barrel, while 42 other cars continuously try to knock you out of the way. Basically, the last man standing lays claim to the monarch’s rightful spoils.

Now, that’s a crown worth fighting for.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Simply The Best: NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race

Posted on May 12th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Simply The Best: NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

The NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race is the best event of its kind in professional sports, hands down (or maybe feet down would be more appropriate, in this case). Why? Because the participants in the event actually earn their way in.

This shouldn’t be a unique concept. Isn’t any type of all-star event, by its very definition, designed to showcase the best of the best in any given sport, athletes who have proven their mettle on the track, floor, or field of valor?

You’d think so, but the way things have evolved, that is no longer necessarily the case. At some point, preference trumped performance, leaving fans watching more glitter than grit. Are they contests? Certainly they are. Popularity contests.

Major League Baseball’s all-star game, for example, also known as the “Midsummer Classic,” fields a team from each league with rosters including players who are selected by a combination of fans, players, coaches and manager.

In the National Football League’s Pro Bowl, players are voted in by the coaches, the players themselves, and the fans.

Over in the National Basketball Association, all-star game participants are currently decided in two ways. The reserves are chosen by a vote among the head coaches of each squad’s particular conference. The starters are selected by – you guessed it – a fan ballot.

Does anyone else see a trend here?

NASCAR, ever the rowdy cowboy in the corral, takes a truly unorthodox approach to its all-star race. The event is open to – gasp! — race winners from the previous and the current season, plus the past 10 event winners and the past decade’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions.

Drivers are also eligible if they are one of the top two finishers in the Sprint Showdown qualifying race, or remain on the lead lap in the Sprint Showdown and get the most votes. There is a fan vote, but only one guy gets to take advantage of that, rather than the majority of the field.

This seems so elementary and simple that it’s almost silly to even be discussing it. I mean, you work hard, race hard, achieve success and get rewarded for it, right? In theory, at least, that just seems rational.

The formula followed by other sports really couldn’t ever work for NASCAR, anyway. If we relied on a fan vote to determine the field for the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, who in the world would Dale Earnhardt, Jr. have to race against? Maybe two other guys? Where’s the fun in that?

Oh wait, I get it. Maybe that’s the idea. He would be the odds-on favorite and the dark horse all rolled into one. Talk about a win-win situation. 

Now, of course, I’m kidding … sort of. But I do think that if fans were given free rein to decide who NASCAR’s all-stars are, some of the sport’s most talented drivers could find themselves watching the event on TV rather than through the windshield of a stock car.

I understand the position that fans should have some input regarding the makeup of their various all-star teams. They are the ones who support these sports with their energy, enthusiasm and money, after all. Naturally, they want to see Derek Jeter or Kobe Bryant or Peyton Manning compete. These athletes are the faces of their sports.

But invariably, some player gets voted in just because people like the guy, and that’s not fair. What if we embraced this concept in the real world? The head cheerleader would be named Calculus Queen, the star quarterback would be elected student body president, and the guy who dances around with a lampshade on his head at the company Christmas party would be appointed CEO. Funny? Oh, yes. But fun? Not so much.

Other sports really should consider fielding teams composed of performers rather than personalities in their all-star contests.

In NASCAR’s all-star race, the best man will definitely have a chance to win … because he will definitely get the chance to try.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Destination Darlington: Southern 500 More Than A Date

Posted on May 7th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Destination Darlington: Southern 500 More Than A Date

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

Prepare to call me names. “Homer” is a good one, if you need a suggestion. I know it’s coming, and I don’t care. I’m proud of this name, so bring it on.

Why do I feel such monikers are lying in wait to ambush me? Simple. It’s race week in Darlington. I worked for many years at Darlington Raceway. I’m still in Darlington, just down the street from the raceway. And every year without fail, right about this time, someone looks at me, opens their mouth and says this: “What’s the big deal about Darlington?”

Enamel dust falls around me as I grind my teeth. South Carolina’s humidity level rises a couple of notches thanks to the steam coming out of my ears. Please, somebody give me a break. This, in my opinion, has to rank as one of the three dumbest questions in NASCAR, right up there with “How many miles are in the Daytona 500?” and “Dale who?”

But I’m going to answer it, because Darlington Raceway and its signature event, the Southern 500, is a very big deal, indeed.

Most fans that are even casually acquainted with Darlington Raceway know that the decision to carve a racetrack out of a former peanut field was made during a Saturday night poker game in a local textile mill. Its unique egg-shaped configuration was the result of a spontaneous redesign when the original landowner decreed that a minnow pond on the property not be disturbed.

It is a difficult place to race, and to win. Drivers say that at Darlington, there are 44 competitors rather than the usual 43; the track itself puts up quite a fight during each and every race.

These are the cool bits and pieces of trivia we’ve heard for years about the track “Too Tough To Tame.”

So we all know what Darlington Raceway is — old, cranky and funny-looking. But what does Darlington Raceway mean?

It means a lot. Just for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume a couple of things about those of you who are reading this. One, that like myself, you are a NASCAR fan, and two, that you were born sometime after 1950. What this means is that there has never been a time in our racing lives when there was no Darlington Raceway. It’s always been there.

Except it hasn’t. There was a time, not so very long ago, really, when stock cars raced on dirt. They raced on country back roads, and they raced on the beach. But the smell of that asphalt baking in the sun, and the distinctive sound of tire rubber meeting that oval road, wasn’t part of the racing experience before Darlington Raceway was built.

That first coat of asphalt on top of those plowed-under peanuts literally paved the way for the high banks, high speeds, high excitement and sometimes, high anxiety that has become so much a part of our weekends in the intervening years. We have Darlington to thank for that.

The Southern 500, which was run on Labor Day weekend from 1950 until 2003, always had a festive feel about it. Every year, for thousands of people, it was a family vacation. Folks would take advantage of the three-day weekend to pack up the kids and visit nearby Myrtle Beach before heading to Darlington for the races. It was a holiday in the truest sense of the word.

Decades later, the same holds true for places like Charlotte on Memorial Day weekend and Daytona Beach on the Fourth of July. The Southern 500 at Darlington, however, was the first true “destination race.”

Most drivers will tell you that any win is a good win, and I’m sure they believe it when they say it. I am equally sure, however, that if you sneak into some guy’s trophy case in the middle of the night and swap out his Daytona 500 or Allstate 400 at the Brickyard trophy for a trophy from some other track, it won’t take him long to notice. Half a second, tops.

The things we fight the hardest to get are the things we value most. The Southern 500 winner’s trophy from Darlington Raceway is one of those things.  Argue if you want, but you know I’m right. Some things just mean more.

Many people cried foul when Darlington Raceway announced that the name Southern 500, discarded when the track’s lone NASCAR Sprint Cup Series weekend moved to May in 2005, was returning this year. The Southern 500, they said, should be run on Labor Day.

But the Southern 500 is more than a simple three-day weekend. It is the tradition of 500 grueling miles of competition at a place where men become legends. It is the place where dollars fell down like rain on Awesome Bill. It is the spot where David and Dale, Curtis and Cale, Jimmie and Jeff and Junior Johnson, have all raised their hands in victory.

The Southern 500 deserves a hero’s welcome home, because it is much more than a page in a calendar.

It is a page in history.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

NASCAR Is More Than Just Numbers

Posted on April 20th, 2009 by GrayBoy

NASCAR Is More Than Just Numbers

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott


I can hear the howls of dedicated fans of “other” sports all across America already, but with the possible exception of professional basketball’s No. 23, I’m of the opinion that the numbers of NASCAR teams carry more clout than those of anyone else. But is that necessarily a good thing?

Case in point: There has been a lot of talk recently about the fact that, for the first time in 10 years, a 43-car NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race field would hit the track without the inclusion of a No. 8 car. The location of this first noticeable absence — Phoenix International Raceway on April 18.

The No. 8, of course, was piloted by Ralph Earnhardt, and later was most famously driven by his grandson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., NASCAR’s most popular driver by a country mile.

The absence of the No. 8 has been called everything from a tragedy to a travesty. But I think what really has people so twisted up is not the absence of the number itself, but what it stands for; in a word, the Earnhardt family legacy.

Something so indelibly linked to one of NASCAR’s most beloved family dynasties has managed to create a noticeable void in the racing world in only one week’s time. That’s saying something.

Other sports teams retire the jerseys of superstar players, but that doesn’t stop a player on another team from wearing that same number to work.

There will never be another No. 8 New York Yankee (Yogi Berra’s jersey was retired) or Baltimore Oriole (Cal Ripken, Jr.’s number was similarly laid to rest), but baseballs are still being hit, thrown and caught every day by the likes of other stars such as the Detroit Tigers’ Gerald Laird, or Troy Glaus of the St. Louis Cardinals.

We all have our favorite NASCAR numbers. Often when I ask someone who “their” driver is, the answer will be “No. 14, baby,” or “No. 24 all the way, woo-hoo!’

This is great for sponsors, because names and numbers show a post-race interview tendency to power up and run together in one long sentence, like a string of twinkling Christmas lights. “The No. 18 M&Ms Toyota ran good today,” is a prime example, because like it or not, the No. 18 M&Ms Toyota seems to run well pretty much every day.

Being reduced to little more than a number, though, might not be such a great thing for the drivers. Not that they’re complaining. Business at souvenir merchandise haulers has been brisk this season as fans stock up on gear proclaiming their support of old drivers with new numbers – Tony Stewart, Mark Martin and Ryan Newman are a few noteworthy examples.

But for those of you who are fans of prime-time medical dramas, it might seem more than a little unsettling that one of the team doctors on the FOX hit show “House, M.D.” is simply referred to as “13”. I’m positive the vast majority of viewers would have no idea what her name is (Dr. Remy Hadley, for the record).

NASCAR’s strength rests more on personalities than on the various digits that represent them, and rightly so. In fact, NASCAR doesn’t even retire car numbers. If they did, a little bit of the history and tradition that makes the sport of stock car racing so special would be leeched away with each number that fell by the wayside.

Yes, Richard Petty has retired, but it’s still nice to see the No. 43 car on the track. Yes, Dale Earnhardt is gone, but how bittersweet it is to believe we will see the No. 3 back on the racetrack some day, perhaps even driven by another, younger Dale Earnhardt.

(Be prepared to wear body armor to the merchandise rig if that ever happens, by the way. It’s going to be Cabbage Patch Doll carnage all over again.)

Is it really so awful that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. wasn’t able to bring his No. 8 with him when he switched teams a couple of years ago? Is there really any good reason to be mad at, or lay blame on, any one person or organization for not allowing that to happen?

We don’t feel true affection for numbers, in most cases. A man is defined by much more than his tally of wins, poles, top five or top 10 finishes. He is more than some digits on the side of a car. It’s the person, and the personality, that we care about.

But if we’re really going to insist on being hard-nosed and boiling NASCAR down to a mathematical representation, even that really isn’t so hard to figure out. Regardless of who our favorite driver is, or what is painted on his door, to his fans, he is simply number one.

Nothing else really matters.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »

Too Early To Judge Joey

Posted on April 15th, 2009 by GrayBoy

Too Early To Judge Joey

Guest Column By Cathy Elliott

Once in a while, a random comment can serve as a humdinger of a reality check.

I heard Joey Logano, driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, doing a radio interview earlier in the week. One of the hosts of the show asked him what he was planning to do on one of the all-too-rare days off allotted to NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers over the course of the grueling, 36-event race season.

“I’m just going to be a kid,” Logano said.

Well, that sounded a little bit odd. If you ask most of the guys on the circuit, they might say they hoped to take the boat out for an afternoon or two, maybe relax a couple of days and enjoy the feeling that only comes with having absolutely nothing to do, and some period of time in which not to do it.

They might spend some time going over the books of the various business endeavors they’re involved in. Someone might even get married; you never know. But why in the world would anyone say his goal was to make every possible effort to act like a kid?

Oh. The light bulb just went off. Logano wants to act like a kid, because he is one.

Logano has been in the news lately more than he would have liked, for the wrong reasons. The driver who was given the nickname “Sliced Bread” (as in, the best thing since …) is already feeling the hungry dogs of doubt nipping at his heels.

He’s hanging on to a spot in the top 35 for dear life — currently, he is in the 35th position in the driver standings — and some naysayers are already showing signs of changing that “Sliced Bread” designation to “Toast.” They haven’t gone that far yet, but you can tell they’re really, really tempted.

After a disappointing 38th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway on April 5, various Internet “experts and insiders” declared that JGR was considering replacing Logano in the car.

Is it just me, or are we being a tad hasty — one might even say immature — with this rush to judgment? Joey Logano is 18 years old. I have sweatshirts that are older than that, and they’re not even all that ratty.

It might not be such a bad idea to try and gain a little bit of adult perspective here.

Joey Logano was born in the year 1990. The number one movie at the box office that year was “Home Alone.” Think about this, people. He’s younger than Macaulay Culkin. A lot younger. Yikes.

The top pop song in 1990 was “Hold On,” by Wilson Phillips. 1990 also happened to be the year that Milli Vanilli was stripped of their Grammy award after it was revealed that, well, they didn’t actually sing. The Grammy folks are picky about that stuff.

Wilson Phillips’ last Top 40 hit was “Give It Up” in 1992. Logano was probably learning to say things like “No!” and “Mine!” about that time.

The San Francisco 49ers were Super Bowl champions in 1990, and the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series. Dale Earnhardt was the Cup Series champion, with Mark Martin, Geoffrey Bodine, Bill Elliott, Morgan Shepherd, Rusty Wallace, Ricky Rudd, Alan Kulwicki, Ernie Irvan and Ken Schrader rounding out the top 10.

The number one TV show that year was “Cheers.” Logano can vote, and could serve his country in the military, but he is years away from being able to belly up to the bar with Norm and Cliff to shoot the breeze with Sam Malone over a couple of beers.

Let’s stop worrying about what Logano hasn’t done (so far), and talk for a moment about what he has.

At the age of 7, Logano won his first Eastern Grand National championship in the junior stock car division. He followed it up with a junior Honda Division championship in 1998 and in early 1999 a late modified division championship.

At the age of 10, he set a record 14-race Legends car winning streak at Atlanta Motor Speedway. At age 12, he won the Southeast-based Pro Legends national championship.

In 2007, at age 16, Logano won five races, three poles, and had 10 top 5s and 10 top 10s on his way to the Camping World East Series championship.

Last year at Kentucky Speedway, in his third start, Logano made history by becoming the youngest driver ever to win a Nationwide Series race.

The bottom line here is that if you’re going to hold up a yardstick, make sure you’re using the proper standards of measurement when you’re wielding it. I surely am glad nobody examined me under the microscope and potentially put my career on the line after just seven weeks on the job. That’s kind of harsh, unless maybe you’re a brain surgeon or something like that.

The comedian Paula Poundstone once said that adults are always asking kids what they want to be when the grow up because they’re looking for ideas. I propose that we give this kid a break, because wouldn’t you really love to be Joey Logano when you grow up?

I know I would.

Tags: Racing // Add Comment »