Over the past week I have cruised the web via the Jayski web site. It seems approximately half of the articles being written concern the safety issues which NA$CAR belatedly woke up to. What took them so long? I freely admit that I was not a fan of Dale Earnhardt and can only wonder why it took his untimely death to wake up the suits in the ivory towers of Daytona Beach. Is NA$CAR telling us that Dale was more valuable than Tony Roper, Adam Petty, John Nemecheck or Kenny Irwin? Heaven forbid that this be so but what conclusions am I left to draw from the subsequent actions of NA$CAR after Dale's death? Where were they in the preceeding eighteen months? Where was their concern when Neil Bonnett or Rodney Orr died at Daytona? Why was Dale's death the straw that broke the camel's back.
Now I read numerous reports that NA$CAR will conduct yet another soft wall test at an undisclosed location. Urgent Message to NA$CAR: It ain't gonna work. There is no such animal as a soft wall that won't cause more problems than it solves. The problem, gentlemen, is the cars are too rigid and too confined. The new carbon fiber seats are sure to help and long overdue as a viable safety improvement. But the biggest improvement has to be in crushability of the cars, preventing impact transfer to the driver. Be it the Humpy Bumper, or equivelant, crushable frames or other shock absorbtion materials, soft walls aren't the answer and are a blatant waste of time, energy and money. Hey guys, it's time to get on with the gettin' on. Fix The Cars, Not The Walls. Our street cars are designed to crush and the race cars need the same features.
The second item that seems to be receiving a considrable amount of coverage is COST. In various ways, in previous columns, I have hit on this obstruction to the future growth of NA$CAR as best I can. I have read that the new high for Winston Cup sponsorship is sixteen million dollars. In the best of times, this is a totally unreasonable amount for any corporate entity to squander on the sponsorship of one car. In a down economy this is a ludicrous figure to contemplate and totally unnecessary. As a consumer I am offended to think that one of my favorite products would squander their funds in such a frivilous way when they should be insisting that half that amount is extreme. We must all remember that the cost of any given sponsorship is passed on to you and I, the consumer, regardless of how much of the product you buy. Yet NA$CAR takes no steps in restricting the amount of money any given team can waste on extreme measures to gain that extra tenth of a second. To the contrary, they seem to be encouraging this abuse and laughing all the way to the bank and their off shore accounts. Could NA$CAR become the next ENRON? If they don't wake up it may soon become so. The only redeeming hope is that the likes of Humpy Wheeler and Bruton Smith would be there to make it right again.
Bill France, Jr. and his billion dollar plus worth, has, as with our legislators, forgotten the value of a dollar to the little person. Their policies have raised the cost of racing for the teams and the fans to the point that they are very near to pricing themselves out of the market they created. Our senators and congressmen are so out of touch with reality that they treat a billion dollars as you and I would treat ten dollars. NA$CAR has become too insensitive to the value of the dollar and the grass root fan who must make extreme sacrifices to attend a race. Many devoted fans, such as myself, must confine their racing experience to that which is presented on TV. Those of you who have attended a race in person well know that there is no experience like being there, hearing the roar of the engines and smelling the burnt fuel and rubber. To be in the crowd and sense the excitement is irreplaceable. Sadly, too many of us can no longer experience the thrill of victory or agony of defeat in person. I don't know about you, my friends, but this is a shame and, I believe, inexcusable.
NA$CAR has taken one step that should reduce cost in their single engine rule. This is long overdue. What they haven't done is limit the team ownership or amount of cars per team. All professional sports have a limit of how many players can fill the roster. NA$CAR allows the big dollar teams to have as many cars as they want. The major teams have a car that only runs Daytona/Talladega and another that only runs Dover and Bristol. They have a car for Martinsville and another for road courses. They have their Charlotte car and another strictly for Indy. This goes on and on and, of course, each of these specialized cars must have a backup For Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, Robert Yates and Penske South this may not be too big a problem. What about the few remaining single car and independent team? How are they to compete? The answer is, "They Can't".
Imagine, if you will, that major league baseball teams had unlimited rosters where they could field a specialized team for outdoor grass fields, another for indoor artificial grass fields and another specialized team that would only play in Fenway Park. George Steinbrenner and the Yankees would still fare pretty well since he has the money and the fan base. What about the teams that play in smaller markets and haven't been a contender for many years? How many baseball owners could support a roster of players numbering fifty, sixty or a hundred? The answer is, "Very few." Teams are limited in the number of players for a theoretical reason of equal competition and reduced costs. NA$CAR, on the other hand says to the owners, "If you got it, flaunt it and screw the little teams." This, my friends, is pure insanity and no one is watching the inmates. In my humble opinion, this is truly a case of the inmates guarding the asylum. Rick Hendrick has an engine shop employing eighty plus people. How can a single car team or an unerfunded two car team begin to compete with team owners with such vast resources as Hendrick, Yates, Roush or Gibbs? A far more important question is, "Why should they have to?" The answer is quite simple, "They wouldn't have to if NA$CAR could remember from whence they came." The sad thing is that NA$CAR is riding a bucking bronco and they don't know how to control it . If they keep riding it they'll get thrown and if they try to dismount they'll get trampled. From a financial perspective, they need to tame the mount and the question is, "Do they have the nerve to tell the owners their limits and make sponsorship affordable again"?
At the present time we are in a sad dilema. Teams without adequate sponsorship have no hope of being truly competitive with the big buck teams and, until they become competitive, they have no real hope of obtaining a major sponsor. What is the solution to this problem? Wisened leadership from NA$CAR that limits what any team ownership can spend. Baseball has their supposed salary caps for players and total team expenditures. We have to look to the same logic in team ownership and expenditures or our sport will stangle on it's excesses. I think I hear some strangling sounds eminating from Daytona Beach and pray that it is all in my imagination.
Bill France, Jr, NA$CAR and ISC have all the money they need and have lost sight of the grass roots origin of our beloved sport. When team owner such as Roush Racing have sponsorship problems it becomes quite apparent that we have exceeded an unforseen limit of reasonable funding of the race teams. There is a great fear that the Busch series will not be able to run a full field of cars in 2002. The Truck series is on even shakier ground. It is my humble, reasoned and wisened opinion that the suits of NA$CAR have reached the point at which they are biting the hands that have been feeding them over the past years. We are now at the point in which the powers that be are no longer able to see the forrest for all those damn trees. We need a wisened forrest ranger to show NA$CAR the way out of their tangled web. Will reason prevail or will the current spate of insanity continue to rule until we are no more?
May God bless this great nation and the victims of 911. Always remember that you have the right to disagree but not the right to be disagreeable.
Don@insidethepitbox.com
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