SONOMA, Calif. — Memo to Formula One: Take your culture and caviar, your visits to exotic venues and your sleek and sexy cars and shove it. Here in the United States, we’re quite happy with NASCAR as the premier form of motorsports.
Even Indy and Champ Car racing deserve more ink than your so-called World Championship. You continually dismiss American stock-car racing as an archaic form of motorsports where cars run around in circles.
Well, it’s time for an enlightenment session.
A driver who stood atop the podium six times wants nothing to do with Formula One and everything to do with NASCAR. Since his return to the States, Juan Pablo Montoya nearly burned his bottom at Homestead, lives in a bus on wheels and welcomes hardly ever getting a day off.
Despite these daily hardships, JPM says he’s never had more fun racing cars for a living — and that includes his stint over there.
Sunday’s Toyota Save Mart 350 marked Montoya’s true coming-out party. So, for each car on the grid, here are 22 reasons why Formula One’s got nothing on NASCAR.
1. You have Bernie. We have Brian — France, that is.
2. Real racers race every weekend. F-1 races, what, 17 times in 2007? Lame! Try 38 times.
3. Unlike Formula One, NASCAR drivers can make up for an ill-handling car. If you ain’t in a Ferrari or McLaren, you got no shot.
4. We have cool terms like dirty air and Darlington stripe. What’s F-1 got? A shunt?
5. The outcome of grands prix oftentimes is decided in the first corner.
6. NASCAR lets its fans interact with the drivers and crews. F-1’s top-secret technology is on lockdown. What’s the point of having it if you can’t flaunt it?
7. Monaco is one cool circuit. Watkins Glen ... well, score one for F-1.
8. Formula One’s high-end hospitality pales in comparison to a Martinsville hot dog or a Talladega turkey leg.
9. As sad as it is, team orders were once legal in Formula One.
10. Car cloning grabs headlines in the British tabloids. Over here, we had a car owner accused of adding a thick, gooey substance to his engine. We really know how to cheat.
11. Schumi could still be racing. Yet he hung up his helmet. Our drivers race well into their 40s. Kyle Petty, for example, just turned 47.
12. Does Formula One have fat, sweaty, beer-gutted race fans that pitch tents and live in squalor day after day just to see a race in the middle of nowhere?
13. NASCAR has Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
14. It’s so expensive to compete in Formula One that several teams have gone bankrupt in recent years. NASCAR actually tries to control costs, and anyone with a few million and a thirst for speed can play.
15. Formula One has the Concorde Agreement. NASCAR has gentlemen’s agreements.
16. It only takes seven men to service a car — tires, fuel and adjustments — during a pit stop in NASCAR. Why in Formula One does it take eight men just to carry tires?
17. NASCAR has The Chase. Does F-1 even have 12 cars worthy of such an honor?
18. NASCAR is a contact sport.
19. While NASCAR was exploding in popularity, Formula One failed to run a grand prix on U.S. soil from 1992 to 1999. Hardly anyone noticed.
20. Formula One has one type of circuit — a road/street course. We have road courses, too, but we also have short tracks, intermediate tracks and superspeedways. NASCAR wins, 4-1.
21. Our biggest race of the year, the Daytona 500, is the first race of the year. How many sports can say their Super Bowl opens the season?
22. NASCAR has heroes with first names such as Kyle, Ricky and Dale. Kimi, Fernando or Felipe don’t fly around here.