Perhaps it is part of coming clean for Aaron Fike to, well, come clean — to be honest and forthcoming about the darkness of his addiction.
So, he has done just that, admitting in a recent interview that while in the throes of heroin addiction he raced in a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event while under the influence of heroin.
With Tony Stewart’s war of words with Goodyear a couple of weeks old, and FIA chief Max Mosley’s salacious video an ocean away, all the garage talk turned to Fike’s revelation and NASCAR’s laissez faire drug policy. Calls for change came from the pits in the person of Kevin Harvick as well as from talk radio and TV.

NASCAR has joined the hierarchy of professional sports in America, according to television ratings and the sheer truckloads of dollars that flow through the sport from day to day and week to week, yet change often comes slow and deliberate — as if the sport is still found off the major highways, as if the biggest problem that could possibly be found comes out of a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

There are two realities at work in this instance. The first being that the climate of professional sports has changed, and NASCAR has been at the forefront of that change with bigger dollars to go along with its big risks. The second reality is that, at its core, NASCAR is still a family business with a lot if not all the say going to the France family.
NASCAR has joined the hierarchy of professional sports in America, according to television ratings and the sheer truckloads of dollars that flow through the sport from day to day and week to week, yet change often comes slow and deliberate — as if the sport is still found off the major highways, as if the biggest problem that could possibly be found comes out of a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
But with money and fame can come the right parties and the designer drugs and the late nights and a whole new can of trouble that can’t be solved by a pack of Goody’s and hair of the dog.
Major League Baseball was similarly slow in reacting to its steroid epidemic and found itself in Congressional hearings, attempting to defend a negligence induced by record home runs and booming attendance at the ballparks.
NASCAR cannot afford a similar arrogance when it comes to drug policies. NASCAR cannot be afraid of what it will find if it were to give its lax drug-testing policy, which uses anemic words such as “random” and “suspicion,” teeth.
In other sports, the use of drugs such as steroids can affect competitive balance. In any arena, the use of drugs such as heroin can cost lives.
Surely, no one would be so cavalier with the lives of his friends and competitors as to actually race while under the influence of drugs, right?
That’s what NASCAR would like to believe. Hell, it’s what I would like to believe, but Fike’s admittance makes that theory about as palpable as that whole “world is flat” thing Columbus rebuked.
Drivers such as Kevin Harvick have openly called for drug testing. He believes the garage to be about 95 percent clean.
It’s the other five percent he’s worried about.
It’s the other five percent NASCAR has to worry about.
With a rulebook so often erased and re-written from year to year and race to race, NASCAR cannot afford to reject those concerns. The folks who run the family business have to look at the evidence, accept it and make sure the sport is clean and safe.
At 200 miles per hour, too much is at stake to be timid now.