April 29, 2008 - Penalize Stupidity

Dario Franchitti missed Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with a fractured ankle suffered in a crash during Sunday’s Aaron’s 312 Nationwide Series race at the 2.66-mile superspeedway.

The defending Indianapolis 500 champion should have been on that race, and he should not have been injured. But nearly eight seconds after Franchitti spun, his car was impacted by the machine driven by Larry Gunselman.

There has been plenty written and said about the drastic measures NASCAR and the race tracks have gone to regarding safety. The cars are safer and the tracks are safer. Reinforced roll cages and SAFER barriers can only do so much to protect drivers.

At some point these drivers have to take it upon themselves to keep each other safer. There is absolutely no excuse for piling into a wreck eight seconds after it happened. Spotter or no spotter, a driver should be able to exercise good judgment.

And should he not use good judgment in the seat of his race car, he should be penalized. If using a curse word can get you fined, if passing below the yellow line at superspeedways can draw a black flag, well what should piling into an accident three days after it happened get you?

And if the sanctioning body doesn’t want to enforce a penalty, maybe the other drivers should.

I think a lot. A similar accident during practice for an ARCA race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway cost driver Eric Martin his life when his car was t-boned by the speeding machine wheeled by Deborah Renshaw.

In racing, some accidents are unavoidable. However, these types of incidents are not. And something should be done to keep them from happening.

April 22, 2008 - The Next Big Thing?

Young drivers have been the talk of auto racing for many years. It wasn’t that long ago that one of hose up-and-coming racers was Long Islander Steve Park.

Park won his first modified race in 1988 and got better every year. Ten victories in 1994 led to a 1995 season that saw him win seven modified events and a pair of Busch North races.

After a few Truck and Busch Series starts, Park got a call from the late Dale Earnhardt in the summer of 1996. Park was hired to drive Earnhardt’s ACDelco Busch Series entry the following season and he didn’t disappoint.

Three victories in his rookie season propelled Park to the rookie of the year award in the Busch Series. Park moved on to the Cup Series in 1998 and despite numerous injuries, one which many believe helped bring a premature end to his Cup career, did win a pair of races.

His last season of Cup racing came in 2003 and ran full time in the Craftsman Truck Series from 2004 through 2006, gaining a single victory in that series.

He’s not racing on national television every week any more, but Park is still racing stock cars and while he is not the young driver on the fast track, indirectly he is helping to train young drivers on the fast track.

Park plans to race full-time in the NASCAR Camping World East Series this season and finished seventh as the season kicked off Saturday at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina. Virtually, every driver, including race winner Peyton Sellers and runner-up Austin Dillon are looked at as future stars in NASCAR racing.

While he is only 40, Park seems unlikely to get another Cup ride, but it seems certain there are a least a few more victories out there for a man who has won in five different NASCAR series.

Park’s next race is May 18 at Iowa Speedway.

“I went there when the track first opened and did a little exhibition match race with Michael Waltrip and Kenny Schrader,” he said. “It’s a beautiful facility and I look forward to racing there.”

Historically Speaking

I like history.

I’m specifically fond of U.S. Civil War and World War II history. Both my parents were born during the Second World War and my grandfather served under General Omar Bradley in the European theater.

But while I spend a lot of free time reading about these types of things, until recently I hadn’t really pondered the history of my own life. A great portion of my life has been spent working at National Speed Sport News, where in a sense I have helped document the history of auto racing.

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Buzz McKim, who has been charged with helping to preserve auto-racing history, specifically the history of NASCAR stock-car racing.

McKim is spending his days helping to organize and gather historical pieces for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which will open in Charlotte, N.C., in 2010. He’s interested in everything, photographs, decals, old passes, pieces of cars, trophies and other items.

Many items have been and will be donated to the Hall of Fame, while still others will be loaned to the Hall of Fame by their rightful owners.

In many ways, National Speed Sport News is a Hall of Fame of its own, both to the motorsports industry, and the newspaper industry. Our halls and shelves are covered with old-time auto racing posters as well as remnants of the newspaper business the way it used to be.

We have event posters for long-ago auto races, programs from those races, as well as old negatives and photographs, and newspaper equipment including cameras, enlargers, primitive tape recorders and head sets. Oh, and we have typewriters. Typewriters on which some of the best columns in the history of motorsports journalism were created.

Typewriters that just may end up in an official Hall of Fame. Simple items of how things were once done. Items that tell a little bit about the people who did them.

That my friends is history in its simplest form.

April 8, 2008 - IRL Fortunes Turn

Could things be going any better for the Indy Racing League?

The 13-year split of open-wheel racing came to an end in February, with Champ Car moving by the wayside and many of its teams and a handful of its marquee events joining the IRL IndyCar Series.

Since then, the momentum has been growing.

DirecTV has been added as a presenting sponsor and Coke as an official sponsor. More sponsors are on the way. The largest field of cars (25) for an open-wheel event outside of the Indianapolis 500, took the green for the first two races of the season.

The season opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway delivered a record (.08) rating for an IRL race on ESPN. Crowds at both events were solid.

But the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg may have given the series what it needed most — a new star. And an American star at that.

At NSSN, we hear over and over from readers and many of our columnists bemoaning foreign drivers. Well, a true blown American hero was delivered on a silver platter at St. Petersburg, as Graham Rahal rode onto center stage and exited into the sunset with his first IndyCar victory in the very first race he ran.

Yes, his Newman-Haas-Lanigan team is a proven open-wheel winner, but to have the son of one of open-wheel racing’s most beloved drivers and team owners, Bobby Rahal, triumph in his very first IRL race, is a result IRL marketing officials could have only dreamed about.

With the IRL having lost its two most recent champions — Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish, Jr. — to NASCAR racing, it needed another driver to promote, and there’s no question it has found one.

The Rahal name is familiar to all racing fans. He’s American, which appeals to traditional Indy car fans and maybe best of all, Graham Rahal is young. At 19 years of age, a long career lies ahead of him.

And for the IRL, things are getting better every day.

April 1, 2008 - Let's Do Lunch

We know there are many of you out there that would love to live in the middle of NASCAR country, and since we do, we decided today would be as good a day as any to share one of the idiosyncrasies of NASCAR country.

Eating lunch.

It may be a simple thing to do, but it all depends on how you look at it. With so many racing people working in one general area it’s not easy to go unseen, and it is also very easy to be seen.

In the shadows of Lowe’s Motor Speedway where National Speed Sport News is located, there are hundreds of places to eat lunch, but finding one not frequented by other racing folks is next to — if not completely — impossible.

Employing the largest number of people, Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway Racing have the largest amount of diners. Particularly, with the Hendrick folks, they really are EVERYWHERE you may choose to eat.

But planning lunch may be important, if say you worked for one power team and you wanted to secretly acquire a top-secret part during your lunch hour. Imagine a Toyota team member meeting a Roush Fenway employee in a restaurant on the lunch hour. There is just no way they could do it without being seen by another member of their own organization, and they certainly couldn’t do it without bumping into someone from Hendrick Motorsports.

And it wouldn’t only be dodging the competition, but the media and NASCAR. While McAllister’s deli seems to be the key place for NASCAR officials from Mike Helton to Robin Pemberton to break their mid-day bread, it could be any place within a few miles of the NASCAR R & C Center near the Concord Regional Airport.

So, when going to lunch in NASCAR land, it’s not as simple as “what are you in the mood for,” or who has the best specials, it may be more about who you want to avoid, or who you want to accidentally bump into.