NASCAR is six races into the season, and what are we talking about the most these days?
Sway bars, stealing and lawyers.
Jack Roush is probably not the guy you want to tick off, if you have any interest of stating your case and moving on. Toyota’s Lee White, who worked for years with Roush as part of the dynastic road-racing empire he created, got that ball rolling following Carl Edwards’s 100/100 (points and money) penalty for having the oil tank lid off at Las Vegas, and Jack keeps kicking it.
Roush hasn’t liked Toyota since it was announced the manufacturer was coming into the Cup Series, saying that Toyota’s money and power would severely tilt the playing field in its favor.
Ever since White made some comments that appeared in USA Today surrounding the Edwards penalty, Roush has been on the cam about Toyota, the latest flap just the latest iteration of that same message.
Whether or not someone at Michael Waltrip Racing took the sway bar intentionally or not, the fact remains that it’s just meat for the beast. If it was taken, inadvertently or otherwise, it’s a situation that the teams themselves have to solve, and the best way to do that is to talk it out, yell and scream a little, and go about their business.
Not with lawyers, injunctions and all that Roush was talking about.
If it were an engine piece or something like that, I could see a bigger response, but it’s a sway bar. It ties suspension pieces together on either side of the car and in this case, it helps the car turn. OK, technical, but not engine software (like in F-1, because NASCAR has no engine software).
Simply put, Roush has adopted the policy of scorched earth against Toyota. This is not news, but it’s starting to be an unnecessary sideshow. It’s great copy, especially the parts where everyone is laughing about it, but it’s unnecessary nonetheless.
It is understandable that he’s angry that another team had one of his parts. It’s even understandable that he’d think of legal recourse. But combine it as part of a continuing grudge against Lee White and Toyota, and it becomes theater of the absurd.
Never has there been a more vocal advocate of his teams than Jack Roush. That’s fine, and he is to be commended for it. But sometimes you can take it a bit too far, and Roush is at that point, in my opinion.
In talking about proprietary parts, he’s flying in the face of nearly everything NASCAR has tried to implement in its new car. Some might say that’s a good thing, but face it, the new car is here to stay. Might as well get used to it now and quit wishing for things that will never be again.
Yes, Roush is an innovator, and yes, he loves nothing more than tinkering with something to make the one indispensable part that everyone has to have. It happened with the roof flaps, for instance.
He and his engineers came up with the sway bar, the mounts and all that goes with it. Not knowing how it works, it’s hard to say if it is the indispensable sway bar that everyone needs to have to make the CoT work, but Roush and his engineers aren’t the only smart guys in the paddock.
Here’s hoping that next week we’re not still talking about this. Roush’s team president, Geoff Smith, said Sunday that the team probably would not seek a legal solution to this mess, which is the best news of the weekend from this corner.
Of course, Texas is next week, and who can tell what dastardly deed will be up next on the get-back wheel?