“They oughta fine that son of a bitch and suspend him the rest of the year, I say.” Strong words issued by a man in a late season championship hunt after being taken out while leading the race by someone out of the championship picture. If you guessed those were Joey Logano’s words following this week’s Martinsville race, you’d be completely wrong. No, those were the words of Dale Earnhardt, following the Fall 1989 North Wilkesboro race, after he and Ricky Rudd got tangled up in a “quintessential” NASCAR moment.1 I didn’t have to look up that quote, it sticks out in my memory, among the many former great moments of a former great sport. Cable TV was still fairly new, so hearing Dale saying a cuss word on TV was a pretty big deal for me. It was my Steve Harvey’s Sister Odell moment. I don’t think I’ve missed a Cup race since.
Every weekend was a new adventure. I could see Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, Harry Gant, Bill Elliott, Darrell Waltrip, Dick Trickle etc., mix it up on some short track, somewhere in North Carolina, or Virginia, or wherever, it didn’t matter. Except road courses, no one likes a road course, at least in the 1990s. Every race wasn’t a fireworks show, and yes it wasn’t uncommon for the 10th place car to be 3 laps down, but you never knew when another “quintessential” moment would arrive, but somehow, they always did.
So let’s fast-forward for a moment to last Sunday. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d highly recommend it, unless you’re a Logano fan 2 or NASCAR takes it down, ‘cause you know, that’s probably the next great idea they’ll come up with. So in what might be the greatest thing I have seen in a long time on a race track, Kenseth obliterated Shit Stain.3 He left no doubt, and I applauded from my living room, of which Kenseth would have heard me all the way in Martinsville, but it got swallowed up by EVERYONE IN THE GRANDSTANDS CHEERING AND YELLING “HELL YEAHS.” You can even see on the replays people are going nuts even before they’d hit the wall, everyone not wearing a Shit Stain hat was hoping for this moment. The 1989 fan in me had awoken, thanks to Matt Kenseth. This wasn’t about thanking sponsors and points racing, it was sweet revenge, and as a bonus, Shit Stain wouldn’t win for the fourth week in a row.
Then to put the cherry on top, in a post-race interview Kenseth states in perfect deadpan, “The right front was dragging down there and probably should’ve went to the garage area and went into the corner there and, man, couldn’t get it to turn and collected him,” Kenseth said.
Shit Stain on the other hand offered, “Here, he was a complete coward. … It’s a chicken-you-know-what move to completely take out the leader when your race is over. … He’ll have his.”
To be fair to Shit Stain, he would have gotten grounded by his Dad had he said chicken shit move instead of chicken-you-know-what. You can always tell a guy’s a real bad ass, when in the heat of the moment, he’s more worried about getting a spanking for saying a “bad” word than going off. Quite the contrast to Mr. Earnhardt’s reaction in 1989 in a similar situation. Then again, one worked his ass off to get where he was at, the other’s Dad owned a big company in the Northeast and financed his son’s racing career.
NASCAR could have had its best day in years if it really wanted it. I’m no Gordon fan by any means, but the Kenseth/Shit Stain wreck, along with a four time Champion likely winning for the final time and knowing it while on a historic track was all a huge deal. Folks who wouldn’t normally pay attention or who passively pay attention would take notice. You’d have momentum, folks would want to see what happens next between the two new rivals. Did NASCAR ride that momentum? Hell no! They squashed it. Suspended Kenseth for two races. The single most exciting thing to happen all year that was universally applauded at the track would receive the strongest penalty ever given for something like that. Boys have at it until we take the ball and go home!
Meanwhile Kevin Harvick still rides around with no repercussions from his race fixing at Talladega. Danica races on this weekend after she stated several times she would take out David Gilliland and then proceeded to wreck him.4 Seems legit.
The fault lies at the feet of Brian France. In most professions, though it seems to be a fleeting thing, competence breeds promotion. You start at the bottom, prove your worth, and eventually move up. At least in theory. Brian France’s qualifications begin and end with the fact that he came from Bill France Jr’s balls.
In no other sport, do I recall the leader of a sanctioning body being determined by being the former president’s son. Can you imagine if the next NFL commissioner was Goodell’s son? You think that would go over well? Why the big owners like Hendrick, Gibbs, Roush, Childress, etc, don’t just band together and say to hell with it, we’re starting our own racing series, is beyond me.
The Chase, this elimination format, IROC style cars where the seemingly only difference is the emblem on the nose, cookie cutter 1.5 mile racetracks, three green white checkers, computerized pit road officials that enforce the dumbest of rules are all things introduced by Brian France. It hasn’t all been bad, double file restarts were a good idea, the truck race at Eldora is pretty cool and safety has come a long way, but I’m pretty sure I could have drummed those ideas up during my morning dump. No he just makes it up as he goes along, this is fair game, that’s a two race penalty, that’s just good hard racing, that’s no fine, this is $100,000 fine, and when all else fails, just fall behind the ole 12-4-A “Actions detrimental to stock car racing.” No consistency, different rules for different drivers is the norm.
So now he’s basically said that all drivers in a race aren’t equal. It’s ok to wreck the 24th place car, its ok to take the field out at Talladega to save your Chase spot, its fine and dandy to spin someone to win. But don’t you dare touch a Chase driver in a Chase race and affect the outcome of this manufactured drama known as the Chase. #Brilliant. Part of me would love to see Junior call France’s bluff this weekend and take out Logano, daring France to suspend him, and watch the ratings plummet.
It’s not like Kenseth has a history of being a loose cannon in the first place, maybe, just maybe, Logano had it coming? And please spare the whole “it’s a safety issue” nonsense. Martinsville is the slowest track on the circuit. Corner speed is about 60 mph, and they hit a soft wall with a cockpit that resembles a cocoon. Not to mention, he did it in a way that no one else’s day got impacted. That took skill. But let’s not forget Carl Edwards flipping Keselowski going about 200 mph at Atlanta a few years back in retaliation, but he didn’t get suspended. I guess that was different, Edwards was 156 laps down, not 9 like Kenseth. I guess that was “quintessential” NASCAR too.
The sport today looks nothing like it did 25 years ago. The politically correct crowd that gets its panties in a bunch over anything has too much say, these are the types that didn’t know there was a race until someone told them to be outraged by Kenseth’s actions. Can you imagine an in car camera catching Tony Stewart smoking a cigarette during a caution like Dick Trickle? Can you imagine a sponsor getting behind a driver with the name Dick Trickle? It would never happen. Talent doesn’t buy you a seat anymore, it’s how marketable you are to some Madison Avenue Advertising Firm, see “Patrick, Danica,” or if your daddy owns the sponsor, see “Menard, Paul.” Promising drivers in the lower rungs can’t get seat time because sponsors want brand names in their Busch car.5
Some of it is just the changing of the times. I don’t blame NASCAR for leaving the North Wilkesboros and the Rockinghams when they did. Sure I’d love to see those tracks return, but it doesn’t make much sense to have half your schedule in North Carolina at tracks that seat 40,000. What I totally blame them for is the glut of Texas, Kansas, and Chicago style tracks. You want to go to the Midwest? Fine, but do we really need them all to be lame tracks that look like Charlotte and Atlanta that are already on the schedule? Make a higher banked Richmond in Dallas, build a North Wilkesboro in Kansas, you know tracks that promote good racing which is why we want to watch in the first place.
The lack of self-awareness by the sport is dooming it. Every time a commercial comes on to sell tickets to ‘Dega or Daytona, they always show the big wrecks as the main draw. They always show the 1979 Fight at Daytona as spurring the rise of the sport, Bristol always shows drivers throwing helmets at passing cars, but as soon as any of these things happen today we have to launch a national investigation, suspend people, and act contrite.
If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who the hell you are. The sport was founded by moonshiners, and strengthened by its characters along the way. It’s a funny thing, I’ve never tuned in to see NASCAR or Brian France, I tuned in to see what Dale Earnhardt was going to do that day, or see an ending like Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch at Darlington or hear some of the crazy stories about Junior Johnson, or Smokey’s 7/8 scale car, or if Matt Kenseth was going to dump Logano. And they’ve forgotten that. NASCAR isn’t or wasn’t great because of NASCAR, it was great because for 3 or 4 hours every Sunday, you’d hope to see something great, something you could never do in real life. In real life you can’t go punch your coworker out because he said something or did something you didn’t agree with, but at Bristol, hey its fair game buddy, I’m kicking your ass when we get to the pits, or I’m gonna take you out and ruin your day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to “love tap” someone into the median slowing down the left lane. Instead now, everything is so contrived, no one knows what’s right or wrong anymore, we’d rather protect the fragile Loganos of the world than let it play out.
At the end of every race just before the broadcast signs off, I always laugh to myself at the ending tagline that goes along the lines of “We’d like to thank our loyal fans for watching today’s race.” I’m struck by arrogance of it, the idea that we can butcher the sport as much as we want, and you’ll still watch, because you’re loyal, so thanks idiots! It would be wise to stop testing that loyalty. Give the sport back to the drivers and fans and get the hell out of the way.
1 Geoff Bodine won, but no one gives a shit about Geoff Bodine, not even Brett Bodine.
2 Get some self respect! Logano?!? I guess there’s a market for everyone, they say a person’s driver is a reflection of themselves, and you must really identify with immature spoiled rich “kids”. Get out of my column.
3 For the rest of this article Logano will be referred to as Shit Stain
4 Who knew David Gilliland was still racing? I didn’t.
5 It’s my article, it was the Busch series all my life, I don’t give a damn whatever flavor of the month wants to attach itself to the series, it will be forever known as the Busch Series