2nd in both races entered. On Saturday, July 5th, Jeb ran out at Orange County, qualified 3rd, and finished 5th in the Limited Sportsman division. He did pretty darn good if you ask me for a kid that has only driven go-carts until this Limited Sportsman car. I was hoping to have this info last month, but a couple of things came up so my apologies to all those who were waiting with bated breath.
I mentioned that Jacques Villeneuve was going to be driving for Robby Gordon at Montreal and it looks like that changed. He's now driving for Braun Racing at Montreal. I wonder if this is a one shot deal or could it be leading to a more permanent position for Jacques?
How did Petty Enterprises get to the point where they had to find investors? Well, it goes all the way back to when Lee Petty started the operation. He always pulled out more money for himself than he put into the racing operation. He had a family to feed and take care of. Richard picked up on this from his dad and continued it. He always pulled out a little more for himself to support and take care of his family than he put into the racing operation. The team fell behind because of the escalating cost of doing business and the money wasn't there to keep up with it. I'm not blaming The King for taking care of his family. Being a family man myself, family always come first. And seeing what's happening to another owner, who has hocked himself (re-financing houses and personal property) up to his eyeballs to keep his 3 car operation going, I think The King was smart on how he kept things separate. But this is how things have gotten to where they are today. Hopefully somebody from the Petty family will stay involved with this operation for years to come.
With the continued falling out between Eddie George and Faux King Brian, you have to ask how much longer NA$CAR will be racing at the hallowed grounds of Indianapolis. If the IRL returns to the former glory it had before the split into the IRL and CART, we could possibly see Indy coming off of the Cup schedule. Right now, the IRL is still getting its legs back. But give it a few years and the closer that NA$CAR gets to being IROC II, The Sequel, the more race fans are going to go searching elsewhere to get their need for speed fulfilled.
There were a lot of articles this past week talking about the cutbacks GM will be making and the possibilities of them pulling out of racing altogether. GM dropped their involvement with 2 $MI tracks in addition to the I$C tracks that were previously announced. It wouldn't be the first time GM pulled out of racing altogether. The Big 3 have all pulled out at one time or another, but they always returned at some point. However, with the current financial situation with the Big 3, stockholder accountability, and bean counters checking the books, GM may not return if they can't get over their next big financial hump mainly because they may not be around. One of Fords mainstays over the past 50 years, the Wood Brothers, appear to be left hanging by Ford in favor of the young upstart Roush. Yates Racing could be described as being on life support with Roush handing sponsorship deals to Yates to keep them on the track. So Ford could be moving closer and closer to cutting back their involvement in racing with just tacit support. But none of this is new.
Back in the 1960's, GM pulled out of racing across the board. Or at least that's what they said publicly. Behind the scenes, they were helping out Jim Hall and his Chaparral program. It took a few years for that to come out but when it did, GM did the initial denial and then returned to stock car racing. Rex White told me that the folks from Chevy came by his garage just before the start of the 1964 season and took all their racing engines that they had furnished him, leaving him to run an old engine design that suffered from overheating. He ran the Daytona 500 in a Chevy and ran a few races in a Mercury Marauder but GM pulling out in 1964 pretty much ended his career. Ford publicly pulled out of stock car racing in the mid-to late 1960's but were working behind the scenes with Holman-Moody and eventually returned publicly like Chevy did. But with the financial situation being what it is right now, I don't see anything like this happening. We could very well return to having a situation similar to that of Junior Johnson, the real Junior. Junior ran Chevies but had no factory backing at all. Imagine Hendrick, Childress, and the other Chevy teams having to operate like Junior did back then.
Junior had one of the best engine builders in the racing business. What do Hendrick, Childress, and the rest have right now? Engineers and computers. Sure they have guys who can put the engines together, but do they have someone who can eyeball a part and know if its right for the job? Do they have somebody who can tinker with different components and get more out of them? Maybe, but I doubt it. Theres no one in the garage nowadays who can match what Waddell Wilson did.
We still have the engine downsizing coming up along with having so many of the parts being interchangeable between car brands. This amounts to something that is little more than a spec engine. The main difference would be the engine block and that's pretty much it. The plan calls for cylinder heads, oil pumps, water pumps, and more to all be interchangeable between brands. It's not enough the cars all look alike, but the engines are going to be that same? I think this is going to be just another reason the Big 3 will be able to use for pulling out. And where will that leave His Royal Highness and his merry band of henchmen? Well, they already have the car in kit form. So it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for them to start manufacturing the engines. They could hire an independent engine design and manufacturing company to create their engine like Ford and Chevy did when they went to Cosworth to create engines for them for some of their cars. So we have a one size fits all engine with a one size fits all car. Add in mandated gears for the transmission and rear end and issued shocks. Issued springs are still being discussed. So even if the teams are allowed to change out shocks and springs, it's little more than a spec series race car.
So where does that leave us fans? For those who are brand loyal, they'll be leaving if they're not doing so already. Those fans who follow a specific driver will continue to go to see that driver but how exciting is it going to be with all the cars being the same? For those fans that do go to the track, youre going to be paying big money to see 43 spec series cars going around the track. Shades of IROC. Yes, heresy! NA$CAR is becoming more and more like IROC. IROC didn't have that big of a following. While it was great to see drivers from different forms of racing going at it on the track, it was either cars going around the track side by side or in single file. Sound familiar? What have the Uni-Car races been like? Running side by side or single file. And outside of a bonehead move causing a wreck or a tire blowing out, IROC wasn't all that exciting. It was like the current Uni-Car races. Side by side racing because nobody can pass each other or single file racing on long green flag runs. No real excitement on the track until the last few laps.
And with this boredom, how is an auto manufacturer going to be able to advertise that they sell exciting cars? They can't. They can advertise MPG, creature comforts, gizmos and gadgets, but not excitement. And what happens when this free advertising from the manufacturers disappears? GM is already cutting back on theirs. This means HRH is going to have to dig into his own purse for advertising money. And as we've seen in recent times, Faux King Brian isnt going to want to lay out money from the family coffers unless its for the Daytona 500 and the two failed races at Fontana. And with the races become more and more of a snooze-fest, how many folks are going to buy tickets to something that's going to put them into a coma from the boredom? Boring races do affect the bottom line. Long time fans attend fewer and fewer races because the races are boring. The curious show up and get put to sleep because of the lack of excitement so you won't get any return business out of them. Fans that have been around with the latest transition from the template racer to the Uni-Car are bored by the lack of excitement on the track. Sure, there were races back in the old days that were stinkers because one car dominated the day, but that happens from time to time. And while one car may have run away from the rest of the field, there was still some serious fender banging going on back in the field. We might have Robby Gordon, Tony Stewart, or JPM rubbing somebody the wrong way, but the rest of the field is out there just making laps points racing. Whereis the excitement in that? So boring racing yields boring advertising which yields lack of sales of new cars.
We have the usual mouthpieces saying how great the races are and they use some exciting terms to describe things, but the fans who see the races on TV or at the track know that the mouthpieces are blowing smoke up our tailpipes. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear no matter how hard you try. How many times can you regurgitate the official PR releases of Faux King Brian to try to make things look better than they really are? It makes me think of 1984 when Winston had to revise the daily newspaper information day after day, week after week. Change a name, add in a few extra adjectives of excitement, change some dates and viola, you have the next new piece of NA$CAR PR.
Before Don Hamm hung up his spurs, he forwarded a couple of e-mails to me regarding fuel mileage and ethanol. The race fans who e-mailed Don were complaining about how their gas mileage had dropped since they started using ethanol. I've been doing my own research to compare that with what the folks were telling Don. And they're right. The gas mileage on my car drops 4-6 mpg using ethanol. That adds up to about ¼ tank of fuel a week. Now, if ethanol is supposed to be the great savior of the Driving Public, then why are we burning up more ethanol than gasoline? For my car, every 4 weeks I'm using up what would be 5 tanks of ethanol rather than 4 tanks of gasoline. So that really isn't stretching out the gas supplies. It's causing the consumer to burn more fuel, which means more fuel deliveries so the consumers can
refuel, which means more gasoline and diesel
are being consumed. And this is saving our
petroleum supplies? Now, what does this have
to do with racing? For one thing, getting back
and forth to the races. It has increased the cost
of doing that for the race fans and teams. We've
also had one of the Big 3 pushing for ethanol
engines in NA$CAR. If they run ethanol engines
in NA$CAR, and they get ¼ less mileage per
tank like what I'm getting in my street car, we
really will see races being about gas mileage
with the cars needing more pit stops to make it
to the end. And we've all seen in the past just
how boring gas mileage races can be. More
boredom on top of the already boring Uni-Car
races.
Something I forgot to mention last month was my thanks to a group of very special folks who did something very important 60 years ago. And that was all of the men and women who were involved with the Berlin Airlift. They braved horrible weather and constant harassment from the Russians to deliver the food, clothing, fuel, and coal to keep the citizens of Berlin alive and warm. It was probably the largest humanitarian effort ever undertaken.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, and John Wayne
Mad Mikie
Curmudgeon at Large
Want to chat with other race fans about this article and other NASCAR stuff?
Gotta comment, question or want to say hey there...email Mike here
Go visit our home page, called appropriately The Pits & check out our photos & pages. Our most popular page; Race Recon is where you get all the info you need to go to the races including local camping, hotels, bars, restaurants, tracks, golf & other important race weekend information. We also have attending a NASCAR Race tips, tailgating tips & recipes, stories, trivia, quotes & more! While you are surfing see if you are a REAL RACE FAN. Be sure to read the Fan Fables, LAIDBACK RACING’S adventures with the tailgating race fan at NASCAR tracks.
