This week’s Factor will be a little different than normal. I’m going to be going over my votes for the NASCAR Hall of Fame fan vote, which anybody can vote for right here- http://www.nascar.com/halloffame . Because NASCAR loves not to actually promote it (last year I didn’t know it was active until it closed), I feel I should do my part and reveal my votes for the Hall. Agree or disagree, I hope that you can take the time out to cast your vote this year.
But First, Three Honorable Mentions:
Ray Evernham– What kills him being in right now is the general uncompetitiveness of Evernham Motorsports. If Evernham had won a championship or was even still around today he would definitely get a vote from me.
Evernham, while having a remarkable career with Jeff Gordon (being the Chad Knaus to Gordon’s Jimmie Johnson), his lack of success with anyone or anything else leaves him on the outside looking in for me so far. It’s like if Hendrick himself had just stopped in the late 90’s- sure he’d be in eventually, but he doesn’t have the longevity a Jeff Gordon has that shoots him ahead of most nominees.
Curtis Turner– The field of nominees right now is just too good. If there were six able to go in no doubt he would be my sixth.
Turner was the Babe Ruth of stock car racing, and although more popular drivers have come along since, few can match the antics and personality of the moonshiner from Roanoke, Virginia. If you think Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart are characters, Turner could impress you just by using his pinky.
The first NASCAR driver on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Turner’s meager Cup stats only tell one side of the story. Never full-time, he was the king of the short-lived convertible series and his commitment to getting Charlotte Motor Speedway on the ground set the stage for numerous events, such as the rise of Bruton Smith as one of the most powerful men in sports. Having long since passed away after a strange plane crash in 1970, Turner was the poster child for a race car driver before the 1970’s, a wildman who didn’t care to run a full season in anything, picking and choosing big money or just fun races to do on the side of his real job. One of these off weekends I’m going to devote an entire Factor to Turner stories, like the time he landed a plane on a street in a town just to get liquor, or becoming the only pace car driver in history to lead the field under the green flag.
Alan Kulwicki– So I might be just a little biased. Kulwicki is such an underrated driver and he did something nobody will probably ever do again. He came into Cup racing owning his own team, turned down all offers to race for everybody, even when he had no sponsors, then ended up winning a championship. Just doing the last part is difficult for many drivers; Darrell Waltrip’s team failed, Ricky Rudd’s team failed and Geoff Bodine’s team failed. But to waltz into Cup and within five years hoist the championship with the team you built is like a joke you tell to friends.
And he never sat on his laurels either. This is a man who, the month before his tragic death in a plane crash, was working on his car in an Atlanta blizzard when nobody else was in the garage, using his helmet to protect him from the conditions. Kulwicki’s thing that is killing him, like Turner, is the unimpressive stat line and just how good the nominee list is. I also feel like Kulwicki needs to go in with Davey Allison. Although both drivers had little in common, both will always be forever linked, and with Tim Richmond, their deaths will always be regarded as the great what-ifs of 1990’s NASCAR.
Texas Preview
The Favorite
I think this will be the week Matt Kenseth makes his return to victory lane. This is one of his best tracks, and JGR seems to be improving every week.
One to Watch
It will be interesting to see if Ryan Newman can continue his constancy run with the dark cloud of those penalties looming. Let’s see how this team performs under pressure.
Dark Horse
David Ragan did well here before leaving Roush Fenway Racing. Now that he’s in a car that has some power to it again, I don’t doubt a good result will come on Saturday.
Oh, and to those who actually still care about the Keselowski-Gordon fight from last year… Really? Don’t sit around and create stories for no real reason other than to stir the pot. And I doubt either man is going to drink from said pot this time around.
The Votes: (Ranked in no particular order):
Raymond Parks
If there was no Raymond Parks, there would be no NASCAR. Before Parks, all stock car drivers were disorganized with little consistency in who they were running for, or if they were running for themselves, wrecking their car and never being heard from again. Parks brought to the sport uniformity and set the stage for today’s car owners in Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs. Paul Brown before Paul Brown, the “moonshine baron” of Atlanta created a winning formula that still works- buy the best cars, hire the best mechanics (Red Vogt), the best drivers (Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, sometimes the Flock brothers, and most famously Red Byron among others), then collect the trophy and the check after winning the race.
Red Byron
If there was no Red Byron, there would be no stock car racing, or if there was it would be about 30 years behind the times. After World War II, stock car racing, after establishing itself in the late 1930’s as the southern sport on the rise, looked like it was going to struggle to catch open wheel racing. Most of its biggest stars were no longer around. Roy Hall was in prison. Lloyd Seay was dead. Bill France Sr., a fine racer and generally regarded as the unofficial 1940 overall stock car champion, had retired to focus on promoting the sport. Not only that, but many involved in the sport were simply criminals, hard-nosed moonshiners who were not exactly people that would appeal to the police, politicans, or other powerful figures willing to take the sport down.
Enter Red Byron.
The World War II vet, with a bum left leg due to shrapnel from the war, was a racer. He never hauled moonshine. He had never done a “bootlegger’s turn”. But he was a racer, and he was exactly what the sport needed at the time, a solid and relatable man who, like Mark Martin many years later, wasn’t everybody’s favorite driver, rather at least their second favorite. Byron, also, as a seasoned open wheel driver, helped provide legitimacy to many who looked down on the “good old boy redneck show”.
Byron’s stats are horrible compared to many on the ballot, but what he did for the sport at the most chaotic time of its existence, plus his distinction as the first NASCAR champion (in the modified series in 1948) and the first Strictly Stock (now known as the Sprint Cup) champion in 1949 definitely make up for it.
Benny Parsons
Parsons is definitely debatable right now. I’d guess the class cut-off will come down to Parsons and Terry Labonte. While it is true Labonte has another championship and better overall statistics in play than Parsons, the impact Labonte has had on the sport simply has been minimal, if at all. Rather, Parsons’ impact can still be felt today.
I’m taking what Parsons did for coverage and media into account, simply because the Hall itself already has had displays for Darrell Waltrip and Ned Jarrett’s media careers following their driving days. Parsons, in many ways, is the hallmark for what an announcer should be. He had the Larry McReynolds gift of being able to tell the viewer what was going on during a race without dumbing it down or being too technical. His pairing with Jarrett will go down as one of the greatest in the sport’s history, and his announcing could turn a boring race into something exciting to watch and think about.
Parsons was also a great driver. In 1964, Benny seemed to have gotten his big break into the Grand National (now Sprint Cup) series. He was getting the chance most drivers could only dream of, a race at the old Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in a Holman-Moody Ford. Success could lead to a full-time ride in the best equipment around. However, he had two little problems that day. The first of which was an overheating issue that knocked him out of the race prematurely. The other problem was that Ford was trying out another driver that day, who, although he only lasted nine more laps than Parsons, had impressed the Ford brass more than Benny could.
That other driver was called Cale Yarborough.
Benny would eventually have his day in the sun nine years later, beating Yarborough in a now famous points battle that spoke to the kindness and respect Parsons had and gave to the garage area.
In 1973’s final race, Parsons came into Rockingham needing to complete a specific amount of laps to win the championship due to the way the points worked back then. Parsons wrecked early, and seemed to be doomed to once again come up short to Yarborough. However, men from every crew came down to the No. 72 garage and helped fix the car enough for Benny to come back out onto the track, winning the 1973 championship and etching his name into history. Benny ended his career with 21 victories, only one off from Labonte’s 22. Benny also only has roughly 100 less top-tens than Labonte, impressive considering the Iron Man had over 350 more starts than Parsons.
Rick Hendrick
There is literally only one argument one can make for Hendrick not to be in the Hall of Fame- he’s still active.
If he wasn’t, we’re talking second class inductee here.
There’s really not much I have to say here. It’s really just some numbers with some words:
232 victories.
202 poles.
11 championships. Four straight in 1995-1998, five in 2006-2010.
His engines/chassis have won three other championships, in 1989, 2011 and 2014.
Quite simply the greatest car owner of all time. No argument.
Mark Martin
Quite simply the greatest driver to never win a championship. But, to be honest, would a championship really make a huge difference?
The king of consistency, Martin finished second in points five times, far and away the most in history among those never to hoist the Cup. Easily his most impressive season was 2009, where at the age of fifty he won five races and in an unlikely twist, filled the void the underperforming Dale Earnhardt Jr. made for many in the fanbase.
Why would anybody hate Mark Martin? As far as I can remember, I’ve never heard of him being rude to fans. I can’t recall him ever making a fellow driver mad. Starting in Cup racing as a young 22-year-old in 1981 and ending his career as an old man at 54 in 2013, Martin remained constantly consistent and, outside of two winless seasons in 12thand 17th place in 2001 and 2003 respectively, never finished outside of the top-ten in points from 1988 to 2006. He helped build Roush Racing from being a new team to, at the time of his departure in 2006, a five car organization, having won championships in 2003 and 2004. They also won 18 races in 2005, a good enough record to force NASCAR to enact a four car team limit that same year.
He also hold the distinction of having raced against every NASCAR champion since the start of the modern era in 1972, and at times bested all of them. His work with Michael Waltrip Racing in the last three years in his career helped to get the team into high gear, and his loss has definitely stung at MWR the last two years.
Mark Martin is definitely a Hall of Famer, and there’s no doubting that. So what if he didn’t win a championship? Let’s not pretend Bill Rexford is going in anytime soon….
