The Father’s Day off week allows us all to reflect on nearly the first half of the season. Like Harry Nilsson wrote in his country parody song, “Joy,” things have been good and things have been bad, but on the whole they are pretty good. At least they are better than we’ve seen for a few years thanks to NASCAR taking the bull by the horns and really trying to make racing better. I have thoughts on the 2016 season. Some you may agree with and some not, but here they are.
It’s funny how who wins the race determines what we think of it. To many the All-Star race was horrible because Joey Logano won it. The same could be said for Michigan. If another driver had won it, it would have been a pretty good race to many. I like racing for what it is. Sometimes the drivers I favor win and sometimes they lay an egg, but if the racing it good, I’m content. We have become a fan base of drivers and not racing. I don’t think that’s especially good, but many say it’s always been that way.
Logano might be the most hated driver among fans that I have ever seen. I go back to the 1960’s and I’ve never seen anything like it. Many point to his father’s protectiveness and others point to his aggressive racing style. You may say Earnhardt the senior and Gordon were hated, but never to this extent. Earnhardt and Gordon had legions of fans, but not Logano. Brad Keselowski is not far behind. It might be a manufacturer prejudice, but I’ll have to do a little more research to point to that.
At the beginning of the season, I made the statement that Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske had moved past Hendrick Motorsports as the best teams in the business. Prior to Sonoma, this seems to be true. So far, JGR has won nearly half of the 15 races, seven to be exact. Team Penske has three, Hendrick has two (both wins by Jimmie Johnson), Stewart-Haas Racing has a win each by Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, and Furniture Row, essentially a satellite of JGR, has one. I used to say that SHR was a satellite of Hendrick Motorsports, but I don’t see that anymore around the tracks I’ve been to. They’re on their own from all indications and doing pretty well.
As much as I like the kid, everyone needs to quit putting pressure on Chase Elliott to win. We’ve heard the same, “I expect him to win this year,” and “It’s just a matter of time before he wins,” mantra from others who have not won yet. I could use Kyle Larson as an example, and maybe Austin Dillon for example. I’d maybe throw in others, too. Truth is, this is a hard series and is very dependent on experience. Elliott has the equipment—a car that has performed up to championship status many times—and a great crew chief, but putting that pressure on a kid, not in his twenties, is a little unfair. Yet, we do it time after time. If the broadcast media would leave him alone and not praise him every time he has a good finish, just maybe the kid will take the time to develop and not grieve about things that just normally happen in the course of a race.
That brings us up to the Jeff Gordon situation. If you have worked for an organization for as many years as Gordon has and still have ties there, it’s impossible not to be a little biased. That said, I noticed a lot less of that bias in the Michigan broadcast, and overall, he’s done a terrific job this season. Keselowski’s criticism comes as no surprise after the dustup the two had a couple of years ago which resulted in punches being thrown. Both apparently haven’t forgotten that.
Speaking of forgetting things, let’s just forget about the whole lug nut issue. Tony Stewart spoke out about not tightening five lug nuts and got fined. Other drivers came to his defense. NASCAR reacts by fining and suspending crew chiefs if all five are not tightened at the end of the race. I believe in safety, but I’ve heard enough about lug nuts.
‘Furniture Row’, not ‘Front Row’.
Thanks for catching the error, we have corrected it.