My mom always taught me growing up that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. It’s becoming fairly obvious that NASCAR, ISC, SMI, or other track owners such as Dover Motorsports or the Mattioli family aren’t doing things right when it comes to SAFER Barriers, and never have.
When Jeff Gordon had a very violent wreck with a non-SAFER Barrier wall, it should have sparked a conscious effort by everybody involved with the sport to put SAFER Barrier walls everywhere, at 100 percent of all race tracks. Oh, you think I’m writing about what happened on Sunday? No, I’m writing about what happened in Las Vegas, in 2008, in a wreck that at least aggravated the back problems that are partially responsible for Gordon retiring. This was seven years before the Kyle Busch wreck at Daytona that restarted this issue.
It’s sad and shameful, and a disgrace to men such as Dale Earnhardt Sr. whose death helped inspire the growth of such technologies. Tracks should have been 100 percent coated in SAFER Barriers by 2010 at the very least. Instead, it’s 2015 and we’ve had two cars experience devastating hits to non-SAFER walls in the Cup series alone, (the other hit was during the final wreck in the Daytona 500, where Kyle Larson hit a non-SAFER wall out of camera view), not to mention Kyle Busch’s horrible wreck in the XFINITY race at Daytona that has him on the mend for the foreseeable future.
As a historian, I see that there is a history towards ignoring driver safety until a disaster or series of disasters happen, in favor of speed and entertainment. Probably the best example of this outside of the late 1990s-2000 era that ended with the death of Dale Earnhardt Sr., was the dramatic increase of speed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Back then, the idea was to make cars that went as fast as possible in order to beat the other car on the track, so that your manufacture (who typically either owned the team, sponsored it, or supported it) could outsell the other cars on Monday. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” it was called. Then came the sad year of 1964.
Defending champion Joe Weatherly and superstar Fireball Roberts, both NASCAR Hall of Famers, were both dead by July of that year, either directly due to a crash (Weatherly), or dying as a result of injuries sustained in a crash (Roberts, who only lived for a month after the accident thanks to Ned Jarrett saving him from his burning car….. somehow this has not been made into a movie). In addition to that, death in the Indianapolis 500 of Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald that same year, along with public heat brought about by Ralph Nader a year later, helped to bring about plenty of safety technologies we take for granted today, such as the fuel cell, fire suits, and the inner tire.
Could you imagine racing today without fire suits? I hope in fifty years our grandchildren wonder the same about SAFER Barriers.
The favorite for this weekend at Las Vegas has to be Jimmie Johnson. He has scored more points than anyone over the past five races there, and now that he has a win and an almost guaranteed spot in the Chase he can roll the dice and gamble his way to another victory.
Be on the lookout for Jeff Gordon, who will be attempting to start a comeback in his final season. His finishes this season of 33rd and 41st don’t do him justice, as he has spent the vast majority of the races this year running in the top five. Remember that a slow start last year didn’t stop Kevin Harvick from hoisting the Cup at the end of it.
Dark horses this week are Martin Truex Jr., Casey Mears and A.J. Almendinger. Both Mears and Allmendinger drove great races at Daytona and Atlanta and are sitting sixth and eighth in the points respectively. Truex, fifth in points, seems to have finally recaptured the mojo he had at MWR before leaving, competing for victories at both Daytona and Atlanta.
At the very least, this season seems to have brought some new teams to the sport.
Instead of 43-44 cars at Atlanta and only 45 at Daytona, there are around 49-48 cars on the entry list every single week. Why is this? First and foremost, it seems that the economy has finally come back as far as racing is concerned. Secondly, it helps that although the big teams are getting larger and larger, the smaller teams seem to be finding solid footing.
Let’s take Roush Fenway Racing, for example. An off-season where they lose their most marketable driver, most of his sponsors, and a full-season sponsorship in 3M would have crippled a team even a few years ago. But yet, they have been able to replace most of what they have lost, like another very marketable driver in Trevor Bayne (who, being 12 years younger than Carl Edwards, may be a better long term choice for that ride as long as his MS doesn’t hurt his career), and two sponsors in Advocare (I believe it is a full season sponsorship) and Ortho (At least half a season), along with a renewed deal with Kellogg’s.
Sure, I’m not saying Roush isn’t out of the dog house just yet. They completely unimpressed me as far as Atlanta went, and if they don’t pick up the results soon they aren’t going to be able to replace what they lose next season. But just the fact a team like Roush, often mocked by fans and outclassed by Penske and even in some ways Richard Petty Motorsports, cannot just find sponsorship, but big sponsorship, is a definite good sign.
It also seems like the new television deal, where well over a billion dollars is being paid to teams annually through race winnings, has had a positive effect. The coverage hasn’t been good whatsoever, with constant sponsor spots (Nationwide Dale Jr. Reports and the Aflac look into the booth thing), constant commercials, and Darrell Waltrip being Darrell Waltrip, but the money from the deal has definitely helped increase the number of entries.
It will be interesting, however, to see who goes and who doesn’t throughout this season. I’m a little concerned with Tommy Baldwin Racing, who has gone from two full-time teams to one and has lost a lot of sponsorship, like Pilot J. It doesn’t help that they missed the Daytona 500 (which is worth about a quarter million dollars just to start) and tore up their restrictor plate car in the process. The 30 car of The Motorsports Group has been insanely slow and only made Atlanta due to other cars not being able to qualify, missed the Daytona 500, and probably isn’t attempting the next three races due to cost (Las Vegas, Phoenix, then Fontana are far away from Charlotte). Team Xtreme has had a crazy year, causing the first ever multicar wreck in Daytona 500 qualifying history, making the race after coming down to Daytona initially without a back-up car, then having Atlanta literally stolen out from under them when somebody swiped their hauler, with tools, a car, and an engine. Only the car has surfaced.
All eyes will be on Vegas this week. Who will win and stamp a spot into the Chase? How many laps will Jimmie Johnson lead? How many plugs for Nationwide will FOX have? Tune in to find out, Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern time.
