Flashman's Take

Maybe a career has been destroyed. Just like the teacher I once knew who was accused of unthinkable acts, lost his job, but exonerated. It didn’t make much difference.

As my father used to say, "I’d have liked to have been a little birdie". We will probably never know what was discussed in that verbal intercourse between Jack Roush and his points-leading driver, Matt Kenseth. But whatever it was saw one of the best drivers in the sport head for Joe Gibbs Racing (or so they say).

Saturday was a great racing day. We saw what I consider great racing. After the Nationwide Series race at Road America where the storylines were so great and the racing was so great.

We’ve heard for years that the “insurance” NASCAR carries would not tolerate anything over the 200 mph limit, and yet speeds reached nearly 220 mph at Michigan this week and lap times at well over 200 mph. What gives?

This whole Kurt Busch controversy really disturbs me. I’ve had times in my life and my career when I got in trouble. Everyone has. When it happened, I made super sure that I kept my nose clean until the storm passed by. It’s on human nature. Unfortunately, many people don’t follow this example. One of them is Kurt Busch.

The weather was perfect, if not hot, and the pre-race show was amazing. No one does the patriotic opening act like Charlotte Motor Speedway, so why was the attendance so bad?

The panel of over 50 people named the 2013 class to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Once again there are only five inductees, something I’ve railed about before. The Hall of Fame, in my opinion needs to have more people inducted each year.

Why it is that NASCAR feels it has to tweak the All-Star race. Consider this. The All Star Game, the mid-summer classic plays nine innings and all rules apply. The NBA All Star event follows the rules and the NFL late season All Star game still plays four quarters and follows the rules.

Restrictor plate racing is not racing. You have read it here from me for a long time, but rarely do we hear it from the competitors.

What happened at Richmond on Saturday night was typical when circumstances get out of control. Why? It’s pretty obvious. Let’s forget for a second how the race played out.