DuPont Says Goodbye to NASCAR and Jeff Gordon
Jeff Gordon’s No.24 Dupont Chevrolet. How many times have you heard Jeff Gordon say that over the course of his soon to be 21 year career? Many times. But the season finale at the Ford Ecoboost 400 this past fall was officially the last time we will hear Gordon utter those famous words. DuPont has been a familiar sponsor in the NASCAR garage area since Gordon made his debut during the 1992 season finale at the Hooters 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway in what was Richard Petty’s final race as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series competitor.
What does this mean for Gordon? Well, DuPont was bought out by Axalta Coating Systems for nearly $5 billion and they have since stated that they will remain committed to Hendrick Motorsports and Jeff Gordon. For Gordon fans, it certainly is going to be a hard transition after 20 years, and myself included. Axalta will sponsor Gordon for 14 races in 2013. The only races that have been confirmed to be sponsored by Axalta for this upcoming season are Texas and the season finale in Homestead. The 22 remaining races will continued to be sponsored by AARP and the Drive to End Hunger.
“While these are big changes for us, our commitment to the No. 24 team, Jeff Gordon and NASCAR remains the same,” Axalta President John McCool said in a statement. “We are proud to continue our sponsorship of the No. 24 team and Jeff Gordon in 2013.”
Rick Hendrick also made a short statement today saying that the new Axalta brand is made up of the “the same folks who have spent more than two decades executing one of the most successful sponsorship programs in sports.” And the win at Homestead has to feel 50 times more special for Jeff Gordon and Hendrick Motorsports as they sent off DuPont with a win in their final NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race together and in the special paint scheme, which also happened to be Gordon’s first career victory at Homestead. It was just a great night all together as Brad Keselowski became the second driver in NASCAR history to win his first championship in just his third full-time season on the circuit. Guess who was the other driver? Jeff Gordon! Crazy.
Carlyle Group was the business that purchased DuPont for nearly $5 billion late last year. They also own a variety of businesses including Hertz, and Dunkin’ Donuts.
REBRANDED AXALTA COATING SYSTEMS REMAINS COMMITTED TO HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS AND JEFF GORDON
Dalton Wins All 3 AMS Championships on iRacing
In what was an utterly dominating season, that saw Dalton Baldwin visit victory lane a total of 34 times after starting from the pole an outstanding 35 times in the 60 points races held, DB sat on top of the points standings in all 3 series. That’s right, all 3 series. Dalton dominated the points standings from the opening weeks, even after being suspended from the first race for an altercation in last seasons finale. Even the equalizing, chase style format that NASCAR uses couldn’t stop Dalton in the AMS Cup Series and Truck Series, and the Nationwide Series was all Dalton’s from the minute he started to pull away.
Tyler Walker: A Man Who Had Potential To Be Great
Just who is Tyler Walker? Just what happened to the Tyler Walker that won four California state karting championships with 200 victories? At just the tender age of 16, Walker had already moved up to the All Star Circuit of Champions and won seven races in his rookie season. Walker then moved up to the World of Outlaws, winning their Gumout Series in 2002 with 16 wins in that season alone.
It was in fact Walker who started doing the back flip off of his race car before Carl Edwards. Walker began racing in the Truck Series in 2003, scoring just one career top ten finish before being suspended for violating NASCAR’s substance abuse policy. Where did things go wrong for Tyler Walker? I see a driver that was absolutely a star in the lower series, but struggled in his transition to NASCAR.
Since his suspension from NASCAR, Walker had run mostly in small heat races at local tracks across the country. His last win was the 2011 King’s Royal at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway. However; he had stopped racing for a while due to an inner ear injury that was causing him to have vertigo.
As recently as July of 2012, Walker was involved in an altercation at the Williams Grove Speedway following an on-track incident at a qualifying race. Walker broke a track rule by going off the racing surface. Walker stormed through pit road to the officials stand to scold them for the ruling, but also made obscene gestures to both the officials and fans of the event. Walker was suspended following the outburst. It was ugly. There was a female official that was struck by two different men and Walker threatened to beat up a couple of people. And it was hard to even recognize Walker if you look at his 2007 team photo.
Then there came January 30th, 2012. Walker was arrested after leading police on a high speed chase across three states before police set down spike strips to apprehend Walker. After running over the spike strips, Walker fled on foot, but was apprehended. Police found meth, marijuana, and paraphernalia inside his vehicle. This man needs some serious help before it’s too late. And heck, it might already be too late. But there has been success after stopping drugs. Tim Allen and Josh Hamilton are two examples that I can think of. I wish Walker the best and I hope he recovers and gets his life back.
