NASCAR like all sports in the world has many flaws and they need to be addressed. My first question to my viewers is this, Are fuel mileage races healthy for the sport? I would like to hear your opinion on that later.
I have been receiving a lot of angry letters from fans all over about the extremity of fuel mileage races especially this season. Now, why do you think that is?
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[/media-credit]I have an answer for you and it’s going to make every single corn farmer involved in this deal angry and it is ethanol. Now, what is ethanol? It is corn. This corn is turned into fuel through industrial fermentation, chemical processing, and distillation and is the main feedstock used for producing ethanol fuel in the United States, but it is mostly used as an oxygenate in the form of low-level blends because a full blend of this corn ethanol wouldn’t work.
Using ethanol to fuel these race cars is only making food prices skyrocket. Kenny Wallace doesn’t seem to understand that, but I can sympathize with him because American Ethanol is his sponsor and he is trying his absolute best to promote a complete waste of money. For those of you who have studied economics this is simple supply and demand. It is quite a simple concept. If you have low supply but a high demand, then prices go up. There is a low supply of corn because the federal government is converting it to fuel that is why prices are so darn high.
Ethanol also doesn’t get as much mileage as gas along with the incredible amount of corn needed to produce 1 gallon of fuel. Did you know that each gallon of ethanol needs over 1,700 gallons of water? That is mostly for growing the corn! This also leads to soil erosion and produces about 6 to 12 gallons of noxious organic effluent. Yeah. Not good.
The state of Minnesota found out how unreliable it was the hard way. In January of 2008, Minnesota forced all of their public school buses to use full blown ethanol. There was no blend. Well these geniuses back in Minnesota didn’t do enough research to realize this stuff turns into a gel when it freezes. Hello!! This is Minnesota in January!! The buses couldn’t start and many young kids were treated for hypothermia all across the state. And I forgot to mention over 26 pounds of corn is needed to produce 1 gallon of this crap.
Now, this controversy has carried over into my sport and it’s not making me happy. Unlike regular gas that we should be drilling for, ethanol has an expiration date like a gallon of milk. It cannot stay in a tank forever. So, all of this stuff you hear about ethanol being the next generation changer is absolute bull. Thankfully for NASCAR, they burn the fuel during the race so they don’t have to care, but what races have been affected by this change and by bad calls in general?
The Budweiser Shootout was the first race and right off the bat we had a bad call by giving the win to Kurt Busch. Denny Hamlin according to photos dipped below the yellow line just after taking the lead from Ryan Newman to avoid a wreck and it was wrong taking that win away from him. Like I have said in the past, more consistency would be nice.
Daytona and Talladega have perhaps turn into the biggest jokes in the sport. The two-by-two tango crap is not racing! It’s follow the leader until someone else wants to be the speeder. It may have produced a .002 finish between Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer, but that is not racing.
The fuel controversy has also affected which driver should really win the race. We saw Kevin Harvick win the Coca Cola 600 this past May. Who had the best car that day? Matt Kenseth. He had fuel issues like many drivers and we had a ‘surprise’ winner. Well, I like many fans are sick of these ‘surprises.’ I just want to see the best car win, but a lot of times now it’s a random driver the next time.
In Kansas, Kurt Busch was the class of the field, but had fuel issues. Your surprise winner is Brad Keselowski. Today at Indy, the two best cars were Kasey Kahne and Jeff Gordon. Paul Menard won his first career race. The longer your fuel stretches also depends when you buy the fuel because like I said, it has an expiration.
Congratulations to Menard on his first win, but I call on NASCAR to go back to regular gas! It’s more reliable and less expensive. If you ask any corn farmer that is apart of this NASCAR package, they will tell you how magnificent their stuff is. Well, no kidding. They are getting money off this ya know? I like surprises every now and then fans, but when it is happening every week because of the fuel we are using, can we please return to decency?
