Catchfence

The 1979 Daytona 500 turned out to be a race that altered the career not just of a competitive driver, but also of the team for whcih he drove.  Hoss Ellington’s #1 team, at the time driven by Donnie Allison, had become a winner in the latter 1970s.  In the ’79 500 Allison led the most laps but the win disintegrated when he and Cale Yarborough crashed on the final lap.  It marked a fateful turning point in Donnie’s career as well as that of Ellington, for Allison never won another Winston Cup-level points race – he won a qualifying race at Daytona in Hoss’ Oldsmobile - while Ellington won the 1980 Rebel 500 with David Pearson but would never visit victory again before his team folded in February 1989.

Ironically, Hoss Ellington’s team figured in another such turning point race.  In the 1980 Southern 500 just over four months after the Pearson-Ellington combination won the Rebel, Pearson made up a lap and got into a fierce fight with Dale Earnhardt and Benny Parsons; all three crashed in oil from a backmarker’s blown engine with two to go; Pearson limped toward the race-ending yellow, but sophmore Terry Labonte caught him and beat him by a bumper for the win.  It would not be Pearson’s last career top five finish, but it turned out to be the final chance of a win his The Silver Fox’s career.

In recent times, the 2006 UAW 500 at Talladega may prove to be the rubicon that was crossed in fatal fashion for the car that, entering the final mile-plus, appeared to have the win.  Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove the #8 of Earnhardt Inc. and Jimmie Johnson’s #48 was hot in his draft with Hendrick teammate Brian Vickers in the #25 first made famous twenty years earlier by Tim Richmond.

It turned into an eerie parallel with the 1979 Daytona 500, right down to the car colors – Hoss Ellington-esque red for Junior and dark blue akin to Cale Yarborough’s Olds on Jimmie Johnson’s Chevy.   On the final lap Vickers hammered Johnson and both he and Junior spun off the backstretch.  Vickers won the race, and Junior was left to finish 23rd.

Earlier that season Junior had won at Richmond and his overall season had been a competitive one.  But the Talladega finish was a seemingly certain win snatched away, and the fateful turning point of his career looked to have been reached, for while Junior would post top ten finishes after that and even win a race at Michigan, the muscle he displayed in that Talladega race has never been approached.

For that #8 DEI team, Talladega in 2006 has proven even more to be a fateful turning point.  The season following that race was the tumutuous divorce between Junior and his stepmom, and the organization around the #8 began to crumble amid the sport’s fit of economic fratricide finally coming home to roost.

Now the #8 appears to have been shut down, due to lack of sponsorship.  Driver Aric Almirola for the time being faces an uncertain future in 2009, and on message boards and motorsports talk radio the vindictive commentary against Teresa Earnhardt has already resumed on the absurd premise that the sport’s insane economics were not cause of DEI’s fall, that it was the work of a lazy and brainless owner in Teresa Earnhardt.

Such invective reflects a mind-boggling refusal to understand pro sports economics – “In this economy” is tritely used to explain away money problems in some areas of sport when the actual cause is a lack of spending control, manifestly the case in racing in particular.  It also reflects continued ignorance of Teresa Earnhardt’s role in running the team from when her husband was still alive, and running it in tandem with the likes of Don Hawk and Ty Norris – success came with Teresa in charge.  The implicit credit of the #8′s success solely to Dale Junior by at least some of his fanbase is absurdity.

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In contrast, another team lately got some good news as additional sponsorship has shored up Richard Petty’s #44 and driver A.J. Allmendinger up to the end of the “regular” season.  Amid the surprising surge of Tony Stewart’s Hendrick satellite cars, largely overlooked as far as “new” cars go has been a commendable effort by Allmendinger’s #44 Dodge.

The Petty and Earnhardt efforts shared quite a bit in common entering 2009 – both were organizations priced out of contention and having no alternative but to merge into other existing outfits in order to keep racing.  The similarities end there.

That Allmendinger was able to get some additional sponsorship is commendable but that it took considerable effort reflects the sport’s continued failure to reign in the spendaholism that brought it to this point.   The hits have kept on coming to a sport in greater than ever need of not just new winners but comeback winners – a mixture that may include Petty and Allmendiner.