His brief era in the sport produced some outrageous moments, a lot of controversy – especially at the end of the decade – and some memorable racing moments, both on the track and also in some moments away from it. Presented here is a chronological list of Richmond’s ten most memorable moments in NASCAR -

—————-

1981 Dixie 500 – Debuting in stock cars in 1980 at Pocono, Richmond posted several respectable finishes in racecars that were chronically underfunded, and for 1981 he was squared off against Morgan Shepherd and Ron Bouchard for the season’s rookie of the year honors. After driving for D.K. Ulrich and Kenny Childers, Richmond in September jumped into Bob Rogers’ Buick, finished ninth at Dover, and led for the first time in NASCAR competition at Martinsville.

At the Dixie 500 that November Richmond timed 16th in a race that was being televised live by third-year cable network ESPN, the first live racecast by the network. While Bouchard and Shepherd fell out with engine failures Richmond clawed into the top ten and doggedly raced to stay there. It was one of the first times that Richmond not only ran well but showed the fight needed to win. He later spun out and also nearly hit Darrell Waltrip on pit road, but the point was made that Richmond could race.

1982 Riverside – Hired by J.D. Stacy in April, Richmond raced hard from his first race, the ’82 Rebel 500. Few people ever doused Les Richter with drink, but Richmond did it twice in 1982.

1983 Summer 500, Pocono – Driving for Raymond Beadle, Richmond had run poorly until finishing fourth at Pocono in June; from there he and the team began gelling into a consistent power. At Pocono in July Richmond didn’t put much stock into practice – when he ran a practice lap he “half-assed it” in the words of Tim Brewer, but when qualifying began for real he won the pole. He battled throughout a day delayed twice by rain before storming to the win, his first for Beadle and first on an oval.

1984 Firecracker 400 – This race was memorable not for Richmond’s performance (he finished 11th) but for what happened afterward. He got into David Pearson a few times and then radioed, “Better get to the garage, I think me and Pearson are going to have a fight.” It was a one-hit fight – Richmond got into Pearson’s face and Pearson slapped him to the ground.

1986 North Wilkesboro tire test – Signing with third-year team owner Rick Hendrick for a second team when second teams were not a proven success for racing, Richmond raised eyebrows by changing his appearence to an almost mocking level of panache. It didn’t translate to success on the track, and he was at loggerheads with crew chief Harry Hyde, who to that point of his career was tired of being a babysitter to “young ‘uns.”

At one point Richmond and Hyde got into a such a savage argument that the two started outside to fight – Richmond then started laughing, saying he’d look foolish losing a fight to “an old man.” It broke up the dark mood between the two, and later at a tire test at North Wilkesboro Hyde had Richmond drive 50 laps to his style and 50 laps to the style Hyde wanted. It was here that Richmond saw for himself in tire wear and the lap sheets what Hyde wanted and why it would work.

It was the turning point for both men and for their team.

1986 Summer 500, Pocono – Fog delayed the start by two hours and a stretch of nearly 80 laps hit the race before things began heating up around Lap 100. Richmond and teammate Geoff Bodine led on and off during the day while Dale Earnhardt got into it with Richard Petty on a pitstop and Petty responded by swerving Earnhardt to the Tunnel Turn wall. Following blown engines by Bill Elliott and Buddy Baker, pitstops around Lap 115 put Neil Bonnett and Petty into the lead and in the ensuing scramble Richmond made a three-abreast pass into the Tunnel Turn that could best be described as ill-advised – the result was a spin into Petty’s path and a wreck; Petty was eliminated (and livid at Richmond and Bodine’s driving in interviews) while Richmond had to drive backwards to get to pit road. A lap down Richmond got repairs and fought it out with Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, and Bodine to get his lap back – and he got it when Earnhardt crashed. Getting tires, Richmond faced a five-lap sprint as NASCAR decided to end the race at Lap 150 due to fog; it turned into one of the sport’s greatest finishes as Richmond ripped past six cars and on the final two laps went after Bodine, then Bodine fought back, and as they hung together nose to nose Ricky Rudd stormed from nowhere to pass them both, but was edged by Richmond at the stripe, a finish so close the two looked at each other in confusion as to who actually won.

1986 Talladega and Hayride 500s – The Talladega 500 that year broke 20 official leaders for the first time in racing history as 26 drivers led amid 49 lead changes. An epidemic of crashes late in the going wiped out roughly a dozen cars and Richmond could only finish second to upstart Bobby Hillin Jr.

Following the race NASCAR organized an effort where team transporters hauled hay to drought-stricken farms in the Midwest. Richmond cleared his schedule for the week and personally drove one of the haulers; a famous image of the effort showed Richmond, Petty, Pearson, Rudd, and Phil Barkdoll loading hay into a hauler. Richmond also dazzled people on his CB radio, taking the handle Top Gun.

1986 Southern 500 – Surviving the Southern 500 was always a chore. Here Richmond led 168 laps but had to sweat out a late showdown with Bill Elliott to storm to the win. Richmond was especially proud since it was Harry Hyde’s first ever win at Darlington.

1986 Capital City 400, Richmond – Richmond wins Richmond – it was a headline that Tim enjoyed greatly as he took his sixth win of the season, sixth in the last ten races, and had suddenly jumped into legitimate contention for the season title.

June 1987 – Richmond’s 1986 season hit the skids in September and he finished third in points, while his health hit the skids at the same time. He fought to get back into the racecar and after testing in March and running the All Star Race in May, Richmond entered the Pocono 500. He stormed to the front early on, then lost a lap with transmission trouble; he got the lap back and whipped into the lead for good with 46 to go. He never saw the flag, so emotional he’d become at his greatest comeback moment.

He then followed up by leading 46 of the last 57 laps at Riverside, dedicating the win to his dad Al.

——————–

The way it all ended became a bitter moment for the sport. The way it had developed in that seven season span will stick with people always. It’s why anniversaries such as this resonate.

If anything what Sadler’s crash illustrated – again – is the fact these cars are simply too fast to race unrestricted. Trap speeds at Pocono reach 200, and the reality of racing is that 190 has been the cut-off point for safety, and even that’s a bit iffy. With the Trucks making their Pocono debut on Saturday, it was noteworthy that they were noticeably slower down the straights than the cars, be they Sprint Cup or ARCA; the Trucks also displayed a noticeably stronger drafting effect, especially at Lap 40 when Todd Bodine from some ten lengths back in third got on Elliott Sadler’s bumper and blasted him down the frontstretch and erased the ten length gap to leader Denny Hamlin before they even got to Turn One – in contrast, though the battle up front in the 500 became at times downright stunning and Dale Junior and a few others tried to push-draft cars, it was obvious the COTs simply were too fast and too aero-tight for push-drafting to work at well.

It would thus seem that while adding more SAFER barriers is a done deal, Brandon Igdalsky should be pushing NASCAR to start restricting the cars there as well as everywhere else. The racing would certainly improve and its impossible to see any safety degradation from it.

——————-

Amid Brandon Igsalsky’s introduction to the larger NASCAR world, NASCAR’s Brian France found himself under fire for the secret fining of drivers Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman. The reaction of other drivers was on the side of NASCAR to a striking extent, with a lot of verbiage about the need not to attack the sport.

It leaves one radically mixed. Certainly criticisms that are less than honest warrant censure, but what has been at work here is less appropriate censure than what appears to be a vengeful attack by Brian France in a fit of denial that the sport over which he presides has been faltering and that the changes he has wrought not only have not worked but have only worsened the decline in popularity. His push to market NASCAR The Brand has clearly not worked, with the term NASCAR more and more a pejorative than a positive thanks to promotion of The Brand instead of the product.

The laundry list of Brian France failures easily overwhelms whatever successes he may have brought – the Chase and the general refusal to change the points structure to punish mediocrity and reward hard-charging and winning; the bastardization of downforce and tires and its inevitable endgame the COT; the push to impose NASCAR on demographics (LA, NYC, Washington State, to a lesser extent Chicago) that don’t want it and the resultant campaign of speedway fratricide; the implosion of the sport’s economics to where even car owners have begun holding powwows to discuss cost-cutting (though the recent one seemed woefully dry on credible ideas toward that end); and the steady eroding of the sport’s competitive depth with lack of winners, lack of lead changes, and the renewed phenomenon of independents – aka start-and-park cars – actually a controversy.

“We shouldn’t have to lock the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in our glovebox when we drive….into the NASCAR garage.” Here Mr. Mulhern is correct. We also shouldn’t not hold critics accountable for their criticisms, and those in position of power manifestly should be held accountable – and with Brian France lashing out in what can’t look like anything except a fit of denial, the light of accountability needs to be shone.

——————————

Amid all that, the sport still has the 2010 season to go, as Watkins Glen beckons.

The piece’s credibility takes a major blow thusly, because the assumption that a sport must be multicultural is wrong on its face. “Multiculturalism” is a euphemism for Balkanization, and Balkanization does nothing but destroy real diversity. Citing LeBron James, Terrell Owens, and Donovan McNabb hurts the piece’s argument more given James’ underhanded handling of changing teams, the serial insanity of Terrell Owens, and the underwhelming reality of McNabb’s NFL career, a career that despite its numbers is memorable only for McNabb’s serial ability to alienate teammates to where they rally behind his backups on a regular basis.

The piece proceeds to an interview with four of the program’s most recent “stars,” even though it acknowledges the program’s lack of success in its seven years so far and the successes of late that the piece notes are remarkably thin gruel for a program given such soaring goals assigned to it.

The Drive For Diversity program suffers right away because the reality is that “diversity” simply has no relevance to anything. Why it is anyone’s business if a sport or a team do not live up to some quota is never credibly explained. The argument that “diversity” opens avenues of talent otherwise ignores has never been credible – the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, for instance, have used three quarterbacks (Warren Moon, Steve McNair, and Vince Young) who are black, none of whom benefitted from any quota system – they were picked because their skill set meshed with how the Oilers/Titans played football. In competitive sports or any competitive endeavor the search for talent by its nature ignores whatever barriers are felt to exist, and competition punishes those who adher to such barriers – the refusal of the Boston Red Sox for decades to employ non-white players stifled the team’s ability to compete.

That the Drive For Diversity has not seen any of its graduates show any ability to advance beyond the lowest levels of racing suggests the concept of the program simply doesn’t work – if Aric Almirola (the program’s most prominent graduate) was any good he’d be farther along in his career.

Then there is the reality of the sanctioning body playing a role in “picking the winners.” Why, for instance, the graduates of the Driver For Diversity are more qualified for advancement in their careers than the likes of Ted Christopher or Jimmy Horton or other such racers who’ve actually accomplished something beyond the thin gruel of DFD’s graduates is never explained.

The concept is thus meaningless. It simply exists to fill out some quota imposed from somewhere else. The promises of the program have shown no evidence of being realistic in the seven years it has existed and media puffery won’t change this fact any more than it has changed the mediocre talent and worse judgement of the likes of Danica Patrick, Deborah Renshaw (now a subject worthy of “Where Are They Now?” missives), and Patty Moise.

For a change, maybe the Mainstream Sports Media should ask whether the time has come to cancel diversity programs.

The Brickyard has become a lead-in to the Summer 500 at Pocono, and while the two tracks share similarities the differences outweigh them between Pocono’s different bankings, sharper corners, and greater track width; indeed the most striking difference is that the Brickyard at times is impassable while at Pocono the leaders periodically stack it five wide.

The winners and losers from the Brickyard are worth a look entering Pocono -

WINNERS:

JAMIE MCMURRAY – We all thought he was a plate track specialist and his season hadn’t been that stout with a lack of consistent muscle; he also didn’t finish at Pocono in June. That may be changing now after he led 72 laps at Chicago and now has the win at Indianapolis.

KEVIN HARVICK – His point lead began bleeding but a second place finish stops that for now.

RCR – All three RCR Chevrolets finished in the top ten and their ally in EGR used their engine to win.

KYLE BUSCH – He rallied from the opening lap spin to finish in the top ten.

AJ ALLMENDINGER – 16th isn’t worth celebrating, but Allmendinger was stuck a lap down for most of the race after the flurry of early-race overheating stops and was one of the few cars fighting for anything all day.

REGAN SMITH – For awhile he ran in the top twenty, commendable given the hopeless odds his team faces.

JACQUES VILLENEUVE – It isn’t much, but he made the field and didn’t embarrass himself like he so often has over the years.

LOSERS:

JUAN MONTOYA – For the second year in a row he led the most laps; for the second year in a row he got trapped in aeropush and was eliminated from contention. It was actually worse this year; in 2009 NASCAR cost him the race with a bogus speeding penalty, but this time a four-tire call wound up hurting his effort with an aeropush problem that looked worse than usual. Montoya then reverted to loose cannon form by crashing. One could sympathize with him last year; now there’s no reason to feel bad for him.

HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS – The entire organization laid a big egg between sub-par runs and a spat over Mark Martin’s future with the team.

RYAN NEWMAN – He started fifth but never contended for anything and despite winning at Phoenix is becoming less relevant to the sport.

PENSKE RACING – Kurt Busch’s decent effort couldn’t hide the irrelevance of Brad Keselowski and the embarrassment that is Sam Hornish, Jr.

JOE GIBBS RACING – This illustrates how different Indianapolis and Pocono are as racetracks – JGR has become the dominator at Pocono but at the Brickyard none of the Coach’s cars were in contention to win.

MAX PAPIS – Is this guy learning anything here?

The flat super-oval portion of the season thus continues next week.

We’ll start with Mr. Edwards as he is considered a potential winner of the upcoming Brickyard 400 but who had spent most of the last two seasons displaying a curious mixture of bullying and timidity in his racing – since his 2009 Talladega melee Edwards seemed to have lost something in his racing to where he’d become surprisingly timid in terms of actually fighting for anything on the racetrack.

Whatever he lost, he seems to have found in a finish at Gateway that will make people forget the embarrassment of losing the lights for the track’s scheduled Friday night Truck feature. I can’t remember Edwards showing this much fight to actually win a race in several years, certainly not since getting blasted into orbit at the Winston 500 two seasons past.

The wreck raises continuing questions about Edwards and his relationship on the track with Brash-Brad Keselowski and also about the safety of NASCAR’s “Boys Have At It” approach to on-track thuggery. That Edwards is displaying a disturbing similarity on the racetrack to “Mad Max” Mel Gibson ought to concern people – it was flagrant reckless endangerment by Edwards and racers are not supposed to race this way.

Making it doubly disturbing is that Edwards and Keselowski had before that staged a superb four-lap battle for the lead where they took Gateway’s tricky turns nose to nose; despite what appeared to be a sideswipe by Edwards that resulted in a nice save by Keselowski, the battle was clean, green, and stirring, the kind of racing the sport really needs to win back the fan base, the kind of racing that puts the bullrings to shame.

The sport needs to ask whether Carl Edwards should be allowed to race. It also needs to get real about what “Boys Have At It” means and what it doesn’t mean.

———————

Before this the sport saw yet another Mad Max episode from one Juan “Don’t Call Me Roger Murtaugh” Montoya. His own on-track idiocy was aggravated when he trash-talked Mark Martin, the sport’s ultimate gentleman. What right he has to say what he did is a mystery, and of course Juan Montoya will get a lot of attention for the Brickyard, for it was in this race last season that his micro-renaissance in NASCAR began, and his return to the race where NASCAR’s own stupidity cost him a win will certainly warrant heavy media coverage.

Montoya won’t be the only Chevrolet getting attention, as Jimmie Johnson has overcome this spring’s dip in performance and the RCR fleet has of recent becomes a real juggernaut despite some bumps encountered at Chicagoland.

But when it comes to the Brickyard the name on everyone’s lips will be Roger Penske, as Kurt Busch comes to town with Mr. Keselowski alongside and ex-500 champ Sam Hornish a straightaway back.

Then of course we have win less Ford, between the Roush-Fenway fleet and the Petty-Gillett group; the Petty-Gillett group has shown real fight pretty much all season and it remains curious that this group hasn’t broken through yet.

Finally, there is the JGR behemoth, curiously quiet the last few races after racing to the front with a vengeance. It seems unlikely JGR’s bunch will stay quiet come the Brickyard, especially Denny Hamlin.

———————

Then there is ESPN, which telecast the Gateway race and takes over the NASCAR television deal with the Brickyard. Does ESPN put its announcers through a course in how to lie to viewers? For the announcer to plead ignorance when reviewing the replay was cowardice. Announcers are suposed to tell the truth, yet “Edwards hooked Keselowski head-on into the wall” apparently doesn’t qualify.

Brock Yates wrote back in 1987 about how ESPN’s “reputation for low-ball production values has diminished, not increased, the appeal of motorsports to the masses.” The production values are better, but the broadcasts still leave a lot to be desired, especially when honesty is required.

The bottom line remains that the Brickyard comes at a juncture when NASCAR needs something positive. If it gets a battle up front like the four-lap side-draft between Edwards and Keselowski it will succeed; if it gets chaos like the finish at Gateway it will have failed.

With all that the Firecracker 400 saw some glaring examples of a phenomenon that tends to get lost in the shuffle. With all the talk about drivers and their successes, this Firecracker illustrated the reality of drivers and their failures. The NFL is replete with draft busts; the Firecracker displayed several drivers who qualify as drafting busts.

NASCAR drafting busts are not a new phenomenon but amid the spectacle of the most competitive Firecracker 400 ever the ineptitude of several drivers stood out and also brought to the fore that their careers have been illusory rather than real. A look at some drafting busts in the present-day Cup series and their lowlights in this Firecracker -

Reed Sorenson – He finished eighth in the Firecracker 400, a fact that graphically qualifies as the exception that proves the rule about his career. Once a Chip Ganassi development driver, he won twice in the Busch/Nationwide series in 2005 before being elevated to a fulltime Cup ride. He still ran BGN in 2006 but didn’t particularly distinguish himself, and between BGN and Cup he led 122 laps, less than a third of the over 400 he led in BGN in 2005. Instead of getting better, he steadily got worse, making less and less effort at a fight for anything. When the Ganassi ride finally dried up he was signed by the Petty-Gillett group and got the #43; he finished a surprising 8th at Daytona and then fell off the map, never fighting for any kind of position and finishing with an insultingly meager five laps led.

It stood as zero surprise that Sorenson was demoted to BGN before injury to Brian Vickers reopened his Cup career. That he has such is a genuine shock given his timidity as a racer and the lack of any improvement in his racing worthy of the name.

J.J. YELEY – The last time we saw him in NASCAR he was riding around out back in Joe Gibbs’ #18; it so soured Gibbs that he demoted Yeley to the ill-fated Troy Aikman-Roger Staubach #96 for 2008. Yeley, a former short track star in USAC, showed zero fight in any race he entered in stock cars.

SAM HORNISH JR. – What is this guy doing in stock cars? It is a question worth badgering him with after he tried an Ernie Irvan move in the Firecracker 400 and caused a wreck as a result. The subpar numbers don’t even tell the story of his unfitness for stock cars – what tells the story is the sheer lack of any fire or competence he displays in any race.

It is an indictment of a driver whose cowardice as a stock car driver still stands in contrast to his sheer ferocity as an Indycar racer. First showing some muscle in 2000, Hornish was signed by Panther Racing and by 2001′s end had whipped his Panther #4 to a title. By the end of his IRL career he’d exploded to 19 wins and over 3,400 laps led, but beyond the wins was the sheer elan of his racing – no one sidedrafted for the lead in an IRL race better than he did, and it produced two straight victories at Chicagoland in nonstop sidedraft battles ending in photo finishes, plus back-to-back wins at the September-October Lone Star 500k at Texas, a dramatic Fontana win in 2002, and heartbreaking loss at the Michigan Indy 400 in 2003.

That he could race so spectacularly in IRL and fail so miserably in stock cars is breathtaking.

JUAN MONTOYA – We’re still waiting for that win on an oval, Juan.

He won at Sears Point in 2007 and the sport thought it was just the start of a spectacular run of succes. Instead all he’s produced is a strong run of top-five finishes and several bouts where he’s led with authority. For a driver as accomplished (and hyped) as he’s been, it is fairly thin result, and beyond the mediocre numbers are the bouts of recklessness – hooking Kyle Busch head-on into the wall is bad enough; doing it because you’re being lapped is even more egregious; not since the 1975 Daytona 500, when David Pearson was inexplicably and very graphically spun out by Cale Yarborough with three to go, can one recall a lapped car racing the leader with this kind of stupidity.

DAVID RAGAN – He exploded to fourteen top ten finishes in 2008 and in 2009 won at Talladega in the Busch/Nationwide series in a spectacular photo finish that displayed the elan of a champion. Other than that, David Ragan has taken the flagship car of Roush-Fenway and has been as spectacularly uncompetitive as his dad Ken Ragan; indeed, one can argue David’s career has been worse, for Ken Ragan never had much money to race with – David is a driver doing very little with a lot. And it’s not getting better.

TRAVIS KVAPIL – The Craftsman Truck Series was a series that some thought would produce stars of the future; Travis Kvapil won nine times there but like such graduates as Mike Skinner, Ron Hornaday, Andy Houston, Jack Sprague, Jason Leffler, Mike Bliss, Jay Sauter, Rich Bickle, and Kenny Irwin Jr., he has produced little to nothing at the Winston Cup level. Being saddled with the Yates group certainly hurt his chances.

These drivers all raced in the Firecracker 400 and al have gone a long way toward cementing a legacy as great drafting bustgs in NASCAR history.

Certainly the spectacle of multiple crashes is an obvious result of this approach and it has brought out the “rubbing is racing” cliche. But what is missing is that two issues are at work here.

First NASCAR has created a monster with “Boys Have At It.” It is true (as Jeff Burton has noted) that through NASCAR history virtually no examples exist of the sanctioning body punishing rough driving – and it is this fact that is the most galling of all. For what we’re seeing here, and what the sport has seen on and off for the last three decades, is not “rough” driving but outright reckless endangerment. More and more drivers are flat out blasting other drivers into the wall or into traffic for the sake of wiping them out. Certainly one cannot call such egregiousness as Carl Edwards versus Brad Keselowski or the late-race wreck by Jeff Burton on Kyle Busch mere rubbing.

Burton noted the “atrocious” driving at Sears Point and it illustrates the absurdity of “Boys Have At It.” It is ridiculous that there have not been penalties for reckless endangerment beyond what few have ever occurred. The blunt truth is Carl Edwards should have been suspended for more than one race after the Atlanta 500; Jeff Gordon should have been suspended after Sears Point – but then he’s been racing like that throughout his NASCAR career – and so forth.

The idea that punishing reckless endangerment will somehow take away competitive racing is ignorance squared. Racers respect racing each other clean – one is not supposed to have to cheap shot another car to be able to pass. Rubbing is not racing – it never has been; it never will be.

The rubbing is racing myth is especially laughable when one remembers the sport’s competitive heyday of Richard Petty, David Pearson, the Allisons, Bobby Isaac, Buddy Baker, Benny Parsons, A.J. Foyt, and that group. Other than Bobby Allison versus whomever, this generation of racers raced each other clean, reflected in a 1970 comment from Isaac at North Wilkesboro: “Richard is good to race against. He doesn’t hog the track or try to wreck you.”

The sport already has a good idea what reckless endangerment looks like. “Boys Have At It” isn’t supposed to mean ignoring it.

———————–

Why this policy came to be reflects complete misunderstanding and its underlying deceit bears toward this coming Firecracker 400 (Coke Zero 400). The policy came about because of NASCAR’s “We will have a problem” with push-drafting at Talladega bluff. That NASCAR’s threat about push-drafting was a bluff should have been obvious to all – there was no evidence any driver who pushed a car through the corners would be flagged off the track – and thus this whole angle of the discussion was absurd.

But making it more absurd is what “Boys Have At It” is not doing – the implication from the policy is that NASCAR won’t police the racers but let them police themselves. Yet taking away the already-mythical ban on push-drafting has been the only real change. In the other areas where the policy would supposedly apply, it hasn’t. NASCAR considered eliminating the yellow line rule used at Daytona and Talladega – an obvious angle where “Boys Have At It” would apply – but instead continues with it – this despite the logic that is pretty clear that the racers are supposed to police whatever issue comes from passing below the yellow line; the officiating tower has no business with it.

Elsewhere pit road rules remain an exercise in the officiating tower controlling the racing instead of the racers – under the logic of “Boys Have At It” pit road would stay open when the yellow comes out and NASCAR would not police how fast they enter or exit the pits, since it’s supposed to be the drivers policing themselves, right? And the running order when the yellow flies – since “Boys Have At It” is supposed to mean the officiating tower stays out of the way, then the racers would be allowed to race back to the stripe, and thus the running order (and the finish) would be seen by all to be clearly established – mythical scoring loops would have zero involvement and whatever issues develop would be dealt with by the racers themselves.

“Boys Have At It” means the racing is controlled by the racers, not by the officiating tower. So by what right does the officiating tower still maintain a preposterous level of control of the racing?

The two issues make nonsense of the policy and illustrate that the sanctioning body still has a fundamental problem dealing with what the rules mean and what they don’t mean. “Boys Have At It” means the racers control the racing, the officiating tower stays out of the way, concerned only with reckless endangerment.

Once that wrapped up Kyle Busch cleaned house in the BGN 200 while a mediocre IRL driver crashed with Morgan Shepherd early in the going and whined about it afterward.

Then on Sunday a prolonged period dominated by Kasey Kahne and Jeff Burton turned upside down on some late yellows, several wrecks, and a showdown betwen Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch that loudly proclaimed that the recent rut for the four-time champ is over. The late-race scraps left Juan Montoya with another wrecked racecar and AJ Allmendinger upset with Ryan Newman – it also leaves Newman looking two-faced after his haughty holier-than-thou rip on fans at Talladega last autumn – while illustrating the continuing rise of a potential new star for NASCAR aligned with the sport’s greatest star in the owner of Allmendinger’s #43.

————————-

But amid the racing the track itself became a source of controversy after Bruton Smith threatened to pull the June date after a spat with local police, a spat that illustrates what a former board of selectman member angrilly noted is Bruton Smith’s chronic refusal to engage in negotiation and compromise, a drastic difference from former owner Bob Bahre.

Simultaneously with the spat with local police, the track announced its new IRL date next season, a move more than a few saw as setting the table for replacing a Loudon date with IRL so that Bruton could feed his fantasy of Winston Cup at Kentucky. The notion of moving a New Hampshire date doesn’t carry much plausibility as NASCAR wants no part of cutting back in one of its stronger market areas, but given how Bruton has worked, it isn’t something that will go away for awhile.

And it begs the question that has been asked before but which so often requires asking again – why does Bruton do these things?

———————-

One of the unfortunate casualties of recent internal issues is Fred Neergaard, long the Director of Communications at NHMS but no longer in the track’s employ. It is difficult to imagine a more gracious and more pleasant official of any sporting venue than Fred. Whether you are a decades-long veteran of racing or a raw Internet rookie, Fred in the years I’ve gone to Loudon could never have been a better ambassador of the sport, of his speedway, of the area. If you made a mistake in a press conference he’d let you know in a way that allowed you to correct the mistake quietly. If you had a question, Fred gave you honest answers – in the years I dealt with him he was always honest and his answers were always credible.

Wherever he goes next, I hope it’s in racing, because he’s the best New Hampshire ever had.

NASCAR first began limiting testing in March 1990 after several drivers tested 30-plus times in 1989; teams were limited to seven tests from the March to November period. The reason for limiting testing was ostensibly to reign in costs, but by June 1991 it had become obvious that they were not working, with multiple crew chiefs speaking out against any limit on testing – Harry Hyde had the most succinct argument: “What kind of plays would Broadway put on if they didn’t have rehersals?”

NASCAR then extended testing limits to an outright ban on testing from mid-November until January in 1994, and the last two seasons it has banned testing outright. Of course the ban can’t apply to non-NASCAR tracks such as Texas World Speedway, where Winston Cup teams have tested and where Greg Biffle supposedly hit 218 in a test.

Robin Pemberton, in explaning NASCAR’s present lack of a decision, talked about “risk versus reward,” and claimed that some felt the racing in the last two seasons “has never been better.” Yet Pemberton’s argument does nothing but illustrate Harry Hyde’s point. The advent of two-abreast restarts has added a competitive spark to the racing, but in doing so has masked the fundamental weakness of the racing. The reality is that the sport’s non-plate racing, outside of spots at Pocono this past June, the Martinsville finish, and some nastiness at Sears Point, has not been competitive – an illustration of Hyde’s point that plays without rehersals cannot work.

Aside from that, the big picture of NASCAR’s testing ban has been that it changed the sport’s dynamic by killing single-car teams. In the days where even four to five months of unlimited testing were allowed, single-car teams were able to get all the track time they needed to prepare for racing and could keep their effort focused; multicar teams could gain nothing from sharing information because it was inherently unfocused. By severely limiting and then outright banning testing NASCAR literally forced teams to share information, and suddenly multicar teams stopped being the top-heavy white elephant they’d been throughout NASCAR history pre-1995 and became the sport’s lone competitive force.

With testing ban, it is impossible to find any area where costs have been saved – all the sport can see is the resultant wreckage of the swallowing of single-car teams by mutlicar monsters – a feast that would never have happened without testing restriction.

It has been the single biggest mistake in NASCAR history. Robin Pemberton now has opportunity to rectify this mistake, and he needs not blow it.

There is of course Danifraud, the insufferable soft-porn actress who decided to jump into racecars and has done less with substantially more than anyone in recent racing memory. A fuel-mileage second at Texas brought her some publicity and she then followed it up the way Brett Favre follows up a successful play – she faltered, finishing a sub-mediocre tenth at Iowa.

Yet amid this, the return of IndyCar racing to New Hampshire illustrates a crossroads this form of racing is now within, as an IRL “think tank” is pondering the racing series’ future. This comes as a panel has been looking at new chassis for 2012 and beyond.

The think tank’s work is summarized by former driver Gil De Ferren in noting, “Bringing innovation and diversity back to IndyCars is something we felt was very important. It’s also very important to be cost-effective.”

This, though, illustrates the continuing problem with IndyCar racing and why this series has been torn asunder for over 30 years. By not controlling the sport’s technology, IndyCar racing has been torn by constant civil war over it, from Dan Gurney’s infamous 1978 White Paper to Jim Hal’s Chaparral ground-effects car to Roger Penske’s infamous “stock block” Mercedes engines of 1994 to the collapse of CART in the early part of the 21st century.

Technology first became an issue with the introduction of rear-engine cars in 1961, and when the winged McLaren M16 debuted it escalated speeds and costs and two years after its debut the 500 saw its blackest day in David Walther’s flight almost through the fencing and Swede Savage’s death in an inferno. Even with improvements in safety, costs and preposterous performance levels helped drive out Firestone from racing and reduced the spot’s competitive depth.

The formation of CART didn’t help matters as much as its partisans are wont to claim, for it took the demise of the CanAm Challenge Cup series – another high-tech racing series that bankrupted itself – to bail out IndyCar racing in the 1980s, and the body nearly collapsed in 1989-90 in a simmering revolt of car owners against Penske and the Newman-Haas organization.

The formation of the IRL led to outright civil war, and CART became the big loser – though it boasted “The real stars, the real cars, the real race,” in reality none of these were legitimate; they were illusory, as IRL’s retro-tech approach led to a marked increase in passing as well as opening avenues for American racers who’d been ignored by CART. By the time CART declared bankrupcy, IRL had developed a legitimate series with marque races at Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, and Chicagoland.

But in trying to get more manufacturers involved in the series, IRL was drained dry by Honda and Toyota and their fiscal recklessness. It was a shocking lapse by the series as it had made inroads in keeping technology under control and was beginning to establish a connection with American short track racers and fans – highlighted by IRL show car visits to tracks such as Stafford Motor Speeday in CT and the success of drivers such as Tony Stewart and Billy Boat.

———————-

In its new quest to deal with the future, IRL needs to come to grips with the contradiction inherent in De Ferren’s comment about innovation and cost-effectiveness. The reality is these goals are not compatible. The retro-tech approach is why NASCAR for so long maintained growth and competitive balance as well as holding costs to a reasonable level – and why the sport’s present increase in technology has done it harm via cost and absurd performance levels. IRL needs to forget about “innovation and diversity” because the history of racing has shown that it is not possible to allow innovation without a price to pay that the sport invariably suffers from.

IRL’s cars now and in the future need to be bulky, generate a powerful drafting effect so passing is produced (and thus the league’s idiotic and ineffective “push to pass” buttons can be ripped out), and be so stable as to not slide even by an inch, so drivers can run open throttle. The rear wings need to Hanford rail, first used in 1998 in CART to generate a powerful drafting effect that worked far better than anyone expected.

The league also needs to return to tracks like Pocono. Pocono was built as an IndyCar and stock car track and as such can still accommodate IndyCars. The fan base in the Pocono area is a strong racing demographic, and even in the dark days of the CART era Pocono still could draw a solid audience for racing. Adding second dates at Texas, Chicagoland (scene of the league’s greatest races), and Kentucky should also be a priority.

Finally, the league needs to work to reconnect with the audience of American short trackers. IndyCar racing lost over an entire generation of racefans because it would not get the likes of Ted Christopher, Steve Butler, Bob Cicconi, or Kenny Irwin into Indycars and keep them there. Sam Hornish needs to quit NASCAR and return to IRL not only because he is a dismal fit with stock cars but because he can help rebuild the league’s popularity. The connection between short track racers and the big leagues has been severed and both NASCAR and IRL need to reestablish it, especially IRL.

The return of the IndyCar Pocono 500 will be a sign that IndyCar racing is really coming back.

There is only one solution for improving the Chase -

END IT, DON’T MEND IT.

There is no case for a playoff format in racing, period.

Extending the format to the Nationwide Series ignores that the format at the Sprint Cup level has been a failure. To see how much of a failure the format has been, one must look at the points races under the format and see what has not happened -

* There has been no sudden rally to a title by a dark horse.

* There has been no intensity in the racing; on the contrary the bulk of the field has effectively quit in the final ten races.

* There have been several drivers (notably Jamie McMurray in 2004) artificially locked out of the format who outpointed Chase drivers in the playoff run and went ignored.

* The one close finish (2004 by Kurt Busch) was entirely artificial – Kurt Busch’s point lead entering the season finale was too high to be overcome, and all Busch had to do was finish – he realistically clinched the title by winning the pole at Miami.

* Virtually no attention is paid to anyone outside of the top three during the Chase by the media; no sponsor has been persuaded by the format into jumping on board the sport; upsets in Chase races have been all but nonexistent.

The Chase format has accomplished nothing of consequence in the first six seasons it has been used, and extending it to any other touring series cannot possibly work.

What the sport continues to miss is the one solution that will make the points race a real race -

* Maintain the basic Latford Point System.
* Increase race-winner points to 300.
* Increase the bonus for most laps led to 100.

This is a format that makes it mathematically impossible to win the championship without winning the most races and leading the most laps. With this being at stake, there becomes no alternative to going for the win no matter what lap it is, and the sport is presented with the scenario of the entire field determined to stop any one driver from pulling away in either the race or in points. This opens the twin advantages of increasing the battle for the win and also opens more avenues for points upsets as one month’s point leader is likely to meet so much resistance that a dark horse bolts to the fore.

This, ultimately, is the goal of the points race. It is a goal that the points structure has not reflected since 1975 and which it needs to reflect for the sport’s competitive betterment.

Certainly the sport has seen cases of controversial calls from the tower, in races like the 1969 Atlanta 500 and a rash of on-track penalties and the 1975 Pocono 500 and a tardy black flag to a smoking David Pearson, flagged with two to go with a three-lap grace period allowed for obedience and thus no bite to the penalty. Penalties for restarts have been a periodic issue, such as at Martinsville in 1997 and a black flag that cost Rusty Wallace.

The Sears Point 350, however, raises an continuing issue of the soundness of the officiating tower and the degree to which it controls the racing. The issue that has the followers of the sport – fans and media alike – was the decision to drop race leader Marcos Ambrose out of the lead because he stopped momentarily on the track under yellow and then resumed speed. NASCAR dropped him back based on a “maintain pace” rule that was ignored by NASCAR at the 2008 Michigan 400 and 2007 Kansas 400; Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the beneficiary at the Michigan 400 and Greg Biffle the beneficiary at Kansas. Ramsey Poston – he of the “if it’s the last lap anything goes” quote in Regan Smith’s Talladega penalty in 2008 – was the point man in arguing NASCAR’s case, and the credibility of his argument here isn’t any greater than that used in previous NASCAR officiating controversies.

It illustrates the bigger issue that the officiating tower is making calls and been given a level of control of the racing it objectively has no business having. Even before the Ambrose imbroglio Sears Point was yet another example of the sanctioning body’s illegitimate pit speed limit rule with numerous teams flagged for speeding on pit road even though it was impossible to tell the difference between those like Bobby Labonte who were flagged and those like Juan Montoya who were periodically nose-to-nose with other cars coming out of the pits and were not flagged.

The pit speed limit rule of course came about because of the rule – now 22 seasons old – of closing pit road when the yellow comes out. It is a case study of mission creep usurping credible rules writing and pit speeding penalties have so often been dubious as to illustrate the lack of credibility of the rule.

The “maintain pace” rule and pit speed limits both combined to display a certain lack of credibility for the sanctioning body in this Sears Point 350, and they continue to illustrate that the officiating tower has too much control of the racing as opposed to the racers. Why it remains NASCAR’s business to police how fast cars go down and out of pit road is a mystery; why NASCAR has to maintain the farce of closing pit road – when the pre-1989 approach made pit road safer thanks to lessening of pit crowding – is a mystery; just what qualifies as not maintaining pace was a mystery twice before in the last four seasons and is a bigger mystery now.

And the issue goes beyond here – the sport still has no credible reason for yellow-line rules at the plate tracks and no credible reason for not racing back to the stripe to determine the running order under yellow – in the last ten years both contributed to numerous examples of the wrong driver being given the win.

“It happened to me at Montreal,” Robby Gordon said after finishing second at Sears Point. The officiating tower’s control of the racing has happened to the likes of Tony Stewart, Ward Burton (losing a late lead at Talladega in 2003 because of a scoring loop), Kasey Kahne, Regan Smith, and now Marcos Ambrose.

It’s long past time for NASCAR to take away from the officiating tower a heavy degree of control of the racing – the officiating tower has no business policing whther racers race above or below yellow lines, the running order except at the stripe, when cars pit under caution and how fast they go (the only time it should be an issue is real punishment of brushbackers), or determining based on nothing that a car is not maintaining pace under caution. All that is the business of the racers – if they pit at a speed that the pit road can handle, it is not supposed to matter if its over 35 MPH at Sears Point or 65 MPH at most big tracks; if they dive into the pits before taking the yellow, it not only is not supposed to matter to the tower but it should be encouraged to lessen pit crowding; if they stop on the track for a moment and then resume speed, it’s not NASCAR’s business to drop them back in the field.

Marcos Ambrose was robbed. Period.

The controversy du jour is between Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano, and Greg Biffle acidly rips Logano for chopping off other cars every race. Now Logano proved at Irwindale why he won’t be the success people are assuming he’ll reach, but Biffle, a driver who seems not to know how to win anymore, goes too far with noting the need for drivers to give each other room; blaming a driver for actually fighting for something is wrong.

Logano’s problem isn’t fighting for position, because he’s never shown much fight for actual position. That he chops people off every race is obvious, but it’s not Kevin Harvick’s place (or Biffle’s) to lecture him about it given Harvick’s own bully-boy reputation. Therein lies the mixed bag of this controversy – Logano and Harvick are a fight where neither side deserves to win.

It illustrates the radically mixed bag of the 2010 season’s upsurge in nastiness. While some of the racing has been better – Pocono had spots of the best racing outside the plate tracks this year; Bristol was unusually competitive in its misbegotten concrete era; Martinsville saw the wildest finish so far – the onus right now isn’t on racing but on fights and name-calling T-shirts marketed by Kevin Harvick’s wife.

What’s been missing is racing that truly lives up to the sport’s competitive depth. Even with two-abreast restarts we have yet to see a non-plate race approach 40 lead changes; the last time it happened was the 2000 National 500 at Charlotte, and that it’s been that long since it happened is all the more damning.

Even with spots of four-abreast racing as at Pocono, it’s dirty air – always it’s dirty air; aeropush is as prevelant now as it’s been since the late 1990s; we have yet to see a non-plate race where the cars wanted to race in dirty air, where dirty air aided passing instead of impeding it. For all of NASCAR’s discussions with drivers and crew chiefs it’s obvious no one on either side of the competition garage has a clue how to make the draft overcome aeropush on the non-plate tracks.

So the sport is left with racing that in spots is good but for the most part is no better than it was a few years ago. It is also left with fights between drivers that take up virtually all of the discussion in the absense of 50-lead-change racing. So where the sport is better and where it isn’t needs to take up more serious discussion in those meetings – and lead to actual rational rule changes to make it truly better, to actually reach the competitive level the sport can have – and needs to have.

Gillette sponsorship, though, proved more troublingly ironic as the Pocono 500 saw a close shave in the last-lap melee that nearly sent Kasey Kahne into the wooded area near the Long Pond stream whose presence dictated the track’s design. Cars getting upside down at Pocono isn’t a new phenomenon – Turn One and the Tunnel Turn have seperately seen airborne melees involving Richard Petty, Tim Richmond, Dale Earnhardt, Neil Bonnett, Greg Sacks, Davey Allison, Dave Marcis, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Park, and now Kahne.

Kahne was livid at AJ Allmendinger for swerving down to stop the pass; AJ deserves some criticism but the advocates of no-blocking rules in racing are all wet if they want to cite this, for Kahne, despite seeing no lane open, tried to force it anyway and plowed into the grass – forcing a pass by itself is not a negative; trying to race through grass, though, is stupid. If it counts as poetic justice, it was hardly worth shedding a tear that Greg Biffle and two of the Hendrick cars plus Ryan Newman got ruined, so though AJ acknowledged fault he has nothing to apologize for.

—————————–

It almost became the defining image of the race, until the earlier spin by Joey Logano turned into yet another of the season’s absurd near-fights that have gotten the blessing of the sanctioning body from its “Boys, Have At It” approach. The sport may think these set-tos in the pits after races are allowing the display of emotion and thus helping the sport; the reality is they are displaying that the core of the sport’s competitors are not ready for prime time. There is plenty of blame to go around in the Harvick-Logano situation and neither competitor deserves sympathy, but the sanctioning body has to at some point engage in some honest thinking about whether “Boys, have at it” is really in the sport’s best interest.

People will of course cite the 1979 Daytona 500 as the example of why this apporoach is necessary for the sport, and they will of course ignore that Billy France was aghast when the postrace fracas erupted, and the premise is absurd on its face – people wanted to see racing because of a fight after the race? Wanting to see racing after a last-lap melee and resulting shockert of a finish is to be expected; the figbht part is a lot harder to swallow.

————————–

It all served to further muddy the season as Hendrick Motorsports’ slide continued and the ascension of JGR to dominator status accelerated while RCR continues to hold its own, Roush-Fenway’s slow steady slide continued, and the rest of the field continued to try and hang on with RPM at least flexing some muscle to go with its chaotic family feud.

It also served to rebut critics of the track’s 500-mile distances, which produced more competition and a more dramatic shift in outcome than any shorter race can.

The Michigan Speedway now has some juicy prerace buzz to help with its first race weekend of the year as the 2010 season continues to fly off the course a lot of people expected of it.

Hayes later recalled that Phil’s elevation to Winston Cup in 1983 was a mixture of perseverance and luck – the younger Parsons had run his own racecars in NASCAR’s Dash series and had run out of money (“If I had the choice between buying tires and eating, I bought tires”) and the racing credentials he’d earned to that point would not have been enough to warrant the kind of opportunity he wound up getting. It began in ugly fashion in the 1983 Winston 500.

Yet Parsons and the Jacksons persevered and by 1988 Richard had purchased the team from Johnny Hayes and the combination was a full-time participant. Five years after trying to blow open the walls at Talladega, Phil Parsons and Richard Jackson had won there.

In 1989, though, Leo and Richard had formed a second team; the team, basically Harry Gant’s #33 team transferred from the lameduck Hal Needham outfit, eventually was purchased by Leo and became a seperate entity. Richard, while still owning the former Phil Parsons team (changed from #55 to #1 in 1990), still had a role with his brother’s outfit, and the team became a point team in the sport’s transition to radial tires. Richard’s #1 car won poles at the 1992 Dixie 500 and the inaugural Brickyard 400, but perhaps the team’s best run came at the end, as Morgan Shepherd drove Richard Jackson’s #1 Pontiac in the 1997 Atlanta 500 to the top five.

He eventually became another casualty of the sport’s economics, and warrants being remembered for pushing on despite them.