Where Are The Credentials
by Andy Belmont-Staff Writer and ARCA Series Driver
02/19/2003

Here we are, at the start of another great season for the ARCA RE/MAX Series. The 51st circuit will see us again reach new heights. Daytona has come and gone with our event being a great race for the fans. Passing, big packs and a winner from the youth movement. It's great to see these kids who are on the fast track up the ladder win early in their careers.

This poses the question for me as we head to Atlanta. Here we see more entries and media releases about "first ever try" or trying to make it. This is puzzling at best. ATLANTA is the fastest place we go! ONE full mile shorter than Daytona, completely narrower and G-loads much higher. At what point do we look inside ourselves and say "okay we appreciate your wanting to race with us, but how about a short track?"

We keep seeing new faces come out of the woodwork to race for glory and fame at the superspeedways. When are these people ever going to get experience at Salem? That's right Salem. Winchester. Show me you can drive that bad boy in on the outside around the top at Salem and stand in the gas, with car control. Earn some respect from Jason, Frank and Billy in traffic at Toledo.

All of today's wannabe's are forgetting some pretty simple basics. You have to have some idea of what you are doing! Why does Frank Kimmel win all the time? Okay, part of it is funding with Larry Clement and Advance/Pork's check book. Part of it is a great race team that communicates well, that took years of development. How about the most important part? Frank Kimmel learned to race at Louisville. Raced and won on short tracks. Frank is a great race car driver.

Jeff Gordon, Dale, Jr., Lajoie, The Green's, the list goes on and on. They had lots of experience on short tracks, in many different kinds of cars when they made the jump. Lap time, lap time and some more lap time. Years of lap time.

Somehow, I can't get it through my thick skull that driving a legends car one season (and having no idea what the difference is from an open end to a box end on a combination wrench) makes you qualified to run a half dozen races in a late model somewhere, go to a driving school and then jump to a 750 Horsepower, aerodynamically sound stock car capable of going 185MPH at Atlanta.

Frankly, it's pretty scary for those of us who have half an idea of what we are doing, to think we are out there at this level with some who just may not belong there. Until you get some experience, "us idiots wont race with you." That by the way IS a quote from a rookie.

Whatever happened to the "learning curve?" Today, the new millennium race driver needs an 8X10 studio glossy, a Dale Carnegie course in speaking and a brief case full of green stamps. Never mind that driving part, we can teach that! We will put lights on the dash so you don't need to know what the lights around the speedway are. You can be color blind and not need look at the flag stand. We will give you a radio and walk you through it!

Last week at Daytona, we raced with a car whose driver made the 500. That car couldn't go straight down the straightaway in the ARCA race for 200 miles. It hit everything but the flag stand. The car looked like it had raced at Salem. But the credentials are there. Name and checkbook, seems like enough to me.

You can reach Andy Belmont at: abelmont@catchfence.com