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July 24, 2006
Steve Park Still Doesn't Have a Truck Ride
So the wait continues. It's been a month since it was accidentally posted on the HT Motorsports site that Steve Park would be leaving the #59 team because he got a ride at Bill Davis Racing. But at the moment there isn't even the smallest of credible rumors or hints to indicate this ride is actually going to happen anytime in the near future. Correction, there is someone at Steve Park Central who claims they heard that Steve will be in the #22 truck at Indy, but since their source is a Nascar chat room, you'll have to forgive me for not putting much weight into that. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for Steve to have a truck ride at Indy and I do think he is or was in the mix for a ride at BDR, otherwise that item on the HT Motorsports site would never have been posted, but I don't think it's a good sign for Steve that this much time has gone by from when he apparently thought it was a done deal to now without anything happening, at least to the point where an announcement that he would be racing at Indy could be made.
There's more than a few people who questioned the wisdom of Steve leaving the #59 team before he had a done deal with another team. Sometimes I find myself agreeing with those people because leaving the #59 team has left Steve sitting at home instead of racing the past few weeks. But on the other hand, Steve has to make the decisions that he feels are best for himself and at the time he must have thought that he had a done deal for a new ride. Of course as Steve has apparently found out, some deals are a lot more done than others, and until you have a signed contract (and I would guess sometimes even when you do) anything can happen and things can fall apart suddenly. I just feel bad for him that things haven't worked out the way he thought they would.
What really gets me is that Steve's name hasn't been mentioned, not once anywhere, ever, for any of the open Cup rides for next season. Not even for the second BDR Cup car! Now Steve has apparently said in the past that he's not keen on racing Cup again, but it really surprises me that his name hasn't even come up just in terms of wild speculation. It seems to me that if teams are trying to lure drivers like Ricky Craven off of Moosehead Lake, Ward Burton out of the depths of the woods of Virginia and Ricky Rudd away from his family, then Steve, who is still an active driver, who has some wins to his name in Cup should be in the mix as a possiblity for one of these rides. And maybe he is. For all I know, maybe some teams have been calling him and he's talking to one of them right this very moment. But there isn't too much that escapes mention in the rumor mill.
Steve is doing some racing this weekend though. He'll be in the #31 Whelen Busch car in St. Louis. You'll have to forgive me though for not exactly jumping up and down about that. Fact is, Steve's results this season in the Busch car have been... how shall I put it... less than what everyone would like, to be kind. His best finish was 29th at Las Vegas and he was involved in wrecks in three other races. Now it's completely out of his hands if a Sauter or two is going to run him over, but given that all four races haven't exactly been anything to write home about, you'll have to forgive me for not expecting much this weekend. Steve's luck is just so bad and the team he's with has so few resources in comparison to many of the others, that it seems likely that as usual anything that can go wrong, will go wrong for Steve. I guess I should look at it as at least he'll be racing, but it's kind of depressing that retired Darrell Waltrip, in his first Busch race in eleven years was on his way to a top 20 finish this past weekend in Martinsville before being spun by one of the Sauters and still ended up finishing better than Steve has all season (by one spot). I guess I should just be happy that Steve's going to be racing at all, but I think all my positive energy in that direction has been used up by just being happy that Michael Waltrip is able to qualify for races these days. I would really like to see some good things happen for both Michael and Steve this season on the track, but at least I know Michael has a very bright future starting next season with everything going on at Michael Waltrip Racing.
I'm trying to stay positive and hold out hope that this week or next we'll hear something about a truck ride for Steve for Indy. But I wouldn't be surprised if we don't.
Posted by silverdsl at July 24, 2006 03:03 PM