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May 29, 2007
Nascar Continues the Crackdown on Credential Abuses
Last week the hauler driver for the #00 team was suspended for duplicating his hard card, and this week others in the garage area are facing penalities for credential related violations. In the first instance, Nascar confiscated credentials belonging to a number of members of the media, including some from Fox Sports and Nascar Images, because they ran onto pit road at the conclusion of the Coca-Cola 600 before all the cars had crossed the start-finish line as the rules dicate. That happened because those members of the media were following the #25 team who were celebrating Casey Mears's first Cup win of his career.
I assume that the media members involved were likely photographers and camera people looking for "jube" (jubilation) shots of the team celebrating, in a possibly more spontaneous and emotional way than they might in Victory Lane. Of course safety needs to come first, and the media members should adhere to the rule that they can't enter pit road until all the cars have crossed the finish line, but on the other hand if it's photographers and camera people that were involved they also have a job to do, which in this case is to document Casey's team as they celebrate the win. It's in issue in other sports as well, photographers running onto the field to photograph celebrations at big games such as the Super Bowl and the World Series, which can lead to clashes like this one between photographers who are just trying to get the photos the media outlets they work for want, the governing bodies of the each sport, who want there to be some restrictions so that the photographers aren't in the way. It'll be interesting to see if any media members get their credentials revoked for this.
In the second case, there's no excuse for the photographer having a fake hard card. If she's legitamitely covering the race for a media outlet or other organization, they could get her the appropriate credentials to allow her the access that she needs. That she had to resort to a fake indicates that she didn't belong. Every fan wants to get as close as possible to the drivers, and as one who loves photography, I'd love to have the regular access to every area of every track that a hard card would bring because I'd be able to use it to take some great photos. But there's no way that I'd ever consider faking a credential or sneaking in somewhere that I don't belong! It's amazing what some people will do - and scary too.
Posted by silverdsl at May 29, 2007 08:30 PM