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October 14, 2008
Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (10/14)
*Robin Pemberton, Nascar's vice president of competition, said yesterday that there won't be any rules changes for the Cup COT next season. This is probably pretty disappointing to a lot of fans who think the COT stinks and that Nascar needs to make massive changes to it to improve the quality of the racing. I think Nascar is making a good decision. I hope that down the road they'll consider rules changes - if needed - but for now I think it's a good idea to make sure the teams are given enough time to get a handle on the current COT before they go making any rules changes that would require more testing and expense.
*Bruce Martin has a few interesting items in his most recent column on SI.com. For one thing he has some comments from the always outspoken Felix Sabates regarding the state of the sport and how he thinks that there could be as many as eight fewer teams by 2010.Sabates says that this is because of the poor economy and because the investors coming into the sport are going to want some return on their money or they're going to want to get out. For one thing, even when the economy has been relatively good teams come and go - Ginn Racing comes to mind. In addition, a smart investor will invest their money long-term and have the patience to realize that they might not get a return on their money for a number of years. No one is going to keep pouring an endless amount of money into a team without getting anything in return from it but I'm not so sure these investors are gonig to jump out of the sport just as quickly as they jumped in. Furthermore, Sabates made similar dire predictions about next season and while there are likely going to be some teams that aren't around next season, thus far it's not looking like there will be significantly less teams next season than this since there are also going to be several new teams. It's true that the economy is hurting teams, particularly in relation to sponsorship but way too many people have invested way too much time, money and effort into this sport for a multitude of teams and the sport itself to collapse without a fight.
*Martin brought up something interesting about the confrontation between Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick. He wrote, "Imagine what would happen in any sport if another driver went into the opposing team's dugout or bench area during competition?" That player might get a pretty big smackdown if they went into the opposing team's dugout during a game. We're used to drivers going over to talk to each other in the garage area frequently but opposing players going into each other's space is something that's highly frowned upon. In baseball it used to be that players from opposing teams wouldn't even talk to each other on the field or be too friendly otherwise, let alone go into another team's dugout or locker room. In some ways Carl is lucky he didn't get a beatdown from Kevin's whole team.
*Eastseries.com posted the final points for the Camping World East Series and Steve Park finished 9th. I'm not sure I should be happy that he finished in the top ten in points with eight top tens and three top fives in thirteen races, or disappointed that he didn't finish higher. The 26th place finish due to mechanical issues out of his control at Stafford really hurt because it dropped him three spots in the overall points. Of course a driver can only make the most of the cars they're given to race and there's nothing a driver can do about mechanical problems but I can't help but notice that Steve has significantly more experience in Nascar in the Nationwide, Truck and Cup Series than those who finished in the points ahead of him. In fact those eight drivers total experience together in all those series amounts to no Cup races, six Nationwide races and one Truck race - there of them have never raced on a higher level than in the East Series.
As noted there are so many variables that go into it, including that some of these drivers are racing for Cup backed teams, though not the Series Champion, Matt Kobyluck, but as someone pointed out to me while it's great that Steve has raced in the top ten so much, he was only doing what he should be doing given his experience in Nascar and racing overall. In addition, as this person pointed out, maybe given that experience if Steve wasn't at least finishing in the top five in every race, if not winning, then maybe he's not living up to expectations. There are a lot of fans who were thinking that racing competitively in this series was going to impress an owner on a higher level enough to give Steve a ride for next season but I'm not sure a 9th place points finish with no wins is going to be enough.
*Both Steve and Ricky Carmichael drew a lot of fans to the track to see East Series races. It was mentioned by someone at the track this past weekend that there were so many fans who wanted Steve and Ricky's autographs during the mandatory autograph session prior to the race that fans had a hard time getting to the other drivers near them for autographs. What's not so good for this series is that it's possible that neither Steve nor Ricky will be back in the East Series next year. Steve was only signed with the #35 team for this season and Ricky is slated to race for Kevin Harvick, Inc. in the Truck Series. That might mean less fans at East Series races next season which is unfortunate because I think the series and some of it's young drivers could use more attention not less since some of the young drivers racing in the series today might be tomorrow's stars.
Posted by silverdsl at October 14, 2008 03:39 PM