“NASCAR, We Have a Problem….”

By Larry Van Zandt

I have an admission to make.

I didn’t watch much of the Nationwide race on Saturday. I wasn’t even interested in it, to be honest with you.

However, I did see something rather interesting in the few short bits that I did see….Joey Logano showing the rest of the field what was painted on the bumper of his car, leading 95 of 225 laps, including the one that counts most….the last lap.

However, being that I didn’t actually pay much attention to the race….one thing stands out; if Logano does this well in Nationwide, why does he look like a drunken and blindfolded sailor who just stole a race car, while out on the track in a COT vehicle?

I’m obviously cracking jokes, as I have no interest in being sued by the ‘Drunken and Blindfolded Anti-defamation League’, but I’m really searching for an explanation here.

The problem is that I already know the answer to the question I’m asking….I’m just really nosy as to why NASCAR refuses to acknowledge a problem.

I’m beginning to think, more and more, that the Car Of Some Hideous Alternate Tomorrow is a practical joke gone horribly awry. The problem is that the ‘Brian’ trust at NASCAR doesn’t realize it’s a practical joke; imagine a man who puts a bucket of water on top of a partially-opened door, so it can fall on the next person walking through the door, and then when the victim gets douched by the water, he looks at the perpetrator and starts to laugh after being surprised initially, halting only when he realizes that the instigator is serious.

“Ha ha, what did you do that for?”

“I’m sorry, was that funny?”

What the ‘Brian’ trust doesn’t realize, is that his COT car is the most expensive, and most insulting prank ever invented by NASCAR, and in a world of shifting priorities, having a race car that’s so difficult to drive that the drivers really just don’t give a **** anymore about whether or not they win, the fans out there are going through enough crap that they really don’t have the patience necessary to watch 43 examples of why it’s a bad idea to let ‘Junior’ run the company.

“Wowee, this is great! I get to take my crayons and design my VERY OWN RACE CAR!!!”

Oh, and before I forget, how angry do you have to be, to get into fight with someone else armed with a sword….in 2009? http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19137991/detail.html

Nothing says ‘funny’ quite like two morons sword fighting with Samurai swords purchased straight from the Home Shopping Network. I also have a funny mental image of two ham-fisted Errol Flynn’s waving swords around and hitting everything else but each other….

I love the Home Shopping Network when they are selling knives and swords:

“Hack through a cast-iron engine block, and still be able to gently slice through a soft tomato!”

Anyway, I know I’ve talked a lot about this car, and how badly it blows space monkeys. And frankly, there are other news items to write about. However, for those of you familiar with the fiction and non-fiction works of the late science-fiction-great Isaac Asimov, I have a quote from the ‘Foundation’ series of his:

“All roads lead to Trantor”

This is in reference to the home planet of the Galactic Empire, Trantor, and how all ‘roads’ lead to it. This applies to the COT in that none of the other NASCAR news items really matter at this point; if the series itself is going to collapse simply due to the ponderous vehicular weapon of choice, then it doesn’t really matter that much if Teresa Earnhardt does something yet again to roll old Dale over in his grave one more time, now does it?

We’ve been able to watch 7 Sprint Cup events so far this season, and only Martinsville and Texas Speedway have provided anything even remotely resembling racing ‘entertainment’. Nobody has been able to dominate this season, and I’m thinking that the champion of the 2009 NASCAR season is going to be somebody who manages to somehow string together just enough top 5’s that they squeak out a win. I know it’s still early, but I don’t foresee another 8-or-9 win season for any of the top contenders.

Want to know how bad it’s getting? I used to have no trouble insulting almost anyone and everyone in NASCAR racing, but it’s quickly arriving to the point where I’m kind of starting to feel sorry for them…., sort of a ‘unhappiest millionaire’, knowing you have to perform for the public whenever requested, and your job consists of driving a car you know you are never going to win with.

I had a bizarre thought once about exploring what it would take to be on one of these teams. At this point, knowing how big of an albatross that this car has become, there’s no way in Arkansas I’d ever entertain working in that sort of environment, knowing that there’s almost nothing you can do to make your team’s car better than anyone else’s, because even if you do somehow manage to figure out something new with the car that will give you the ‘unfair advantage’, the world’s most revised rule book will suddenly spout off a new ‘rule change’ that makes any technological advancement almost impossible.

NASCAR has sort of become a ‘Green Mile’, where everyone knows, given the sport’s misdirection, that the end is looming near, but nobody wants to know when it happens, or wants to watch it happen when the ‘off’ switch is thrown. The France cartel marches towards the end, and if anything, they request that they be able to march double time, taking the rest of the sport, the teams, their employees, and the employees’ families, down with them.

Jiminy Christmas…., this is supposed to be ‘entertainment’, right? I think that’s what has been lost to all of us here. This is only a form of entertainment. Give the fans what they want to see, and try to be as safe as possible doing it. What NASCAR is doing is deciding what’s best for the fan in general, and every time that I’ve seen politics take over and the sanctioning body begins to ignore the fans, the business….,loses.

Look at CART.

Look at Formula 1.

I personally get enough of the ‘Nanny State’ from politicians within the government. I don’t need to turn to NASCAR racing on a weekly basis, and get another dose of it from the France cartel.

The only drawback here?

We can’t vote the France cartel out of office. The only ‘voting’ choices we have are with our pocketbooks, and where we turn the TV channel. If enough people refuse to watch, NASCAR is forced to either change to something more interesting to watch, or slowly fade into the sunset.

Okay, enough of the depressing banter for a while….time for the jokes!