September 16, 2007
By Kim Roberson

Kim Roberson

Where has the season gone? It seems like we just began racing, and now here we are, week one of the Chase for the Championship. The driver who has been designated the least likely to win the Nextel Cup, Clint Bowyer, is on the pole.

And believe it or not…when I woke up Sunday morning, the earth had not stopped rotating just because Dale Junior was not in the Chase.

It has been a busy week in the racing world. The top 12 drivers have been doing yeoman’s work, testing at Talladega in the Car of Tomorrow at the start of the week, and then heading to New York to appear on Late Night with David Letterman and dozens of sports TV and radio shows. Then they came to Loudon, and hopped back in the cars to get back to their day jobs.

While I am sure he would have preferred to be in the traveling show called the top 12, I bet Dale Junior had a more relaxing week than his teammate, Martin Truex Jr.

Friday we found that Budweiser has found a new home…and they don’t even have to worry about changing the color of the car. Kasey Kahne, shaky hands and all, will be NASCAR’s new Bud Man. It will be very interesting to see if he has the same marketability as Dale Junior has had over the last 8 years. Somehow, I don’t think he will, if only because he barely looks old enough to drink beer, much less market it. Only time will tell. And the bottom line is sales. Last weekend, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of fans at the #8 souvenir haulers, although it might have been because almost everything in the hauler was on sale.

As for Dale Junior, we will officially find out not only his sponsor, but his new number on Tuesday. The sponsor, a Pepsi-based product, more than likely Mountain Dew with a few National Guard weeks thrown in for good measure, isn’t all that well kept of a secret. The number, however, is as closely guarded as the Colonel’s secret recipe. 28, 28, 81, 88. The only thing Junior has let on is that it will contain an 8. (Which will make for easy tattoo editing.)

Another thing that was announced this week that doesn’t actually affect NASCAR, but does involve racing, is the $100-million dollar penalty handed down to the F-1 team owner McLaren. Anyone who thinks NASCAR has gotten too big in the money bags needs to compare itself to the racing that most of the world sees as the top of the sport. Sure, it might cost $40-million to run a NASCAR Cup team, and $100-thousand seems like a high price to pay for a penalty, but it is apparently just a tenth of what F-1 costs.

A $100-million fine in NASCAR would not only put a team out of business…it would put it in debt for years to come. And don’t forget the points. NASCAR might fine a team 100 points for cheating…but the FIA took away ALL the constructors points for McLaren's teams, both of which were leading the constructors points at the time. Only the drivers’ points were left untouched, allowing Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton to continue their quest for the driver's title. In NASCAR, you might lose 100 points, but as Kurt Busch proved, it doesn’t mean that you or your team is out of the chance for a title.

For years, mentioning F-1 and NASCAR in the same breath was a waste of that breath. Drivers in F-1 looked down at their country racing cousins in NASCAR with their bulky stock cars and oval tracks. Now, it seems more and more open wheel drivers are recognizing NASCAR for what it is…a challenging sport with talented drivers and growing world recognition. The only problem appears to be…many fans are dead set against that recognition, and the foreign attention it is bringing.

A recent poll on a racing website asked fans what they thought about foreign cars and drivers coming into NASCAR. The options for response were “Fresh talent might make for better racing”, “It's wrong and it troubles me” and “Don’t care. Let’s race”.

50% of the respondents voted it troubled them. When asked why, you realize that there are still some strong feelings about foreigners not only in the sport, but in the country.

“Should I point out that the sport of auto racing actually originated in Europe?”

If there is one thing that NASCAR fans are, it is passionate. They love their sport, love their drivers, love that which made them fans. In some cases, such as mine, that fandom came later in life, and without someone guiding me as to who to root for or which team to support.

Others, such as several of my racing friends, are second generation race fans who were raised not only on the old school way of doing things, but to root only for a certain manufacturer, regardless of who was driving it. Over the last 15 years, the sport has moved out of the south and across the country. Drivers are no longer solely born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi.

Southern twangs mingle with Spanish, Canadian, and Australian accents. Next year, it appears we’ll have Scottish and French mixed in as well if Jacques Villeneuve and Dario Franchitti join the NASCAR ranks as is being rumored.

For those fans who say foreigners should not be allowed in NASCAR, they need to be reminded a little about NASCAR history, and the fact the 1967 Daytona 500 champion was born in Montona d'Istria, Italy, which is now Motovun, Croatia.

His name: Mario Andretti.

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The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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