My Two Cents Worth for 8/09/04

By Todd Berger, LGR Staff Correspondent

NASCAR and NBC returned to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the second half of the season’s Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400.

The pre-race show was, as usual, a chance for the boys at NBC to highlight “all” of the drivers who are from Indiana, except they really just highlight Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.  Yes, they interviewed Ryan Newman, but not like they did Jeff and Tony.  Wonder if that Alltel/Nextel thing had anything to do with it.  And where was our interview with the fourth and final Hoosier, Tony Raines?  I guess his Indiana-ness didn’t warrant any attention (cough cough…no ad buys…cough cough…unsponsored car for the evil Bill Davis Racing…cough cough).  Sorry.  I must have had a little sarcasm stuck in my throat.

And to that end, I know Home Depot buys a lot of TV time, but is it really NBC’s job to not only shove Tony Stewart down our collective throats but to also resurrect Tony’s status as NASCAR’s loveable bad boy?  I mean, I didn’t forget what he’s done this year despite all the fuzzy warm pictures of him in the dairy queen driver’s suit and the talk about how much he loves Indy.  He’s still a menace and I can’t wait until a driver much smarter than him handles that situation when it is most painful for Tony…in the final ten races.

And speaking of menaces, Brian Vickers must quickly be gaining some attention in the garage for his Tony-like driving.  Actually, he reminds me a lot more of another Hendrick Motorsports rookie (Jeff Gordon) who, in 1993 wrecked an astounding 13 cars between racing and qualifying.  Vickers has ended good runs for two guys in two weeks (Bobby Labonte last week and Ryan Newman this week), and is probably going to find himself all out of second chances as “the chase” gets closer to Richmond.

It was amazing to me the number of blown or cut tires we saw Sunday, but the dumbest move of all clearly had to come from Robby Gordon and the Cingular team.  After watching Sterling Marlin try to limp around and get to pit road on the rim, only to have the car literally burn up from under him, the Cingular team did exactly the same thing.  Rather than pit right away which he easily could have done and wanted to do, the team advised him to stay out, he did, and fried the car in the process.  Yes he finished 22nd and yes he stayed in the race, but that car was in the top 10 much of the day and still had a chance (albeit a small one) to win.  When they chose to skip pit road the first time by with that flat, they threw a good result out the window as well.

Rookie of the Year lock Kasey Kahne continually astounds me.  Last week, with a hood that looked like it came from the movie Mad Max, Kahne brought the car home third.  This week, he pounds the outside wall and flattens a right front, but gets to pit road, loses a lap, gets the lucky dog, and rebounds to finish 4th.  Simply amazing. 

If you want a glimpse inside what the last two races before the chase and the last two races of the chase are going to be like, take a snapshot of the Brickyard stat sheet. 

  -  13 cautions for 47 laps (where laps take 3 minutes under yellow, so they spent almost two and a half hours behind the pace car).

  -  11 cars out of the field due to accidents.

  -  Race time:  well over four hours for a 400-mile race.

It is my belief that you are going to see a lot more carnage like this in the near future.

I bet I can name you two drivers that are not in favor of the green-white-checker finish this morning:  Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin.  Both drivers cut tires coming out of turn two on the final lap and went from fighting for 6th place to 27th and 25th respectively.  Junior’s in no real danger of falling out of the top ten, but Martin is now 123 out with five races to go and is in 15th place.  A top 7 finish would have put him 50 points closer to the cutoff.  Since there are so many drivers so close in points (seventh to 15th place differ by a mere 194 points), there is no room for error or bad luck at this point of the season. 

Kudos to Robert Yates Racing this week as Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler finished 2nd and 3rd.  It’s just too bad that Jarrett didn’t let Sadler go by and see if he had anything for the 24 car.  Sadler may well have been able to challenge Gordon, which Jarrett clearly could not.

I thought Brendan Gaughan’s shot at NBC was funny.  While being interviewed after his accident, Gaughan said something to the effect that he was sorry he had to wreck so bad to finally get interviewed on NBC.  Funny stuff.

Ward Burton radioed his spotter after lap one contact with the 41 car, advising him to tell Mears that Burton “owed him one.”  It looked to me like Ward was giving as good as getting, so that’s kind of sour grapes to me. 

I must also offer a shout out to Jeff Green who somehow piloted the Cheerios Petty Enterprises Dodge to a 14th place finish.  That is Green’s best finish of the 2004 season.

Now, on to the topic you were waiting for me to address:  Jeff Gordon’s “spontaneous” yard of bricks celebration after winning an astounding 4th Brickyard 400.

Let me say this up front.  I respect Jeff Gordon as a driver and a four-time champion.  I don’t like him, I hate his owner, and I hate that NASCAR didn’t have the stones to throw a convicted felon out of the sport, but that’s another argument for another time.

That said, I thought what Jeff did yesterday was smart, creative, and great for him, his team and his sponsors.  I am only sorry that I didn’t think of it myself. 

If you don’t know, after winning the race, instead of heading for victory lane, Jeff parked at the start-finish line and got out of the car to celebrate with his team and his fans.  While being interviewed on TV, a NASCAR official attempted to politely usher Gordon and company away, but he was ignored.  I’d like to know, by the way, if that fellow will be “reassigned” like the Pocono pit road monitor was, but I digress.

But spontaneous?  No.  Absolutely not.  There is no way on God’s green earth that that wasn’t planned out to the letter at Hendrick Motorsports (and every other anti-Powerade race shop for that matter) on Monday or Tuesday or whenever Johnson’s $10,000 fine was announced last week.   Gordon spoke afterwards about the “spontaneity” of his actions, but in the same breath acknowledged that NASCAR would have something to say on the matter, meaning he knew what he was doing when he did it.

You had to know that a Hendrick car would win again this season and that they weren’t going to lie down and just take NASCAR’s crap on this regarding their own sponsors. 

After that, the Dupont team headed for victory lane sans car to celebrate, take pictures and spray stuff (probably not Powerade) on one another.  Team owner Rick Hendrick was called to the NASCAR on-site offices to discuss the matter further.

Later, it was announced that there would be no fine since the episode “seemed” spontaneous and didn’t appear to violate  “protocol,” whatever that means.

That’s crap.  If it’s fine-able for putting a glorified tabletop ad on top of your car, then not showing up in victory lane should also be a fine-able offense.  You can bet that the next guy to “spontaneously” celebrate on the track away from victory lane without the car-top bottles will get hit for about twenty-five large and quite possibly get a point or two knocked off his total. 

Like I said last week, this issue isn’t going to go away, and the closer we get to crunch time, the more I wonder not if but when NASCAR’s arbitrary iron fist of bossiness and corporate greed will come down and punish someone like Kevin Harvick or Kasey Kahne or Tony Stewart or whomever for the same thing.

Don’t believe it’ll happen?  Just watch.

Article copyright Todd Berger 2004 and the sole property and opinion of Todd Berger.  Published by Lets-Go-Racing.com with permission.  Contact Todd at nascarnews@charter.net.