Over Rated?

Yeah, right. Dale Earnhardt Jr. only has his ride because he's the son of a 7 time Winston Cup Champion. (Yeah, I said Winston, because that's what it was when Dale won all of them.) Chances are that Dale Jr. would not even be racing had he not come from a racing family. He might have, but he probably wouldn't. I've got news for you: Neither would Dale Earnhardt, or for that matter Richard Petty.

Being born into a racing family is not a sin, folks. Lee Petty was racing long before King Richard ever stepped into a race car. So was Ralph Earnhardt before Dale ever climbed into one. Racing roots are not bad to have on the resume, it would seem.

Indeed, most of today's drivers have some racing in their blood. Practically every one of the drivers on the track have a brother or a father or a cousin or an uncle that was a racer. The relative in question may not have raced in Nascar, or even been that successful on the short track near home, but he was a racer. Sometimes it wasn't always a 'he', either. Mom might have got some of these boys into racing.

Like I said, having racing genes is not a sin. It just makes it easier to decide on a career as a young person. When Dale Jr. began racing in his early teens, his daddy was surprised. He said he never knew Dale Jr. was interested in racing. Dale Jr. would later say that it was all he ever wanted to do.

Well, guess what? Dale Jr.'s doing it! He's doing it in grand style too. First the Budweiser Shootout, now the Gatorade Duel 1 race. 2 for 2. Dale Jr. promised to come out of the corner swinging, and he has delivered in a huge way. Not only has he won both races he's been in, but he's proven that he is definitely a chip off the old block, and might be the best restrictor plate driver in the business. Possibly the best ever. Time will tell on that though.

Dale Jr. has not won just at Daytona and Talladega though. He's won at bullrings like Bristol, Richmond, and Dover. He's won at tracks like Chicago and Phoenix and Atlanta. He's not won a road course race, at least not in his cup career, but early fans of Dale Jr. will remember his Busch series win at Watkins Glen. Oh, and by the way, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a 2 time Busch Series Champion. I put that in caps because I think a lot of the detractors like to conveniently overlook that fact.

Over rated? No. Dale Jr. just has the equipment and the people and an owner that will allow him to live up to his own potential.

Drafting Partners for the Gatorade Duels

It's difficult to formulate a strategy for any race, except maybe to try to stay out of trouble and be at the front at the end of the race. Things can work a little differently at Daytona and Talladega though, where the draft is so much in play. During the actual race on Sunday, all the partners will be available, assuming they all qualify. Things are quite a bit different in the Duels though.

With the field basically split in two, some drivers will have plenty of partners, while some will have none they can really trust. For instance, in Duel 1, 3 Hendrick Motorsports drivers will start the race already lined up to draft in the low lane, with Jimmie Johnson on the pole, Casey Mears starting in 3rd place, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. starting in 5th place. They maybe all the drafting partners any of them may need the entire race.

Jeff Gordon races in Duel 2 however, and will have no teammates to help him. That is not to say that he won't have help, but will it be help he can really rely on? My best guess is possibly. That's not saying much, but it might be all Jeff will need to finish well or even win his race. One name that comes to mind? Dale Jr.'s old car, the 8 driven by Mark Martin.

Mark showed us all last year that he's a capable driver at Daytona. He's never won a 500, but he almost won last year. Mark is likely to latch onto Jeff's bumper if he can get to him, and probably won't hang Jeff out to dry, until maybe the last lap.

Other notable drafting teams in race 2 will be Michael Waltrip and David Reutimann, who will start the race first and second, and I imagine it will be difficult to pry those two cars apart. Dale Jarrett also is in this race, though he is starting farther back. If I'm David Reutimann, I would be pretty happy about this circumstance, since both of his teammates have won at Daytona before. Dave Blaney, who starts 3rd, is not a team member of Michael Waltrip Racing, but as a fellow Toyota driver, I imagine he will be welcomed by the MWR guys into their private draft.

Also in Duel 2, all three Joe Gibbs Racing cars will start. Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart will start close together, with Kyle Busch starting farther back. I imagine Kyle's first goal will be to catch his teammates as early as possible in this race. Richard Childress Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton will start near the back of the field as well, but I think the RCR cars will be much faster during racing conditions than they were in qualifying trim.

In Duel 1, beside the aforementioned trio of Johnson, Mears, and Earnhardt, we will have the Red Bull cars of Brian Vickers and AJ Allmendinger starting near the front. Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Paul Menard will be starting close to each other, with a third teammate Regan Smith starting farther ahead. I imagine the DEI cars will attempt to work together as much as possible. The Chip Ganassi cars of Reed Sorenson, Juan Pablo Montoya will be starting together near the back of the field as well.

All in all, much of draft racing is about temporary partnerships formed between drivers with cars that draft well together. Some times drivers will try to draft with cars that are the same make as theirs, out of brand loyalty to the manufacturer. Sometimes they recognize an old friend who they know will not wreck them, and will hook up with them. Sometimes they will just find that on this particular day, their car works best with someone that they would ordinarily not want to be around on other tracks. In other words, drafting makes for strange bedfellows sometimes.

The only thing I know for sure is this: When the white flag waves, there are no partnerships anymore. Teammates are meaningless, and it's every driver for himself. This is the beauty of racing at Daytona.

How did Nascar handle the Kurt and Tony Feud?

Today it was announced that Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart would be placed on probation for the next 6 races as punishment for an incident that occurred during Friday night's practice for the Bud Shootout. To this amateur race fan, it appeared that Kurt came up high in front of Tony, and Tony hit him, and Kurt spun out. During the trip to pit road, Kurt came up behind and around Tony and hit his car in the right side at least 3 times. Tony pulled down onto the track apron in an apparent effort to avoid Kurt. Before going behind the wall, Tony stopped, and Kurt pulled his car up against Stewart once more.

That's what I saw. There were reports that later, in the Nascar hauler, Tony took a swing at Kurt. Those reports remain unconfirmed.

To me, it appeared that Kurt, understandably upset about the damage caused by his contact with Tony and the subsequent spin, was attempting to damage Tony's car on pit road in retaliation. I might be wrong. Perhaps if Nascar had inspected Tony's car more closely, they would have discovered the super magnets that Tony's team has hidden in the passenger side door of the number 20 car, causing the number 2 car, through magnetic attraction, to repeatedly strike the 20 car in the passenger side door. I'm still weighing those two possibilities before I make a decision on which way to think about this.

It's possible that Tony, in the Nascar hauler, was so enraged by Kurt's on track antics, that he resorted to violence. It's also possible that Kurt was so enraged by the realization that Tony had wrecked his car with super magnets, attempted to physically assault Tony's fist with his face. The jury's still out on that one too.

Over the last couple of years, Kurt has become a changed man, so the media tells us. On camera during interviews, he smiles like Ward Cleaver, and appears to be about as threatening as Mr. Rogers. Kurt is also always very presentable, clean shaven, hair neatly shorn, and he's even keeping his ears glued to the sides of his head these days.

Tony on the other hand, often appears with a stubbly beard, and lately, long hair. At times he appears to be unhappy during interviews, and has been known to give snide answers to such hard hitting questions such as "What do you expect to get out of the race today?" Indeed, Tony actually resembles a small football linebacker more than he does Mr. Rogers. Tsk Tsk.

Probation in Nascar is a very serious thing indeed, and I hope both of these drivers have learned their lesson. Having to stay after class and straighten the desks for six whole weeks is not a lesson either one of these fellows will soon forget.

I imagine we'll see no more tomfoolery out of Mr. Stewart and Mr. Busch again any time soon!

Full Circle

After months of hype and speculation, Dale Earnhardt Jr. fulfilled a promise on Saturday night. It was a promise he made to his team and to his fans, but more important, it was a promise he made to himself. Dale Jr. was back in Victory Lane!

It was a non-points event, but it was still a huge victory for the 88 team. After months of speculation that finally led to Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving the team that was started by his father, and joining Rick Hendrick Motorsports, a racing team that many Earnhardt fans have always considered the 'Dark Force', Dale Jr. got back into Victory Lane for the first time in well over a year. Dale Jr. showed us the finesse that won his earlier victories on the tracks at Daytona and Talladega. As Tony Stewart said after the race, and I'm paraphrasing, Dale Jr. might be the best restrictor plate driver that's ever lived.

Many fans and reporters have been critical of Dale Jr.'s talent over the years. Is he only good on RP tracks like Daytona and Talladega? Jr.'s other wins include Phoenix, Bristol, Richmond, Chicago, Atlanta, and even the All Star race at Charlotte. He's won at what many consider a very difficult track in Dover. Yet people persist in questioning his talent.

I have a theory for this. Readers that are familiar with me know what my theory is, but I'll repeat it again. Jealousy. Pure jealousy. I read message boards of drivers who have not won 1/10 of the races that Dale Jr. has, and some of them have been driving much longer. They always blame the losses on equipment, but never on talent. Dale Jr. has driven with sub par equipment for the last several years, but has managed to claw out a few wins. Dale Jr. now has the best of all worlds now. He's got the best equipment, he's got the best people behind his efforts, and he's got a renewed drive to win races.

Dale Jr. is not alone in being criticized for lack of talent. Teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have been criticized as having no talent as well, and their combined 6 Cup championships and 114 combined Cup victories are simply the result of cheating. Now that Dale Jr. has joined the team, I imagine that those claims will become even more prevalent.

As a fan of Dale Jr., I don't really care. My driver is back in Victory Lane, and let the haters hate all they want to. Last night, the haters were also the losers.

What a Beautiful Time of the Year!

If you live in Chicago, you got probably a lot of snow today, and if you live in Tennessee, you have been dealing with violent storms, and my prayers go out to all of you that have had a rough time with the weather this week. At last count, 55 dead in the tornadoes that swept the Southeast this week. My prayers for the people involved in all this terrible business.

But I'm so happy that February is finally here, that I'm beside myself with excitement. It is now very early Thursday morning here in South Carolina, and I'm going to get to see live Cup racing on Saturday night, Lord willing.

The Bud Shootout at Daytona is one of my favorite races of the year, because even though it's a non-points race, we actually get to see them running to the checkers for the first time. For a fan like me, it's the end of an excruciating long period of inactivity, at least racing wise.

The off season has been anything but boring, as usual to the average Nascar fan. Drivers chanced teams, teams changed manufacturers, and crew personnel changed on probably virtually every team out there. Some owners and drivers are raring to go, confident in their belief that they will go all the way this year. Others wonder how they will keep their heads above water at all. Many teams are still searching endlessly for sponsors, and praying that they can meet the payroll the week after the Daytona 500. Such is racing, and always has been.

I'm not much of one for making predictions, and at this point it would be foolish to make a prediction about who the eventual champion might be. I will hazard one guess though: The winner will be on a well financed team.

I worry about some of the small teams in Nascar. In a way, much has never changed. They used to call the drivers that drive for lower tier teams "stokers". I haven't heard that word lately. A stroker was a guy that ran races, as many as he could afford to, but knew he never had a real chance of winning. If he got a top 10 finish, he was pretty happy. For instance, back in the 1970's there was an owner/driver out there who not only drove the race car, but he also built it, fixed it when he crashed it, and drove the pickup truck that hauled it to the track every weekend. He wasn't the only guy in that situation. Most of these guys either hooked up with teams with more money and resources, or they quit. This one didn't really fit that bill. He eventually hooked up with a hot driver, and got out of the car and just became an owner. He now has one of the better operations in Nascar. Yeah, you guessed it. I'm speaking no other than Richard Childress, and when he stepped out the car, and Dale Earnhardt got in it, the rest is history, as they say.

I wonder about people like John Carter. Who is John Carter, you ask? John Carter owns a garbage disposal business in Toccoa, Georgia. He is also the part owner of a Sprint Cup racing team. In 2005, his driver, Kevin Lepage finished 9th in the Daytona 500. Kevin was obviously a stroker in that race, no one probably expected him to finish the race, much less place in the top 10. $307,138 dollars was awarded that year for his efforts. This year, John Carter will attempt another Daytona 500 entry, with Eric McClure as the driver. I'm pulling for him to make the race, because I'd love to see a long shot get a chance again.

Most of all, I'm just ready for the beginning of Speed Weeks again. I'm just ready to shake off the winter doldrums and hear the sound of the engines, smell the exhaust of hi-octane racing fuel, and basically just get it all rolling again!

What's the Future for DEI?

I've read an article about the DEI/Ginn merger, where former Ginn co-owner Jay Frye and crew chief Ryan Pemberton were talking about the pain of dissolving a team that had been around for about 10 years. When DEI basically bought out the Ginn operations, a lot of employees were suddenly without jobs.

Jay Frye is now with Team Red Bull, and even though he could have stayed with DEI, he decided to leave, because he didn't like the thought of having to fire so many employees while keeping his own job. I like Jay Frye's style.

Ryan Pemberton left DEI for different reasons. He didn't like the corporate structure of the company, and the "Wall Street" style of management at his new employer. Ryan spoke of the DEI mantra of preserving and continuing Dale Earnhardt's legacy, and quite frankly, Ryan said that's not what he was there for. I think he's right.

Ryan Pemberton is now with Michael Waltrip Racing, serving as David Reutimann's crew chief. Ryan felt like he probably could be working for a team like Rick Hendrick's, but felt that MWR is his place, because he felt like he can make a difference at a young struggling team, such as Michael Waltrip Racing.

I like Ryan's style too. He know's what he's good at doing, and he seeks out opportunities to do it.

My question is this: What exactly is Dale Earnhardt Inc. good at doing these days?

The first answer to my own question is this: DEI is good at marketing memorabilia for the late, great Dale Earnhardt. My second answer is that DEI is good at coming up with really cool sounding titles, such as President for Global Operations. I assume that Max Siegel, who holds that title at DEI, regularly visits the operations folks at DEI London, DEI New Delhi, DEI Shanghai, DEI Tokyo, and DEI Toronto. They do have operations globally, don't they?

Oh, and by the way, they also have some sort of race car team or teams too, don't they? Yeah, that's right! Dale Earnhardt Jr. used to drive for them! Now they've got Martin Truex Jr., Mark Martin, Aric Almirola, and Regan Smith and Paul Menard. They currently drive the 01, the 1, the 8, and the 15 cars. A 4 car team should make them a major contender on the track, shouldn't it?

Martin Truex Jr won a race last year, and that was the only race that DEI won in 2007. DEI has recently joined forces with Richard Childress Racing, Dale Earnhardt's former employer and friend, to produce engines for both operations. Some fans of Richard Childress Racing drivers Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, and Clint Bowyer are a little nervous about this joint endeavor.

I have to make this one observation: After Dale died on February 18, 2001, DEI became a launchpad for Dale Earnhardt Jr. When Dale Jr. left at the end of 2007, DEI ceased to be what it was, as far as a racing operation. Mark Martin is a great driver, and so is Martin Truex Jr., and probably so are the other drivers. What remains at DEI is not nearly as important as what has left DEI, in my humble opinion. Dale Jr. made DEI popular. He wasn't able to keep the performance up to what it was in 2003 and 2004, and he left. Dale wanted to race competitively, and that's exactly what his son wants to do, so he left a team that wasn't providing what he needed and went to one that promises to do all that he needs: Win.

Dale Earnhardt, in my humble opinion, was the greatest driver Nascar has ever had. When he died, DEI started to die, and now that the son is gone, it will continue to compete, but the spark is gone now. DEI is basically a marketing operation now. Racing is not the priority, selling memorabilia is. I hope DEI proves me wrong, but so far they are not coming close to doing that.

I think what DEI doesn't seem to understand is that this company was started by a racer. That racer is gone, but racing continues. Racers race. Period. When racers can not compete with what the owner gives them to compete with, they leave. The go race for someone else. That's what racers do. Dale Jr. left DEI because he could no longer compete on the level at which he accustomed to competing. If you read a history of his father, you will discover that Dale did exactly the same thing in 1981, and again in 1984. He left J.D. Stacy when he bought out Rod Osterlund, and then left Bud Moore when he was not happy with the equipment. Where did he go both times? Richard Childress. The rest, as they say, is history.

DEI? Just win races. Give your drivers what they need to win races. The marketing will be automatic if you just put them into victory lane. Fans love winners. They still love Dale Earnhardt too, but he hasn't won a race in 8 years. Put some winners in your shop, and you'll sell all the tee shirts you can produce.

Feeling the New Season Butterflies yet?

I am. I'm just excited to get the season going. My favorite drivers seem to be very happy about testing, and I am too, even though that part doesn't really matter much. I just like seeing the smiles on the drivers' faces when the get out of the car after a testing run.

I'm just excited to get the season going. In a very short time, Speed Weeks at Daytona will start, and I for one can't wait for the action to begin. We become so used to the week by week events in this, the world's longest sports season, that we feel a huge void in the off season. I know I do at least.

I'm not that big of a baseball fan, and the recent doping scandals have made me even less of a fan. I don't really care for the NBA, but I do enjoy an occasional college basketball game. My main substitute in the off season is football, and I enjoyed the college bowl games and the NFL playoffs, but this past weekend there was none of that. Thankfully, the 24 hour Rolex race was on tv.

I'm usually not much of a Grand Am fan, but this year, as with past years, the influx of Nascar drivers trying their hands at sports car racing made it a lot of fun to watch. I didn't get to watch the end of the racing on Sunday, as prior commitments and vehicle problems kept me out of the house most of the day, but when I finally got home last night, I enjoyed watching the highlights on the Speed Channel. Congratulations to Scott Pruett and Juan Pablo Montoya, by the way. Great win for both of them as the other drivers and teams involved.

Watching the action on the track got me really ready for some good old Nascar style stock car racing. I can't wait to hear the roar of the engines in February!