What Would Dale Sr. Think?
Monday, June 16th, 2008 Write a comment
Not long after Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first points race for Hendrick Motorsports at Michigan, I put in a call to one of my friends in High Places and asked a favor. I needed to talk to Dale Earnhardt Sr. and could he please put me in touch? Within a miraculous minute or two, the phone rang. It was Dale.
‘Dale,’ I said, ‘Thanks for calling. Did you see June Bug win that race at Michigan today driving for Hendrick Motorsports?’
There was a long pause. “Yeah, I saw it,” he said. Then you could almost see that big grin breaking out on his face. “Pretty darned good, wadn’t it? I was really proud of the way Junior and Tony Eury Jr. worked together to win it on fuel mileage. Kind of reminded me of beating Bill Elliott on the last lap at Darlington one year.”
‘But Dale,’ I said, ‘He left Dale Earnhardt Inc. and now he’s winning for Rick Hendrick, never one of your closest friends in the garage, especially back in the days when you used to hammer on Geoff Bodine.’
‘Yeah, well,” said Dale after another pause, “Whenever your son wins a race, it’s a big deal. It don’t matter who he’s driving for. A father has to be happy when a son wins a big race, especially one at Michigan on Father’s Day. Chevy really needed a win there and it will probably help sell some cars at Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet.”
‘Well jeez,’ I replied. ‘It’s not like I’m fishing for a controversial quote. I mean who’s going to believe me, anyway? It just doesn’t seem like you would cotton to the idea of Little E and his sister Kelly splitting from DEI to move to Hendrick. Pardon the expression, but as the Intimidator you’ve always been pretty black and white about such things.’
“I guess it looks like two choices,” said Dale. “But the way the situation is now, I don’t have to pick sides. I’m pulling for everybody to win, including DEI. I mean, how do you think I got admitted to this place up here, anyway?”
‘OK, OK, I get it,’ I said. ‘But you don’t mean you’re pulling for everybody literally. Jack Roush is still a peckerhead in your book, right?’
“Man,” said Dale, “You don’t get it. Once you’re up here, giving driving lessons to the Big Guy, the perspective changes. Things start rubbing off on you, and I’m not talking about fender and door paint. Some days, though, even He thinks He’s Dale Earnhardt and I have to straighten Him out about that.”
‘Speaking of getting things straight,’ I said, trying to regain the momentum, ‘Did you hear how Dale Jr. said he had you whupped at Michigan in the IROC race back in 2000 on the last lap until Rusty Wallace gave you a bump draft?’
Just then a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere and landed just outside the window to my office. Funny thing, though, it didn’t affect the phone connection.
“I had his ass whupped at the finish line, didn’t I?” thundered Dale.
‘I see,’ I said, now getting warmed up. ‘As long as you’re not on the track, everything’s OK, because you’re not getting beat. Is that it?’
“What makes you think I’m not out there?” said Dale. And once again I could sense that sly grin begin to uncurl at the corners of his mouth. “I mighta even been there the day my son Kerry won at Michigan in the ARCA race back in 2001, too.”
‘Well Dale,’ I said. ‘You’ve never failed to amaze me, so I guess anything’s possible, including this phone call.’ I decided to tuck into the draft at this point. ‘So what do you think about Little E winning this year’s championship?’
“I don’t like talking about the Chase, even though Bill France Jr. and I finally worked that out once he got up here. I think Dale Jr.’s got a good chance, if Hendrick can get its act together on the Car of Tomorrow. It looks like they’ve turned the corner. Jimmy Johnson had a pretty good race at Michigan. I think Dale Jr.’s really been carrying the car a lot up until now. You can’t win the championship on fuel mileage. But if they really catch up, maybe ol’ DW’s prediction of six race victories ain’t too bad.”
‘He’s already got three if you include the two prelims from Daytona,’ I said. ‘And four if you include Brad Keselowski’s first Nationwide win for JR Motorsports. How do you think Dale Jr.’s doing as a team owner?’
“He’s getting there, ain’t he?” said Dale. “I honestly think that comment Teresa made about him having to choose between being a celebrity and a race car driver got his attention. She prayed a lot about it beforehand, so I can’t fault her for that. It’s too bad the rest of it didn’t work out. But I really couldn’t see Dale Jr. running the team and the rest of the DEI stuff better than her at this point in his life. He’s better off sticking to driving.”
‘I see,’ I replied, this time really mystified. Was I really talking to my old friend Dale? Could he be this mellow? So I gave it one more try.
‘You probably saw where Dale Jarrett and Bill Elliott are hanging up their helmets. Sterling Marlin’s almost done. So I guess your career in NASCAR would be over about now. Otherwise, I’d ask you whether you could beat Junior to the championship if you were still driving for Richard Childress.’
“Well, I guess you already know who did the better job the last time we drove the same equipment, that Corvette in the Daytona 24-hour,” said Dale calmly, not missing a beat.
‘OK, OK,’ I replied, on the short end yet again in a conversation with the seven-time champion. ‘You got me there. Too bad you never had a chance to get your Corvette team together. I know how much you wanted to race at Le Mans. By the way, did you see the Le Mans race this weekend? Allan McNish was incredible when he ran that quadruple stint against the Peugeots at the start and put the Audi into the lead.’
“Did I see it?” said Dale. “I was right there on his shoulder.”
Jonathan can be reached at jonathan@jingrambooks.com.
Top Ten Season-Ending Observations On The Fall of Rome (i.e. NASCAR)
Monday, November 19th, 2007 Write a Comment1. NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France sounds more and more like a guy with “horse sense.” And, that’s the way NASCAR founder “Big Bill” France described son Bill Jr. when he took over at the start of the modern era in 1972. Each of the ruling Frances may have had a distinct way of doing things. But having worked with all three, it’s clear they come from the same line.
2. Brian France evidently has figured out that he can’t make more money doing anything else. Perhaps he’s looked at the next best alternative — a bi-coastal lifestyle between Daytona Beach and Los Angeles. That’s the word on the street. I believe him when Brian says he’s as committed as his uncle Jim and sister Lesa to NASCAR’s future.
3. The rumors about discussions on the sale of NASCAR are true. People have approached the France family in the wake of the death of Bill France Jr. These same people have consulted various parts of the racing community as well, which is how the story emerged, perhaps by design.
4. The best bet on where these approaches came from? Media companies looking to own content, just as some currently own baseball teams.
5. How far did they get? Not to any meeting, says Brian France. Like his sister and uncle, he’s probably interested to know how NASCAR is priced by the business world at large, even if NASCAR’s not for sale. The pricing might be a measure of how well the re-alignment of tracks is working and the mark-to-book value of Nextel/Sprint Cup dates. The France family’s International Speedway Corporation, of course, owns the majority of those dates.
6. When Rome fell, people were trying to get out. That seems to fit American open-wheel racing these days. That’s not a knock on open-wheel racing, just it’s management.
7. When talking about the alienation of longtime NASCAR fans being important issue for him to address, I suspect Brian France is giving that priority lip service. The alienation is an inevitable result of changes bequeathed to him by Bill France Jr., who continues to rule, even in death.
8. The TV ratings system is going to change more than NASCAR or its network affiliates in the coming years, as will judging the value of how advertising dollars are spent. In other words, young people follow sports differently and a lot of older people have given up on the new presentation(s).
9. The new points system in the Chase has done it’s job by forcing great drivers like Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth to switch their game to edgy aggression in place of smooth operation.
10. The NFL is to Brian France and his family what Jimmie Johnson was to Gordon during this year’s Chase for the Championship. Easy to see, harder to catch, ne’r impossible to pass.
Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jonathan@jingrambooks.com.
Expect The Unexpected From Johnson vs. Gordon
Monday, November 12th, 2007 Write a CommentThe good ol’ days are back again — with a twist.
A close championship battle, the kind that helped build NASCAR’s popularity in the 1980’s and 1990’s, is upon us once more. It’s nothing new to have two Hendrick Motorsports drivers facing off against one another given Jeff Gordon’s down-to-the-wire fight with Terry Labonte in 1996. The twist is the Chase format.
If the Latford system that served so well in the previous two decades was still in place, Jimmie Johnson would be trailing Jeff Gordon by 400 points with two races remaining and would have already clinched the title. The old system favored consistency. The new one favors victories during the final 10 races of the season. Not a bad formula given the showdown in Texas during the closing laps between Johnson and Matt Kenseth, which brought winner Johnson 15 additional points as well as momentum.
It’s too early to write off Gordon even given Johnson’s three straight victories. Texas has not been Gordon’s favorite place to race after his heavy crash into the concrete in Turn 4 in 1999 — the first major moment of his career that ended with the wall having the upper hand. As it was, Gordon pronounced himself grateful on Sunday to be leaving Ft. Worth with a seventh-place finish headed into what he regards as the friendlier climes of Phoenix and Homestead.
But the outcomes in the final two races remain less than certain whatever the earlier performances by these two drivers on those tracks. Stuff happens when the points race gets this tight between two capable teams. However they arrived at this crossroad, either crew can suddenly find new ways for things to go wrong.
Labonte nearly lost his title after hitting the wall in Phoenix during practice — and breaking his hand in a freak incident with the steering wheel. The tough Texan hasn’t been able to look at a hyperdermic needle ever since those cortisone injections needed to run the final two races in order to nip Gordon.
Awesome Bill Elliott from Dawsonville and Melling Racing collapsed down the stretch in 1985, to cite an instance when things didn’t work out. Divorce procedings by Junior Johnson and Associates, i.e. Johnson and wife Flossie, proved to be distracting when Elliott again lost down the stretch in 1992. At North Wilkesboro, of all places, the team missed the handling on the chassis by a country mile, opening the door for Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison.
Bobby Allison needed to lose it two years running before narrowly clinching the title at Riverside in 1983 — despite the sabotage of his fuel by someone who figured out how to get sugar into one of the DiGard Racing team’s dump cans during the race. DiGard really blew its first chance to win the title when the team decided to use a conservative gear for Darrell Waltrip at Ontario in 1979 to avoid a blown engine — then didn’t have enough power to recover from a mistake early in the season’s final race. That paved the way for Richard Petty’s seventh championship.
Gordon may have headed down a similar errant, conservative path this year. In Atlanta, he said the driver and team that commits the fewest mistakes would win the title. So he may have been driving too defensively. In Atlanta, Johnson declared that he would try to win the most races and lead the most laps, a decidedly different approach. On the other hand, after Texas Johnson is now suddenly in the lead by 30 points and might be tempted by the lure of points racing.
Given their lifestyles, it seems unlikely that anything off the track will interfere with the championship aspirations of either Gordon or Johnson. Neither one has ever been known to break a curfew or use expletives over the public address for that matter, although Johnson fell off the roof — of a golf cart — during the post-season last year after winning the championship and broke his wrist.
There’s always the sheer luck factor. Had Kurt Busch’s wheel disengaged a few moments later, he would have missed the pit road entrance at Homestead in the first year of the Chase and lost a lap or two — as well as the title.
There are other things that can go wrong. But let’s not even think about the room of doom factor, e.g. one or the other of the championship aspirants gets caught with the wrong post-race ride height. (A lot of folks seem to think Mark Martin lost a title by a post-race decision in February of 1990 at Richmond that cost his Roush Racing team points. But that really falls under could-a, should-a, would-a since it occurred so early in the season.)
In any event, a betting man would have a difficult time laying odds at this stage on either Johnson or Gordon. Given the amount of money and prestige on the line, I would expect the unexpected.
Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jonathan@jingrambooks.com.