Down in the Pits: Chevys happy, but fans upset
This week’s NASCAR race at the Texas motor-speedway is one of the few tracks that are not owned by the France family.
You can always tell the difference.
NASCAR runs half of their races on the International Speedway Corporation’s tracks. About a fourth of the rest of the races are run at the Bruton-Smith tracks. I.S.C. tracks prohibit the sports fans from bringing certain items into their stands — virtually everything except your money.
The Texas track is like the Bristol track and the one at Charlotte. Coolers and fans are welcome. You’re subject to inspection to make sure you’re not a terrorist, but he’s not going to try to rip you off for any extra hard-earned money at his concession stands for stuff that you could’ve brought from home at a fourth of the price.
Not everyone is upset with NASCAR this week. The Chevrolets have a reason to celebrate. As usual NASCAR has changed the rules in the middle of the game. They have given the Chevrolets an extra inch and a quarter on the nose to make them to a hundred and a quarter inches, the same as the Dodge and the Ford.
Of course, this rule applies to everybody but Jeff Gordon. Brooke is fighting for her fair division of that extra inch and a quarter in her divorce settlement.
The extra inch and a quarter on the Chevrolets will just give them more down force and really Gordon doesn’t need the down force. If he got any further down, he’d be racing submarines instead of cars.
As I told you a couple of weeks ago, we all knew this change was coming. Thus far every brand of car has won with the exception of Chevrolet. The Chevrolet fans just aren’t going to stand for this. Today look for a strong performance by all the Chevy teams. K
NASCAR very seldom does anything right, but the rule change was in order. However, that may be about the only thing that’s going right for them this year. The fans are mad at them because of their restrictions on what size coolers they can bring into a track to what type of scanner that they can use.
One fan finally got the right idea. He bought some stock in the Texas Motor Speedway and has sued NASCAR for not giving them the second race date which Bruton-Smith had been promised when it was built.
The speedway says that they have been sold out for every single NASCAR race that they have run at the track. That extra date would amount to a lot of cash for the corporation. He’s got a right to complain and to sue NASCAR because he is a stockholder.
Another suit was filed earlier this year by Bill Simpson, who owned the corporation that produced most of the safety equipment for all of racing. Simpson has alleged that NASCAR misrepresented the facts and tried to put part of the blame for Dale Earnhardt’s death on him, thus ruining his reputation.
Normally this would just seem like a lot of lawyer stuff, but the fact that the France family owns NASCAR and therefore does not have to disclose what NASCAR makes each year is a big deal. Since it’s a privately held organization they don’t have to account to anyone. That just ain’t the way it happens in the court system.
Don’t be surprised to see the Texas speedway get another race date and Bill Simpson get an apology and an out-of-court settlement.
Every year the off track situations in NASCAR are as good or better than any soap opera on TV. Last year it was the Dale Earnhardt tragedy and the accusation that NASCAR was involved in a cover-up. So far this year we have the FAN FLAP and the divorce of the blonde bomber and the golden boy of stock car racing.
NASCAR ought to get the rights to televise that divorce. It would probably get better ratings than the O. J. Simpson trial.