This is gettting silly

Reports this week are that Petty Enterprises, uh, I mean Gillet Evernham Motorsports that paid Richard Petty a lot of money to rename their team Richard Petty Motorsports is now merging with the organization formerly known as Robert Yates Racing.

Maybe the new organization will be called EGYP Racing.

The competition in this sport has become a farce. There is Hendrick Motorsports who dominates, a couple of teams like Gibbs and Rousch fighting for second, and a bunch of teams fighting for scraps. The smartest thing Tony Stewart did was "affiliate" himself with Hendrick. For his sake, I hope he does not become the Hendrick R&D program.

I wish Mike Joy would stop apologizing for the France family

This is sort of a minor complaint, but I think some people (namely the schills at FOX Sports) are dowplaying the seriousness of what happened at Talladega last week.

In case anyone has forgotten, 7 people were injured when Carl Edwards' car went airborne and hit the catchfence, scattering debris into the fans.

This week at Richmond during the pre-race, the issue came up. Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds tried to dismiss it by saying that Edwards' car wouldn't have gotten airborne if Ryan Newman hadn't hit him. Fat lot of good that statement was. Maybe when NASCAR unveils the "Car of Tomorrow 2" they can design in a magic feature so cars don't bump into each other.

Worse yet, Mike Joy dismissed the injuries as "minor". Hmmm. One teenage girl was in the hospital for three days while her jaw was being reconstructed. No doubt, her jaw is probably wired shut and she eats through a straw these days while television personalities merrily flap their gums. Thankfully for her, she is not on TV announcing sporting events like Mr. Joy.

I liked Mike Joy a lot better when he was on CBS and wasn't glossing over serious issues in this sport.

Done Deal

According to jakski today, this is a done deal for Petty and GEM.

Long Live The King

Ever since I realized you could race cars, I was a Richard Petty fan. It started one summer in the early-1970's when I was at my cousin's house, and he had an AFX slot car track with a box full of cars. Put two cars on the slots, pull the trigger as hard as you could, and hope the car didn't fly off the track when you hit the corner.

"The Closest Thing to Real Racing," Jackie Stewart told me. (For you readers who may not have heard of Formula 1 in the 1970's, Jackie is not related to Tony Stewart.)

One of them HO scale cars was a sporty blue Road Runner with sidepipes and a 43 painted on the side. "That's Richard Petty's car," my cousin told me.

"He's won more races than anyone," my other cousin told me.

"They call him King Richard," my brother said.

From then on I was a race fan and a Richard Petty fan. We didn't get much NASCAR news in central Texas. The Indy 500 was usually broadcast on tape delay back then, and I wondered why Richard Petty wasn't in it. That was OK though because I rooted for A.J. Foyt just the same. He was from Houston, had won 4 Indy 500's and, and that was cool. (I still like A.J.)

Not long after I got to see the 1979 Daytona 500 on TV. You know the one. The one where Cale Yarborough and the 2/3 of the Alabama Gang fought on the back stretch while King Richard went on to win his 7th Daytona 500.

When I finally started being able to attend races live in 1994 (Hey to Fireball Doowah and my VT buddies), I kept that sentimental attachment to the 43 even though I knew it wasn't doing that well. Over the years, that seat has been occupied by a long list of meh drivers.







Lots of potential but little payoff.

When I heard Bobby Labonte was going to drive the 43 I got excited. Hot Damn! A former Winston Cup champion and a guy from Texas to boot. While the team enjoyed a little bit of a resurgence, the overall results were still unremarkable. Sadly, Bobby Hamilton and John Anderetti have 3 more wins in the 43 car than Bobby Labonte does.

So now in 2008, Richard Petty has sold a controlling interest in Petty Enterprises to Boston Ventures. Boston Ventures has unceremoniously fired Kyle Petty. Bobby Labonte has left the 43 team for lack of a sponsor. As of this writing, Petty Enterprises has laid off 65 employees according to the latest ticker on jayski.com. And now there is a reported merger of Petty Enterprises and Gillete Evernham Motorsposrts (GEM). For the life of me, I can figure out what GEM wants with a struggling team, slow cars, an empty shop, and no driver.


I guess the only thing of value left at Petty is the number on the car.

Pretty sad when you think about it.

Long live the king.

Who Knew

Being an engineer, one could say I’m a fan of numbers, but numerology, not so much. Which brings me to my rambling yearly post on this blog. Numerology is complete hocus-pocus. I’d like to think Mark Martin’s years of frustration of not winning a championship was related to the unholy number – 6, but I am skeptical. And, any sane person would call the number 07 and the number 7, as the same. I certainly wouldn’t confuse Clint Bowyer and Robby Gordon, I sure might confuse their respective sponsors – is there really any difference between Jack Daniels and Jim Beam? And who hired these marketing geniuses to differentiate the respective brands.

So, yesterday I’m reading a story about a Nazi skinhead who is plotting a national killing spree, that would include Sen. Obama. What I found most interesting was the significance of the number 88, which is apparently a white supremacist symbol that also stands for “Heil Hitler”, since “H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet. I certainly wouldn’t denigrate any Dale Jr. fans, but me personally, I’d have a hard time wearing a number 88 for fear that some stupid-ass Nazi skinhead would confuse me as a hate monger…

We interupt this silence...

... to express our ambivalence about Kyle Busch. Apparently, he is revelling in his new found bad boy image and all the fans that hate on him.


Please, GMAFB.

It is hard to express hatred for those whose only crime is ignorance and obnoxiousness.

Otherwise, the season hasn't been half bad so far. I am still no fan of the Spec Racecar of The Day, but the racing has been pretty good.

Gaining Interest

Unlike Texas Aggie Gearhead, my interest in NASCAR has been reinvigorated. As far as the Blog, who the heck has time to write these things...

I have a rather long commute, and I am so sick of talk radio and politics, I'm considering a third or forth party candidate for President. Needless to say, turning off the radio has left a void in my commute, so I've been downloading various podcast. Although Fresh Air is one of my favorites, it can be a bit dry, and leads to nodding off to sleep on the way home. So, I looked around for more interesting podcast, and I stumbled upon Rowdy Racing News Podcast. This podcast is responsible for me getting excited about NASCAR again. The slug fest on the track between Jimmie and Jeff is great, too bad one of them is going to be the champion. And the slug fest off the track between Carl & Matt is also exciting. Looks like Jack Roush is in need of a strong leader like Mark Martin to crack some heads...

Anyway, I highly recommend the Rowdy Racing News Podcast @ Rowdy.com. The only minor problem I have with them is either "Buck" and/or "Bass" are Wahoo's and they are Redskin fans...