Is Erin Crocker - And NASCAR Diversity - A Fraud?

We've now had three races in NASCAR's BGN series for highly-touted lady racer Erin Crocker, a driver for the powerful Evernham Motorsports team. To this we can add a Craftsman Truck race at Phoenix, AZ in early November. And in those races the result has been the same -

RICHMOND - DNF - Crash

DOVER - DNF - Crash

MEMPHIS - DNF - Crash

PHOENIX Trucks - Crash

It's just three races, but the record in those three races is disturbing enough to warrant questions about Erin Crocker's judgement and ability to drive a NASCAR racecar - in the Richmond wreck she'd already crashed in practice and in the race lost it by herself and took another car with her. At Memphis she tagged Steve Grissom and took him and herself into the wall - and tried to blame it on Grissom even though he had the corner.

Crocker ran in the ARCA Supercar Series in Evernham Dodges and had several top five finishes, but lost here is that ARCA is a series so starved of resources and money that only about six or seven cars in that series are any good.

It also raises questions about NASCAR's recent quest for "diversity." Crocker is part of Dodge's extensive driver diversity initiatve, an initiative that dovetails nicely with NASCAR President Brian France and his mildly obsessive quest for "diversity" in the sport.

Dodge's diversity efforts have been going since 2001, when they slotted Willy T. Ribbs in one of Bobby Hamilton's Dodge Trucks. Willy T. attempted to run in NASCAR in the late-1970s and mid-1980s. In 1978 he was slotted for a drive with Will Cronkite in an ex-Bud Moore Ford at Charlotte, a deal arranged by Bruton Smith. But Ribbs failed to appear at two scheduled practice sessions and was later arrested for driving the wrong way on a one-way street with a car rented by the speedway. He was canned from the ride and local short-tracker Dale Earnhardt drove Cronkite's Ford.

Ribbs tried again in 1986 with DiGard Racing, a team on its last legs at that time, and the effort went nowhere. Ribbs also tried CART Indycars with a team co-owned by Bill Cosby, and went nowhere. In the Hamilton #8 Dodge, the form chart took over again - he went nowhere and was gone by the end of the year.

More recently the Hamilton #8 has been driven by Deborah Renshaw, who raced at the Nashville Fairgrounds speedway and became a cause celebre when she was disqualified following a rancorous protest of the cars driven by her and her teammate; some very tedentious media coverage made the incident to be a sexist conspiracy by other racers against Renshaw because she'd briefly led the track's point standings.

Renshaw made it to ARCA in late 2002 and everything blew up in the savage crash at Charlotte during an ARCA practice session that killed racer Eric Martin. Martin spun to a stop on Charlotte's frontstretch and several cars split around him. He was stalled but none the worse for wear - until some fifteen seconds later Renshaw blasted full speed out of the corner and T-boned Martin through the left side door.

Again, tedentious media coverage passed the buck away from Renshaw, focusing on the "lack of spotters during practice sessions," raising questions about the visibility of the caution lights - everything but the fundamental judgement of Deborah Renshaw as a racer. NASCAR passed a new rule requiring spotters during any time a racecar is on the track at speed, never mind the fact that the wreck happened because Renshaw refused to pay attention to the caution lights or even past the nose of her racecar.

Of course this season saw Danica Mania, as Danica Patrick was slotted into one of the IRL's strongest cars, the primary Bobby Rahal-David Letterman car #16. Patrick snuck up on the other drivers and posted two stunning fourth-place finishes, including at Indy. But after that her performances dropped dramatically, especially on open-throttle drafting tracks where she was skittish in traffic and showed no consistent ability to pass anyone. Her season began with a bad wreck at Homestead in which she never cracked the throttle and instead bludgeoned into the wreck scene, and it ended with a hard wreck at Fontana.

Racing, however, seems determined to press on with "diversity" despite the fact it adds nothing to the sport, nor does it add anything to any serious endeavor.