NASCAR has once again taken the cowardly way out. Instead of forcing drivers to toughen themselves up and accept slam-drafting for what it is - a necessary racing tactic that increases the competitiveness of the racing - NASCAR will require teams to remove steel plates from their front bumpers for Talladega, to soften them in the hope that if a team pushes another car it will buckle their bumper enough to hurt aerodynamics.
Predictably Jeff Gordon was front and center praising the change, and as usual there will be no media coverage of a contrary viewpoint, a viewpoint that takes the drivers to task for complaining instead of sucking it up and racing, a viewpoint that points out a glaring fact that refutes the Lindsey Lohan act - not one accident has ever occurred because of push-drafting.
If the Mainstream Media - MSM - and its coverage of everything from the Iraq War to Hurricane Katrina's aftermath to gasoline prices consistently takes the doomsday approach and never gets the story right as a result, then the Race-Stream Media - RSM - is also guilty of lack of ideological diversity and of thus not getting it right.
Put the proverbial gun to the heads of RSM types and tell them to name a wreck that was caused by push-drafting. They may grope for an answer but will not be able to come up with one.
On push-drafting, at least someone got under Tony Stewart's skin at Daytona, a refreshing change from a generally tepid Race-Stream Media. Why they don't take the drivers to task more often is a mystery. Criticism of participants in the other sports by their press corps is no rarity; why should the Race-Stream Media so consistently avoid taking drivers to task in print?
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On another note, the fizzling of AJ Foyt IV's racing career continues with his release from his BGN ride. It is disappointing that AJ IV's career is going nowhere at the present. His IRL days never saw any kind of respectable numbers, but being with a team all but devoid of sponsorship meant he could never get anything going to start with; on those few occassions when he had good racecars, he raced well.
Foyt IV once boasted he would not race "taxicabs." Circumstances made him change his tune, but he may have been right before, since he realistically hasn't shown any potential in a stock car. What will happen to him from here on remains to be seen, but one can't have much confidence that AJ IV will last in NASCAR now.
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