So the 2016 Atlanta 500 has been run. A look at the race's winners and losers -
WINNERS -
Hendrick Motorsports - After taking it on the chin at Daytona by JGR's Toyotas, Hendrick's honchos roared back to finish 1-2 and also eighth thanks to a nice rebound by Chase Elliott. Kasey Kahnre remains the black sheep of the Hendrick fleet.
Half of Stewart-Haas Racing - Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick combined to lead 193 laps and finish fourth and sixth. Harvick's gag on the final restart was the killer of the race.
Young guns - The young guns had zero ammo at Daytona. At Atlanta Elliott, Ricky Stenhouse, and Austin Dillon made a respectable effort and result.
Martin Truex - He led 34 laps and it's obvious that team fits better with Toyota than it did with Chevrolet.
The list of winners is pretty slim; the list of losers isn't -
LOSERS -
The short field - Striking was the high incidence of reportage critical of NASCAR for the shortness of the field, with blame given the new Charter system. For a media that has been easily the most lapdog of all the sports medias, the NASCAR media's shots at NASCAR's Charter system was surprising - and very refreshing. Lower car counts is never a good thing; it is a sign of declining value. It's certainly not irreversible - but NASCAR needs to work to reverse this trend.
NASCAR's Retro 5&5 Rule - Drivers after the race kept saying "it was fun, it was fun." But the most fun rules package remains the one where they can blast into the lead and they can fight back and retake it when someone else blasts into the lead - the more lead changes, the better for everyone. This Atlanta 500 had a couple of spots of dicing up front, notably the two-lap dice between Harvick and Martin Truex, but other than that there wasn't much - certainly nothing like the apex of the track's history as a 1.54-mile quad-oval - 1999-2002 with four of its most competitive races, notably the 2001-2 Atlanta 500s contested with high downforce and a much-harder tire than used today.
With this low-downforce package we also saw a return of the dirtiest words in racing, the condition from which nothing good can ever arrive - aero tight. The biggest surprise was the lack of yellows in the 500, doubly surprising given the tire mini-fiascos endured in the Xfinity-Truck doubleheader on Saturday.
People oversold low downforce at Kentucky and Darlington last year and it showed again it's not the way to go, no matter how much fun drivers professed to have with it.
Matt Kenseth - The pit penalty after leading 47 laps left him 19th at the end.
Ganassi Racing - Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson were on milk cartons the whole race long.
Penske Racing - Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano did salvage productive finishes - ninth for Brad and twelfth for Logano - but they're hardly the power they were last season so far.
RCR and Roush-Fenway - Six cars, one top-ten in this race between them. Even with that Roush's bunch did show some notable improvement.
Showing posts with label Hendrick Motorsports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hendrick Motorsports. Show all posts
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Sunday, October 25, 2015
At Talladega NASCAR Gets Worse
And it gets worse for NASCAR. TV ratings for the Chase in 2015 have been dismal and the moving of the Diehard 500 at Talladega to NBC Sports Network instead of airing it on NBC (which aired the USGP for F1) was not a good sign for the Cup Series; adding insult to that injury, the Truck 250 was aired on FOX's over the air network.
But what transpired at Talladega is bound to anger even more people. Not only was the racing once again enormously under-competitive due to NASCAR's ridiculous diktat against push-drafting, the finish was the biggest insult to competitive integrity in years, certainly since the absurd Regan Smith yellow line penalty that cost him a last-lap win in the 2008 Diehard 500. NASCAR dictated only one green-white checker finish for this Diehard 500, apparently thinking having the normal three would produce more crashes; what they got instead was two, the first coming on what NASCAR disingenuously claimed was not an attempt - the green light came on as the cars hit the gas, but a crash occurred in the trioval and NASCAR waved the yellow, claiming it was not an attempt, this even though the radio chatter from drivers indicated it was an attempt.
NASCAR tried again and as Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr took off Logano got the lead but another wreck, involving among others the eminently-forgettable Denny Hamlin after a bad day where he had to get a roof hatch repaired, erupted and NASCAR wasted several minutes trying to determine who was leading at what scoring loop even though it was obvious Logano was the leader and thus, under NASCAR's field-freeze rule, the winner.
The wreck happened because Kevin Harvick - who took out Denny Hamlin at Daytona and thus launched Austin Dillon into spearing the fencing - swerved into Trevor Bayne. But of course Harvick refuses to be accountable for it - and NASCAR as usual will not hold the responsible driver accountable for it.
It combined the worst of everything for NASCAR.
Without push-drafting the cars basically are stuck sidedrafting with the leader basically immune from challenge; for most of the race the top five hogged the bottom line without any challenge, where the racing should have been about rocket-surges from midfield into the lead by lock-bumper two-car superdrafts, the lead thus changing at a spectacular rate, and the field able to keep up and sort out without being stuck in place.
Then there is the chronic problem that NASCAR gives the officiating tower the power it has to determine the outcome instead of the racers, That the restart was declared not a restart by NASCAR was doubletalk; that it was important is also absurd both for the aborted start and for the one that was stopped after the leaders hit Turn One; because NASCAR ostensibly doesn't allow racing to the line, instead freezing the field when the caution comes out - this even after numerous examples (such as the 2004 Firecracker 250, the 2007 Daytona 500, the 2008 Talladega Truck 250, and the 2011 Firecracker 400) where NASCAR left the green out amid a crash and let the field race to the line. The result all these times was that racing to the line is not the safety problem NASCAR seems to pretend it to be.
What transpired was Joey Logano was declared the winner, based not on the start-finish line but by the officiating tower reading a scoring loop. No matter how it is sliced it is not a legitimate win; Logano didn't race to the line to earn the win. Such rule-induced fraudulence has been a depressingly frequent occurrence, most infamously illustrated in the 2004 Winston 500 and 2004 Pocono 500.
The tower wasn't supposed to make the call - it was supposed to be determined by racing to the stripe. That it was officiated like this shows anew NASCAR's credibility problem.
At Talladega such problems are easily fixable - let the cars (and Trucks) push-draft again; it's the strongest power to pass ever seen, and what matters is passing, period; give the racing at Talladega and Daytona back the 60-plus lead change average it had just a few years ago. Reduce the officiating tower's role and give some control of the racing back to the racers - let them race to the stripe and thus legitimately determine the outcome. And stop pretending a restart is not a restart.
NASCAR's credibility issues of course extend far beyond Talladega. The Chase concept has no legitimacy and the disintegration of TV ratings shows it; drop the Chase, go back to the Latford Point System, and increase the points bonuses for the win and for most laps led - incentivize going for the win above everything else. The issue of costs and team spending need to be addressed by NASCAR and the new Race Team Alliance - the low number of winners in 2015 (just eleven with the Talladega outcome) is indicative of a disturbing lack of competitive depth for the sport.
*****
It was a lousy race even for the winner, and it certainly stunk for the rest of the field. Joe Gibbs Racing was dismal even though it led some laps; Stewart-Haas Racing was basically MIA; so were any Fords outside of Penske Racing; Ganassi-Earnhardt had a forgettable day. That racing always produces more widespread disappointment than cheer is true enough; that even the winners couldn't honestly feel good about how it all transpired merely shows how dismal a day it was for a track where it should always be so much better.
But what transpired at Talladega is bound to anger even more people. Not only was the racing once again enormously under-competitive due to NASCAR's ridiculous diktat against push-drafting, the finish was the biggest insult to competitive integrity in years, certainly since the absurd Regan Smith yellow line penalty that cost him a last-lap win in the 2008 Diehard 500. NASCAR dictated only one green-white checker finish for this Diehard 500, apparently thinking having the normal three would produce more crashes; what they got instead was two, the first coming on what NASCAR disingenuously claimed was not an attempt - the green light came on as the cars hit the gas, but a crash occurred in the trioval and NASCAR waved the yellow, claiming it was not an attempt, this even though the radio chatter from drivers indicated it was an attempt.
NASCAR tried again and as Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr took off Logano got the lead but another wreck, involving among others the eminently-forgettable Denny Hamlin after a bad day where he had to get a roof hatch repaired, erupted and NASCAR wasted several minutes trying to determine who was leading at what scoring loop even though it was obvious Logano was the leader and thus, under NASCAR's field-freeze rule, the winner.
The wreck happened because Kevin Harvick - who took out Denny Hamlin at Daytona and thus launched Austin Dillon into spearing the fencing - swerved into Trevor Bayne. But of course Harvick refuses to be accountable for it - and NASCAR as usual will not hold the responsible driver accountable for it.
It combined the worst of everything for NASCAR.
Without push-drafting the cars basically are stuck sidedrafting with the leader basically immune from challenge; for most of the race the top five hogged the bottom line without any challenge, where the racing should have been about rocket-surges from midfield into the lead by lock-bumper two-car superdrafts, the lead thus changing at a spectacular rate, and the field able to keep up and sort out without being stuck in place.
Then there is the chronic problem that NASCAR gives the officiating tower the power it has to determine the outcome instead of the racers, That the restart was declared not a restart by NASCAR was doubletalk; that it was important is also absurd both for the aborted start and for the one that was stopped after the leaders hit Turn One; because NASCAR ostensibly doesn't allow racing to the line, instead freezing the field when the caution comes out - this even after numerous examples (such as the 2004 Firecracker 250, the 2007 Daytona 500, the 2008 Talladega Truck 250, and the 2011 Firecracker 400) where NASCAR left the green out amid a crash and let the field race to the line. The result all these times was that racing to the line is not the safety problem NASCAR seems to pretend it to be.
What transpired was Joey Logano was declared the winner, based not on the start-finish line but by the officiating tower reading a scoring loop. No matter how it is sliced it is not a legitimate win; Logano didn't race to the line to earn the win. Such rule-induced fraudulence has been a depressingly frequent occurrence, most infamously illustrated in the 2004 Winston 500 and 2004 Pocono 500.
The tower wasn't supposed to make the call - it was supposed to be determined by racing to the stripe. That it was officiated like this shows anew NASCAR's credibility problem.
At Talladega such problems are easily fixable - let the cars (and Trucks) push-draft again; it's the strongest power to pass ever seen, and what matters is passing, period; give the racing at Talladega and Daytona back the 60-plus lead change average it had just a few years ago. Reduce the officiating tower's role and give some control of the racing back to the racers - let them race to the stripe and thus legitimately determine the outcome. And stop pretending a restart is not a restart.
NASCAR's credibility issues of course extend far beyond Talladega. The Chase concept has no legitimacy and the disintegration of TV ratings shows it; drop the Chase, go back to the Latford Point System, and increase the points bonuses for the win and for most laps led - incentivize going for the win above everything else. The issue of costs and team spending need to be addressed by NASCAR and the new Race Team Alliance - the low number of winners in 2015 (just eleven with the Talladega outcome) is indicative of a disturbing lack of competitive depth for the sport.
*****
It was a lousy race even for the winner, and it certainly stunk for the rest of the field. Joe Gibbs Racing was dismal even though it led some laps; Stewart-Haas Racing was basically MIA; so were any Fords outside of Penske Racing; Ganassi-Earnhardt had a forgettable day. That racing always produces more widespread disappointment than cheer is true enough; that even the winners couldn't honestly feel good about how it all transpired merely shows how dismal a day it was for a track where it should always be so much better.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Hendrick: The Myth And The Machine
With Jimmie Johnson's win in the 2012 Southern 500, Rick Hendrick now has 200 wins as a Winston Cup car owner. The accomplishment has already brought out the expected hagiographical pieces about Hendrick's humble beginnings in NASCAR. The reality is not so wholesome.
Joseph Riddick Hendrick began in drag racing and boat racing while building his way up in the car dealer business. The way he was building up the business empire that would seed his racing empire, though, would not exactly hold up in court. Hendrick as a youth befriended Jack Billmyer, an official with the US brand of Honda who was building up the US end of the company by wallowing in bribes and kickbacks from dealers. "All it took was a few gifts," as former American Honda official Steve Lynch once noted, and Rick Hendrick's business empire began with "a few gifts" transmuting in a steady stream of "gifts" - periodically at the expense of rival dealers who would find cars allotted to them instead winding up at Hendrick's stores.
With his car dealer empire growing on graft, Hendrick's racing interest soon found the man who could make it happen in NASCAR in the wild and wooly days of the 1980s when business of lavish appearances (and dubious bank accounts) began populating the sport. When Hendrick was looking for a place to store his drag boats, he found former crew chief Harry Hyde, the 1970 Grand National champ bankrupted by crooked coal miner James "J.D." Stacy in the late 1970s. They wanted to form a NASCAR team and after an aborted alliance with Richard Petty, they hired Geoff Bodine to be their driver. The team clicked and in their third season Hendrick decided to add a second car; he hired Tim Richmond and teamed him with Hyde, a pairing that went poorly at first until both men figured out each other and a spectacular 1986 season ensued.
The success on the track wasn't sustained - after nine wins in 1986 the organization won seven races the next two years - yet Hendrick added a third team in 1987 with Darrell Waltrip as driver, and with that Hendrick Motorsports became almost the only organization to win for Chevrolet in NASCAR's Winston Cup Series (the Richard Childress team was the other, and it out-won Hendrick Motorsports badly). The team rebounded with eight wins in 1989 then hit a skid, winning only six races 1990-3 even as the team was commanding more and more of Chevrolet's resources - Hendrick and RCR were Chevy's lone front-runners, where rival Ford worked to sustain success for a wide variety of its teams and Chevy's GM brethren Pontiac worked aggressively to build a deep roster of race teams.
But even as Hendrick looked to the world as a bloated, inefficient outfit (it won just one race in 1990 and at times looked even worse than that), a fatal NASCAR rule change of 1990 began the path toward a monopoly. NASCAR limited teams in testing to seven test sessions during the season; it left a mid-November to mid-March opening for unlimited testing and teams took advantage of it; in 1990 the Cup series saw 14 different winners (matching the total of 1988) but RCR won just under 1/3 of the series races; in 1991 fourteen winners was replicated but this time competitive depth for the series took over as muscle was flexed by RCR, Robert Yates, the Leo Jackson-Andy Petree outfit, and others.
Then in 1994 as Chevy was granted control of all of GM's racing efforts (and the company cut back to backing just Chevy and Pontiac), NASCAR cut testing to seven per season with a test ban period for November-December. Suddenly the sport had a condition that favored multicar giants like Hendrick - and by 1997 the sport's exodus of team owners had begun as multicar teams squeezed out prospective new winners. It was also when Hendrick was indicted in the mammoth bribery scandal at American Honda. Hendrick escaped punishment despite conviction and was eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton - in part because of Hendrick's involvement with Bank Of America. The conviction nonetheless exposed Hendrick not as someone who reached success from humble beginnings but as someone who took bribery to a new level - especially with hints his car dealership briberies extended to brands other than Honda.
He's continued on and now has 200 wins and ten NASCAR titles. Yet one would feel better about it if Hendrick really were someone of humble beginnings.
Joseph Riddick Hendrick began in drag racing and boat racing while building his way up in the car dealer business. The way he was building up the business empire that would seed his racing empire, though, would not exactly hold up in court. Hendrick as a youth befriended Jack Billmyer, an official with the US brand of Honda who was building up the US end of the company by wallowing in bribes and kickbacks from dealers. "All it took was a few gifts," as former American Honda official Steve Lynch once noted, and Rick Hendrick's business empire began with "a few gifts" transmuting in a steady stream of "gifts" - periodically at the expense of rival dealers who would find cars allotted to them instead winding up at Hendrick's stores.
With his car dealer empire growing on graft, Hendrick's racing interest soon found the man who could make it happen in NASCAR in the wild and wooly days of the 1980s when business of lavish appearances (and dubious bank accounts) began populating the sport. When Hendrick was looking for a place to store his drag boats, he found former crew chief Harry Hyde, the 1970 Grand National champ bankrupted by crooked coal miner James "J.D." Stacy in the late 1970s. They wanted to form a NASCAR team and after an aborted alliance with Richard Petty, they hired Geoff Bodine to be their driver. The team clicked and in their third season Hendrick decided to add a second car; he hired Tim Richmond and teamed him with Hyde, a pairing that went poorly at first until both men figured out each other and a spectacular 1986 season ensued.
The success on the track wasn't sustained - after nine wins in 1986 the organization won seven races the next two years - yet Hendrick added a third team in 1987 with Darrell Waltrip as driver, and with that Hendrick Motorsports became almost the only organization to win for Chevrolet in NASCAR's Winston Cup Series (the Richard Childress team was the other, and it out-won Hendrick Motorsports badly). The team rebounded with eight wins in 1989 then hit a skid, winning only six races 1990-3 even as the team was commanding more and more of Chevrolet's resources - Hendrick and RCR were Chevy's lone front-runners, where rival Ford worked to sustain success for a wide variety of its teams and Chevy's GM brethren Pontiac worked aggressively to build a deep roster of race teams.
But even as Hendrick looked to the world as a bloated, inefficient outfit (it won just one race in 1990 and at times looked even worse than that), a fatal NASCAR rule change of 1990 began the path toward a monopoly. NASCAR limited teams in testing to seven test sessions during the season; it left a mid-November to mid-March opening for unlimited testing and teams took advantage of it; in 1990 the Cup series saw 14 different winners (matching the total of 1988) but RCR won just under 1/3 of the series races; in 1991 fourteen winners was replicated but this time competitive depth for the series took over as muscle was flexed by RCR, Robert Yates, the Leo Jackson-Andy Petree outfit, and others.
Then in 1994 as Chevy was granted control of all of GM's racing efforts (and the company cut back to backing just Chevy and Pontiac), NASCAR cut testing to seven per season with a test ban period for November-December. Suddenly the sport had a condition that favored multicar giants like Hendrick - and by 1997 the sport's exodus of team owners had begun as multicar teams squeezed out prospective new winners. It was also when Hendrick was indicted in the mammoth bribery scandal at American Honda. Hendrick escaped punishment despite conviction and was eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton - in part because of Hendrick's involvement with Bank Of America. The conviction nonetheless exposed Hendrick not as someone who reached success from humble beginnings but as someone who took bribery to a new level - especially with hints his car dealership briberies extended to brands other than Honda.
He's continued on and now has 200 wins and ten NASCAR titles. Yet one would feel better about it if Hendrick really were someone of humble beginnings.
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