NASCAR's savior

[Schwartz Fan]

NASCAR's savior
Ben Smith
Associated Press


Three reasons why Tony Stewart is the salvation of NASCAR, whether NASCAR wants to admit it or not:

1. Everyone else in the sport is Body-By-Nautilus. Tony is Body-By-Wendy’s.

2. Def Lepard must be his favorite band ’cause he stole their hair.

3. He drinks cheap American beer, hasn’t shaved since Bill and Monica were an item, and if you ask him what he thinks, he’ll tell you.

In other words (and, OK, you can count this as a fourth reason), he’s your average NASCAR fan.

He is, in fact, exactly the demographic NASCAR swears it’s not abandoning with its recent frou-frou, Napa-wine-country-crawling leanings. NASCAR wants the redneck vote, dammit. It does. Rednecks are the sport’s roots, and roots are, you know, good. So send Cale Yarborough and the Allisons out there to fistfight again, and NASCAR promises not to call anyone to the you’ve-been-bad trailer afterward.

It’s all a dandy bit of play-acting until Stewart starts saying what he thinks – and what everyone else does, too, by the way. But until Smoke spoke, they were all far too fluent in Press Release to say so.

Stewart couldn’t speak Press Release if you gave him a pocket dictionary and three translators. And so there he was after the Atlanta race nine days ago, tearing Goodyear a new one for essentially sending NASCAR’s most valuable commodities out there on paving bricks chiseled to resemble steel-belted radials.

“If I were Goodyear, I’d be very embarrassed about the tire they brought this weekend,” Stewart told Terry Blount of ESPN.com after finishing second. “It was ridiculous. If they can’t do a better job than that, pull out of the sport. I guarantee you Hoosier or Firestone could do a better job than that.”

Then he said he was “real excited I didn’t crash,” that the tire was “pathetic,” and that “I guess that’s why (Goodyear) got run out of Formula One, the IRL, CART and USAC, you name it.”

OK, first things first: Hardly anyone in racing dares to publicly flame the company that provides his rubber, because the tire companies wield an enormous amount of financial clout. And racing needs financial clout like fish need gills.

Thing No. 2: In a case like Atlanta, though, where the tires Goodyear provided were so bad it was a daylong struggle just to keep the car between the walls, someone needs to flame them. Drivers are not just faceless, penniless hotshoes anymore. They’re national brands. Messing with their lives isn’t just callous these days, it’s bad business.

Thing No. 3: Although everyone pretty much agreed Stewart was just being his usual hotheaded self – “He went too far,” was the refrain – he wasn’t wrong. Goodyear did give the Sprint Cup drivers a pig of a tire. You could tell by how many other drivers publicly agreed with him after he lashed out.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was almost as blunt as Stewart, saying, “We couldn’t race side-by-side or we’d wreck,” and begging Goodyear not bring the same tire to Darlington. Dale Jarrett, as old guard as NASCAR gets, said he had “no problem” with what Stewart said. And Kevin Harvick said everyone was “pretty frustrated.”

“Tony took it to the fullest,” he told The Associated Press last week. “But he’s definitely right in the way the tire stuff has worked out.”

Sure he is. But without Stewart going old-school ballistic on the issue, how much play does it get?

“Getting into attacks in the media is not the right place,” Goodyear marketing flak Justin Fantozzi told Blount, piously, after Stewart’s outburst.

Nonsense. This is NASCAR, son. If you believe it, you say it.

At least as long as Stewart’s around.



NASCAR's savior | The Journal Gazette

[SmokeFan14]

Good article, thanks!

The rest of you that don't like my boy? Well, go powder your noses and we'l talk later.

"Just leave this long-haired racin' boy alone."

;-)