NASCAR: IT IS WHAT IT IS

Source: RacingWest.com / janet peery
Date: 10/19/2007

NASCAR is an amusing organization filled with good and not so good people. There are plenty of good guys employed by NASCAR that truly love the sport…but there are some insecure book-learned employees who are there for a paycheck and the assumed prestige of working for The Beach…and that lends itself to NASCAR becoming stale, especially when it comes to Grassroots racing.

Doesn’t need to be that way, but NASCAR has a way to kick the very people that care the most right in the teeth.

I am one of those people that really do care and I have been kicked in the teeth a few times by NASCAR…it used to hurt…but anymore I don’t care much, except it bugs me still that they have all the grassroots racing right in their hand and they don’t know how to clutch their fist and hang on to what they got.

A few years ago I spoke my mind about the possibility of the NASCAR Tours folding…what that got me was being banned from the NASCAR media list. One of their employees said it was discussed on the conference call that RacingWest should not receive information. So the result of that was the team sent the releases, since they were the ones that were hurt by the decision. Eventually NASCAR added RacingWest back on the media list.

But now, RacingWest has again been omitted from receiving releases, as not one single press release about the ShowDown was received, with the exception of much appreciated entry list. A friend of mine that is also on the media list sent me some stuff, but to get it all RacingWest was forced to go clicking around in the NASCAR media site to find stuff to post to support the teams. Now that is pretty stupid. I thought about it and thought that maybe it is not just RacingWest that gets treated this way…maybe it is all the other sites that are not out their brown nosing and high-fiving the boys at Daytona Beach. And come on…you know they deserve to be exposed on some of the stuff they pull.

Every single time I write I think about the impact to the sport. Not that a fan can have much impact, but still I think about what I say. There are a whole lot of things I have kept my mouth shut about for fear it would hurt a team getting a sponsor, or look bad for a track. I write the truth. And that seems to be the rub between me and NASCAR.

Face it, with regards to the NASCAR Whelan All American Series Championship, those points for California where a championship was won or lost based on licenses…that was ridiculous. And the fact that in all these years I have never heard of it before makes me think that NASCAR enforced the ever present rule this year not necessarily all prior years. But hey, Kenny Shepherd (Madera Speedway promoter, the track that crowned the NASCAR State Champion) will probably win promoter of the year for playing the NASCAR game…a game where the other tracks did not know the focus of the rules had changed.

Once I started talking about the Weekly Racing points in the RacingWest.com message board…that is when RW stopped receiving press releases. Reminds me of last year where tracks were threatened by a former VP of NASCR (one who currently does contract work for NASCAR) that if they had an SRL or ASA race they would not get a NASCAR sanction. Talk about strong arming.

Since RW has no worry of not receiving releases, remember it no longer receives them…guess there is nothing to stop it or me from writing the truth…let me speak directly to the people responsible here, if I may, SHAME ON YOU NASCAR!

Shame for having what could have been a show that saw 200+ cars vying for those 40 or so starting spots in the Late Model race at the Showdown. How many drivers even knew about it? It doesn’t look like many even heard there was this huge race going on with TV and a good purse at one of the best short tracks in the country. If they did know it doesn't seem they knew they could come out and play. Tells me the promoting failed…or maybe like with the Tours, ya don’t really care. At least Irwindale Speedway did a good job of rounding up the locals. I was very impressed with their work.

The car count was exciting. But imagine what it could have been! You have all the potential for huge success but you don’t know how to take care of your drivers, teams, their sponsors and the host track for your big event, Irwindale Speedway. I have sort of come to take your side as it not being your job to promote races promoters buy…but on this one with Toyota as a sponsor and with every team in your late model program a possible entry it was foolish not to elevate and publicize all that could be…could have been.

You kept it all so top-secret…, very reminiscent of the days when you had the secret fax number for results that few were entitled to have. Not wanting the WORLD to know the finishes of a race was moronic as is this. Did it ever occur to you that it is the media that needs the releases over the teams? Most of the teams were already there, right? Doesn’t it make sense to let others know what is coming up or what they missed so the next time you tell them what is coming up they will be there?

You will continue to gain support from the kids that enter the world of covering motorsports via PR, amateur filming, filing as reporters or managing websites. But those people that knew the history, those that loved it all through the rich times and thin times…the ones that were there all along…you are losing them. They are turning to CORR, the SRL, the ASA, dirt racing and all the other little series.

And so all those little sanctioning bodies that have limited resources are winning you at a game where you are the one holding all the aces. I guess the rest of us peek at your hand and think gee…look at all them aces and you look at your hand and think, aww shucks look at all them damn ones. Like a rookie in the game, NASCAR foolishly throws away the keepers.

So now as the flame of passion flickers to an almost non-existent light….the most famous of all losers’ statement comes to mind, “It is what it is.”

Sadly it is not what it could be, could have been.

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