~~Steve is right on the money! I am sure alot of you agree. NASCAR
will be a pitiful shadow of its former self in 10-20 years....encased in
a hermetically sealed corporate bubble.
Kent.



I want my NASCAR back
By Steve Trivett Sig


DAYTONA BEACH — The body attached to the most famous face in the
history of automobile racing leaned forward.
His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses — his head covered by the
famous cowboy hat. He rested his elbows on his knees.
"It's the end of an era," Richard Petty said.

Saturday's running of the Pepsi 400 marked the first time since 1965
that a man named Petty hasn't driven at the Daytona International
Speedway. The only reason one didn't drive that year was because of a
manufacturer boycott of the race due to a NASCAR rule.

There is another reason Richard Petty was right Saturday.
And it had to do with a rule — make that rules — too.
For some odd — and unknown reason — NASCAR has gone rules crazy.
There have always been rules — but it's gotten to the point of no
return.
Any resemblance between the NASCAR of yesterday and the NASCAR of today
is purely accidental.

I want my NASCAR back.

I want to go back to the days when there were two rules.
~Rule 1: You build a race car on the chassis of a showroom car you can
buy at the nearest Ford, Chevy, Oldsmobile, American Motors, Mercury,
Plymouth, Buick or Dodge dealer.
~Rule 2: You make it go as fast as you can.
End of rules.

Now the NASCAR rule book is so thick that it takes a man and two boys to
load it into a car hauler.

On top of all those rules, NASCAR is touting something they call the Car
of Tomorrow. One of those COTs didn't race Saturday at Daytona but there
were a bunch of them parked in the garage area.
But next year, the COT will race everywhere — in fact, it's the only
car that will race anywhere.

There was this pretty young lady standing next to the Dodge version of
the COT. It looked just like the Ford version or the Chevy version or
the Toyota version.
I asked this pretty young lady — it's one of the best parts of having
this job — where I could go buy my own COT.
She looked at me like I was nuts.

I am nuts.

Again, I want my NASCAR back.
I want to be able to walk through the garage area and actually find
somebody working a wrench.

Couldn't do that Saturday.
Found something else — and it wasn't pretty to a guy who once loved
the taste of air full of gasoline, the sound of screaming engines and
the smell of burning rubber.

While I never saw a wrench, there were laptop computers everywhere.

Once upon a time it was: "Hey Floyd, hand me that five-eights box end
and that hammer and I'll see if I can beat another 50 horsepower out of
this sucker."
Now it's: "Excuse me Biff, the computer printout shows that the baud
rate of the download indicates that maximum output to the injector is
not available under the current applications."


And that brings us back to the COT — the ultimate computer-generated,
even-powered, cookie-cutter looking, thing that is being foisted off on
us as a race car.

And I quote from the NASCAR 2007 Media Guide: "The Car of Tomorrow is a
culmination of a seven-year project undertaken at NASCAR's Research and
Development Center with safety being the No. 1 concern."

I could buy that if these weren't the same people who brought us
restrictor plates — a goofy-looking part that goes inside the engine
that cuts back on the flow of fuel which in turn makes cars go slower.
And that in turn bunches up the field — making it more unsafe. You
have lower-speed wrecks now, but they involve more cars because all of
them are going the same speed and are right on top of each other.

Plus, it's against everything that the founding fathers of stock-car
racing stood for.

They wanted to go fast and they didn't want rules that made them go
slower.

Face it. Having rules in car racing is something akin to having rules in
a bar fight.
"Sorry, J.D., I don't care if he hit you with a stool, you can't hit him
with that pool stick. It's against the rules."

Make no mistake; NASCAR is still full of flash, noise and beer drinking.
But it's losing a little every year.
And it won't be long until what it was is gone.

I already miss it.


Steve Trivett is a sportswriter for the Daily Sun. He may be reached at
sports@....

Whatever it takes......