The Frontstretch: The Championship Battle Of Who Could Care Less by Thomas Bowles -- Sunday November 4, 2007

Whatever! Just as soon as next season gets here and Jr. and Gordon hit the track it will be like HULK HOGAN -vs ANDRE THE GIANT wrestling for VINCE MCMAHON and no one will care who’s in charge of the two.

The indifference can also be chalked up to the multiple team syndrome. Whichever one of them wins, it’s a Hendrick team. What’s the drama there? Since they exchange virtually every bit of information, does it really matter which one of them wins the champeenship?

For me, several things are contributing to my ‘Who cares attitude.’
1) As an old time NASCAR fan, I don’t like a lot of the changes that Brian ‘I need tested for drug use’ France has brought to the New NA$CAR: The COT ‘Touring Car’,The top 35 lock in, Variable start times, too many 1.5 mile cookie cutter tracks, Actors driving the pace car, etc, etc, etc.
2) It’s an all Hendrick/Chevy chase. I own Dodges, when I raced locally, I raced Dodges, and none are in contention.
3) I got burned out on ‘All Jr. All the time’
4) ESPN needs to go watch ESPN classic and see how they USED to cover a race. Suzy Kolber needs to go back to NFL coverage.
5) I don’t care what the points are during the race. it only matters when the race is over. The only race that this might be interesting during would be the last one.

And another thing burned me, a Ford fan, up was kennesth saying on the radio would he be better off finishing second. Won’t be rooting for a quitter anymore. Actually I don’t much care about NASCRAP anymore!!

I understood Matt’s comment to question wrecking trying to win or ease up and finish second. Watching how loose he was as Jimmy passed him, I don’t think he let up until Jimmy got by…

If I had been listening to the race on the radio and not watching the first half, I would have thought that JG was the only car on the track!!!

All of the above posts are valid. Dominance by multi-car teams with huge budgets, poor race coverage (and not just by ESPN but all three networks), contrived excitement at the expense of real racing, and absolutely no respect for tradition has helped me learn to enjoy the value of a nice Sunday afternoon nap.

In my opinion, we need more Darlingtons and less Californias. We need more single & 2-car teams and less big-budget super-teams. We need more of Alan Bestwick and less of Rusty Wallace and Darrel Waltrip. Most of all, though, we need more sport and less hype.

Not sure the “racing” at the end was all that good. Or even what it appeared to be!

When all was said and done, I don’t think Jimmie was jeopordizing anything by racing “hard”, but comfortable, for the lead! Only two (2) cars involved, and should there be a spin or such $ASCAR would throw an immediate caution flag and go back to the previous scoring loop placing the 48 car either 1st or 2nd once again!

So yah, on the surface it was ‘exciting”, but in the long run it was just a show!

For whatever reason fans didn’t watch the Texas race, they missed out on a great shootout between two of the best, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth. They may be too vanilla for some, but out on the track Sunday they raced hard and clean, two champions out for the win. I don’t think Matt gave up; he was just outraced by Jimmie. Fans who saw it were treated to a great show!

J-Go and J-Jo didn’t create the boredom – NASCAR did. Fines for fighting, fines for rough driving, fines for this and fines for that. NASCAR wants everyone to be equal, which opened the floodgates for mass exodus. Also, I agree, next year will be worse.

Makes me wonder if the boring rivalry between the 24 and 48 would be the same if ya changed them to the 17 and the 99.

When you have drivers that are so similar driving identical cars owned and managed by the same team, who cares who wins. I’ve noticed that Jr. is adjusting his image and by next year, we’ll have three very similar drivers in identical cars managed by the same team and nobody will care who wins.

Hendrick wins in part by having everything standardized with the only real difference being the number and the sponsor on the car.

WHO CARES?

questions —rants —happy sad don’t frett you ain’t seen nothing yet because here comes fomula nascar sprint champ next year !!! brian has the hammer and theres only one nail missing in nascars coffin
the team owners like cactus jack ain’t selling half their teams because there stupid, don’t you see they’ve been here a long time and they see their ain’t no future its gonna be a couple big money teams running the show very soon. Bruton smiths a smart guy he’s got money ,tracks and the smarts to take stock car racing away from nascar when he and humppy get ready to drop the bomb.

If NA$CAR wants to return to being NASCAR, they need to hire me as the Grand Imperial Poobah of stock car racing. Here’s my plan:

1) Stock sheet metal – Win on Sunday, the fan can buy it on Monday. The only allowable changes are a front blade spoiler and a 6” rear deck blade spoiler.
2) Go fast or go home. The 43 fastest cars race. if you wreck in qualifying, see you next week. If you fail tech after qualifying, 44th fast starts
3) Points count for the whole season, no playoff. 5 Bonus points for a pole, 10 for winning, 7 for leading the most laps, 5 for leading a lap, and 5 if the pole sitter volunteers to start 43rd and wins.
4) If you win and fail tech, DQ. no points, no check, and you have to pose for a pic with Rosie O’donnel!
5) No swapping of owners’ points (but then again, #2 takes care of that….but, just in case ).
6 Any new tracks that want a race have to be 3/4 mile or less, and have to have good reasonably priced hotdogs and REAL french fries.

If you want more of my plan….it’ll cost you!

Speaking of disinterest…I cleaned out my garage yesterday. At 5pm PST I called a friend to see if 48 had won again. I then went over and shut the VCR off, hit rewind and waited to take the tape out, never even turning on the TV. I’ve been a diehard fan since 92’and until last year attended at least 6 races year. Right now, I could care less if Na$car ever fills all the seats again. They finally pushed it over the edge.

All of this is why I watch the truck series. I hardly watch the cup series anymore.

Been a racin’ fan since ’79 and the truck series reminds me of some of the great yrs of cup.

Also, the truck racin’ doesn’t take up 2/3rds of the day. There’s more action in 10 laps by the truckers than in 100 laps by the cupers.

I remember back in the late 90’s, when guys like Roush were expanding to big mult-car teams, I was writing into “The Winston Cup Scene” on the topic of this being the turning point in the sport and damn if it didn’t come true. NASCAR in my opinion shot themselves in the foot by allowing multi-car teams to happen as all its done is kill the smaller teams which for all intensive purposes are spending a boatload of money as well to run 25th. Two cars should’ve been the limit if even that. Listening to the begining of the race in Texas you would’ve thought that not only was Jr. in the chase but he had a shot at taking the title. The over-coverage of Jr. is just getting old..and I actually like the guy..I can only imagine that next year will be twice as bad as now will have to hear minute-by-minute updates as how Jr. is doing with his new team. Personally I’m starting to think that NASCAR is hanging its hat on Jr. to help lift their recent drops in ratings and popularity. Where’s Dick Trickle when you need him…

This chase scenario with JJ and JG has played out as the worst one yet, unless you are one of their diehard fans. NASCAR has effectively ruined the miracle growth enjoyed by the sport in 90’s with bad decision making by NASCAR upper management and letting teams have more than 3 cars. Watch NASCAR degrade to a second tier sport just like the NHL did. Soon all the events will be on Speedvision where no one watches them or worse on OLN like hockey! I am curious to see where the ARCA series goes since all the real NASCAR chassis will be there and the growth of the sport is being led by guys like Andy Hillenburg bringing back cornerstone NASCAR Tracks and innovative ideas like the 50 car field.

Looks like everyone was right all along . Jimmie Johnson has been as fast or faster than Gordon at almost every race for two years . He is the only driver at Hendrick to ever have an equal car to Gordon . So it looks like it was more the car , and less Gordon , just as we thought .

I have to agree with Mike. I was at the Truck Race on Friday night and it was what NASCAR racing was about 15 years ago when it was really great and King Brian was still in diapers.

I would much rather watch an entire truck race that 30 minutes of a Cup Race. The last few laps of Friday night’s race held more action than the entire Cup race on Sunday afternoon.

Ron, you raise a good point..JJ and JG are obviously top-notch drivers with a ton of talent and even_they don’t make the “Chase” exciting. As it stands Chase or no Chase having two drivers being 30 points apart for the title would have you, as a race car fan, on the edge of your seat yet it_doesn’t appear that this is the case. It can’t just be the Chase itself that causes this..what got us to this point? (I agree too that the Truck races are alot more fun to watch..well at least till they roll out the truck-of-tomorrow..;-))

Chris2- that’s the best, most honest commentary Iv’e ever read on this site!

Nascar 2007 = YAWN

I am dumbfounded by the way this year has played out. If you are not a Hendrick fan, then you have been left out in the cold. I quit watching the races for two reasons. 1 is the same drivers winning over and over again.
2 is how many times can the announcers call out Jimmie and Jeff’s name during a race? The focus of the race should be on all 43 drivers, not just a select few. Bring back the old racing where it was all about that week’s race and not so much about the “cup”!

I’ve followed this sport since i stumbled on it back in the mid 1960’s on ABC’S Wide World of Sports when you would get 25 minutes of a race ran months before at Daytona, Charlotte or Darlington and thought this was the greatest think known to mankind. Living in Northeast Pa. this sport was almost unheard of back then. I was a diehard fan till these last few years. Now i can almost care less. I will catch bits of a race while doing something else, unlike when i was stuck to the tv, not evening getting up for a trip to the can. I was and still am a Mopar fan, when Chrysler left in the late 70’s i was a Ford fan. I am still a Mopar guy, if Dodge can’t win then let it be a Ford. What went wrong with this sport.
1. Brain France.
2. John Darby.
3. Total rule inconsistency.
4. Toyota.
5. Darrell Waltrip as an announcer.
When Dodge submitted there Charger, Nascar let them go thru, then lopped the spoiler back down. Nascar could now care less if Dodge is there. If it wasn’t for Jack Roush, Ford wouldn’t even be racing. Nascar only slightly cares if Ford is there. I cannot stand to here endless hype about how great Rick Hendrick is. I am sick of hearing over and over about Harvick, Stewart, Gordon, Johnson. This sport will be worse next year as Darrell Waltrip goes on and on about Chevy And Toyota. When Nascar took a race from Darlington this sport went to hell. It is now trying to put races where nobody wants them. This sport was based in the southeast on moonshiners and now that stupid idiot Brain France wants to erase all that instead of being proud of the heritage. This sport was built around hard working blue-collar people and now all it wants to appeal to is yuppies and mtv generation hip-hop punks. This sport sold it’s soul. I don’t use my nascar cups anymore, wear my nascar shirts anymore or have nascar tags on the cars anymore. I was an avid fan for 40 years, if the season didn’t start next year i could almost care less. Maybe nascar can’t wait to see Chevy’s and Toyota’s running in a parade all next year, they can keep it. One last thing, i would like to punch the next announcer in the mouth when they refer to Charlotte as the house jimmy johnson built. That is an absolute insult to all the drivers that race there along with the ones who died there, long before jimmy johnson was gleam in his old man’s mind.

It seems to me that many of you are missing the point. If you don’t like the championship/chase, then just watch each race as an individual event.
Take the numbers off the cars and tell me that the last 60 laps of Texas were not some of the best racing on the planet. Who cares about the driver/team, just enjoy the racing. I was at the race and let me tell you, that was an unbelievable finish regardless who the driver/teams were.

How can you not pay attention to the campionship? the announcers won’t let you and half of the time the only way you can see where other drivers are on the track is to watch the ticker at the top of the screen. All of the attention of the broadcast was placed on Jimmie and Jeff (mostly).Even when Jeff was a lap down, he got more coverage than the other drivers who were even on the lead lap.