Jo's Cafe

The changes in NASCAR of the last years have just about put me off from even bothering to stay awake for the first 3 laps*.   A lot of changes are for safety – and I can get behind them – but lately things just seem ‘off’.

Tony Stewart made a comment out loud that we in this family have been making for couple years now.  We could predict a wreck and yellow flag on the third lap whenever a certain driver was in the lead, or about to take the lead.

Then they changed the car – ugly little bugger isn’t it?

Now more cheating is found.  There has been cheating in racing since Junior Johnson made the first charge to the finish line with a trunk full of moonshine.   A season doesn’t go by without a crew chief or team member getting fined or suspended for something that was “wrong” about a race car.   But it still happens.

Now NASCAR is considering not only fining and suspending a crew member, but the driver too.  Sure, there are times the driver loses points for an infraction, but suspended?  Could happen.

I say let it happen.  You can’t tell me that a driver doesn’t know what is going on in the pit or garage.  Like a good pilot that should do a pre-flight check and know exactly what shape his plane is in, a good driver does the same.  They know – don’t let them try and pansey their way out of either.

But before they suspend a driver for what their crew does, its time NASCAR suspend itself.  Until it stops treating one or two drivers better than the others (back to Tony Stewart’s statement), the whole organization is cheating. 

*About the 3 lap nap rule — usually in this house, three laps in and we are both asleep – waking just as the yellow flag is thrown at the last three laps of the race so Jeff Gordon can win.

NASCAR