Checkered Past

PGA drafting with NASCAR?

Likening it to "mixing white wine and Old Milwaukee, Porsches and Pontiacs, croutons and crackers," Steve Elling writes in The Orlando Sentinel that the PGA might be taking a page from NASCAR's book (the Brian France edition).

In an attempt to invigorate fall TV ratings, the Tour might adopt some kind of system like NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup points format.

You'll forgive Elling his out-of-date Pontiac reference. This is probably a guy who spends more time on Sundays lining up putts than studying race lineups.

"Next week in Atlanta," Elling writes, "PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem is expected to shed some light on what likely will represent the most provocative change in the circuit's lengthy history by copying a template from an organization located a few gear shifts down the interstate. "Hello, NASCAR." This just in: People cut back on their golf-watching when football season starts, too. As has been the case with NASCAR, Elling notes, the PGA plan would proceed "at the risk of marginalizing or eliminating some events that put the Tour on the map in the first place." Yep, that's the Brian France edition all right.

Breaking up isn't that hard to do, Marlin says

Think NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup has lost a little of its luster in this, it's sophomore season? You're not the only one. Sterling Marlin agrees with you.

“Maybe there’s not quite as much interest in this year," Marlin said in a conference call with the media on Tuesday. "You’ve got some big names that didn’t make the cut, so I don’t know if that took a little out of it or what.”

I vote for both. The big names missing the cut has to be a factor, but I'm not willing to overlook the "or what," particularly if "this whole Chase thing was a hair-brained idea to begin with" comes under that heading.

With four races remaining in the 2005 campaign, Marlin is looking ahead a little bit.

“We’ve got it nailed down," the veteran said. "I’ve got a deal. We’re waiting to get the sponsors nailed down. I think everybody knows I’m going to MB2 Motorsports. I’m looking forward to getting hooked up with those guys.”

“I’m probably going to run two more years and that’s probably going to be it," he said. "I’m going to go to a real competitive team and get going. I’ve talked to Jay (Frye) and them through the year, and I think they’ve got a good race team, good engines, good bodies and chassis.

"Me and Joe (Nemechek) have worked together before, and I think we’ll be a good team."

And the emotional side of it? Is parting such sweet sorrow "or what?"

“I’ve left teams before," Marlin said.

"I’ve been with Felix a long time, I guess since 1997 or ’98. He’s become a great friend. He’s a down-to-earth guy that would give you the shirt off his back. ...I’ve got mixed emotions, but I’m sure I’ll go see Felix on his boat when we get to Daytona in February.

"Me and Felix talk a couple of times a week. He said when I get out of racing he’s getting out, so we’ll see if that holds true.”

And for the immediate future, as in plans for later Tuesday?

“I’ve got a bulldozer here waiting on me to get on it," Marlin said. "I’ve got a lot I’m cleaning off and filling in.

"I love being outside. I can’t stand being inside.”

A si! for Mexico, a not yet for Canada

NASCAR will send its Busch Series back to Mexico City but won't being racing in Canada in 2006.

Busch teams will run for the second time in a points-paying race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez the weekend of March 5. Martin Truex Jr. dominated the Telcel Motorola 200 en route to the win last spring.

Promoters in Toronto and Montreal had courted NASCAR in hopes of landing a race next season. Monday's release of the Craftsman Truck Series slate - Canada's last hope after Nextel Cup and Busch Series schedules were released earlier - meant it was "wait til next year" again.

"NASCAR's interest in Canada hasn't waned by any means," Robbie Weiss, NASCAR's director of international racing, told the Toronto Sun. "Without putting a date to it, I would like to think that we would be in Canada in the near future."

Meanwhile, in Washington state, International Speedway Corp.'s plans for a new NASCAR track are prompting more political debate.

Some Washington lawmakers say public funding for the proposed $300 million track in Kitsap County may hinge on voters' response to Initiative 912 and repeal of the gas tax. Rejection would mean "there'll be no NASCAR track," state Sen. Bob Oketold the Kitsap Sun newspaper. "There'll be no funds from the Legislature. We won't even take (the issue) up."

ISC plans to ask lawmakers for a share of the state's sales tax revenue to fund about half of its track.

Meanwhile, the Skokomish Tribe has expressed interest in locating a new casino adjacent to the proposed ISC/NASCAR track.

The tribe already operates the Lucky Dog Casino and is seeking to increase betting limits and expand operating hours and gambling activities.

"We understand their goals," ISC Vice President Grant Lynch, a former head man at Talladega Superspeedway, said last week. "We think they'd be a good neighbor."

Here's an idea: If Washington state's taxpayers are leary of the repealing the gas tax and are similarly wary of covering so much of the track's costs, maybe the casino operators could be even better neighbors. They could float a loan to help ISC build its new track instead.

Schrader is running well; is he carrying some momentum into Atlanta?

Wasn't it cool seeing Ken Schrader running well on Sunday at Martinsville?

Schrader not only ran well, he led the Subway 500 for a little while. In the end, the popular driver finished 13th and made a good check.

The reason a lot of us like Schrader is that he'll run as often and at as many places as he can. Off weekend for NASCAR's Nextel Cup? Not for Schrader. He's got a couple of grarages slam-full of race cars and trucks and the equipment to haul them wherever they need to go, too.

The native of Fenton, Mo., has raced on virtually every type of track in just about every type of race car. This season, Schrader is shooting for more than 100 races again. So far, he's raced at 310 different tracks in these United States.

You get the idea Schrader really likes this racing thing and it would be easy enough to envy him if he weren't so well-respected. And he speaks his mind, which also makes it hard not to like him.   

As the Nextel Cup circus heads south to Hampton, Ga., this week for the Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500, here's a little of what Schrader has to say about the 1.54-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway.

"On a good lap, you've probably scared yourself coming off Turn 2 and again in the middle of 3 and 4. But that's what it takes."

"It's one of the raciest tracks that we go to," Schrader said. "It's multigrooved, with plenty of room to pass, and you just carry a ton of speed through the turns. I don't think there's any place we go -  and that includes Texas and now Charlotte, (which) are both close, but they still don't give you that sensation of speed through the turns.

"You're really going to get that sensation during qualifying. A driver can tell right away if the qualifying lap he's running is going to be good or not."

The veteran notes that NASCAR's still relatively new impound procedure takes a little of the sheen off qualifying, but drivers still try pretty hard to start as far toward the front as possible.

And how do things look for Schrader and the BAM Dodge team at the fast Georgia track?

"If you look at this race team, the mile-and-half tracks are probably the area where we've improved the most," he said. "I'm not lying; there was a time a couple years ago where we dreaded these tracks, but not anymore.

"We've been competitive all year at the mile-and-a-half tracks and we're using these last several tracks to take that next step for next season."

Dressing for success

The sports world is being rocked this week by the NBA's new dress code. And, wouldn't you know it, the tremors are being felt in NASCAR's part of that planet, too.

As in the real world, most actions touch off reactions somewhere. And NASCAR can't help it. Stock car racing has become a major player in sports with an avowed 75 million fans and a political landscape crowded with NASCAR dads.

In case you missed it these past few days, David Stern, commissioner of National Basketball Association, is now requiring players to wear "business casual" attire while involved in league activities, promotional appearances, traveling with their teams and so on. Sleeveless shirts, sunglasses indoors and copious amounts of bling are being banned beginning Nov. 1. T-shirts, shorts and headphones are out, too.

Obviously, the league hopes to improve its marketability to corporate America. And that's where the rub with NASCAR comes in.

As a direct result of the NBA initiative, NASCAR - which stands for National Association for Securing all the Cash All Right - is feeling pressure to tone down the marketability of its product to corporate America.

Drivers showing up for promotional appearances in starched shirts, posing with their wives and children at race tracks and calling ladies ma'am and gentlemen sir, even using the right utensils at dinner have given NASCAR an unfair advantage in the courtship of corporate America and the cornering of so much if its cash.

Seeing team members standing at attention in crisp, clean uniforms while the National Anthem plays and otherwise behaving like - gasp! - teammates isn't helping either.

The heavy involvement of the sport's biggest stars in some of the biggest charities, too, tips the scales unfairly NASCAR's way. And - even with hot vs. cold passes - NASCAR's stars remain the most accessible to the rank and file fan.

Alas, had the NASCAR brass acted more quickly to curtail these kinds of excesses, the NBA commissioner might not have felt the need to act. And executives of some of the other professional sports leagues wouldn't be nodding so fervently in agreement with Stern's edict.

Fairness and NASCAR 'coverage'

In the media center at Lowe's Motor speedway last week there were still some sore tails and tight jaws over the previous week's NASCAR sit-down with "selected" members of the motorsports media.

While I understand how frustrating the episode was for the media folks who weren't selected and who got beat on the stories, I'm still a bit puzzled by some of the reactions.

To sum it up, the NASCAR brass, including head man Brian France, made their picks from the crop of reporters and others in the media center on Friday at Kansas Speedway. Then they pulled that small group together and gave them some pretty good "scoops" on Saturday. One heapin' helpin' was France's exclamation that NASCAR might eventually cap the number of teams one owner is allowed to run in NASCAR's premier series, Nextel Cup.

The media representatives not invited to the private party howled then and some of them haven't stopped yet. And it surprises me to see the surprise. Have they not been working NASCAR races and events all this time? And have they not seen this movie before?

A side note and explanation for choosing "working" instead of "covering" here: More accurately, reporters in all forms of the media ply a trade that involves their writing occasional stories, doing sound bites, taping segments and so on. Cover implies a whole lot more.

The most conscientious beat writer ever assigned to City Hall or the White House, for instance, does the same, no more or no less. He or she goes to meetings, works sources, reads news releases and often does as much else as is humanly possible, then writes or otherwise reports about City Hall or the White House.

To say that any equally conscientious beat writer "covers" stock car racing is at least as far from the truth as the distance from a track's media center to the NASCAR hauler. Many of them do a helluva job, but they don't - by any stretch of the imagination, even their own - have the beat "covered."

Bookies cover bets. And reporters might cover a bet from time to time, too, but those who would tell you they have NASCAR covered are just as likely to break a story about restrictor plates at Lowe's Motor Speedway as they are to have anything else "covered." And that might present another problem when the weather turns a little cooler this fall.

I believe that "working" vs. "covering" definition fits the folks who were let in on NASCAR's little secrets at Kansas as much as it does those left in the dark of the media center that Saturday.

Let's try and remember that NASCAR, even with the word "National" as part of its name, is a private business. It is not a governmental agency and certainly not a benevolent one.

Governments in these United States are held somewhat more accountable, by law, than businesses when it comes to dealings with the media and the public. So NASCAR did nothing to run afoul of any law by snubbing some reporters and favoring others.

Businesses, and governments, do that all the time.

What we had in Kansas was, at most, an ethical lapse. It wasn't "fair." And why does that surprise anyone in that battle-hardened group that works the NASCAR beat?

It was great until the 'event' started

For me, the best part of Saturday's NASCAR Nextel Cup event at Lowe's Motor Speedway had little to do with the track surface. It involved some good people.

No, not Larry Hagman, although "J.R" did just fine as honorary race director, even if always liked him better in "I Dream of Jeanie."

The grand prize winners of ThatsRacin.com's Race Date contest were in town, hoping to see a race, of course, and we're sorry that didn't work out so well. It was kind of like inviting friends over to grill some steaks and finding nothing but ground beef in the fridge. Or having bragged about your football team for weeks, getting tickets and taking those friends, then watching the offense just mail it in and get shut out.

Brooke Pinkston and Ramona Thomas were here with their guests and we got to spend a little time together visiting the Sam Bass Gallery and getting them over to the Speedway Club for the evening's main event.

Sam Bass, Susan Russo and the rest of 'em were super and we've got some images of that visit to share with you soon. Scott Cooper and Susan Pare', among others at Lowe's Motor Speedway, likewise,  were the most gracious of hosts.

R.J. Perry, Michelle Putnam, Brian Wilder and the rest of the Premiere Sports Travel team also pitched in to help get our winners to town and put them up for a couple of nights. We couldn't have done it without them.

And, again, thanks to everyone who entered, 'cuz we dang sure couldn't have done it without you.

We'll keep you posted on promotions for next spring's event here in Charlotte and hope when it's all over but the shouting that we'll be able to call it a race instead of having to use one of those other words.

Maybe then we'll even have some positives to talk about after the green flag waves.

Are racers athletes? Ask the doctor, Sanjay Gupta

It doesn’t take long to learn which side of the old “are racers athletes?” debate Dr. Sanjay Gupta comes down on.

Gupta grew up in Detroit, where his parents worked in the auto industry. So the interest in racing came early.

What CNN’s senior medical correspondent learned in four trips deep into the heart of NASCAR country to report on safety and athletic performance in "NASCAR: Driven to Extremes" only confirmed what Gupta already knew: Yes, they are.

CNN’s most recent Dr. Sanjay Gupta special debuts Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern time.

Gupta did the Richard Petty Driving Experience and rode along with NBC/TNT analyst Wally Dallenbach to monitor and illustrate the physical demands of driving a stock car.

“My heart rate reached 130 or 140” while waiting for the rides to begin, giving some credence to the theory that the waiting is, indeed, the hardest part. Gupta calls it anticipatory response. But the stress doesn’t necessarily end when the waiting does.

"The incredible strain on the human body from the heat, g-forces and the mental focus is like nothing I've seen before," Gupta said. “I told Wally we’d name a disease after him if he didn’t kill me.” No word on what kind of disorder Dallenbach’s disease will label.

Gupta puts the spotlight on the time and energy drivers and team members spend on fitness training and came away with a larger admiration for over-the wall team pit crews. Safety, too, is a focus as the doctor spends some time with Jerry Nadeau, still recovering from injuries suffered at Richmond in 2003.

He applauds efforts that have brought SAFER barriers to tracks and those of NASCAR’s R&D Center, where the so-called “car of tomorrow” is taking shape.

“We asked drivers what they’ve learned that would be of help to everyday drivers, you and me, on the highway,” Gupta said in selling the “something for everyone” aspect of his latest special. “Even if we don’t drive 200 mph, there are things we can learn from them.”

I’d second that and believe Gupta’s efforts to underscore the demands of the sport – both physical and mental – could actually serve as a wake-up call to some of the wanna-be’s and think-they-already-are’s we encounter during the morning commute.

No, what I meant to say ...

I caught myself the other day - you know how we do sometimes, start talking and letting the words get about halfway out there before realizing we haven't thought this thing all the way through yet. I'd started to say I was concerned, maybe even worried, about the track surface at Lowe's Motor Speedway with this weeekend racing almost upon us.

But that would be wrong.

Crew chiefs and drivers, maybe even car owners to a point, are concerned.

The "levigation" problems that helped produce 20-something cautions during last May's Coca-Cola 600 don't appear to have been cured. Some cars got torn up during Nextel Cup testing at the track in recent weeks and some of the drivers involved were rather outspoken about the track conditions.

When Busch Series teams arrived at the 1.5-mile track a week later to test, far fewer incidents were reported and some drivers even stepped up to say the track was getting better. Never mind that Busch cars are well down on power and are slower compared with their Nextel Cup brethren.

Track boss H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler and his bunch have been working their tails off to get some new rubber down on the speedway surface, but aren't being helped by the rain we've been having in our part of North Cackalackee this month. The weather guy on TV last night noted that we've had cloudy, drippy weather for eight of the 11 days in October. And from the looks of this morning, that will be nine for 12 by the time the weather guy comes back on tonight.

That's extremely bad timing for Wheeler and his folks.

So I've got no business saying I'm concerned or worried about what the track will do when the racing starts this weekend at our home - and favorite - track. What I probably meant to say was that I hope the track isn't the story this time. A great race or two would make for much better reading.

Concern about it? That's for the teams.

And worry? That would be Wheeler's department.

How much fun can one guy have?

I've mentioned before that this job can be fun sometimes. Make no mistake, it's also a lot like work more often than not, but it beats the heck out of most of the gigs I've had.

My first three months here, after 15 or so years of doing night work for daily newspapers, I always felt like looking over my shoulder. The shock of suddenly finding myself working days for the most part, concentrating on racing - few subjects have ever been more dear to my heart - just felt too much like stealing. Or at least it did at first, compared with night after night of politics (inside and outside the building), crime news, disaster coverage and political correctness (inside and outside the building).

On this job, I've been able to get inside the ropes, into some of the garages and top shops in the sport and meet some pretty cool people. I've talked with some of the sport's stars and wanna-be stars and I've gotten into some pretty cool cars.

I even got to do a ride-along with Kurt Busch before he'd ever won a thing at NASCAR's top level. But that one was close. The Coca-Cola people arranged the ride at Atlanta Motor Speedway on a cloudy Thursday, only days before Busch broke through to score his first Cup victory.

Among others, I've gotten to talk with Richard Petty and am here to tell you: Yes, The King can do that amazing and time-consuming freehand thing that eventually becomes his signature while fully participating in an actual  conversation with you. And he makes it looks easy, too.

That's only part of why he's The King, I suppose.

But over the past week, I might've pegged the fun meter again, at least for me, at ThatsRacin.com. I've gotten to phone the grand prize winners of our Race Date contest, tell them they've won and share a little bit in their excitement. Like I told Lee Montgomery, This must  be what Santa Claus feels like every year.

I wish we had a budget that would have allowed everyone who entered to win. That would have been a lot of calls, though, and maybe too much fun for me.

We're putting together some trips to Charlotte for the weekend of the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. There will be a couple of nights at an uptown hotel, race day dinner at the track's Speedway Club, a chance to meet NASCAR artist Sam Bass, pit tours and great seats for the race and more

I caught Ramona Thomas on her cell at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. "You entered our contest," I began. "Are you still interested in coming to the race, on us?"

She assured me that she was, but only after getting a little more comfortable with the idea that I wasn't kidding her. Thomas is an Air Force wife with young children. Same with her next-door neighbor, Crystal Brown. Both of their husbands are preparing for duty in the coming months "in the 'sandbox,' as we call it," Thomas said, which means Iraq or Afghanistan.

They'll deal with that the way American service families do, which is to say admirably. Of course, you'd imagine Thomas would be eager to share the good fortune with her military man, but you'd be wrong.

She and her neighbor will be making the race weekend trip to Charlotte.

"We're NASCAR nuts," Thomas said, running down the list of tracks they've visited and naming the ones she wants to add to it. Mark Martin is one of her favorite drivers, for a lot of reasons and not just because they both hail from Arkansas.

I wanted to try the same intro with Brooke Pinkston, our other winner, but she wasn't at home when I called. I'm afraid the message I left pretty much muted the surprise factor, which isn't to say she didn't sound excited and delighted just the same.

Pinkston is a first-year, first-grade teacher in need a break from the classroom. (But wait, isn't it only October?) And NASCAR will work just about right for her. She'll be bringing along friend Ashley Lane.

I look forward to meeting these good folks and want to say how much we appreciate everyone taking the time to enter. It's been a pleasure, too, working with the businesses that are making this thing possible for our winners.

Sam Bass and the rest of them at the Sam Bass Gallery have been great to work with. Same with those at Premiere Sports Travel who are helping get our winners to town, appropriately lodged and to the track on time.

And the people at the Speedway Club at Lowe's Motor Speedway? Nothing short of super.

I've seen the demographics and heard the TV guys comment on the allure stock racing holds for growing legions of female fans. And I never doubted it, but still found myself wondering why our winners had all turned out to be women. Then I looked back through the entries - two more times - and realized seven of every 10 of the e-mails had come from women.

So guys, if you haven't already, make a little more room in those grandstands or in front of those TVs. And you might wanna watch that language a little more, too.