Checkered Past

Hey, that's branding, partner

On the surface, NASCAR appears to be taking an odd position on "branding" for its proposed hall of fame in Charlotte. Seldom, if ever, in the history of the company has an opportunity to sell a sponsorship been bypassed. Nonetheless, the NASCAR brass says naming rights for the hall won't be offered.

But if you get branding and don't automatically associate it with some of the work being done on a cattle ranch, it makes a certain amount of sense.

NASCAR wants its name to be first and foremost on this one and, as a taxpaying investor in the project, I can understand that perfectly. Besides, corporations come and go and names change all the time (please see Nextel-Sprint deal and the Sprint name's growing presence at the tracks and in other advertising for NASCAR's top series). And a new name on the hall every few years would further detract from the NASCAR branding strategy.

Among other thoughts as we get ready for a fast weekend at Atlanta:

There's currently a lot of discussion and blogging going on about Buschwhacking and, bottom lines, I'm still split.

If I'm buying a ticket or sitting down to watch a race on Saturday, or the occasional Friday night, I want to see the Nextel Cup stars. Same as it ever was with George Harrison's all-star fund-raising gigs for the Prince's Trust, the National Trust and so on back in the day. If all of the performers had been on par with the guy from Electric Light Orchestra, who would've cared, much less bought the albums and supported Harrison's causes?

No, we watched and listened because Harrison was joined by his former husband-in-law Eric Clapton, one or two of his former band mates and other such stars from rock 'n' roll's firmament.

On the other hand, and even if one washes the other: You don't see Formula One's stars racing before the main event. That's a developmental series in which drivers race hard to try and catch the eyes of the F1 bosses and work their way up to those salaries that are roughly equal to some nations' GNP. Or some nations' debt. Your choice there.

NASCAR will be watching closely at Atlanta this weekend and at Lowe's Motor Speedway during tire testing later this month, now that the new surface is almost down at the track near Charlotte. The speeds at both tracks are a concern and, aside from the actual danger involved, there's a growing chorus of people in the sport who believe that slowing things down would make for better competition.

So restrictor plates aren't out of the question. Not that they'll be as restrictive as those used at Daytona and Talladega. And aero fixes are also a consideration.

But you have to wonder if NASCAR's enforcers might not be a little quicker to whip the plates out at one of these tracks owned by Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. track than at one of those in the ISC portfolio. ISC, of course, being International Speedway Corp., the publicly traded sister company to the France family's privately held NASCAR.

That having been said, we all have to admit that something needs to be done to improve the competition at some tracks. Up until the last third of the final lap, last weekend's race at Vegas probably paled in comparison to the racing most of us see coming and going to work every day.

And, beside even that having been said, how scary is Las Vegas Motor Speedway going to be with new, steeper banking?

I think it might've been Kyle Petty who once likened racing at the half-mile Bristol track to flying a jet in a gym. Vegas sounds like it might be Bristol on Barry Bonds' steroid regimen.

Motorsports writer David Poole enters the blogosphere

EDITOR'S NOTE: We're doing that old piggy-back thing again, this time rolling out our first blog from David Poole of The Charlotte Observer. Many of you know David's work from ThatsRacin.com and the newspapers he's affiliated with. We'll get him squared away in his own blog space soon. There's no doubt here that you'll enjoy the chance to read and comment on his blogs.

By David Poole

OK, we'll start this blog thing off with a confession.

I never actually have been sure what the difference is supposed to be between a blog and a story or a column or a notebook I might write for the Charlotte Observer or thatsracin.com.

People ask me all the time what the "scoop" is on something, and that makes me laugh. I promise you, as soon as I find out something and am able to convince myself that it's really what's happening or what's likely to happen, it goes into the paper or onto the web. That's the nature of the news business these days, this whole "24 hour news cycle" idea.

Does anybody else remember almanacs? I used to buy one of those things every year because about once every couple of weeks I'd want to know some obscure fact or check the spelling of some celebrity's name and that was about the quickest way to get at that.

These days, the Internet has made that process obsolete. The other day, I wanted to compare Ryan Newman to Macgyver for the way he helped knock down a fire at a restaurant in Lenoir, N.C., last week.

Had it not been for the Internet, I am not at all sure how I could have found out it wasn't "McGyver," which would have been my first guess.

But I digress. (Get used to that, because I have a feeling that this blog is going to feature a lot of that.)

Anyway, it seems to me that the best purpose of this space would be to turn it into a place where we can have conversations about what's going on in the sport that you might want to ask specific questions about - or just to sound off on.

One of the reasons I like having a column is that I get to share my opinions about NASCAR through that. So we'll use this as a place where you can talk back about what I've said or written and I'll either try to defend myself or, at least once in a while, admit I might be wrong.

Hey, it could happen.