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March 10, 2007
(I can't get no) Satisfaction
By DAVID GREEN
Forty-two years after the release of The Rolling Stones' most iconic tune, Mick Jagger's lament seems to be more apropos than ever. "Satisfaction"? You'll find it in the dictionary, but not in too many other places.
Obviously Bruton Smith wasn't satisfied with his Las Vegas Motor Speedway, so he rebuilt it. Now, not too many drivers seem to be satisfied with the newly rebuilt track.
Goodyear wasn't satisfied with the results of pre-season testing at the new LVMS, so it modified its tires. Now, not too many competitors seem to be satisfied with the tires and how they (don't) perform on the newly rebuilt track.
Declining popularity of NASCAR racing, as evidenced by ticket sales and television ratings, would seem to suggest that fans are less than satisfied with the product NASCAR has been delivering.
And, of course, there is the Car of Tomorrow.
But it isn't only in the world of stock car racing that this trend is apparent. In the expanded motorsports universe, Toyota has its own woes in NASCAR and has been frustrated in its Formula One endeavors, but think of poor Honda.
The new Honda F1 entries will feature a color scheme (they call it "livery" in the grand prix world) supposed to look like the Earth as photographed from space. Rather than touting a conventional corporate sponsor and its logo, the cars are supposed to represent a recognition of the importance of environmental responsibility.
Honda, one of the frontrunners among global carmakers when it comes to alternative power systems for automobiles, is trying to promote out-of-the-box thinking in racing and their stated desire is to use the cutting-edge technology of F1 to improve transportation.
No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. In response to their efforts, Honda was slammed by the enviro-radicals Friends of the Earth, whose spin doctors called Honda hypocritical and dismissed motorsport as the most environmentally unfriendly activity on the planet.
Outside the racing arena, there's Super Bowl champion coach Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts, taking heat from gay rights groups for his selection as recipient of a "Friend of the Family" award to be presented by the conservative group Focus on the Family.
Dungy is, by every account, a fine example of a man in every other aspect of his life. Yet he is being criticized for his own lifestyle and personal ethics decisions by a segment of the population that, in other matters, seems to be all in favor of "choice."
In every walk of life, the complainers are taking an inordinate share of the mass-media pie, folks. The world of advertising, where it was once considered bad manners to bad-mouth a competitor except in a vague reference to "Brand X," has become nasty and unrestrained. So-called "news" reporting is more slanted than the new Las Vegas banking. Political discourse is even nastier than in the days when gentlemen legislators resorted to dueling pistols to settle their differences.
The antics of professional wrestlers sometimes seem to offer our best example of civil behavior.
The only winner, it would seem, might be Mark Young, who is blessed with an infinite number of selections to whom he can shout, "Just shut up!" in his TR.com blog.
It's all too true -- the squeaking wheels get the grease. Sometimes it makes you wish they'd get "greased," all right, but in the parlance of Vietnam-era soldiers, not in a friction-reducing sense.
I'm sure there's a peacenik organization ready to respond indignantly to that suggestion. Rage away, peace lovers. It's not in vogue, you know, to be satisfied with anything these days.
March 10, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
I'd rather have a full field of unhappy drivers than 43 perfectly content ones. Makes for better racing/more drama.
Posted by: Jim | Mar 10, 2007 11:31:47 AM
On Honda's F1 program and its Earth color schemes - why does the environment so need protection? People forget that the environment is far sturdier than the Mainstream Media and the ecofascists want to portray it. People also forget that the best form of environmentalism is not ecofascism, but the market.
On Tony Dungy - why does anyone listen to these gay "rights" groups? Gay rights groups have no standing to lecture anyone because they are in the business of promoting perversion.
The increase in the ugliness of controversies is sympomatic of the coarsening of the mainstream media and its complete lack of accuracy and objectivity - people have been lied to by the MSM for so long that they are not taking it anymore.
The analogy with NASCAR is apt because NASCAR has not done its job for a long time - if it had then we would not have a multicar monster, the per-race average number of lead changes would be over 40, the per-season average number of winning teams (not drivers, teams) would be over a dozen, and costs would be far lower than they presently are.
Posted by: Mike Daly | Mar 10, 2007 12:04:51 PM
David,
Protestors always pick the most news visible target. And, the people covering the news really aren't trying actively to dissuade them. Nevermind that, on a typical day, gridlocked highways spout more tons of fossil fuels into the air than a full NASCAR season. Motorsports are seen as an easy target. If NASCAR could keep more people watching on TV, they could counter with a net fuel savings ad. Because they were off the road saving fuel and the environment.
Posted by: Keith | Mar 10, 2007 3:44:48 PM
"Gay rights groups have no standing to lecture anyone because they are in the business of promoting perversion."
This single statement is so ignorant it renders the rest of your post void. The sooner NASCAR gets rid of the redneck factor, the sooner it will achieve true legitimacy.
Posted by: Tjames | Mar 10, 2007 6:46:51 PM
There ain't nobody gettin' satisfaction out of them tires in Las Vegas.
Posted by: Keith | Mar 10, 2007 9:11:20 PM
Jim: With all due respect, fussing and fighting has nothing whatsoever to do with drama. You have that confused with melodrama. You can always watch soap operas for that. To me, it's a whole lot more enjoyable to watch drivers fight it out and then, when the checkered flag has waved, shake hands (like Jeff Burton and Kyle Busch earlier today) than to see some prima donna "go after" somebody he believes has wronged him, like the ridiculous Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth deal at Bristol. Such altercations are going to occur, but I sure don't want a steady diet of them.
Mike Daly: It's people such as you who make me cringe even more than (well -- at least as much as) the loony Al Gore or the despicable Michael Moore. It is true that the doomsayers have been predicting that we would deplete all our fossil fuels ever since we dug the first chunk of coal out of the ground, and that they have been so patently wrong it is absurd. But it's even more stupid to blindly assume that there's no need for us to be vigilant about our environment. The ever-growing population makes that an issue, whether all those people are burning fossil fuels in their vehicles or not. I'm a free-market economy advocate, but that doesn't mean I don't want any kind of regulatory oversight. I'm not blind to the fact that the pursuit of profit has led to a variety of evils. Have you done any research, by the way, into the development of leaded gasoline in the 1920s? How about enviro-disasters such as Times Beach, Mo., or the Exxon Valdez? The market doesn't come off looking so squeaky clean in those and other instances, and the markets didn't significantly reduce air pollution or clean up garbage dumps around this country over the past 40 years or so.
During the first half-century of the automobile, racing was the proving ground that provided much of the improvement and innovation for passenger cars. This is an opportunity for another cycle of racing-developed innovation, and I for one applaud Honda's endeavor and the F1 initiative overall. As for Friends of the Earth's condemnation, it just proves how off-the-wall radical and unreasonable these people are.
Keith is absolutely right about the targets of publicity-seeking protestors. Bill France Sr. led the lobbying effort to convince U.S. legislators that auto racing events did not require any greater fuel consumption than a weekend of NFL games, with half the teams jetting to away-from-home stadiums, and helped save the sport from government-imposed restrictions during the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s. Guess we'll have to fight that war all over again. I hope Brian has his grandfather's notes.
Tjames: Explain to me exactly how your denigration of the segment of the population that might be classified as "rednecks" is substantially different from Mike Daly's homophobia, and I'll be ready to consider your criticism. Not until then, though.
I have to admit, though -- sometimes Mr. Daly provides the best test of the wisdom of the First Amendment since Larry Flynt.
Posted by: David Green | Mar 10, 2007 11:33:44 PM
Hey David,
You buy the groceries & cook the meal.
They send it back to the kitchen, saying it's not done well enough.
Then you put it back on the grill, spit on it and cut out the grissel.
Now that's, well done!
Posted by: Larry | Mar 11, 2007 1:20:26 AM
David, the final laps of today's BGN race were exactly what I was thinking of when I used the word "drama". There were good stretches of green flag racing today and I certainly hope that everyone learned something for Sunday, nobody likes to see wrecks.
But I stand by my thought that happy drivers = boring racing. Example...all drivers sing praises of Michigan, to me it's a boring show. Same thing with Phoenix and California. Drivers generally hate Bristol and I enjoy it.
Posted by: Jim | Mar 11, 2007 3:09:38 AM
David--
As far as the "environmental awareness"...I remember a couple of years ago when Casey Mears' Target car was painted a very effeminate pink in the name of breast cancer awareness. And that was all the announcers told us, no foundtion name to send money to, no suggestions on what we could do, etc. Just a pink car to make me "aware" of it. What good does that do? It's like all of the people who wear yellow ribbons for AIDS victims. I'm sure they're sincere, but how does that help?
If anything the environmental groups should be upset about the fact that painting a car in the colors of the earth doesn't help anything.
Good post David.
Posted by: Kurt Smith | Mar 11, 2007 11:00:36 AM
How in the hell did we go from racing to talking about homosexuality? Mike Daly, you don't have to agree what they say, but they do have a right to speak. You ever heard of the First Amendment? By the way, you lecture people on these blogs almost daily for not agreeing with you. I look forward to your 7 paragraph response.
Posted by: joe | Mar 11, 2007 11:21:27 AM
Wow! Interesting post and repsonses. Hear, hear David! Thoughtful, well written response(s). To often on these posts they are reduced to name calling, playground level antics. It's nice to see some thoughtful responses for a change. By the way, after reading all of the posts, by the time I got to the bottom I couldn't remember what the original blog was about! Must have been good. :)
Posted by: canucken | Mar 11, 2007 11:49:02 AM
Larry: Thanks, man.
Jim: I see your point. Darlington would be a good example, I think, of a track that often features good, entertaining competition, but which many drivers find frustrating. However, there are exceptions that make this something less than an absolute cause-effect connection. Michigan, for example, used to feature some of the best multi-groove racing on the circuit. The drivers liked it then, too. The track has not changed, but aero, suspension and tire technology has ratcheted speeds beyond the point where there is a legitimate multi-groove line -- hence, the unexciting racing (although it's usually a lot better at Michigan than at Fontana). Ditto for Bristol, where, in the days of bias-ply tires, drivers could race three abreast all day long. Now, you get shuffled (or bumped) off the yellow line, and you're history. As a spectator, I don't find that entertaining; I find it frustrating.
As a competitor, I think you are wary of tracks where chaos is likely if not inevitable, not merely those tracks that are challenging in some way. Drivers who have won regularly at Darlington, for example (Pearson, Earnhardt, Yarborough, Allison), never complained about having to race there. Kyle Petty, on the other hand, once suggested that ISC fill up the track with water and hold bass-fishing tournaments there instead of stock car races.
I also offer Richmond as an example of a track everybody likes, and which features immensely entertaining, multi-groove racing action for stock cars. RIR is among the best tracks on the circuit right now, if not the best, in my opinion.
All this explains why I'm mystified that anybody thinks making Las Vegas about 20 mph faster than it used to be is going to make competition better. Even if we resolve the traction problems, the groove is going to be narrower, guys, not wider.
Or, so it says here. Unlike some of us who utilize this forum, I recognize the possibility that I could be entirely wrong.
Kurt: Spot-on observation, dude. Symbolism is meaningless to those who don't get the symbol. If you're a poet or songwriter who's trying to make people think, that's one thing; if you're trying to market something, for commercial or charitable purposes, you're better off to be a little -- no, make that a lot -- less subtle with your message. However, Honda is just now introducing this effort, and in the launch of the new car, CEO Nick Fry went to great lengths to explain Honda's intention to work to develop alternative systems that are more environmentally friendly than fossil-fueled internal combustion engines. That pledge ought to have some credibility, given Honda's proactive environmental stance in its passenger car program. If the environazis want more action right now, just add "impatience" to their list of character flaws.
Joe: Don't forget -- unlike mere mortals, Supermike is always right, because he says he is. End of discussion. (Gosh -- I hope he hasn't patented that phrase.)
Canucken: Thanks for the compliment. I have enjoyed this debate myself.
Posted by: David Green | Mar 11, 2007 12:21:40 PM
Thanks for the name drop David!!
Does anyone think back to 1998 when Atlanta was reconfigured? It was too fast, and everyone was complaining. But next week we roll in there and will see great racing.
Chicagoland was the same was at first. Nobody liked it and now the racing is decent.
People hate change......the change at Vegas will turn out to be a good one.
Nice post Mr. Green
Posted by: Mark | Mar 11, 2007 1:28:57 PM
That post was pretty much the biggest stretch i've ever seen in my life, i think this covers every one of the 'logical fallacies'
Posted by: Joe | Mar 12, 2007 4:59:08 AM
David, once again you made me stop and think about everything you mentioned. I had no clue about Honda's paint scheme, but will keep a close eye for them this weekend. (Can you believe the first Formula 1 race of the season is finally here!)
I don't believe anyone was happy with the progressive banking at Homestead, but it improved racing there 100%. That is when the competitors really do "race" and aren't just counting the points during the last race of the season.
Don't forget the smaller fuel cell at Charlotte, and this past weekend. Everyone was calculating how many pit stops each team would HAVE to make. But I remember when they had "fuel cells" that were bigger than allowed by NASCAR (i.e., Smokey Yunick), but the teams stopped every time they had an opportunity for tires and fuel.
Guess they weren't happy with the fact that they would HAVE to stop, they'd rather have the option. But it all worked out in the long run.
I haven't heard anything from Tony Stweart re: LVMS since the race was over. Wonder how he feels about the place now after two top 10 finishes.
As always, well done David!
Posted by: Shirley | Mar 12, 2007 2:18:18 PM
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