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Dark Horse Picks For 2009

By Mark Young

With Speed Weeks nearly upon us I thought I would write a couple of posts to get some feedback from the rest of you in Blog Land.  Each year there are always drivers and teams that have a break out season proclaiming their mark upon the sport.  Even if it is for a few races during the long season it is great to see the dark horse break up the monotony of watching the power house drivers win each and every week.  So with that in mind, I am going to talk about a couple of guys I think will make a mark this season but more importantly I want to know who you guys are looking out for.......U WANT SOME?

My first of three drivers who will emerge from the middle of the pack as contenders to win races or run strong is rookie Scott Speed.  This kid has oodles of talent and runs fast in every NASCAR piece of equipment he buckles into.  Who care what he did in F-1, he has run great in trucks, ARCA, and Nationwide.....I look to see a lot of him and his Charlie Brown looking Red Bull hat this season.

The next driver is David Stremme.  This second round Cup Series driver got a bad deal (in my opinion) when he was let go from driving for Chip Ganassi.  But I guess he got the last laugh, the #40 team didn't make it through the season in 2008 while David drove thousands of miles in a COT for Penske as their test driver.  His perseverance paid off and replaces Ryan Newman in the #12 Dodge.

Juan Pablo Montoya shouldn't really be considered a dark horse but in reality he should be.  I have talk and written many times about how much talent JPM has but didn't have good equipment to race in.  The merger between Ganassi and DEI will put Juan in better equipment and I think it might just be what he needs to get to victory lane on a non-road course event.

What do you guys out there think?

New twist to an old feeling

By DAVID GREEN

In some five decades as a race fan/journalist/competitor, I can't remember a pre-season quite like this one.

I can't help feeling some of the same old anticipatory eagerness, the yearning to hear a high-performance engine straining to its limits, to see the flash of familiar and new colors, to smell the intoxicating aromas of motor sport, to feel the resonance of the high-decibel noise levels in my body's tissues (and the quivering caused by my own involuntary response to all that sensory stimuli).

At the same time, I am anxious and concerned -- about the state of the economy in general, and about the effect it's already having on racing.

I guess the only other time that compares would be 1971-72, when the sport was facing the loss of participation by the auto manufacturers. I wasn't old enough to remember the 1957 withdrawal of the car companies, but I know the sport wasn't quite as big or as dependent on factory support then as it was in the early '70s.

But in '71-72, I was just getting my own racing efforts under way, and while I noticed what was going on in Grand National racing, I was more concerned about the local dirt track.

There was also the distraction of my status with the Selective Service. For those who are old enough to remember, my draft lottery number was the same as my racecar -- 27.

I remember the transition, about a decade later, from big cars to mid-sized ones. There was, if I remember, almost as much controversy then as there has been about the COT.

The crux of this pre-season's discontent is both internal and external. Dissatisfaction with the sport is evident in online forums such as this one, but would be signaled also by the lower attendance and television viewer numbers that have been reported the past two seasons. And then there's the recession.

It's impossible for me to determine just how serious this economic dilemma is going to be -- whether it's going to be October 1929 redux, or whether the U.S. and the global economy are strong and resilient enough to just keep rolling.

For sure, hard times have already hit thousands of out-of-work people, within the racing community and in the overall job market. But the question remains, just how bad is it going to get?

Within the racing community, the signals are just as mixed. On one hand we hear business-as-almost-usual optimism; from other sources, we hear there may be as few as 32 entries for the Daytona 500. At this stage, it's hard to determine the validity of either extreme position.

So, all we can do is wait.

The anticipation is there, just like it has been for all these years. But it has a little different feeling this time.

Like Playing Monopoly With Your Brother

By Mark Young

I swear, I made a promise to myself that I would be a more positive person in 2009.  I wouldn't bash or slam NASCAR for the decisions they make....or didn't make.  I told myself I wouldn't be so critical of drivers when they do something I didn't like (even Kyle Busch) as well.  With so many other bad things going on lately between job cuts, the mortgage crisis, and so on I really wanted to be a more positive blogger this season.  Then NASCAR announced rule changes to the Budweiser Shootout that guaranteed Tony Stewart a starting spot.

Just like changing the number of drivers who qualify for The Chase from ten to twelve because Dale Jr. missed the cut this rule is flat out ridiculous.  Changing the format of the Shootout from the pole position winners the previous year to this equal participation race is just plain dumb.  Of course we can't have the Coors Light Pole Award winners run the Bud Shootout, that doesn't make sense.  But why not sell the shootout as the Silver Bullet Dash?  That way the pole winners would still be the participants and not allow teams to get into the race "because they tried really hard".

Hey NASCAR, want to keep Budweiser as a special event sponsor?  Why not rename the All-Star race after Budweiser?

I swear, sometimes the way NASCAR changes the rules on the fly is like playing monopoly with your little brother.  It's cool to change the rules as you go because hey, he is your little brother.

Yet again, another really cool thing in NASCAR to get ruined by the new France regime.

What A Sad Situation

By Mark Young

It is really too bad that my first blog of the year has to be a negative one.  Here we are four weeks away from the green flag of the first race of the year and the sport is in the same shape as our Nation's economy....sad.  Yes I know that in a way the two are tied together but surprisingly there is a major difference between our Federal Government and the NASCAR Government.  Our Federal Government, whether you believe it or not, is actually trying to straighten things out and NASCAR is sitting in their wonderful glass palace in Daytona doing  NOTHING.

NASCAR had seen the signs of this storm coming for quite a while.  Teams are dropping like flies.  It is nothing new to see lower tier teams close up shop whether because of poor performance or lack of sponsorship.  But when teams like Roush Racing have to merge with another business just to generate the monies needed to field a team Brian France should have smelled smoke.  Then Ray Evernham did it followed by Ganassi merging with DEI.  But the fire became catostrophic when Petty Enterprises recently merged with GEM because they could no longer afford to operate like they had for over 50 years.  Sure the #43 will be on the track in 2009 but it won't be the same.  Another venerable number that has been around for decades will rarely be seen this coming season as well.  The famous Wood Brothers #21 cannot acquire enough sponsorship to run a full season.

WHEN IS NASCAR GOING TO STEP IN AND DO SOMETHING?????

I tell you one thing that Brian France needs to figure out.  He needs to take a look at his own website and look at all of the "Official Sponsors" the sport has.  I am sure he knows how many he has because those companies all pay NASCAR hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, for the right to be "Official".  Doesn't Brian and the rest of NASCAR understand that they are taking potential sponsor money away from the teams who desperately need it?

I am willing to bet anyone out there that by the time the Cup Series gets to Atlanta that there will not be 43 cars attempting to qualify.  I am also willing to bet that there will be even fewer people in the seats too but that is another topic for another day.

NASCAR needs to step in and create their own form of economic stimulus package.  Is the method of creating franchises the answer?  Don't tell it wouldn't work, look at the NFL.  Is the answer releasing these companies as "Official Sponsors" and encourage them to invest their funds into what created the sport, race cars on the track going fast.

In dire times this Nation needs to have something special to look forward to and for many American it is NASCAR but unfortunately NASCAR is too worried about themselves and counting their "Official Sponsor" money to realize it is decaying right in front of them.