The Truth

Did you miss me? Circumstances beyond my control prevented me from delivering The Truth about Kansas last week, but have no fear! I am back, I am well, and am ready to deliver The Truth about Talladega!

First off, Kansas. Not a lot to say about this race other than it was a boring cookie-cutter fuel-mileage waste of time. Unbeknownst at the time, it was Jimmie Johnson’s first closing laps failure that will prevent him from yet again winning the Nextel Cup. Yawn.

On to Talladega, where Humpy Wheeler got to see first hand what a good track resurfacing job looks like. My hat is off to the men and women who worked their asses off since April to get that racing surface ready for last weekend’s racing activities. It is immaculate, and three-wide racing is much less of a problem without the cars bouncing around on that 1960’s shit they were driving on before. Great work! I hope they hire you guys to resurface Bristol.

With practice speeds pushing 199 mph, NASCAR shit a brick and decided to go with smaller restrictor plate openings than the ones they originally passed out and had the teams practice with for two hours. NASCAR passed them out Saturday morning right before qualifying, leaving teams virtually not time to regear the cars. To top it all off, they went ahead with the post-qualifying impound, which again did not allow teams to regear for the race on Sunday. Nobody in NASCAR’s brain trust foresaw a new racing surface increasing speeds and thought to go with smaller plate holes before teams showed up for practice? These geniuses keep getting dumber by the week! Way to perpetuate the thought outside of NASCAR fandom that it is a sport for dumb rednecks.

The Friday ARCA race marked Juan Pablo Montoya’s first stock car race, where he finished third in the most unfamiliar type of race he will ever race in a stock car. Somebody please get this guy into better competition! He is a world-class driver that is a shoe in for the 2007 Rookie of the Year in Nextel Cup competition, so let us at least see him compete in some Busch races. Get A.J. Allmendinger in a Busch car too while you are at it.

Saturday’s Craftsman Truck Series race saw Mark Martin once again win a truck race. This after he announced he still wants to be competitive in the Cup series and signed on to drive a shitty MB2 car. Way to go, sell out! I thought you were going to help develop your son’s racing career and spend more time with your wife? Guess not. For all those doubting Toyota’s ability to compete at a higher level, they placed seven trucks in the top 10. That is great, especially since they only fielded ten trucks. Sorry Detroit, Japan is kicking your ass again. You have one, maybe two years left before they hoist a manufacturer’s championship.

Sunday’s Nextel Cup race was pretty typical—178 laps of riding around to set up 10 laps of actual racing. “The Big One” happened on lap 139 when Jimmie Johnson failed to check up when everyone else did, got into the back of Carl Edwards, and triggered a bunch of spins. For some reason, Johnson said it was caused when Edwards got into him, but unless Edwards somehow turned his car around and ran into Johnson, this is impossible. Of significance, Jeff Gordon’s day was ruined when his car was trashed, but although they spun, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick escaped with nothing more than cosmetic damage. The last lap of the race was marred when the third place car of Brian Vickers got into the right rear of Jimmie Johnson and knocked him into Junior, catapulting Vickers to his first career Cup level victory. Congratulations, Brian!

First, let us tackle the first wreck. Jimmie Johnson causing a big wreck at Talladega is equal to the sunrise in the east on the shocking scale. If they are racing at Talladega, Johnson is causing wrecks, plain and simple. What baffles me is why Jeff Gordon called out Junior after the wreck when Junior was way behind it and was not involved? Basically he blamed it on bump drafting that NASCAR refused to police (I am assuming that he did not know it was his teammate that was doing it) and called Junior the biggest offender. This followed with Junior saying that he bumped Gordon to the front “five damn times” and would never do it again. This bellyaching and threat giving will last until the next time they are nose to tail in a plate race. Stick any combination of Junior, Gordon, Stewart, and Harvick together and you will have a pair of cars that will end up at the front. I highly doubt Junior will sit back in 25^th and not go with Gordon to the front on principle. Junior loves plate racing and cannot help himself, even if that means finishing second to Jeff.

Second, the controversial ending that saw the #8 and #48 wrecked and covered with dirt and Brian Vickers sipping Champaign in victory lane. You have all seen it repeatedly so I will not go into in-depth detail, but what I saw was a faster #25 car tucked up behind a slower #48 car lap after lap waiting on Johnson to attempt a pass on the #8 car, the class of the field all afternoon. Forget that Gordon and Johnson have been saying for weeks that Vickers is not their teammate. Forget that Vickers has been locked out of team meetings for weeks. Nobody tucks under a slower car for that long with a chance to win if he is not a teammate, plain and simple. What I did not see is Johnson give any signal to the car that was his only chance to win when he decided to make his move. A little wave that says, “Here we go!” prevents the whole thing. This does not take Vickers off the hook and place Johnson on it, but it does make you wonder.

Let us look at Vickers’ options. First, not attempt to follow Johnson around Junior and stay behind Junior. This may be the only option that would have made Johnson madder. This immediately shuffles Johnson back to third and could have resulted in, gasp, Johnson pushing Vickers around Junior at the line. I could hear Johnson now, “How dare my teammate help out somebody I am racing against in the Chase and then take a position ahead of me!!!!” Second, back out of the gas and probably fall behind at least Kahne and Kurt Busch. Not too many guys at a plate race are real keen on backing out, especially with cars behind them, and this could have led to positions three on back getting caught up in the “Really Big One”. Then Johnson would have torched Vickers for not following him and letting his Chase competitor take points from him. Third, do what he did, which was the only real choice he had. He attempted to follow his teammate around Junior and finish second to his teammate, which is exactly what his intention was. Unfortunately, the combination of Johnson not cluing him in along with Vickers having a better car led to the wreck.

As a final point to this wreck, I have to mention Junior’s pure professional class and dignity in handlingit. He chalked it up to racing, congratulated Vickers on his first win, and said it was on to Charlotte. At the end of the day, moving on is the only thing you can do. You cannot go back and make the wreck not happen, and NASCAR is not going to name you the winner and give you a bunch more points than you were already given. No amount of bitching and bellyaching will change it, so get ready for the next race. A lot of other drivers out there could learn a thing or two from this.

To wrap it up this week, Humpy Wheeler is a douche bag. Announcing in the media that he was providing more security for Vickers instead of asking Brian if he wanted more is a bush-league attempt to grab headlines. I guess he needed a way to distract from the fact that we are moving from a top notch resurface job at Talladega to a bargain-basement job at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Can’t handle it? Tough shit, it’s THE TRUTH!

The Fan