Do You NASCAR? - NASCAR News

… And the Names Keep Changin’

by Tim Zaegel on March 4th, 2008

It feels like NASCAR has already put us on one heck of a roller coaster ride just three weeks into the young 2008 Sprint Cup season, and a very large part of that has to do with the constant revolving door of individual media attention that’s been given to specific drivers. With the exception of those few controversial stories that we’ve run into – ie, Robby Gordon’s Daytona penalty – it seems that for the last four weeks the media frenzy has been focused solely on one individual driver, and it’s been a different driver each week.

The week heading into Daytona, everything was all about Dale Earnhardt Jr … Junior switched teams, Junior has a new number and new sponsors, Junior won the Shootout, Junior won the Gatorade Duel, Junior’s gonna win the Daytona 500, Junior’s might actually compete for a NASCAR Sprint Cup title … should I keep going with this, or do we all get the point? Basically, as we sat and waited through Speed Weeks, Earnhardt could do no wrong, and there was very little doubt that anyone other than Junior could win the 50th running of the Daytona 500. It was basically a stacked deck …

Then, we get through the Daytona 500 and Ryan Newman is standing in victory lane with car owner Roger Penske and Earnhardt Jr finished in ninth place. It was the first win for Newman since 2005, the first-ever restrictor plate win for Roger Penske, and it was also the first time Penske had ever had two of his own cars finish 1st and 2nd at the end of a race. Out with Junior and in with Newman, cause if you’re buying into the media hype, suddenly Flyin’ Ryan is back on track and now we’re all talking about Newman’s averages at Fontana even though the numbers aren’t that great.

So, California ends after a wet and miserable weekend. Forget about the race winner or where Newman and Earnhardt finished, because the big story here is that after Kyle Busch scored his second straight top five victory, he’s now the points leader in the Sprint Cup and Craftsman Truck Series’, and he’s second in the Nationwide Series. Between the three series, up to this point he’d run six total races and finished in the top five in all six events. We can’t get enough of how much this young cat’s matured since coming over to Joe Gibbs Racing, and now we can all forget about Junior altogether, because it’s obvious that Gibbs walked away with the best pickup of the off-season. Busch’s hype is then only glorified that much more when he takes the Pole at his hometown track of Las Vegas and becomes the odds-on-favorite to walk away with the checkers.

Well, the UAW-Dodge 400 is over, and we’re not really talking about Junior, Newman, or Busch anymore despite the fact that Busch is still second in points, Newman’s  third, and Junior finished second in the race. Why? Because Carl Edwards has just won his second race of the year and is now the new points leader barring any penalties from NASCAR for a missing oil lid found in post-race inspections. But, basically after a lackluster performance in Vegas, people have settled down over the theory that Toyota’s running an ample amount more of horsepower, and Penske’s miracle run at Daytona is slowly being relegated to the back of most people’s minds as something that likely may not happen again. Now, the talk of the town is about how Roush-Fenway Racing has really gotten a handle on the new race car, and they’ve shown up to rival Hendrick Motorsports as the class of the field.

The point of this post is not to put any of these people down or to diminish the credibility of their accomplishments by insinuating that they don’t deserve the public eye that’s been cast their way. Rather, my intention is to simply point out that the bandwagon frenzy that’s become so commonplace in professional sports has never been illustrated quite as clearly in NASCAR until now. Every week we’re jumping all over this person or that based on what they’ve done in the last week or two rather than maintaining an impartial view of the big – or complete – picture. Will Ryan Newman have a better year in 2008 than he has in either of the last two seasons? Well, he didn’t win a race or make the Chase in ’06 or ’07 and he’s already won a race this year, so I think the answer’s obvious. Will Junior run more successfully with HMS than he did with DEI? Yes, because Hendrick Motorsports has a history of allowing their drivers to run half their races without engine or mechanical failure. Has Kyle Busch matured since the 2007 season? Last I checked, as a general rule of thumb, most folks do tend to mature just a little bit more with each passing year. The point is, yes, these guys deserve their time in the spotlight when they’re running well, but as I go from site to site, it’s become abundantly clear to me that, yes, media overkill does exist.

DYN Imposes … This week, Do You NASCAR also asks its readers …

1) Will Dale Earnhardt Jr. live up to his pre-season hype and contend for a championship with Hendrick Motorsports in 2008?

2) Was Ryan Newman’s Daytona 500 victory a fluke, or do he and teammate Kurt Busch stand a legitimate shot at competing for the title this year?

3) Is Kyle Busch good enough to continue this momentum for the entire year? Does he have a shot at winning any of NASCAR’s three main series championships in 2008?

4) Has Roush Racing turned their COT program around enough to compete with Hendrick Motorsports in the long run this year, or is Carl Edwards just on a hot streak?

Share This

Related Stories

• IRL Drivers Heading To NASCAR
• Casey Mears Officially Looking for Work
• Bushwackers - Enough is Enough

POSTED IN: NASCAR