Be happy, NASCAR Nation: Life is good
Between all you fans and all us pundits, the various ills of contemporary NASCAR have been aired in detail in the past several months.
It occurs to me that we all could use a breather. So, here are my top 20 reasons why things are not so bad in NASCAR right now.
20. Both road races are behind us. But wait! There's more! As a special added bonus, both Pocono races are behind us.
19. The Bristol night race is upon us, and it's sold out. How's that for normalcy in stormy times? Any league in any sport in America would be overjoyed to draw 160,000-plus people to a single event in this economy, so maybe we can stop singling out NASCAR.
18. Michigan International Speedway was maybe half to two-thirds full Sunday. That size crowd in the devastated state of Michigan might be an even more positive sign than a sold-out Bristol.
17. NASCAR president Mike Helton says there won't be any major changes to the car (aka the COT) for 2010. Terrific! That means we're all guaranteed plenty of reasons to despise the thing and complain about it, all next year. What would any of us, fans or pundits, do without anything to complain about?
16. Just when you think the Jeremy Mayfield mess couldn't get any more intriguing, the plot thickens exponentially. Have you seen that mug shot of his stepmother from the Catawba (N.C.) Police Department after she was arrested at Mayfield's farm for trespassing? Wooo! And she's supposed to be NASCAR's star witness? Wonder if Fox is trying to extend its NASCAR rights package to include "Cops" episodes.
15. Other than the Mayfield affair, NASCAR driver misbehavior this year has maxed out with Kyle Busch's complaining. Nobody's in trouble with the law, nobody's causing any sort of scandal, and too often we take that for granted as we grouse about NASCAR's "vanilla" personalities.
14. Helton has blown off Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s blast of the quality of racing as "frustration." The truth of Earnhardt's remarks aside, do you have any idea how long it has been since Helton blew off an Earnhardt's opinion? There was a time when I thought the Earnhardts ran NASCAR more than the Frances did.
13. We don't have to fret with all that arithmetic and all those hypothetical scenarios about whether Junior can make the Chase. Clearly he won't. We can relax. (So can he.)
12. The Mark Martin cliffhanger continues. He's hanging in for the old guys with a series-high four wins, but he's hanging by a thread to make the Chase. Isn't that something? The scenario now seems to be that either he'll be seeded first or won't make the playoffs at all. Now that's suspense.
11. Juan Pablo Montoya may actually have a chance to become the first foreign-born winner of a Cup championship. That's gotta be cool, and it's bound to stir a little controversy among the old-time xenophobes.
10. Kyle Busch is hanging onto the cliff by his fingernails. It's looking more and more like he's going to miss the Chase, but he just won't go away yet, leaving his legions of detractors in suspense.
9. The math upholds the merits of the Chase. If there weren't one, Tony Stewart would be running away with the championship -- by 284 points over Jeff Gordon, 303 over Jimmie Johnson and 505 over Carl Edwards -- and we'd all be complaining that the points system needs fixing to add more suspense.
8. The Chase is shaping up as a very good one, especially if Martin makes it. Stewart is plenty strong enough to provide a major obstacle to Jimmie Johnson's fourth straight championship, Jeff Gordon keeps hanging in, and if Roush Fenway Racing can put a decent car under Carl Edwards, this could be a cavalry charge.
7. OK, you're right. The Chase charge will likely be limited to Hendrick Motorsports and its satellite team, Stewart-Haas Racing. But Cup has become the HRL -- Hendrick Racing League -- anyway, so we might as well accept it for what it is and enjoy the intramural competition.
6. Start-and-park drivers have been a non-starter as an issue. Have you really noticed it as a factor? Those who've started have caused little mischief, and those who've parked were good riddance in fields where I've always said 43 cars are way too many in the first place.
5. Double-file restarts have livened up the racing even beyond expectations. Any rule that can make a wildly entertaining race out of the last 50 laps at Pocono is nothing short of revolutionary.
4. As many predicted back in January, the effects of the economy on NASCAR have not been very visible, if at all, on the tracks. The competition up front, among the top 20 or so cars, remains exactly the same as it would be in flush times under the same rules.
3. Despite carmaker cutbacks -- which amounted to only a fraction of teams' budgets anyway -- there are still four brands running in Cup. Team owner Rick Hendrick recently reminded ESPN analysts than he can remember when there were only two. He meant Ford and GM. I can remember when there were none, officially, and the racing was fine.
2. Tracks' ticket price-slashing panic is now extending into next year's races. Another season or two of lagging attendance and a few more rounds of cuts, and ticket prices might get almost reasonable again.
1. If you're still outraged that race telecasts are oversaturated with commercials, you haven't learned the trick yet. Don't watch the race in real time. Pause your DVR for half an hour after the start. Then when you turn the race on, replay several times any incident that interests you. Before you know it, you'll have enough of a time cushion that you can fast-forward through the commercial breaks. And if you think the Aflac duck is funny driving a race car in real time, check him out at quadruple speed. It's much more entertaining and takes less of your time, and Aflac still makes its brand impression.
See now? Everybody's happy, if you just think of things the right way.
Ed Hinton is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at edward.t.hinton@espn3.com.
