Cue Gene Kelly singing a slightly different tune.
It took us 22 weeks, but we finally had our first rain out of the season after a close call at Pocono.
This of course moves the race to Monday on ESPN – a notably smaller audience and reach. In recent years this wouldn’t have been a problem for the Nationwide Series. Rain tires, windshield wipers and brake light have gotten the job done. For the Cup Series though, that option doesn’t exist. This delay has raised the inevitable question of why what’s good enough for the Nationwide Series is not good enough for the Cup Series.
And this morning, as you peruse the NASCAR press, there are a lot of opinions about the use of rain tires in the Cup Series – a move that would have kept the Series in it’s prime TV slot and maintained the audience.
NASCAR Vice President Robin Pemberton said:
“We feel at this level, it really throws a wild card in there… Our guys, we’re a series that doesn’t have experience on rain tires. It’s a lot to put on them. Nowadays the championships are so close and making the Chase is so close, it’s a lot of pressure to put on one race at this stage of the season.“
The fact is, he’s right. The series never has raced on rain tires and it would be nothing short of risky to put them out there under the present circumstances. Should preparations have been made for such a scenario though?
Obviously rain tires on an oval are out of the question. But the Nationwide Series has proven, if not with mixed results, that it can work on a stock car. It’s true that the racing is rough, sloppy and frankly not very good, but it is possible.
For NASCAR though ensuring the quality of the racing has to be a top priority. We’ve seen in the past when things have gone wrong and the damage it can do to the sport and to the venue hosting – I point you to the tire fiasco at Indianapolis in 2008.
Is it better to have a race because we can? Or should we be ensuring the conditions are optimal for the race we want?
I’ll admit, I thought some of Pemberton’s excuses were shaky. But I don’t necessarily think this is a bad policy for NASCAR. The races we’ve run in the rain have been entertaining only for the novelty of the event. I know I’d rather see a delayed good race on Monday than a forced bad race on Sunday.
Tell us what you think! Would you like to see the Cup Series on rain tires? Do you wish we’d raced on Sunday instead of Monday? Let us know.
By the way, check out the race at noon 10 am on ESPN.
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Did you notice the short field in the Nationwide Series this weekend? Certainly not a great indicator of health of the sport. But then did you notice the fields in the Cup and especially the Truck Series? Those should make us all feel a little better.
Consider this: there were 40 cars on the Nationwide entry list, the first short field since 2008, 44 on the Cup Series entry list and 41 on the Truck Series entry list. In the Truck Series that’s five more cars than make up a full field.
Unfortunately that meant some great young talent like James Buescher and, for the second week in a row, Tayler Malsam didn’t make the race. Still there wasn’t a single team that start-and-parked. That in itself is quite an achievement.
With the lesser cost of entry and the investment by teams like RCR, KHI and KBM, the Truck Series this season is a whole new place. Competition is improved (or perhaps expanded) and the fields are full. To see reduced and or eliminated start-and-park teams is wonderful.
This season is shaping up to be really interesting. Let’s hope these full fields continue.
Tommy Baldwin Racing Announces Their Start-And-Park Run
File this under the strange moment of the weekend, Tommy Baldwin Racing actually announced they would be start-and-parking. The team had planned to run the full race, but a wreck in practice meant they would have to go to a backup – which turned out to be their Las Vegas primary.
Apparently they decided they’d have better luck in Las Vegas and they wanted to tell everyone – from a PR perspective, I’m not sure I see what the benefit of this was though. And NASCAR didn’t either. NASCAR’s VP of Competition Robin Pemberton said before the race Sunday:
“I can’t speak for Tommy and why he did it, but I just thought that it totally took us by surprise… We know that if anybody tries to run all the races it’s Tommy Baldwin. When he can he does. Quite honestly, just taken back by it, and I thought it was just poor timing on his part and that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
Telling everyone you’re about to take part in a frowned upon practice is not advisable – though it’s admirable they apparently felt bad enough about doing it that they decided they would tell everyone. With the response they got, I doubt they do this again.
An interesting tidbit none the less. What do you think? Would you prefer for a team to announce their intention, or would you rather they just did it?
UPDATED: Link to TBR’s full statement here.
Combine a sanctioning body with no self awareness, select media members inflaming a penalty, an unclear inspection process and technical issue, and a driver who likes to speak his mind and you’ve got a lesson in public relations no-nos.
There is an old adage in PR: if you don’t tell your story, someone else will and you may not like how they tell it. This is something the folks at NASCAR could stand to learn.
In a media environment that is increasingly loud, swift and dare I say hostile, treading lightly around these penalty issues is very important.
In the wake of the Clint Bowyer penalties this past week, NASCAR used their weekly teleconference to explain the issue and answer questions – only they did a pretty bad job at both. Instead of making sure things were appropriately explained, and giving media members every opportunity to ask questions, they were unclear (even when asked to explain in layman’s terms) and limited them to one question (which some promptly started complaining about on twitter).
All told the teleconference explaining this thing took 21 minutes. What NASCAR needed to do was to take the car, get their video conferencing equipment and go through it – then they needed to let the media members ask as many questions as they wanted (whether that took 20 minutes or 2 hours). Of course all of this needed to be available for fans to watch.
The resulting inadequate explanations then got muddled when the story was told. Then RCR added to the story by essentially calling BS on NASCAR (NASCAR addressed in the teleconference what would later become RCR’s explanation and said given previous data they had, it was not likely). With the amount of trust fans have in the sanctioning body though it was apparent who they believed. As usual, the story got away from NASCAR.
This wasn’t helped by some media members who took to their respective websites and social media accounts to join the chorus of anti-NASCAR sentiment. Again, they, like RCR, told the story, not NASCAR.
What I find hard to believe though is that NASCAR doesn’t realize the implications these penalties have with the fans. If they’d do a reasonable job explaining the problem, this means going on TV and explaining in actual layman’s terms what the issue is (because most people don’t understand what goes into the inspection process, or what exactly a penalty is being issued for because they haven’t been involved in building a COT, or understand the engineering of it), and then debunking things, they wouldn’t spend two weeks defending themselves against (or doing what they normally do and ignoring) unfounded allegations.
This sporting body has trust and public relations issues unlike their counterparts throughout America. It’s to the point I believe it’s driving fans away. They though are tone deaf. Truly mind boggling. Let’s hope whoever takes this unenviable position of Chief Communications Officer convinces the leadership at NASCAR to do a better job of creating transparency (which they are under no obligation to do) for the sake of the sport.
NASCAR wasn’t alone in their communications missteps this weekend. Look no further than Denny Hamlin, a guy who is never afraid to give his opinion. During his Friday Chase press conference Hamlin said:
“In the garage, everyone has known it for months… It’s not two weeks old. They’ve been warned for a long time, way before Richmond. … They knew it was wrong way before that, and they wanted to get everything they could.”
Now I won’t comment on the validity of Hamlin’s comments, but they got him into trouble. As JD Gibbs later told him, sometimes it’s best to keep our thoughts and opinions to ourselves.
Whether acting under team orders, or as a lone assassin, Kevin Harvick, during practice on Saturday, proceeded to let Denny Hamlin know that his comments were not well received. Afterward there was some intense discussion. NASCAR said ‘boys, have at it’ right? No doubt failed communications on all parts.
What we learned this week was that NASCAR still has a long way to go in regaining the trust of it’s fans and that is probably going to start with much more transparency to prove that they really have no agenda – other than maintaining their rulebook. And don’t screw with RCR, because they’ll get you.
NASCAR policies often ebb and flow in their enforcement. In the past we’ve seen a sanctioning body that really likes to loosen things up when people start complaining; but when that inevitable watershed event occurs enforcement gets ramped up again.
In true NASCAR form, this season brought us one of those promises of lighter enforcement. They wanted to foster an atmosphere of self-policing (within moderation of course). In response to that just more than a month ago Robin Pemberton looked at the gathered media and said, “Boys, have at it.”
Well Sunday in Atlanta, NASCAR got their wish; the boys had at it. After getting wrecked early in the race, Carl Edwards returned to the track 153 laps down and quite clearly took out the guy who helped him into the wall earlier.
That guy, Brad Keselowski, has made a name for himself in his very short career of getting involved in incidents like this one. Remember the Brad K. v. Denny Hamlin feud just a few months ago? Right or wrong, being aggressive and unapologetic about it is his style.
So with that, it was only a matter of time before an incident like this one occurred and it came as no surprise (to me at least) that Brad K. was involved.
I applauded NASCAR’s move before the season began and I still believe it was a good call. I think this incident though should be a wake up call to everyone in the garage. There’s self-policing and then there’s self-policing. Everyone needs to agree this sort of thing can’t be tolerated. Obviously Carl didn’t mean for Keselowski to get airborne, or expect that happen, but the possibility always exists at 200 mph.
That said though, I have a hard time justifying a suspension, and I’d be surprised if NASCAR issued one (famous last words). Even more, of all people to be calling for someone to get suspended for aggressive driving, it’s almost laughable that person is Brad Keselowski. By all means he deserves to be angry for what resulted from the payback; he could have been seriously injured (thankfully he wasn’t). But if ever there was a situation where that old idiom ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ applies, this is it.
No question, it’s unfortunate this happened. Frankly drivers should know better than to do things like this. While I can’t say what the proper punishment should be here, Robin Pemberton has said NASCAR will evaluate the incident further. If there are additional penalties, we’ll likely hear about them by Tuesday.
So what do you think? Was the retaliation justified? What, if any, should the punishment be for retaliating on track?