The Year In Review, The Good, Bad, Ugly and Questionable By-Don Hamm Check out ALL our sections and features here!! There is plenty to keep you busy on our main page! 2001 was a year that started off with a good tainted by truly ugly. Good ole' Mikey Waltrip, who had missed victory lane so many times it was pathetic, finally got his first win at the big D. What a great victory for a driver whom many have maligned. There is Mikey in Victory Lane and Ken Schrader walks into the picture. Exuberant celebration becomes muted when Ken tells Mikey, Dale is bad hurt. How suddenly a great victory turns into an immemorable tragedy. There was no bear hug from his car owner and new found mentor. Only emptiness. A victory with no celebration. No euphoria. Just one terrible empty feeling. Way too long after the crash of the Intimidator, we are finally informed that Dale is gone. How could that possibly be? May it be that Mikey has many reasons to celebrate in the upcoming season. Two weeks later we visit Rockingham and the show goes on. The green flag drops and Dale, Jr. hits the wall in turn one. Out of the race. Gloriously, Steve Park gives DEI it's second victory in as many races. Mikey finishes a distant nineteenth but DEI is in victory lane. Emotionally, it was a great victory for the fallen owner. Was it to mean a dominance by the DEI teams? It was ugly for Jr., good for Steve Park and questionable for Mikey. Fast forward to HotLanta. A young, virtually unknown, unproven rookie is in the seat of the renumbered and repainted Goodwrench Chevy. The formerly black and silver was replaced by white with red trim and numbered 29. Who would have thought that this unproven rookie, filling the seat of the Intimidator, could win in only his third start in the Winston Cup Series? Truth be known, not Kevin Harvick. Granted, Kevin is a competitor whose main interest is winning but even he couldn't have dreamed of winning in only his third start. Not only did he win, he beat the best, Jeff Gordon, by mere inches. Definitely GOOD. After Atlanta we had a few races of some excitement and some of inconsequence. Dale Jarrett won three out of four races in the butt ugly UPS Ford. Ho hum. Elliott Sadler got his first win at Bristol and I thought that was good until I saw those God awful Stacker II commercials. How demeaning, but anything for a buck. Rusty won in California, Tony Stewart at Richmond and Jeff Gordon won The Winston in a back up car. Is that team good or are they Great? Then it was Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gordon, Ricky Rudd and Tony Stewart again. During this period we had some good races, some bad and some questionable in so far as competitiveness. Now we arrive back at Daytona and the win by Dale, Jr. What a marvelous victory with Mikey running second. What a great celebration in the infield by Jr. with Mikey joining in. Then comes the ugly. Some drivers and many so-called journalists claimed the fix was in. NA$CAR had fixed the race so that Jr. could win and avenge his father's untimely death. What a bunch of unadulterated bull dung. More demeaning was NA$CAR's penalizing Tony Stewart for going below the yellow line and avoiding the BIG ONE relegating him to a twenty sixth place finish instead of a potential win. One race incorporated all the good, bad, ugly and questionable. Regardless of who you root for, how many highs and lows can there be in one race? I can tell you in all honesty, I am not a fan of Jr. but I truly wept at his victory and Mikey's joy in Jr's win. At the same time, I was bewildered at the ruling by NA$CAR that Tony's avoidance of the big one was worthy of such an inconsistent penalty while the likes of Bobby Labonte escaped penalty for the same infraction. May 2002 bring more consistency in NA$CAR's rulings. We now venture to the new ChicagoLand speedway where Kevin Harvick picks up his second win in an otherwise boring race. When is the last time you saw a corn field in Chicago? Be that as it may, good show Kevin. The ugly Ford wins again at the worthless New Hampshire Speedway. Sorry Adam Petty. We miss your genuine smile. We'll also miss the competitiveness of Kenny Irwin. Next we venture to Pocono and watch Bobby Labonte do the impossible, passing Jr. in the tunnel turn for an eventual victory. Good move Bobby. Next we have Jeff Gordon times two and Sterling Marlin's win at Michigan, giving Dodge it's first victory. Good show Sterling. Tony Stewart wins again at Bristol and Ward Burton wins at Darlington. Good show for Tony's win and Ward's second win for Dodge. We now go to Dover which followed the tragic events of 911. What a show of Americanism and patriotism. Dale, Jr. won the race and displayed the colors with pride. What can I say that exceeds the good overcoming the ugly. There was nothing questionable about what it means to be an American. This was followed by Jeff Gordon's win at Kansas. A nice track with questionable significance. Sterling Marlin gets his second win and the third for Dodge at Charlotte which was good. Ricky Craven got his first win at Martinsville and was called Ricky Rudd in victory lane. Good win, bad interview. We move back to Talladega and Jr. wins again. Good move to win for Jr., bad move for Bobby Labonte's blocking and causing THE BIG ONE on the last lap. Jeff Burton gets his second win at the meaningless Phoenix speedway and Joe Nemecheck wins a boring, single file race at Rockingham. Not too good as racing goes. Awesome Bill finally wins another race, after seven years, at another useless track at the bad and ugly Homestead. Bobby Labonte wins at HotLanta for what should have been a good season end. The final race at the bad and ugly New Hampshire Speedway saw Robby Gordon gain his first win. Some saw it as ugly because Robby bumped Jeff Gordon. Jeff Gordon showed he's human in his retaliation on Robby even though he cost himself a lap and many positions. Good move Jeff, bad timing. The ironic part is that this should have been Robby's third win instead of his first. Robby had the best car at Watkins Glen only to have the GPS box blow up and set his car on fire. He had a definite win going at Sonoma had he not been so determined to keep Kevin Harvick a lap down. Talk about good, bad and ugly not to mention questionable. May it be that Robby has many more wins when luck and temperament favor him. There wasn't too much doubt that Jeff Gordon would take home his fourth championship trophy and pay check. Good job Jeff. Congratulations to Kevin Harvick for rookie of the year and his concurrent Busch championship. That's my observation and I'm sticking to it. It is totally impossible to recap every race and I picked what I saw as the high and low points of the season past. Some say I'm good, some say I'm bad, some say I'm ugly and a few say I'm questionable. You have the right to disagree with my observations but not the right to be disagreeable. Respond to skamper68@knology.net for comment. Check out ALL our sections and features here!! There is plenty to keep you busy on our main page! (Editors Note:The views and opinions of our writers are just that, theirs. If you have comments, write to them. We take no responsibility for their articles... Do you blame us?) Article Archives Return to the Main Page