TEAM OWNERSHIP AND THE CARS By-Don Hamm Check out ALL our sections and features here!! There is plenty to keep you busy on our main page! I recently wrote an article on SpeedwayMedia where I questioned the viability of any Winston Cup driver owning teams with which he was, in essence, in direct competition. I firmly believe this is wrong and counterproductive. Will Jeff Gordon root Jimmy Johnson out of the way at Bristol for the win or will he, in essence, protect his rear to ensure Jimmy a win? How can Jeff remain an honest, competitive driver when he has a special interest in Jimmy getting his first or any win? Why would Rick Hendrick be a party to any thing so in conflict to his star driver giving it his all, each and every race? Even more so, why does NA$CAR allow this obvious conflict of interest to exist? I have no heart burn if a Winston Cup driver wants to own a Busch, ARCA, Craftsman Truck, ASA or sprint car team so long as they never enter into direct competition with them. As to team ownership itself, I strongly believe team ownership must be limited to a maximum of two teams per owner. Papa Hendrick is no more Jeff's team owner than I am the President of the US. Flossie Johnson was no more the team owner of Neil Bonnets car than Neil himself. Granted, Flossie has the whole farm now. That is beside the point, of course. The main point is that multi-car operations have destroyed the roots of our favorite sport in that the only owner driver left is Brett Bodine and, depending on sponsorship, how long will he last? It is no longer possible for independent, single car teams to break into Winston Cup as the likes of Darrell Waltrip, Ricky Rudd, Ronnie Thomas, Dave Marcis, J.D McDuffie, Bill Elliott and so on. We need to get back to the roots of our racing and give the little guy a chance. Too many of our greatest drivers started out with a second hand or home built car that ran well enough to garner the attention of a team owner. Does Dale Earnhardt come to mind? Who knows where the next championship caliber driver might come from if they are frozen out of our top series? As to the cars, again, there must be a limit of how many cars any given team can have in their stable at any given time. How can Dave Marcis or Brett Bodine be competitive with, lets say five cars, when the likes of Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett or any Roush team has fifteen or twenty cars on the floor of their shop? Were it to be that I ran NA$CAR I would limit any and all teams to a maximum of six cars. These would consist of two for super speedways, two for intermediate tracks and two for short track, road course use. The expense of teams essentially building seperate cars for each track is ludicrous and leaves the little guy way out there in left field in so far as being competitive. In addition, reducing the total number of cars per team would greatly reduce the cost of team ownership and the number of in house shop people needed. Instead of requireing a sponsorship of $15 million plus, might it be that a decent sponsorship could be had for $6 or 8 million. Regardless of the track any given car is meant to run on, all cars would fit one common template with no modifications allowed to the bodies other than wheel openings. There would be no flared fenders for downforce, no narrow bodies for super speedways and no special aero tricks. The templates would be based on the street version of the car that is supposedly represented. Ride height would be no more than one inch less than the street version. Front valances would be no closer to the track than one inch lesss than the street version. In other words, let's put some stock back into stock cars. NA$CAR started as a grass roots, seat of the pants, pedal to the metal style of racing. For safety sake, many changes have been implemented, some good, some not so good. The front clips on the current crop of cars is far too stiff and transfers too much impact back to the drivers compartment in case of a crash. I don't have enough info to know it the Humpy Bumper would have helped. As of now, we may never know. All I know is the cars are too small and too stiff to prevent injury to the driver. Would Steve Park be OK if his car had been four to six inches wider? Are there too many roll bars too close to the driver to bring injury to him as opposed to transferring it away from him? I can't speak knowledgeably about the Cup and Busch cars but the Trucks are way too scaled down. I've seen two racing trucks up close and they have taken a full sized Chevy and made it an S10. I was literally floored when I walked up to a supposed full size pickup whose roof was at my shoulder height. There is no room in the cocpit of the trucks I saw that give the driver any room to move. Is that why John Nemecheck is no longer with us. Since NA$CAR didn't give that tragic death due investigation, we'll never know. What I do know is there is no place to go inside the cockpit and the drivers head is going to contact a roll bar or the wall. I do know this much. The street version of the Chevy Monte Carlo is not a sub compact and has more room inside than the racing version. The bottom line is we need to make the cars safer, ownership less monopolistic and grass roots racing more a part of our beloved sport. We have a series that uses 1950 technology in engines, transmissions and rear ends and aero bodies that approach those sporty and open wheel cars in being upside down airplanes. Don't get me wrong, I love our favorite sport. All I am asking is that we bring a realistic aspect to the cars, ownership and team financing. Can you go to a dealership and buy one of those gimmicky F1 cars and drive it down the street? Let's don't go there. Always remember, you have the right to disagree without being disagreeable. Support your favorite driver or drivers but don't be vindictive against those who aren't in your favor. They all risk life and limb to give us the best racing series going. You can reach me at 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