SteelerDirtFreak :: 21st Century Missional Redneck Geek

I don’t often agree with Darrell Waltrip, FOX Sports NASCAR analyst and former NASCAR driver. I think that 90% of the time he just runs his mouth to hear noise coming out, regardless of whether said noise is actually coherent sentences or not.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that, in most cases, he has absolutely no clue what he is talking about. A recent example would be the tremendous impact that David Reutimann took in a crash at California Speedway. From the different camera angles that Fox showed, including an in-car camera, it was obvious that Reutimann was hurting and had really had his bell rung. Yet there was DW, blathering away and dismissing any possibility of injury by say, “Oh, he’s alright, just had the wind knocked out of him, he’s ok, nothing wrong.”

What an idiot. Wasn’t he even looking at his own monitor? There is a good chance that any other network would have fired an announcer for such insensitive and uninformed reporting. But this is Fox TV, home of American Idol and Homer Simpson. ‘Nuff said there…

Anyways, this week, DW accidentally said something that made sense. In his online column for NASCAR on Fox, he said,

An important story that came out of California was the inspection process. NASCAR really needs to take a hard look at inspecting the cars and getting them through tech so everybody can get on the racetrack. Practice was almost over when some cars finally got on the track, and some guys only got to make a lap or two before they had to get ready to qualify. When you’re already locked out of the field, and you’ve got to make it in on time, that’s just so unfair.

DW hits the nail on the head with this one. He goes on to say that coupled with this is the unfair way NASCAR ‘fixes’ qualifying, locking in the top 35 cars from last year’s owner points. For the first 5 races, make them all race their way in. Let’s at least start out with a level playing field.

But this points to the bigger problem, which is that NASCAR no longer is about ‘fair’. Nor do they even care to be. They seem to be doing all that they can to keep the field as as unfairly balanced as they possibly can. NASCAR is rapidly becoming the WWE on wheels, and following the example of Vince McMahon, NASCAR no longer even tries to masquerade how unfair they have become.

This latest example of taking the whole practice session to inspect cars of drivers who are already handicapped by the ‘fixed’ qualifying rules that NASCAR has in place is just further proof of how far NASCAR has traveled down the slippery slope of ’sports entertainment.’

Posted on March 8th, 2007 by Paul
Filed under: NASCAR Racing