Is it just me, or does Tony Stewart seem a lot happier these days? And I don’t mean just after snagging the top prize in the All-Star race or this past Sunday’s win at Pocono. He seems to be in a much better mood for the whole year. Since forming his new team and taking on the owner-driver dual-role, he appears a lot more relaxed than in years past.

I remember when he announced last year that he was leaving Joe Gibbs Racing to start his own team. At the time, all sorts of puzzling questions popped up: Why would he leave one of the best Cup teams during the prime of his career? Doesn’t he know how hard it is to be both an owner and driver — while still being competitive? And what is my Dad going to do with his now obsolete Home Depot shirt?

It appears that Stewart has really taken a liking to his new roles. That’s ironic considering the stress of being an owner-driver at the Cup level is usually enough to crumble even the best of men.

When the tour rolled into Daytona Beach in February, somebody with a smile was being interviewed for TV. Somebody… that looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. The graphic on the screen insisted it was Tony Stewart. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with a… smile. I wondered for a bit if this was the same Tony Stewart I’ve been watching for the past few years. But about a week later I heard him trashing Goodyear, and that’s when I knew it was really him.

Maybe he has a girlfriend or something.

Quick Facts

• The last car owner-driver to win a Cup race (before Stewart’s feat at Pocono) was Ricky Rudd in the Fall 1998 race at Martinsville.
• Darrell Waltrip had five wins as an owner-driver of the #17 Western Auto Chevrolet — two in 1991 and three in 1992, the last being the rain-shortened Southern 500 at Darlington.
• Stewart currently leads the NASCAR Sprint Cup points. The last owner-driver to win the Cup Championship? Alan Kulwicki in 1992. Kulwicki fought off all the high-dollar big-name teams to take two victories and win the championship over Bill Elliott by one single lap. Kulwicki omitted the “Th” from the “Thunderbird” printed on his car’s front valence to emphasize his position as the “underdog”.

Photo courtesy Bristol Motor Speedway, flickr.com, CC 2.0.

Well we knew for some time now that “double-file restarts” were coming to NASCAR Sprint Cup racing. NASCAR hopes the change will be a catalyst to kick-start a fan base that has fallen closer to a deep slumber. Of course, to be fair, they’ve always had double-file restarts, it’s just that they’ve chosen a different way of lining up the “files”. So what can we expect?

In some ways, I think restarts may be more exciting at times. I mean… if you like fabricated excitement and all. I think my primary fear is that we’re going to see a lot more yellow flags. As we all know, watching one yellow flag after another is like watching… well… baseball… except without the home runs.

What has really surprised me is NASCAR’s decision to implement this rule for the full race — even down to the final two laps if necessary. I figured that with 25 laps to go or whatever they’d just restart single file. That would be much cleaner and it would allow the leader to maintain his advantage. Is it really fair that the leader gets to restart with his challenger directly by his side? Or is “excitement” more important than the integrity of the sport these days? Will the closing laps be yellow fever? How big will the pile-ups be at Talladega and Daytona?

And how much more controversy and “judgment calls” will come into play from drivers attempting to jump the restart? Or the leader brake-checking to make it appear that the second-place car is jumping the restart?

Matt Kenseth makes another good point: “If you’re at Martinsville or Indy or some of these one-lane tracks and you’re running fourth, and you start on the second row, outside, you’re probably going to be in big trouble — you’re probably going to have a top-five run turn into a 10th- or 12th-place run.”

But what should we not expect?

A bump in television ratings, for one. I suggest that there might be a small increase at Pocono this weekend (though probably not), but I suspect that in the long-term this will not filter down into higher TV ratings, attendance, or fan interest. I see this as more of a distraction from the genuine pressing problems NASCAR needs to be addressing, and I’m quite concerned that they came out of their little “Town Hall” meeting believing that this was the fix they were looking for.

Admittedly, fans seem to be in favor of the change. I find this a bit ironic since the All-Star race at Charlotte had used double-file restarts since as far back as I can remember and there was never a large upwelling of desire from the fans to implement this rule for all races. It seems like the TV folks at SPEED made such a big deal about it during the telecast and then the drivers and NASCAR chimed in to help hype the idea up. Before we knew it fans were being “polled” and voila — the rule was changed.

Lapped cars might get a sweet deal out of these new restarts. If all the leaders ahead of them pit and they stay on the track, they’ll be allowed to pass the pace car under the caution flag and restart at the tail end of the lead lap cars. More excitement, right?

My impression is that NASCAR knows it’s in trouble and is trying to do everything it can to keep the sinking ship afloat. But they should know that cheap tricks and gimmicks don’t make for a good long-term strategy.

Giving television interviews must be such exhaustive work these days. It’s almost unheard of to witness one where the driver isn’t required to take a couple swigs of his “favorite beverage” to make it through.

Here’s how it typically goes:

Booth: “Now let’s go trackside to pit reporter Jane Smith, who’s with Joey Schmoey.”

(The broadcast cuts to a camera located on pit road. On the scene are Jane and Joey. Joey is holding “The Official Soft Drink™ of NASCAR®” in his hand, about half-way between his face and waist, label facing outward towards the camera.  When Jane begins to speak, that is Joey’s cue that the camera is live.  He unscrews the cap from the completely full bottle and takes a chug while listening to Jane’s question, then screws the cap back on.)

Jane: “Joey, you’re starting pretty deep in the pack today.  What’s your strategy to get to the front?”

Joey: “Yeah.  I’ll tell ya… the [insert primary sponsor here] [insert secondary sponsor here] [insert tertiary sponsor here] [insert car make here] [insert car model here] was running great in practice yesterday.  [Insert tire manufacturer here] brought a great tire today.  It’s a long race.  We’ll have to see how the day goes.”

Jane: “Well there you have it…”

(At this point, Joey senses that the interview is coming to a conclusion and that Jane is ready to throw control over to someone else.  He quickly unscrews the cap from his bottle and takes another hit of the soft drink.)

Jane: “Now let’s go up pit road to John Blow who’s with Jimmy Jones.”

(Joey looks straight into the camera and smiles as a sparkle of caramel-induced bling shines from his teeth.)

Well gee… thanks for that informative interview.

Maybe I’m just old school, but I prefer something more like this in an interview.

I remember in the 90s ASA used to have what was called a “competition caution” written into their rulebook.  Basically, if a race ran a certain number of laps consecutively under the green flag — say, 75 laps — they would automatically throw a “competition caution” to bunch up the field.  Yeah… that’s kind of cheesy, but it was ASA so nobody cared.

Fast forward to today and suddenly NASCAR has embraced the term to cover a pre-planned caution period — usually early in the race — to check for tire wear.  (Anything for safety, of course!)  I’m seeing this tactic being used more and more and it’s really inappropriate for a professional racing series in my view.

It appears that now if even a light rain shower falls on the track any time during the weekend — even if teams have a practice session afterwards — NASCAR is quick to have a “competition caution” 25 or so laps after the start of the race… “so that teams can assess tire wear”.  This is supposed to be professional racing.  Crew chiefs and drivers are paid an exorbitant amount of money to do what they do.  If they’re worried about “tire wear” then let them start with a conservative setup or let them pit whenever they want — under the green flag.

Today at Dover they finally had a pretty good race for the lead going when it was interrupted by one of these stupid fake yellows.  It broke the momentum of the start of the race and I wonder how many people tuned out because of it?

Imagine leading a race under caution with just two laps to go, only to have to come down pit road to replace a flat tire. Now imagine that when you peel off the track you hear a roar from the crowd loud enough to nearly drown out your own engine, as if 40,000 Nelsons suddenly stood up, pointed at you and yelled, “Ha, ha!” Such was the plight of Kyle Busch in Saturday night’s Nationwide race at Darlington.

And how can we feel sorry for him? He’s cocky as hell, wins on most weekends, and when he doesn’t win he pouts out a hissy fit.

Boo, hoo… another one slipped out of his hands this past weekend. It’s just a Nationwide race — it’s not like he lost the Super Bowl. And one would think that the “greatest driver in the universe” would know better than to scrub his tires through a huge debris field along a crash scene. Oops. Like we say here in Jersey racing circles — “Sorry ’bout yer luck!”

So Busch’s big “protest” stunt these days seems to involve parking the car up pit road, climbing from his car, feigning outrage at the unfairness of it all, and then storming off to his hauler to leave the premises. He lets the crew members go down, pick up the car, and push it back to the garage themselves.

I’ll tell ya… I wish A.J. Foyt could run NASCAR for a day. Just one day. He would have sent a rollback over to the car, had the car loaded onto it, have it driven out of the track and over to that lake off turn four and then have it hoisted up and the chains released. And that’d be the last time Busch parked his car anywhere but in the garage.

We Need a New Division

NASCAR needs to really reconsider the fact that the Nationwide Series has become a total disaster. It is essentially “Cup Lite”. Just thinking about how Busch has won the past three million Nationwide races straight is evidence enough that changes need to be made. This is supposed to be a lesser series for lesser teams and lesser drivers. So why are the professionals consistently participating in the races, and even running for the championship? It completely takes away opportunities for drivers who need to bridge the gap of experience from short tracks to the Cup level.

Imagine if the New York Yankees announced that, in addition to their Major League Baseball commitments, they’ve also decided to play most of the AAA games. Does that sound ridiculous or what? (Well, okay… with the way the Yankees have been playing lately, maybe it doesn’t sound so one-sided.)

NASCAR needs to put a limit on Cup driver participation in its lower divisions.

Might as Well End Under Yellow

I’m not sure what’s worse… a race ending under yellow… or waiting around for a green, white, checkered finish only to have that end under yellow anyway. I’m seeing this more and more — a ton of late-race cautions interrupting any chance at a decent race for the win. And almost invariably the crashes involve back-markers driving like maniacs for 23rd place. How often do we see, say, the last 50 laps run under green anymore?

If we’re going to have all of these race-ending yellows then I think NASCAR should say, “Okay, if the caution comes out within ten laps to go, drivers can race back to the flag.” Re-starting a race under a green, white, checkered rule only to go immediately back to yellow and calling it a day is just pathetic.