Winning remains the ultimate objective in NASCAR
Here’s a crazy thought: Race-car drivers love to win races. And sometimes they don’t play nice.
It’s amusing and confusing to hear about the big kerfuffle involving Kyle Busch and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards last week in Richmond. To review, Edwards pulled off the classic bump-and-run move on Busch in the last lap for the win. Edwards led a race-high 151 laps, so it wasn’t as if he got lucky that day. It just so happened that the guy he nudged out of the way on Turn 3 happens to be his “teammate.”
Kinda. Maybe. Not really.
NASCAR teammates do not always go together like peanut butter and jelly or sugar and spice. Sometimes it’s just a hot mess.
“The double-edged sword of having great teammates is sometimes you have to race like that,” Edwards said. “(Busch) was pretty certain I was going to bump him.”
Was Busch happy? Certainly not. In fact, he was pretty peeved but managed to maintain his composure in a series of evasive nonanswers after the race.
Edwards may have payback coming for him down the road. And that’s right in line with what NASCAR CEO and Chairman Brian France calls “quintessential NASCAR.” There’s no reason to play nice just because another driver happens to be on the same team. This isn’t basketball or football. It comes down to a one-man or -woman show on the track.
Winning remains the ultimate objective. Imagine that.
Chitwood moving up
The executive grid will look significantly different at Daytona International Speedway and other International Speedway Corporation tracks. Joie Chitwood III, previously track president at Daytona, has been promoted to a newly created role as chief operating officer of ISC. Concurrently, Chip Wile, president of Darlington Raceway, has been promoted to president of Daytona International Speedway.
“Joie has played a tremendous role in the success of our flagship racetrack at Daytona International Speedway since 2010,” ISC CEO Lesa France Kennedy said in a statement. “Most recently, his leadership of the DAYTONA Rising project, while simultaneously operating the facility, has demonstrated his operational acumen.”
Chitwood, who lives in Central Florida, will oversee ISC enterprise facility operations, along with “strengthening key industry initiatives” involving the 13 ISC tracks that stage NASCAR events throughout the year.
France on Stewart
Count me among those shaking their heads when NASCAR dumped a water bucket over Tony Stewart’s head on the same day he announced he was returning to racing. Actually, it poured. That’s probably the best way to describe the $35,000 fine for speaking out about NASCAR for being a bit lax on requiring teams to tighten all five lug nuts on each wheel during pit stops.
Brian France elaborated later in the week.
“I think we have to make judgment calls and how we look at the tone of what someone says, how they’re saying it,” France told SiriusXM Speedway radio. “They have ample opportunities, particularly with safety, to deal with us directly on that. But to insinuate that we’re taking the sport down a road that doesn’t care about safety or we’re trying to hurt people, those kind of comments, that goes to the integrity of the sport and we’ll have to deal with that.”
Stewart’s competitors on the nine-member Drivers Council picked up the fine.