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NASCAR All-Star Event Amongst the Best

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by Steve Wronkowicz

I am co-host of the syndicated radio show: ON PIT ROW. Over ten years on the air and three on the net; see what can happen when I don't let the facts get in the way of my opinions.

May 19, 2011 8:08 pm UTC No Comments

NASCAR’s All-Stars will show their stuff this week at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

As All-Star events go; NASCAR’s ranks a close second to the event put on by Major League Baseball and far outshines those put forth by the NBA, NFL and NHL.  What sets NASCAR and MLB apart from the other sport’s All-Star events is the ability of the performers to showcase their talents and yet the fundamental principles of the game do not change.

Three of the four “stick and ball” sports All-Star events change the game by playing little or no defense therefore changing the very essence of their sport. If anything, NASCAR and it’s drivers heighten their intensity.  The format and winner-take-all format of the NASCAR All-Star event makes it unique and the most watchable of them all.

Teams have to meet one of six criteria to make it to the All-Star event.  Drivers who have won races in 2010 and 2011. If a driver leaves a team with which he has won a race, he remains eligible, the team does NOT.  Also eligible are drivers who are either past Sprint Cup champions or who have won The All-Star Race in the past 10 years.  Finishing first or second in the Sprint Showdown also get them in, or the ubiquitous entry by fan vote.

The pit crew challenge and burn out contest as warm-up events are less than exciting for the fans and may be more for the teams than the spectators. Those events are no more lame than the skills competitions that surround the other sports All-Star weekends.

The main event is what it is all about and NASCAR puts on one of the best events because when all is said and done it comes down to one driver against another, one team versus the others or one bit of strategy outdoing someone else.

Photo Credit:Glenn Bure/ON PIT ROW

Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Hall of Fame, Nascar Legends 

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NASCAR’s First Hall of Fame Class Gets all A’s

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by Steve Wronkowicz

I am co-host of the syndicated radio show: ON PIT ROW. Over ten years on the air and three on the net; see what can happen when I don't let the facts get in the way of my opinions.

October 15, 2009 1:20 am UTC No Comments

NASCAR’s first Hall of Fame class has been announced.

There were no surprises.  It would be impossible to find fault with any of the picks.  The Bill France’s, Senior and Junior were included along with Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Dale Earnhardt.  All are deserving to be in The Hall.  But were they the best choices as the inaugural class?

Big Bill France was a shoo-in; after all with out his vision and tenacity the rest would be irrelevant.  Big Bill organized a bunch of rouge drivers and track owners and made a respectable show with them.  No longer would drivers have to worry whether the track owner would be heading out the pit gate with the receipts two laps before the end of the feature.

Richard Petty was and is the most recognizable name and face in NASCAR. No one will ever come close to his two-hundred career wins.  Yes, it was a different era; racing two or three nights a week.  But that makes the feat even more impressive.  The track variety in Petty’s early years proves his versatility.

Junior Johnson was the face of NASCAR in its earliest days.  He was the true NASCAR pioneer; moving from the back roads with moonshine in his trunk to a true race car driver.  Johnson’s wins as a driver and then as a car owner and crew chief makes his entry into the Hall of Fame a no-brainer.

Bill France, Jr. was instrumental in bringing the sport into the modern era.  The pull out of manufacturer support in the early seventies could have put the sport into a tail spin  that it may have never recovered from, but Junior was instrumental in bringing in a title sponsor and moving the sport into the television era.

The inductee with the most fan support is Dale Earnhardt.  Earnhardt’s championships and his fan polarization made him a natural to be inducted into the first class of the Hall.

Cases could be made for others to have been in the first class, but it is impossible to find fault with this group.  The next five classes of five each will be pretty easy to fill as well.  Just look at the drivers who were in the sweet sixteen of ON PIT ROW’s 64 Greatest Driver Tournament to see the best of the best.  Add in the off track contributors and there is no dearth of candidates to fill the classes to come.

photo credit: Icon Sports Media Inc.

Filed under: Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR, NASCAR & the Media, NASCAR 64 Greatest Driver Tourney, NASCAR Hall of Fame, On Pit Row The Fastest Two Hours on Radio, The King 

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Don’t Put Dale Earnhardt In The NASCAR Hall Of Fame, At Least Not Yet

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by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

October 13, 2009 7:51 pm UTC 1 Comment

Call me a lover of controversy, call me a rebel, call me what you will – I do not want to see Dale Earnhardt inducted as one of the first members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

For those of you not in the know, the new attraction’s first five inductees (out of a previously announced pool of 25) will be announced on Wednesday at 4 PM on SPEED Channel. As NASCAR is the most recent sport out of the “big five” to create a hall of fame, the first five men to be enshrined in the hall will receive a great honor.

Now, all 25 members of that list deserve to be Hall of Famers. There’s not a soul on there that didn’t do his part to make NASCAR what it was in the past, and what it is today. Whether an old-timer like Herb Thomas or Raymond Parks, or a still-active member of the sport like Rick Hendrick or Darrell Waltrip, they all ought to go in within the first five years.

Earnhardt, obviously, has a strong case. He has 76 Sprint Cup wins as a driver, seventh on the all-time list. He has seven championships, tied with Richard Petty for the most in NASCAR Sprint Cup. His 1987 Sprint Cup season, where he had 11 wins and 24 top-10s in 29 races, may be one of the best statistical seasons in NASCAR history.

Add 21 Nationwide and 11 IROC wins as a driver, and 47 wins over NASCAR’s top three series as an owner (counting from 1995, when he first started fielding full-time Busch and SuperTruck teams, through the 2001 Daytona 500), and Earnhardt is one of the most successful figures in NASCAR history. Few can claim more successes on the track, besides perhaps the Petty family.

So where does some Northern kid like me get off on saying that the Intimidator ought to wait a couple years to get in the Hall of Fame?

Simple: I think the pioneers of the sport ought to go in first.

My other passion in life besides sports is music, and although I generally criticize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for being a letdown, they’ve gotten at least one thing right. When the Hall was first established, its voters decided to induct the founders of the genre – men like Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Fats Domino – over such dominant bands as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones.

This move ensured that memories of the founding fathers of rock and roll would be preserved, and re-introduced the public to those figures during its first few years, when those other important, but chronologically later, bands weren’t in the Hall.

Transcending boundaries of art and sport, I think the philosophy fits. NASCAR has claimed to be a tradition-oriented sport in the past, and we all know that its fans enjoy tradition. Changes to cater to the shaky West Coast crowd on television have not been well-received in the past, partially because they have messed with tradition. I contend that if NASCAR really wants to get back to its roots, the announcement of its first five Hall of Fame inductees is a key cog in the equation.

Thankfully, the voting committee is made up of many who were in the sport long before its modernization of the 1990s and 2000s, and not too many NASCAR representatives (or an overwhelming fan vote), so I’m hoping that they will share my sentiments. Inducting members chronologically, and not based on popularity, seems like the best way to do NASCAR’s rich and storied history justice.

So here’s to my ballot – Red Byron, Herb Thomas, Raymond Parks, Lee Petty, and Big Bill France – making it in the first year.

We all know that the Earnhardt fans will keep coming back until he gets in.

Filed under: Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR Hall of Fame, Nascar Legends 

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What a Hall of Fame Should Be

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by Chris Leone, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2012 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

I do weekly Fantasy Pick'Em columns here at OPR, as well as the occasional opinion and analysis piece. I also provide the IZOD IndyCar Series coverage. For more on that, head to my site, OpenWheelAmerica.com. My Twitter handle is @christopherlion.

July 10, 2009 12:05 pm UTC 2 Comments

By now, everybody is aware of the list of potential inductees in the first class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. 25 of the sport’s biggest names, from the pioneers who laid the groundwork for the sport to the legends who helped advance it to where it is today, are up for induction. Certainly every one of them is deserving in his own way. Certainly every one should be inducted very soon.

Ideally, NASCAR would induct all 25 for the first year, and then continue with the 5 inductee-per-year trend it has set, but we all know that’s not going to be the case. And so we, the fans, as well as 50 other voters from within the sport, must choose the five most worthy of being in the first class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

This is where we have to decide what’s more important for a first class: do we vote for the biggest names available, or do we vote for the pioneers (i.e. the first ones involved with the sport are the first to be enshrined)? Certainly there’s a case for both sides. Raymond Parks and Red Byron, for winning the first championship, are just as worthy as any to go in. So is Cale Yarborough for his three consecutive titles, or Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty for their seven apiece.

But fans, if you’re going to let anybody sway your vote, let them sway it for the pioneers.

Remember what the purpose of a Hall of Fame is: to make sure that the contributions of those important to the sport do not go forgotten. Until he donated a slew of trophies to the Hall, when was the last time you heard Parks’ name bandied about? How about Tim Flock – has he been on your mind often since Ol’ DW entered the Tim Flock Special in a 1998 race?

Obviously, Bill France Sr. needs to go in with the first class, for founding the sanctioning body. But I’m not sure that two of the other so-called “locks,” Petty and Earnhardt, should go in right away. Petty even said recently that the founders of the sport should be the ones to go into the first class. I’m sure that, if Earnhardt was still around, he’d probably say the same.

It’s pretty much a lock that the fan ballot will include Earnhardt, for all of the mystique he still inspires (and all of the merchandise his likeness still sells), but doesn’t that sort of defeat the aforementioned purpose of a Hall of Fame? Are we even close to forgetting about Earnhardt’s contribution to the sport? I think not.

Some of the big names of the 70s and 80s, like Yarborough, Petty, and Earnhardt should be inducted by year two, but the first class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame should be, symbolically, made up of the first men to help define the sport. I’m thinking Big Bill, Lee Petty, Flock, Parks, and Herb Thomas. Who’s with me?

…anyone?

Filed under: NASCAR Hall of Fame 

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