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Unfortunately This Is Your Grandmother’s NASCAR

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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.

March 24, 2011 6:34 am UTC 1 Comment

NASCAR’s Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series teams head back to the west coast for their now once a year trip to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana California.

This race track like no other has mirrored what has become of the sport we love so much.  Like the trip to the grandmothers house that is too clean, too organized and too filled with treasures; the trip to many of NASCAR’s venues just isn’t very comfortable.

Places like Fontana, Kansas City, Iowa and Chicago have all the amenities that a fan would seem to want.  Everyone expects to have plenty of clean restrooms and lots of concession stands.  Those are givens.  Race tracks that don’t cater to those two basic needs will eventually fail.  But some tracks do a better job of making race fans feel welcome and a part of the action.

Unlike the grandmother’s house that is too clean and organized; race tracks that give the feeling of gramma’s house where the kids are on the floor, the toys are everywhere and the aunts and uncles are hanging around in the back yard, makes you want to stay and come back.

NASCAR has done a good job over the last couple of decades of making their racing seem more like a trip to grandmother’s house than a trip to gramma’s.  Going to grandmothers just isn’t as comfortable and fun as the trip to grammas.

Growing pains are always uncomfortable and NASCAR has had their share.  Some say they lost sight of their roots and abandoned their core fans for the glitz and glamor of big numbers and questionable venues. What NASCAR lost as it’s fan base exploded was the comfort and intimacy that its long time fans had grown up with; a comfort and intimacy that gramma knew how to cultivate.

NASCAR has so wanted their product to be eaten on the good china with the good silver; but all the fans want is a damn good dog on a fresh bun served on a paper plate with a cold one to wash it down.  NASCAR was ment to have some mustard dripped on the deck and hosed off; not worried about gravy on the table cloth.

Many reasons have been given for NASCAR’s decline in attendance and TV viewership over the past half-dozen years; but the most alarming sight was the lack of campers and the empty seats at Bristol this past week and the reason for it is quite simple.  NASCAR fans want to feel a part of the racing event.  They want to feel a connection to the sport and its participants; but that can’t happen as long as NASCAR continues to serve its product in a sanitized form.

The “good old days” have a short memory.  Nobody really wants to go back to the days of two or three lap lead finishes or 2×10 pine plank seats; just like no one would want gramma’s to have an outhouse.  What fans want is a connection with their sport and their heros that they feel they lost when NASCAR got rid of the back deck and built the dining room.

Lost somewhere in the growth of our sport was the realization that while the fans like to watch cars race and experience the on track show; what they really love more than anything else is their connection with their driver.  Today’s driver has been so marketed by their sponsors and PR companies that they have lost the ability to get down on the floor and play with the kids.

Making sure the sponsors are mentioned in every interview has become more important than sitting on the pit wall signing autographs and having your pictures taken with fans.  How did fans know in the seventies and eighties that Richard Petty was sponsored by STP?  There are thousands–maybe millions of pictures in fans homes of him in his STP firesuit signing autographs for everyone.

Those pictures, whether they be on paper and displayed, or just in a fans memory was what was right with NASCAR and was what made new fans fall in love with the sport.  Those memories of being down on the floor playing with the kids supercede polite conversation, using the proper fork and thanking a dizzying array of sponsors.

Sorry Grandmother–we’d rather hang out at Gramma’s this week.

Filed under: Auto Club Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway, How to fix NASCAR, Iowa Speedway, NASCAR, Nascar Legends, Nationwide Series, Richard Petty Motorsports, The King 

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Let Youth Be Served

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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.

February 24, 2011 8:18 am UTC 1 Comment

Trevor Bayne’s unexpected win in the Daytona 500 shows once again racing is a young mans sport.

As a fan of NASCAR racing the first driver I ever rooted for was LeeRoy Yarbrough in the late 60′s and early 70′s.  Through most of the 70′s after LeeRoy dropped out of the NASCAR world with mysterious ailments; I didn’t have an allegiance to any one driver until Bill Elliott came on the scene toward the end of that decade.

Elliott captured my attention because of his family run team out of Georgia when most NASCAR teams had already migrated to the area around Charlotte.  At the time there weren’t a lot of teams running Fords and I have always held an affinity for the brand.  So Bill, Dan and Ernie were MY guys.

I have remained an Elliott fan throughout his career even when he closed his team and went to drive for Ray Evernham and the resurrected Dodge factory effort.

When it was announce that Bill would drive for the Wood Brothers in a part time effort I believed in my heart, if not totally in my mind, that the combination could bring back the glory of a time gone by when David Pearson took the part time program and won races.  Pearson won races; he wasn’t interested in winning championships.  Championships were for guys like Richard Petty.

My hope for catching lightening in a bottle with the Wood Brothers-Bill Elliott combination kept lessening with every missed opportunity.  The Woods would enter Elliott in places that he had run well in the past; places like Atlanta.  The combination never seemed to work. Maybe the team wasn’t ready to win yet.

I was still surprised when the Woods elected to take Bill out of the car in late 2010 to give the displaced Bayne a one-off.  Bayne had been released earlier by Michael Walltrip Racing from his Nationwide Series ride. Needless to say he ran well enough at Texas, finishing a respectable seventeenth, to make the Woods have to make a decision for 2011.

The decision to part ways with Elliott and give Bayne the ride for 2011 obviously was a winner for both Bayne and the race team that hasn’t seen a win at Daytona since 1976.  One win does not a career make; but to take the iconic #21 to victory lane in only his second Sprint Cup race and just a day after his twenteth birthday could make the Wood Brothers seem like geniuses.

It may be way too early to proclaim a changing of the guard, but for this NASCAR fan it’s time to move on to a new phase in the sport we love.

Photo credit:  BethAnne Heisler/ON PIT ROW

Filed under: Bill Elliott, Daytona 500, How to fix NASCAR, NASCAR, NASCAR & the Media, NASCAR History, Nascar Legends, NASCAR Predictions, Trevor Bayne 

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NASCAR History: Car Number 40 and Pete Hamilton

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

Sundays of my youth consisted of NASCAR racing and cold bottles of Mountain Dew. Thirty years later not much has changed for me. However, nearly everything has changed in NASCAR.

January 5, 2010 10:13 am UTC 2 Comments

Over the next several weeks we’ll be featuring car numbers in NASCAR history. We started with #50 and are working our way down the line. With each car number we’ll take a brief look at a couple stats related to the featured car number, but we’ll primarily spotlight either a driver, sponsor, car owner, manufacturer or other significant subject closely tied to the car number of the day.

NASCAR driver Pete Hamilton car number 40I had some plans for today’s post on the the car numbers in NASCAR history. In an earlier post of this series I mentioned my uncle’s role in introducing me to NASCAR racing. What I didn’t mention is that he also influenced me with a car that he owned. The car was a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner SuperBird done up in Richard Petty blue, complete with #43 and related decals. Unfortunately, I don’t have any images of that car. I know some images exist of me as a child beside the car, and one of my favorites, sitting on the wing. Unfortunately, for the time being I’ll just have to go with what I’ve got as I spotlight #40 and Pete Hamilton’s Plymouth SuperBird.

Stats for all cars running the #40:

NASCAR Driver Pete Hamilton

  • Number of Races: 862
  • Number of Wins: 9
  • Number of Top 5s: 45
  • Number of Top 10s: 141
  • Number of Poles: 4

Check out current NASCAR race statistics here at On Pit Row!

 

Spotlight: Driver Pete Hamilton & the SuperBird

Pete Hamilton only had 15 starts in the #40 for Richard Petty, but he certainly made the most of his time behind the wheel. In those starts he led a total of 338 laps, collected 3 wins, 9 top fives and 11 top tens. As a matter of fact, the four times that he didn’t finish in the top ten were due to mechanical issues or accidents. All three of Pete’s wins came at the fast tracks of Daytona or Talladega. The Daytona win came at the 1970 Daytona 500 which he followed up three weeks later with the first win at Talladega. I say “first win at Talladega” because Pete would go on to become the first driver to win both Talladega races in the same year. An accomplishment that would not be duplicated until none other than Dale Earnhardt did it in 1999! Pete won nearly $95,000 in 1970 for those three wins alone (which was the majority of his total of $131,406 for his sixteen Cup series starts in 1970).

Pete Hamilton and Petty Enterprises #40 SuperBirdIf you don’t like the Car of Tomorrow’s wing, then you likely will hate the SuperBird’s wing! :D The Plymouth SuperBird in which he drove to victory was a Petty Enterprises car. The SuperBirds (along with the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona) were Chrysler’s entries into the “Aero Wars” between the car manufacturers in NASCAR mostly during the 1969 and 1970 seasons. These two cars had one purpose in their creation, to dominate stock car racing. An excellent site featuring these cars is AeroWarriors.com where they summed up these “Aero Warriors” presence in NASCAR pretty good. “The Dodge Daytona and Plymouth SuperBird demonstrated the extremes to which the factories would go to earn victories on the nation’s race tracks. The winged Aero Warriors graced the nation’s speedways from September, 1969 until September, 1972, when major sanctioning body rule changes ended their reign. Their legacy is one of success, having won over 45 percent of the NASCAR races they competed in, as well as scoring a total of eleven victories in ARCA and USAC.” The site has many articles on the history, statistics, and clubs for Chrysler’s “Aero Warriors.” There’s also a “Best and Worst” list related to the cars, such as the “Best Moment For a Winged Car: When Buddy Baker officially broke the 200 MPH barrier for a stock car.”

Cartoon character MutleyI really wish I could have gotten in touch with my uncle for the history and details on the SuperBird that he owned. I’ll keep trying and if I can I’ll update the post with the personal photos. I had a blast riding around Ocala, FL in that car. The windows down, a cold glass bottle of Mt. Dew and the occasional stinging of my upper lip after my uncle would blip the throttle right as I was pursing my lips to the bottle for a drink. I’d then look over to see my uncle’s eyes squinted shut as he let out his Mutley-like wheezy laugh and say something like, “Ohhhh, looks like that hurt, Shrimp!” [Yeah, he called me "Shrimp" all the time.]

Filed under: Daytona 500, James Jones, NASCAR, NASCAR History, Talladega Superspeedway 

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NASCAR History: Car Number 43 and Richard Petty

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

Sundays of my youth consisted of NASCAR racing and cold bottles of Mountain Dew. Thirty years later not much has changed for me. However, nearly everything has changed in NASCAR.

January 2, 2010 10:55 am UTC No Comments

Over the next several weeks we’ll be featuring car numbers in NASCAR history. We started with #50 and are working our way down the line. With each car number we’ll take a brief look at a couple stats related to the featured car number, but we’ll primarily spotlight either a driver, sponsor, car owner, manufacturer or other significant subject closely tied to the car number of the day.

Richard Petty STP car number 43Going into this series I knew that some of the car numbers would take some hard searching for a driver or car owner to spotlight. Yet others would be full of history and difficult to narrow it down to only one driver or owner. And then there’s the #43. It’s the car number that has ran more races than any other car number in NASCAR Cup competition with 1,735 races. It’s a car number that will always be associated with a sponsor (STP) and a driver, Richard Petty. No, the hard part would be determining how to put such a small spotlight on a driver so rich in NASCAR history.

Stats for all cars running the #43:

NASCAR Cup champion Richard Petty

  • Number of Races: 1,735
  • Number of Wins: 198
  • Number of Top 5s: 560
  • Number of Top 10s: 771
  • Number of Poles: 120

Check out current NASCAR race statistics here at On Pit Row!

Spotlight Subject: Driver Richard Petty

So how do I spotlight a driver who has been so dominant in the series and has long ago achieved iconic status, often referred to simply as “The King.” Just some of his career stats are amazing, such as his all time record of 200 wins. (Second place on that list is David Pearson at 105 wins, and the closest active driver is Jeff Gordon with 82 wins.) Richard also has 555 top fives, 712 top tens, and 123 poles. He has seven Cup championships and a total of 10 wins at Daytona, 7 of which are Daytona 500 wins! How do you narrow the focus down to just one thing with The King?

Remember Jimmie Johnson’s 2007 season with four consecutive wins and ten wins overall. I remember that many fans and media writers didn’t believe a ten race season was possible in today’s NASCAR. And with the level of competition in the Cup garage today, I don’t think most would have expected a 4 race win streak either. So, I thought I’d take a look at Richard Petty’s history of streaks. The King would not disappoint when it came to streaks for winning races and streaks of sitting on the pole. Nor would he disappoint with the number of wins in a season. Eight times he had seasons with 10 or more wins, two of them had 21 or more as a matter of fact. But none of this should have been surprising I guess when one considers that in 35 years of racing (in which he logged 1,184 races) he had an average start of 9.5 and an average finish of 11.3. The mid sixties and early seventies were truly Richard’s time. It was in this period of his career that he would truly dominate in regular style, and often in streaks.

Richard Petty Streaks!

In reviewing his record at Racing-Reference.info, I decided to define a streak as three in a row or more. Here’s what I came up with. Between 1966 and 1971, four times he had streaks of 3 poles in a row; once he had a streak of 4 poles in a row; and once more he had a streak of 5 poles in a row. Note, these are all separate streaks!

When it came to wins, it was even more impressive. Between 1962 and 1975 he recorded the 13 race win streaks below, again each are separate streaks.NASCAR Cup Champion Richard Petty

  • 1962 – 3 races
  • 1963 – 3 races
  • 1966 – 3 races
  • 1967 – 3 races
  • 1967 – 10 races
  • 1968 – 3 races
  • 1970 – 3 races
  • 1971 – 3 races
  • 1971 – 3 races
  • 1971 – 5 races
  • 1971 – 3 races
  • 1974 – 3 races
  • 1975 – 3 races

As you might could tell from the list above, 1967 was a record setting year for Richard Petty. In this year he had 27 Winston Cup victories. To put into perspective just how dominant he was in this year I’d like you to consider that our current Cup schedule is made up of 36 races. Starting at the Columbia 200 in 1967 and going 36 races until North Wilkesboro’s Wilkes 400, Richard would start on the pole 18 times, and on the outside pole 11 times. That means 29 out of the 36 races he started on the front row; and he would never start worse than 7th during this stretch. His three worst finishes were a 7th, 11th and a 17th (engine failure). All other finishes were top fours with 25 of them being wins and 5 of them being runner-up finishes. Only twice did he go two races without a win, and he closed that 36 race stretch out with 10 in a row!

I don’t think I ever want to hear a fan gripe about Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon winning too many times during the season again! Can you imagine being a fan of someone other than Richard Petty during that 36 race stretch? People have joked before that track promoters have had the trophy already engraved with a drivers name even before the race was won, but in 1967 I would have believed it. And the name would have been, Richard “The King” Petty.

Filed under: James Jones, NASCAR, NASCAR History 

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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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NASCAR’s Version of the Prince and the Pauper?

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by Charlie Turner

Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. The best NASCAR and IndyCar news and opinion, exclusive pictures and video. I'm Charlie Turner. Follow me on Twitter @onpitrow

September 30, 2009 2:09 pm UTC 3 Comments

In a tweet during On Pit Row this week, I asked…

“If George Gillett brings Saudi money into NASCAR and it rescues Richard Petty Motorsports, will NASCAR fans still love the King?”

The “King” being our king. Richard Petty, of course.

The rumors were flying on Tuesday about Saudis in the garage. Today, Scene Daily has this…

George Gillett, whose family is the majority owner of Richard Petty Motorsports, has entered into a “commercial collaboration” agreement with F6, a leading Saudi Arabia-based sports management firm founded and led by Saudi Arabian Prince Faisal bin Fahad bin Abdullah Al Saud.

Gillett’s earlier purchase of the bulk of Petty Enterprises from the Petty family made many Petty fans leery. The more recent announcement that there exists a letter of intent to merge RPM with Yates Racing has longtime Petty followers trying to justify a switch to Ford.

Most subjects of the Kingdom whom I’ve spoken with are OK with the switch. As long as it saves the 43 and keeps Richard involved. At least they aren’t going to race Toyotas, you know?

But what about the Saudis? How will that wash with the Level Cross crowd?

I don’t know.

But I have a favorite saying about money…

“It’s not the money. It the amount”

And the Kingdom of Saud has whatever it would take for the kingdom of Richard to compete.

How would you feel about this Petty fans?

Filed under: NASCAR, NASCAR Bidness, NASCAR Rumors, The King, The Pettys 

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