Sledgehammer

Best wishes to all my loyal readers for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!

Thanks for staying with me through all the changes in 2011. My full focus will turn back onto NASCAR full time in 2012. You’re gonna like what you read here.

The best is yet to come…

I’m a cancer survivor.

Those who know me, know that I waged a successful 18-month long battle against two different cancers – at the same time. Two separate primary cancers are not common and the survival rates aren’t always the best. But, I was able to wage a successful battle against neck and throat cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma with the brilliant help from an amazing group of medical professionals at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

We all live challenging lives in one way or another. Every day brings a new adventure. And whether or not you consider your current life situation as a blessing or a curse, every day is still a gift.

So during this holiday season, when we all exchange gifts with one another, I ask that you to remember the gift we receive every day.

Every wonder why people refer to time as the past, the present and the future?

Because every day is “a present.”

How will you enjoy yours today?

It’s been a memorable year in motorsports.

NASCAR finally got the championship finish it has been looking for since it came up with the idea of The Chase. The NHRA celebrated 60 years of racing (yeah I didn’t know it was 60 years either until about halfway through the season, but that’s kind of how things are with the NHRA) with a look back at its often overlooked history as some new names emerged at the top of the points at the end of another tough season of racing. Formula One got even more exciting to watch, even as Sebastian Vettel destroyed the field while doing his best Michael Schumacher impersonation. It showed American race fans that a race car sporting the Red Bull logo can indeed win races and championships.

There was also a huge downside as IndyCar watched both a promising season and the life of one of its star drivers vanish in a blink of an eye in Las Vegas. I still think IndyCar has yet to reach bottom and there are some serious people who agree with me.

And while I could devote this entire blog to one sentence reviews of another 15 or so racing series, that’s not really what this is all about.

Too often the fans and the media forget that racing is a team sport. And while we all claim that we remember, how much do we really think about it? When the driver is the most visible member of the team and in most cases the most vocal, it’s easy to forget about the dozens (and in some cases hundreds) of people back at the shop who spend long hours building engines, designing and fabricating race cars, filing important paperwork like the payroll, answering the phone, sweeping the shop floor and even the things we take for granted, like driving the team transporters to race weekends.

These days, the people who are really the most important and most likely overlooked members of the team — and ask any team owner about this –  are the people who are assigned the task of finding sponsorship dollars.

There’s a lot of memorable phrases about money and racing — “If you want to make a million dollars in racing, start with five million” or “It doesn’t take cubic inches to win races, it takes cubic dollars.”

There’s a lot of them. And they’re all true.

When the great recession hit the racing business it started out like a huge tsunami hundreds of miles out to sea. Team owners saw it coming and some reacted accordingly, by tightening their belts and preparing for the worst, finding some comfort in  the historical fact that racing has survived these kinds of economic downturns in the past. Then there were some owners who reacted to the impeding changes by immediately cutting loose a substantial chunk of their workforce and then hoped it was enough to ride out the worst. Still others didn’t know exactly what to do and simply waited for it to hit, hoping for the best.

The impact of the economic downturn has been devastating to motorsports. We’ve watched well established teams in all racing series fold up their tents, while others have taken the option of fielding fewer cars. Consolidation has been the answer for yet another group of owners as everyone has adjusted to learning to survive with less and hope that there’ll be more money in the future.

Sales professionals I talk to tell me that the environment for finding sponsorship may be the worst ever. Gone are the days when all you had to do was show a potential sponsor how an association with a team and the series in which it was racing would result in a measurable return on investment. That often meant raising brand awareness which in turn would result in increased sales. Even business to business deals were fairly straightforward.

Now, a potential sponsor wants and needs more. A return on investment has a “must-have” element to it, essential to selling the deal to those in the executive suites who would easily be convinced to spend their marketing dollars on the NFL or college football or a major golf tournament.

“How will an association with your team grow my business?”

It’s not a new question, but it comes up more and more and it’s often not an easy question to answer. It separates the professionals on the sales staff from the wannabes. It requires that the team’s sales professional does their homework, learning everything about the potential sponsor’s business model and then figuring out how to make it work with the team’s. Successful sales people have done this type of in-depth research for years. It’s now become the norm.

It’s not easy. It’s a tough gig.

You think jumping over the pit wall to make a four tire change and filling the car with fuel or perhaps tearing a red hot engine apart and rebuilding it within a designated timeframe is a tough gig? Try coming up with an answer for your team owner when he asks you how you’re doing with finding several million dollars of sponsorship money for him — so that you can keep the team going. Oh, and while you’re at it, you can keep your job too.

Like I said, it’s a tough gig.

Look at the teams that were vying for the championship in their respective series this season. The teams at the top of the points are essentially the well financed ones. That’s no secret. Talent also needs a lot of money to win championships. You can’t have one without the other.

The 2012 champions won’t be just the best driver in their respective series. They’re likely to be the best financed, as well.

Nothing happens in racing without money.

Those who say, don’t know. Those who know, don’t say.

If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you have always got.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure–which is: Try to please everybody.

In years to come, they may discover what the air we breathe and the life we lead are all about. But it won’t be soon enough for me.

I was in Chicago last week working at Chicagoland Speedway. It was a great trip. I got to see old friends, sample an excellent neighborhood Italian place that an old friend recommended Oggi Trattoria on Grand Avenue (make sure you try the Oggi Special pasta, it’s absolutely fantastic) and I got to spend time in downtown Chicago.

I love to visit Chicago. It’s a wonderful city.

And of course, I had my fix of deep dish pizza at Giordano’s on Van Buren.

While in Chicago, I got to talk to a lot of folks both in and around the track, at restaurants, gas stations, fellow hotel guests and the local and regional journalists. One of the things I wanted to know was their thoughts on the impact of having the opening round of the 2011 Chase at Chicagoland Speedway in September. What I heard was pretty surprising.

Nearly everyone who wasn’t affiliated with the track or racing didn’t even know what I was talking about.

Chase? Who’s chasing what? That was pretty much the reaction.

I wasn’t surprised at all. Chicago is a real stick and ball town. One guy told me that if you want to watch a race, you go to Milwaukee.

On the flight back home I started thinking about NASCAR’s fascination, no…make that obsession, with having a race in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Let’s face it, New York City is about as stick and ball as they come and that attitude extends to northern New Jersey, too. The Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks, the Giants, the Jets. All marquee franchises.

Chicago is THE stick and ball town in America. Nothing else matters in the city where Michael Jordan held court, the Bears rule the world and you’ve got two major league baseball teams to choose from. It’s an attitude that extends all the way down to the high school sports level.

And then there’s L.A.

L.A. is an entertainment town – period. Sports is about the last thing on an Angeleno’s mind, unless they’ve got a team in the playoffs. And younger Angelenos would prefer to play their sports virtually on the latest game console, rather than pay to watch someone else play.

There is one plus for Chicago race fans and that’s their close proximity to the race track. It’s about a 60 minutes drive from downtown. However, I would think the majority of fans come from the northern suburbs, which is another 30 minutes away.

New York City fans have to drive a couple of hours to Pocono Raceway, which (for reasons of full disclosure) happens to be my home track and is located in a really beautiful area of Pennsylvania. Pocono gets a bad rap from the media, but the drivers seem to like it. So do the fans. Now, I’ll admit, Pocono isn’t the greatest place to watch a Cup race and its two races are 100 miles too long. But, track owner Dr. Mattioli was there for Bill France Sr. when NASCAR’s patriarch needed a place to expand his growing racing series out of the southeast and so their two races remain on the schedule, for now (although I for one, would like to see one of their dates become a Cup date at Montreal).

Then there’s the redheaded stepchild of International Speedway Corporation — Auto Club Speedway. California Speedway. Fontana. Penske’s Folly. Call it what you will it’s in the middle of what is called the Inland Empire that for out-of-towners is another name for Nowheresville. It was originally designed and built to accommodate Indy Cars and I’ve seen many great open wheel races there (in an era when open wheel cars would reach nearly 250 mph on the backstretch), but they don’t race there anymore. So now we get 3 ½ boring hours of single file, can’t wait until it’s over Cup racing.

I’d like to see ISC change the configuration, either make it smaller like Richmond or bank it higher and turn it into a restrictor plate track. Either one of those changes will bring more people out to the middle of Bumpluck, Egypt to watch a Cup race.

One more thing about ACS that’s always bugged me. Why does track management think that people will drive out to Nowheresville to see a Hollywood star as part of the pre-race festivities? If you live in Los Angeles, you’re likely to see that same person at the local gas station, where you can at least have a conversation and possibly invite them out for a beer.

The obsession with New York City got so bad a few years back that some at ISC actually got themselves believing that they could build a track on Staten Island. Then, everyone sobered up, the sun came up in the morning and many millions of dollars later, the project was abandoned.

Which brings me back to Chicago and the opening round of the 2011 Chase. On that first weekend of the Chase, local sports editors in the tri-state area will have to choose between NASCAR, NCAA football and the football programs at secondary schools in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. If there’s an NFL season (and there likely will be), it will be in its second week and the Bears will be on television playing in New Orleans. Where do you think NASCAR coverage will rank?

No matter what the storylines are headed into that first race (and I know NASCAR hopes the inclusion of Dale Jr. in the Chase is one of them), it’ll be an uphill climb for the NASCAR PR machine for sure.

Coming up: Off The Menu – who would you invite to dinner from NASCAR?

Thoughts, observations and a few questions…

I always look forward to the trio of races on the Sunday before Memorial Day – the Grand Prix of Monaco, the Indy 500 and the Coke 600. Usually only one of the three is worth talking about the day after. This year, all three were memorable events, which is somehow fitting, given the name of the holiday weekend. And better yet, I got to watch all three from the comfort of my living room (my choice this year).

I would have loved to seen the finish at Monaco had the top three drivers – Vettel, Alonso and Button – not been able to change tires. The change in F1 rules this season that has placed the majority of race strategy on how you use your tires made for another fantastic race. All three of the aforementioned drivers were running with tires that were at different stages of their wear life, with Vettel and Alonso on older tires than Button, yet all three were able to stay within feet of one another lap after lap. When the field came to a stop after Vitaly Petrov’s crash, I expected to watch one of the greatest all time F1 dashes to the checkers after the race went green. Instead, it was a boring four-lap parade to the finish, with Vettel crossing the finish line first.

Even the director of motorsport for Pirelli (who is the exclusive supplier of tires to F1) said the rules should be changed to prevent a similar situation in the future.

“I can understand there is a safety consideration but I am thinking about it more from a fans’ perspective,” Paul Hembery told European media outlet AUTOSPORT. ”I’ve had a lot of people shout at me from the boats around the harbor saying, ‘Why were they allowed to change?’ It took away something from the race – and the big question was could they have lasted? That is what we were all asking with six laps to go and that was going to be the excitement: would Sebastian hit the [tire degradation] cliff?”

Despite the letdown, the other two races on Sunday made up for it.

As the final lap began on the centennial running of the Indy 500, I just couldn’t help thinking how great it would be to see not only an American, but also, a rookie win the race. However, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that as a rookie, J.R. Hildebrand would somehow screw things up. While the rest of the world (and the ABC broadcast team which delivered another absolutely abysmal performance) was focused on Hildebrand’s Dallara entering Turn 3, I focused on the lapped car that was just exiting the same turn and how quickly Hildebrand was closing in on it. Then, along with every other seasoned observer in the audience who knows you can never make a successful late race pass on the outside of Turn 4 at Indy without hitting the wall, I watched the kid make an anticipated rookie mistake and end his race sliding down the front straight.

I wonder if Robby Gordon has called Dale Jr. to commiserate about losing the big Memorial Day weekend race because you ran out of fuel? Gordon was one lap short on fuel in 1999 at the Brickyard and literally handed the race to Swede Kenny Brack who was driving for A.J. Foyt.

OK, wins are wins and that’s what every driver wants. But let’s not forget that The Son of Elvis is still in the top-5 in driver points and should make The Chase.

In Monaco, many of the spectators arrived on private jets or multi-million dollar yachts and then dined on caviar, Kobe beef sliders and delicately arranged fruit platters. At Indy, there were fewer private jets, but plenty of limousine and packed, air-conditioned suites where spectators dined on well-catered meals, drank moderately priced wine and imported beer. At Charlotte Motor Speedway, most of the spectators came in either RV’s or packed minivans, dined on grilled burgers, hot dogs or white bread bologna sandwiches and sat all day in the hot sun waiting for the race drinking Budweiser.

Just my opinion here, but I think the folks in Charlotte might have been having the better time.

Last week, Roger Penske and his three drivers appeared on the Charlie Rose show where they talked about the mystique of Indy, the difficulty of winning there and how they approach the race and racing in general. Penske was asked about his most difficult year at Indy, and of course he immediately talked about 1995, the year after Penske dominated the event using a purpose-built Mercedes pushrod engine (that pushed the spirit of the rules, according to most observers) that just absolutely destroyed the competition and put Al Unser Jr. in victory circle. When Penske returned in ’95 with a turbocharged Mercedes (after the pushrod engine was banned), he came with essentially the same cars he used in ’94, except without the pushrod engine and they were so bad they couldn’t get out of their own way and Penske’s teams missed the field.

While not as dramatic, but just as memorable, I would have to say that the Penske organization’s performance in the prestigious centennial running of the race was weak, uninspiring, rife with errors and on par or actually worse than some of the one-off teams that made the field.

At least The Captain can find solace in the fact that his teams didn’t suck as bad as Andretti Autosport, which wins this year’s Indy 500 award for doing the very least with the most. Michael Andretti is in desperate need to find someone like Mike Hull (managing director at Target Chip Ganassi Racing) to run his racing organization.

Despite running Franchitti out of fuel both during qualifying and the race, the Ganassi teams proved once again that you can never count on the best and the fastest to win the 500.

My heart sunk when Paul Tracy had problems early in the 500. I truly hope Tracy gets another shot at Indy.

All of my interactions with Dan Wheldon have been very pleasant experiences, which made his winning the 500 for the second time something I feel really good about.

Why is it that when Kyle Busch is in a Nationwide car you practically expect him to win the race, yet when he’s in his Cup car you never know which Kyle Busch is going to show up?

You have to wonder if Coach Gibbs was the next guy in line waiting outside of the race shop to take that trick Lexus for a spin when the local constabulary popped Kyle?

Trevor Bayne may have won the Daytona 500 this year (which explains why the winner of that race is almost always the guy who is in the right place at the right time and rarely the best car), but Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is a much better driver and deserves a full time Cup ride in 2012 more than Bayne.

Although the 48 team isn’t dominating the headlines at the moment (and remember, their real strengths always emerge around the time the leaves begin to change), those who dare think or write that their string of championships will come to an end this season will be eating those words come November.

The F1 race at Monaco was the scene of this weekend’s most devastating crashes, especially the one that involved SauberF1 driver Sergio Perez during qualifying.

If I read one more word by some idiot who calls himself a sports writer about how auto racing is too safe today and the lack of danger is driving away fans …

The opinions and views expressed in this blog belong entirely to me.

Yeah, I’m still around. Doing quite a bit of traveling, meeting a lot of new people. Seeing what the world is like when you’re not drinking the Kool Aid.

I’ve been watching the racing world and doing a lot of thinking….

Rainy day, rain all day
Ain’t no use in gettin’ uptight
Just let it groove it’s own way
Let it drain your worries away yeah
Lay back and groove on a rainy day hey
Lay back and dream on a rainy day.