The Scariest Halloween Ever

For this blog post, I want to take you back in time. I could talk to you about the Talladega finish, or the phony NASCAR points system, or why Indy Car is dying, or what to do about Formula One's power units, but today I want to talk about something that has affected me since it occurred on Halloween sixteen years ago. This was the day that open-wheel driver Greg Moore was killed in a terrible crash on lap 9 of the 500-mile CART race in Fontana, CA. 

I always say that the easiest place to start a story is in the beginning. I began watching NASCAR racing in 1993 at age 7. I then became interested in Indy Car (or CART - Championship Auto Racing Teams) a year later. I always liked Michael Andretti, Gil de Ferran, and Adrian Fernandez. But in 1995, this kid from Canada named Jacques Villenueve won the Indianapolis 500. I don't know why, but I took a liking to this little hoser. He had spunk and a personality, and at the time, he was a pretty clean racer. Plus, I loved his car. That bright blue and white scheme with a Ford engine, and what I thought, at the time, was a casino sponsor. It wasn't until the next year, 1996, that I found out Player's was a Canadian cigarette. That made it even cooler. It also wasn't until 1996 that Greg Moore showed up in the CART series and took Villenueve's paint scheme and sponsor with him once Jacques took his talent to F1. I had seen Greg race in Indy Lights the year before with the Player's scheme and he beat the pants off everyone. So, needless to say, I was glad to see him move up to the premier series the next year. As soon as he made it there, it quickly became apparent that he was going to be a major force to be reckoned with. It was also apparent that he was quite possibly the nicest and most humble driver in the series (and perhaps all of American and Canadian motorsports). I remember how incredibly happy he was to finish 2nd to Michael Andretti at Milwaukee in 1996, and then when he won his first CART race there in 1997. Possibly the best moment was one week later, at Detroit, when both PacWest cars of Mauricio Gugelmin and Mark Blundell ran out of fuel on the last lap and Greg zoomed by them both and won with his fist shaking in the air as he crossed the finish line. He could've legitimately won the championship in 1998, but crashes, and some bad mechanical luck squelched his chances. 

This leads me to the sad part. The part I wish wouldn't have happened. But alas, to paraphrase Garth Brooks, I could've missed the pain, but that means I would've had to miss the dance. 

Two weeks prior to the crash, I was in Houston for Friday practice. I got a picture of Greg Moore's car. It still haunts me. I remember the day before the crash, Greg had been hit while he was on his motor scooter by a woman who was backing out of the parking lot in the infield with her car. He fell and broke his finger. The doctors cleared him to race the next day. Every now and then, I get bad feelings about things, I had a bad feeling about him racing, despite the fact that the CART doctors were some of the best in the world. 

Then the crash happened. Some said it happened because of high wind on the backstretch. Richie Hearn crashed his Budweiser car in the exact same spot on lap 3, but he didn't flip over, despite hitting the grass at the same place that Greg did. I was watching the race live on ESPN. Greg's crash was the worst crash I had ever seen at the time. I prayed he would survive, but deep down, I knew he was gone. My mom walked in and told me that the local aquarium was having a free admission day for Halloween and that we should go. I did, and I was upset the whole time, even though the aquarium was awesome. I couldn't wait to get home so I could watch the rest of the race on tape and find out the medical report. When Dr. Steve Olvey made the announcement and ESPN played the tribute package leading to commercial, all I could do was smile. Not because I was happy, but because I was too shocked to cry. And I did plenty of that in the days and weeks ahead. One of my heroes had just perished, and I had just started to have some personal issues the same week. I felt so lost.

I finally found a diecast model of Greg's car two years ago. I paid $150 dollars for it. It's the most I ever spent on a single car. My hands were shaking as I opened the box. I still can hardly look at it. If I had a shelf, I'd probably display it. 

Last month, I was at Circuit of the Americas in Austin for the 6-Hour FIA Endurance Race. A vendor was selling Randy Owens merchandise. They had a set of postcards he designed for $6. I had to buy it because the one on top had a Nissan and a Mercedes from the IMSA sports car series in the late 1990s. As soon as I bought it, I noticed that one was sticking out from under the pile and it was a picture of a blue car. It couldn't possibly be Greg Moore. But it was. It was a rendering of him racing Alex Zanardi in his Target car. I was literally gleeful. That day, I saw a Chaparral from Le Mans, a Porsche made of Legos, a live Corvette engine, and a 6-hour race, but the thing that put a smile on my face and made the most lasting memory was a 50-cent postcard. I think that encapsulates how much I liked Greg Moore. 

I'll end this post, what I hope is one of many more posts to come, with a quote that was on the wall at the aquarium in Galveston, TX that I first visited on the day of Greg Moore's passing. I think it's profound. It haunted me that day and it describes my feelings for Greg and for this sport. 

"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught." Baba Dioum

Kentucky Fried Points System (and Daytona)

Last week's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona was a blast to watch, both literally and figuratively. There's not much I can really say about it that hasn't already been said. It was a great race, despite the last lap crash. My thoughts to make the restrictor-plate races at Daytona and Talladega safer are simple and comprise 4 things.

1. Jeff Burton's idea of having single-file restarts as opposed to double-file restarts in the last 10 laps of the races at those two tracks is a good one. The cars won't be so bunched up.

2. Move the grandstand seating in the front further back. The seats that are that close to the catchfence suck anyway due to the lack of visibility.

3. Put tethers on the engines so they don't fly out on impact. They put tethers on the wheels in the late 1990s after several fatal Indy Car crashes, and it has worked out well.

4. Put a smaller plate on the engines to slow the cars down some more so they aren't as apt to fly through the air on impact. The single-car lap times on the plate tracks didn't get much higher than 192 mph until a few years ago when they started topping out at nearly 200 mph, partially due to the aerodynamics of the Gen-6 car that debuted in 2013.

And now for something completely different:

I felt compelled to write my third blog post after watching Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint Cup Quaker State 400 from Kentucky Speedway. The obvious topic of discussion is the new lower downforce aerodynamics package that NASCAR mandated for the cars this weekend. A similar package will be used at Darlington on Labor Day weekend, and an all new completely different package, focused on creating higher drag, will be used for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in two weeks and at Michigan in August. The package used this weekend was designed to give the cars less grip and more straightaway speed, which would hopefully allow for better runs and more passing, a quality that us fans don't see enough of on most NASCAR tracks nowadays, save for restarts and pit stops. To NASCAR's credit, the package, for the most part, worked. It wasn't a breathtakingly exciting race overall, but there was a lot of passing and it was infinitely better than what we've been seeing on 1.5 mile tracks the last few years (the length that comprises most of the schedule). However, the point (no pun intended) of this post is to proclaim a gripe that I (and I believe a great deal of fans) have with the current NASCAR Cup Series points system. Starting in 2014, if a driver won a race within the first 26 races, he or she would automatically qualify for one of 16 spots in the "Chase," NASCAR's equivalent of a playoff format, that takes place during the last 10 races of the 36-race season. Any other disputes to determine the Chase field (such as ties, more than 16 drivers with wins, or fewer than 16 drivers with wins) would be settled by the actual numerical points accumulated in the first 26 races. Disclaimer: If you're still reading and aren't confused or angry so far, you're doing a lot better than most NASCAR fans. The other issue that had never been touched in 66 years of NASCAR racing was an allowance for a driver to miss a race for a medical exemption, such as an injury. Before the Chase was revamped in 2014, if a driver missed a race, he didn't get any points and would drop down the standings accordingly. I completely understand that NASCAR, and some fans, wanted to give the drivers, teams, and sponsors a chance to win the championship even if they had to miss a race or two due to injury. However, there should be a limit to the kindness in this case. Kyle Busch broke his leg in a multi-car crash during the Xfinity race at Daytona in February. He didn't compete in a race until Charlotte on Memorial Day weekend, meaning he missed the first 11 races, which is nearly half of the regular season. He won on the road course at Sonoma last month and he won again Saturday night at Kentucky. NASCAR deemed that Busch could take a medical exemption and as long as he finishes the regular season in the top-30 in points, he would qualify for the Chase, since he has a win. Something about that just seems naturally wrong to me. It's not his fault that he got hurt, but how is it fair that someone who missed nearly half of the regular season could potentially be the champion, while someone who ran all of the races and finished in the top 16 in regular season points, but may not have a win, could be bumped out of qualifying for the Chase because of the medically-exempted driver? NASCAR made a step in the right direction by introducing the new aero packages to help improve the racing. They could make another step forward by closing this glaring loophole in the points system (if not cancelling the Chase format altogether.)

Long-awaited post #2

All right, so I've been busy and tired this whole year and I haven't been able to blog since February, but something happened this past week that completely woke me up (and it doesn't involve the Supreme Court). Last Saturday's Indy Car race, the MavTV 500 from Fontana, CA, was the best race I've seen in pretty much any series in the last decade. It was reminiscent of the Hanford wing races of the late 90s-early 2000s CART series, and of the early-mid 2000s Indy Racing League racing, coupled with action similar to a NASCAR restrictor-plate race. The reason it necessitates a blog post, however, is not because it was so good. Anyone with two eyes, two ears, a brain, and a heart could have seen it without me telling you. The problem is that no one did see it. The overnight ratings for the live NBCSN telecast were a whopping 0.37. By comparison, this year's Daytona 500 pulled in a 7.3 (and that's even much lower than it should be). The crowd in Fontana was abysmal too, with an estimated attendance of under 20,000. Although the track doesn't give an official number, anyone with the same eyes who watched the amazing race could see that some Texas high school football games get bigger crowds.

This leads to the next problem, even if the few fans who saw the race were happy, the drivers (at least several of the big names) were livid, and down right scared of the racing. The only drivers interviewed on camera who didn't complain were the winner, Graham Rahal, and third place finisher, Marco Andretti, along with Ryan Hunter Reay, Ryan Briscoe, Ed Carpenter, and Josef Newgarden, the latter four of which were, oddly enough, all taken out in crashes. The biggest complainer, not surprisingly, was Will Power, who even went so far as to invoke memories of the 2011 Las Vegas Indy Car race, in which Dan Wheldon was killed. Tony Kanaan was the second-most vocal, and Juan Pablo Montoya expressed a milder displeasure. Marco Andretti said it best, "Yeah, it was crazy, but that's what they pay us to do. I just hope we put on a good show for the fans." What the others failed to realize is how safe the current car is compared to the ones raced in 2011. Dan Wheldon himself did much of the testing of the current car before his passing, albeit without the 2015 aero packages. What they also failed to mention was that Fontana is a wide, sweeping, 2-mile track, completely unlike the 2011 situation at Vegas: a 1.5 mile progressive-banked track, where Indy Car stupidly started 34 cars, and one-third of the drivers had little-to-no oval experience.

Indy Car has been on life support ever since the late 1990s, and it's a crying shame, because they have the best on-track product from week-to-week. If the tickets were a little cheaper, and the drivers a little more famous, and the promoters a little bit better, it might survive. But for now, it will live in the shadows of its stock car counterparts, who aren't doing that great either compared to where they once were. But that's a story for next week: NASCAR's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

In the beginning......

The easiest place to start a story is the beginning, so let me just start there. I became a lifelong fan of NASCAR in 1993 after I saw my first full race on television that August. There were several events that led up to that, which I plan to cover on here later, but for now, let’s just say that I was hooked after that night race at Bristol where Mark Martin beat Rusty Wallace in a photo-finish. I saw a little bit of the previous World Series, I watched some of the Magic/Michael NBA Finals, and I even witnessed the Dallas Cowboys win 2 Super Bowls by that time. All were great, but nothing spoke to me like those cars did, and nothing probably ever will. This leads to me to the past weekend at Daytona. After several admittedly weak years of NASCAR premier series racing (2007-2010 and 2013, and arguably 2004-2006), I think it’s on at least a slight upswing as far as competition and excitement goes. I used to feel an anticipation before every race that I don’t feel as much anymore, and I think I speak for a lot of longtime fans when I say this. However, the races in all 3 series (truck, cup, and xfinity) at Daytona last week reminded me of why I became a fan. Tyler Redick and Austin Theriault working together as young kids in the truck series. Jack Roush smiling and in utter disbelief that his team just finished 1-2 for the first time in an xfinity race at Daytona. Joey Logano, whose Cup career was all but done after the 2012 season, winning the biggest race of his life (albeit under a somewhat unnecessary caution, which is another topic I’m sure we’ll discuss as the season goes on). I welcome everyone’s comments and I hope everyone enjoys the blog. I’m going to try to have as much fun as I can, and I hope anyone else reading does too.