So it's a 30? Already? But we've only just begun....

   What a long strange ride it's been....and remember how 2009 began, at rain-soaked Daytona, ages ago? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   HOMESTEAD, Fla.
   So Jimmie Johnson's the champ, again, and the 2009 stock car racing season is finally, finally in the books, and there's champagne to come for the Rick Hendrick guys out in Las Vegas in a few days, after Johnson winds up the New York City championship whirlwind.
   But before we turn out the lights and head for the door, singing The Party's Over, reflect for a few moments on one of the strangest NASCAR seasons in several years.
   Yes, Jimmie and Chad made history with that fourth straight championship, over clearly demoralized rivals, who all but gave up the title chase even before it began back in September.
   But has this championship playoff system run its course, run out of steam? Is it time for something new? It hasn't done much of what it was supposed to do, judging from fan reaction, in those empty seats in the stands and those empty TV couches.
   There were some flurries of excitement over the year – the emergence of Juan Pablo Montoya as a legitimate championship contender has to be one of the biggest positives….and that Homestead tussling with Tony Stewart was fun to watch.
   And who couldn't help but love Mark Martin in that heartwarming story of yet another championship run, this time at age 50, nearly 30 years after his NASCAR tour debut.
   Then, what to make of hard-driving Brad Keselowski, the rookie who doesn't mind ruffling feathers? Maybe it's about time this sport found somebody with some gumption like that. Of course don't ask Denny Hamlin about all that….
   Too, what to make of Kyle Busch, NASCAR's 'bad boy.' He may be the most talented driver in NASCAR right now, but too inconsistent and too immature to contend for the Cup championship without a major attitude change.  
   Maybe Busch should check out Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s approach to this sport – keep your cool, never let them see you sweat, never show a weakness, and make your point quickly and sharply, and go on down the road with a wickedly disarming smile.
   Busch's petulance isn't helping the sport or himself. Classy players don't storm off the field in hissy fits like he does. Busch is 24; men younger than him are dying on the battlefield in Afghanistan. His brother Kurt has matured; it's time Kyle did too.
   Why can't Joe Gibbs and J. D. Gibbs get this act straight? And if the Gibbs don't watch out, newcomer Joey Logano will start adopting the same chip-on-my-shoulder attitude that Busch and Hamlin appear to have.

   And all the action wasn't on the track.
  General Motors and Chrysler had to go through bankruptcy, in a painful, strange and still on-going story. Hopefully John McCain's prediction two weeks ago that Dodge wouldn't survived doesn't come true.
   And what will happen next in the never-ending Jeremy Mayfield drama?
   NASCAR suspended him back in the spring for what it says its drug testing people say was a positive test for drug abuse.
   Mayfield has vigorously denied that, filed suit against NASCAR, and since then it's been a simmering battle between the now all-but broke independent racer and the powerful sanctioning body with its deep, deep pockets.
    NASCAR brought out Mayfield's step-mom – the two clearly don't get along very well at all, judging what they've said about each other – to back up its case. Then Mayfield charged his step-mom for trespassing in a very bizarre late-night showdown at his home.
   Mayfield brought in high-profile attorney Bill Diehl, but then Diehl bailed, saying he hasn't been paid. Then just a few weeks ago celebrated attorney Mark Geragos jumped in the fray as Mayfield's new lawyer….and now it looks like Geragos wants to try to ramp things up even more by trying to bring some of Brian France's personal life into this….and NASCAR is asking the court to shut all that part of it down.
   That increasingly nasty NASCAR-vs-Mayfield battle took an even more bizarre twist when Grand-Am racer J.C. France, grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., was arrested in October for racing through the streets of Daytona late at night, and charged with possession of crack cocaine, according to the local newspaper.
   As CIA black-ops' David Strathairn said of Jason-Bourne-world: "You can't make this stuff up."
   And the slumping U.S. economy continues to be a drag on NASCAR teams, who rely so heavily on corporate sponsorship (in the tens of millions of dollars a year).
   As many as five 2009 Sprint Cup teams may not be back for a full run in 2010, and several top-name drivers are scrambling to find rides.
   The 2009 season featured a number of "start-and-park" teams, not just in Cup but the other series, teams that showed up each weekend just to make last place money and pull off early in the race. NASCAR, which has apparently guaranteed its TV partners, full fields for each event, has done little to deal with the start-and-parkers, and whether that changes in 2010 isn't clear.
   One of the strangest stories the past two years – new team owner George Gillett, the multi-millionaire sportsman who has boasted sports franchises from international soccer to the Montreal Canadiens to NASCAR. Gillett has put Richard Petty's name on his team, a team that started out several years ago as Dodge's lead dog, under legendary Ray Evernham. How much of a figurehead Petty himself now is, how much of player, is unknown. But Gillett clearly has the money and calls the shots. And after being rebuffed in overtures to Toyota (including that August photo-shoot with Kasey Kahne in Kamry), Gillett is jumping to Ford and merging with slumping Doug Yates.
   How the Gillett-Petty-Yates-Jack Roush thing works out eventually is anyone's guess.
   And then Gillett last month raised the intriguing prospect of what he termed a Middle Eastern NASCAR-type series, maybe as many as 13 stock car races, and he has been talking with some high-ranking Saudis about backing the venture. But just what the venture really is is still unclear.
   And if Gillett has so much money at his fingertips, then why all the pink slips? Virtually the entire engine department has been canned, adding more to the burgeoning unemployment rolls of crewmen….while many of those hundreds let go at the end of 2008 are still looking for jobs.
   Throw in dwindling crowds this season – Jeff Byrd was the only track boss to manage to sell out both of his Cup races, at Bristol – and surprisingly low TV ratings (the Homestead finale was down 10 percent from 2008, to a weak 3.6 on ABC). TV ratings were down in 2008, but even Fox was down in 2009, and it appears the sport was overall down about 10 percent in TV viewers.
   Why?
   It's easy to see why the empty seats, given the cost of attending a race, which is far more than just the $55 ticket.
   But why the empty couches? If fans aren't going to the races themselves, certainly they should be watching them for free on TV, but they're not.
   And NASCAR's response?
   Curious – it has stubbornly refused to do much at all….though it seems to be listening at least.
   Maybe if the Daytona 500 hadn't started at 3:30 p.m., with rain on the way, and all that pressure, and then the big crash, and the rain-ending finish, the season might have gone differently...the year might have gotten off on a better footing.
   At least starting times in 2010 should be a little more user-friend. Maybe.
   Fans, in forums, are pointing to the car-of-tomorrow as something they simply don't like, and drivers have – despite vigorous arm-twisting by NASCAR executives – agreed. But NASCAR hasn't done much at all to make the new car drive any better. Or at least nothing very visible.
   One of the big changes NASCAR has made is to have double-file restarts, which created interested situations, a positive.
   And through it all Goodyear has been one of the few players on top of its game all season, with solid tires, and a vigorous testing program. Another positive.
   However NASCAR's testing ban – no testing at any NASCAR tour tracks, even including Daytona in January – has created more problems than it's solved. Ostensibly a cost-cutting measure, the test ban has, to put it bluntly, been a dud.
   Maybe if someone with the stature of Dale Earnhardt Jr. were willing to stand up and tell NASCAR how it really is – like his father was always willing to do – then maybe something might really change.
   Actually Dale Jr. did make some hard points publically about NASCAR this season…to little avail.
   Of course Earnhardt's own problems have kept him sidetracked. Without an Earnhardt in the headlines, well, if Dale Jr. were winning again (he's won only once in the last 3-1/2 years), would things be better?
   Hard to say.
   But then it's hard for Earnhardt himself to do anything but look in the mirror: his three teammates, Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon finished 1-2-3 in the Sprint Cup standings, and he, in the same equipment, didn't even crack the top-20.
   Maybe NASCAR should open up testing again.
   Instead of letting teams test on the real tour tracks with the real Goodyears, as teams would like, NASCAR with its new 'no' policy has pushed teams – or at least the few with fleets of planes and trucks that can afford it – into clandestine testing around the country, at enormous cost. And teams are also now ever more reliant on expensive computer simulation technology, and those ubiquitous seven-post shaker rigs, and all sorts of high-priced equipment – which has radically changed the competitive balance in the sport and all but driven a number of teams to the sidelines.
   Even someone like Robby Gordon and the Woods, who ought to be able to make a go of it in this sport, are being driven out by NASCAR's stubbornness.
   And to judge from Brian France's rather lackluster 'state of the sport' press conference at Homestead last weekend, there either isn't much interest or desire in changing things, or any clear sense of direction of what to do next.
   What is needed is a shot of Billy France Jr.'s willingness to admit 'Hey, we made some mistakes, and we're going to change things.'
   However, what fans appear to see is almost arrogance by NASCAR executives, an unwillingness to concede the obvious.
   Take Talladega, for instance. In 2008 NASCAR made what many believe was a bad call in penalizing rookie Regan Smith the last lap when he apparently won the Talladega 500 by finishing first, though being forced below the yellow line by Tony Stewart, the man NASCAR called the winner. Then in the return to Talladega this past spring, when rookie Brad Keselowski faced the exact same situation as Smith….and he, unlike Smith, refused to give up his line when leader Carl Edwards tried to block. Edwards' car went flying into the catch fence, only barely missed becoming another Bobby Allison. And Ryan Newman, unfortunately the sponge under Edwards' car when it came back down – on Newman's windshield – angrily called on NASCAR to do something to keep these cars from flying.
   NASCAR's response – virtually nothing. For months NASCAR refused to even talk about Talladega; then the fences were finally raised (from 14 to 22 feet), and carburetor plates were cut slightly (one-64th of an inch in diameter smaller). The plate reduction, which some saw as more a PR ploy than any real solution, bunched the teams up more, drivers said.
   Then just hours before the start of the October race NASCAR officials made an unexpected rules change, to ban the new 'push-draft' tactic (a more subtle form of the 'bump-draft' that teams have been able to use at Talladega with the new 'matching bumpers' on the cars-of-tomorrow). That turned the pre-race drivers meeting into an angry tizzy, with drivers more vocal than ever at one of those things.
    And when the race started, it looked like drivers went on a two-hour sit-down strike, running single-file, making a few painless shuffles for the lead….and waiting till the final moments to finally start racing.
   And when they did start racing again, there were two big crashes – again Newman was a victim, and he hung upside down helpless in his crashed car while safety crews tried to figure out what to do to extract him. Fortunately Newman's car did not catch fire, but just imagine what it must be like to be upside down that long, your helmet jammed against the roll cage so you can't even move it, and the radio disconnected so you can't even communicate…..
   NASCAR's response?
   We're still waiting.
   However when a trio of TV commentators – ex-drivers Jimmy Spencer and Kyle Petty and ex-crew chief Larry McReynolds (who help the late Dale Earnhardt finally win the Daytona 500) – dared to raise some criticisms about this sport and raise warning flags (like about the new, expensive Nationwide car-of-tomorrow), NASCAR's response was a quick, angry retort at the TV men for having the temerity to criticize the sport.
   An attempt to intimidate the media?
   Well, the media itself has been one of the big NASCAR stories the past two years, with virtually every newspaper in the country dropping any semblance of personalized NASCAR coverage, firing reporters right and left. Even the AP has cut back its NASCAR beat to 25 Cup tour events a season, filling the rest of the 36 events with local reporters.
   The death of journalist David Poole after the spring Talladega race – his last column was to rip NASCAR for its continued inaction on the safety front at Talladega, in the wake of the Edwards-Keselowski crash – took out one of the last vigorously independent media voices in the sport.
   All that has left the sport generally at the mercy of TV-owned internet bloggers. And privately some of those will admit they're under orders not to talk or write about certain issues.

   When NASCAR was riding high a few years back, expanding to new markets (rightly so, and with some great facilities, if some in tough and dubious areas, like Fontana), it could afford to run roughshod over its long-time loyalists in the South. But dropping Rockingham, dropping North Wilkesboro, cutting the Southern 500 from Darlington, that's all backfired. For a while NASCAR could keep riding high with its rising interest among new fans in new areas….but now some of those fans have apparently grown tired of some aspects of the sport and are dropping out.
   The most damning word on the state of NASCAR came in October at California's Auto Club Speedway (where, yes, the 14-degree banking is way too low for these stock cars and should be raised at least to 18 or 23 degrees in the corners, and where, yes, the speeds are way too high, at 210 mph into the first turn) – Gillian Zucker can promote a crowd of 60,000 to the track for a race in that western LA area…but there are very few ticket renewals, which means she has to go out and sell another 60,000 for the next race too. If NASCAR officials can't provide a good product – and the race at that track is boring – then why should fans come back? And yet it's been like this ever since the track opened some 10 years ago, and still little has been done by NASCAR to address that issue.
   When asked about such fan reaction, NASCAR executives like to point to what they call their 'fan council,' though they refused to offer any more details about just what that is or who is on it or any specifics.
   On the positive side, NASCAR officials have held at least two major townhall meetings to let drivers and crew chiefs vent and offer suggestions. What, if anything, has actually come out of those sessions, however, is uncertain.
   So NASCAR executives are facing battles on a number of fronts, as 2009 moves toward 2010:
   First, they need to open testing.
   They need to loosen the handcuffs on crew chiefs and give them more tools to work with.
   They need to get more people interested in joining this sport, as team owners and sponsors.
   They need to start thinking outside the box.
   They need to do something about Talladega and flying race cars.
   They need to do something about California's Fontana track.
   They need to stop ignoring the technical issues facing this sport.
   They need to regain that Southern fan base which Daytona has all-but ruthlessly shoved aside.
   But, really, if NASCAR executives would simply show fans a little more humility, and be a little more user-friend, more willing to concede issues to study, rather than offer this arrogant, in-your-face, my-way-or-the-highway approach, maybe they could persuade some of those disgruntled fans to return to the sport.
    A kinder, gentler NASCAR? The ball is in Daytona's court…with just 70 days till Media/Driver Frenzy opens Daytona 500 SpeedWeeks.

   And that's the way it is, Thanksgiving Day 2009.
   Thanks for the ride. And here's a 30 to ya…
   But remember we're always just a click away. You know where the Send button is. Feel free to punch it any time.

   Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net