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July 26, 2007

Starting Spots Should Not be for Sale
By Dennis Michelsen
The NASCAR Nextel Cup circus is heading to its twentieth race of the season and it looks as if one lucky team will be able to buy their way into the show the rest of the year! Bobby Ginn learned that the old joke is true about how to make a small fortune in racing. He started with a huge fortune and went racing this season. Now he will merge with Dale Earnhardt Inc and Paul Menard will have a starting spot guaranteed the rest of the season. That is just fine, companies merge all the time. But one of Bobby Ginn's car numbers will be left over and sold to the highest bidder so they can make it in the show this weekend. If NASCAR allows this mid-season fire sale of JUST the number they are setting a bad precedent. Starting spots should not be for sale!

Top Thirty-Five Supports Mediocrity
Two teams locked into the show by points heading to Indianapolis Motor Speedway have yet to post a top ten finish this season. Eleven teams guaranteed to race in the second biggest race of the season have yet to post a top five. But since they haven't stunk as bad as some of the other teams they have an automatic birth in the second richest race of the year! Is this the kind of mediocrity that NASCAR should support on a weekly basis? Shouldn't NASCAR racing be for the best of the best in the sport? There is no doubt that the thirty-sixth place team has tried just as hard as the first place team. But at the end of the day we are letting eleven teams without a top ten into the race every week without having to post a fast speed! The current top thirty-five rule supports mediocrity.

Announcing Past Champion Racing
I think I will find funding to start my own NASCAR Nextel team next season. We will call it "Past Champion Racing" and each season we will field cars in the first six events of the season using whichever past champion is available! This will guarantee us a spot in the richest race of the season, the Daytona 500, every year. (Provided of course someone else doesn't hire a more recent champion) After the first six races we will sell our starting number to the highest bidder that is outside of the top thirty-five in owner's points. We could get as much as three million bucks for the number in addition to the sponsor and purse money we have earned. Then we will start up a new racing team called "Past Champion Racing 2" and start all over again next season! This is the absurdity of the current rules governing provisionals in NASCAR Nextel Cup. So today I announce the formation of "Past Champions Racing," we'll see you at Daytona!

Top 35 Needs Some Tweaks
Why should any team be given a free pass week after week into the highest level of stockcar racing? In their two years in existence Hall of Fame Racing has one top five and only two top ten finishes! But they have earned over $5.8 million because of the guaranteed starting positions in races. Three of their first five races they made it into the show using a past champion provisional. So you can see my business plan laid out above works! In addition to the race earnings they have a big name big bucks sponsor because they have a guaranteed spot in the starting field every week! (Maybe it's the mirrors) NASCAR needs to limit the number of provisionals a team can take every year. They settled on the magic number of six for past champions, so that number sounds good for non-champions too!

Bobby Ginn is a smart businessman and I don't fault him for selling valuable assets such as a starting spot in the next sixteen races this season. But NASCAR should NOT allow the sale of race numbers in the middle of the season. No you can't prevent a guy from merging with another race team, but the four-team limit prevents crazy shenanigans that will make this an every year occurrence to transfer numbers. But a starting position in the Brickyard 400 should NOT be for sale!

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