Tweet
By NATE RYAN, USA TODAY
(May 5) - Why are there so many wrecks in NASCAR? Maybe because there are fewer fistfights.
As NASCAR has evolved from regional phenomenon to mainstream sport, those face-to-face confrontations prevalent decades ago have given way to unresolved tensions among drivers played out in crashes.
Rowdy behavior, once as much a badge of honor as grease under the fingernails, has become a blemish in a sport driven by image-conscious sponsors who demand clean-cut, well-spoken drivers who avoid controversy. It's an unwritten code of behavior: Fight, and you could lose a sponsor.
Four years ago, when driver Tony Stewart threw a punch at a photographer after a race in which he did poorly, he says sponsor Home Depot almost fired him. Stewart attended counseling with a sports psychologist.
Because drivers aren't familiar enough with each other to vent face-to-face and fighting is understood to bring suspensions and sponsorship loss, the outcome has been a rise in wrecks triggered by road rage.
USA TODAY database research for 2005 shows 253 on-track incidents (defined as accidents and spins), a 24% increase from 2004 and 8% from 2003. There are 60 through nine races this year, 11 more than at this point in 2005.
When Stewart was racing in a no-holds-barred sprint car series instead of the major leagues of NASCAR, the routine for resolving wheel-to-wheel disagreements was simpler, he says. Bang into a competitor, brawl after the race, then break bread.
"Sometimes you got in a fistfight with a guy and then you helped load each other's cars up and you ate dinner together," he says. "If you did something wrong to somebody, there were consequences."
In the 1970s and '80s, the fireworks that followed on-course collisions - the bare-knuckled, rebellious roots of a sport spawned by moonshine runners - were a boon to the popularity of stock car racing. The 1979 Daytona 500 put NASCAR on the map when its first flag-to-flag live telecast concluded with Cale Yarborough squaring off against Bobby and Donnie Allison.
While promoting races in the minor leagues, Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage told a group of drivers not to fight but to "get out to the start-finish line if you do." Cup team owner Ray Evernham says that applied when he raced in the '80s at Wall Stadium, a New Jersey track known for wrecks followed by roughhousing.
"If you fought on the track, it was a one-week suspension, and if you fought in the pits, it was two weeks," Evernham says. "One day I asked why, and a race official says, 'Because at least if you fight on the racetrack, the fans can see it.' "
Because NASCAR wants more competitive races and has issued rules that limit what teams can do to alter cars, a chaotic atmosphere has been created where "the only way to get anybody out of your way is to run over them" on the track, Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip says.
Several feuds have erupted through nine races this season - Stewart vs. Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle vs. Kurt Busch among them - heading into Saturday night's race at Richmond International Raceway.
But none of these feuds has led to an in-person altercation, aside from Gordon's shove of Kenseth, which drew gasps at Bristol Motor Speedway on March 26. "If that happened 15 years ago, nobody would've paid any attention to it" because altercations were so common, Richard Petty says.
Stewart says drivers now bottle their rage and take it out driving on the track rather than working it out immediately after a race.
"Instead of settling the problem right away, you leave mad and frustrated. And by morning, it's a bigger problem then," Stewart says. "Everybody's more frustrated now than ever with each other because we can't settle it ourselves. We don't have that freedom to confront someone and say, 'Listen, you screwed me over.' "
Fighting Not Worth the Risk
The consequences for conflict have grown - while the opportunities have decreased - as NASCAR has attracted companies willing to make $20 million investments in teams. Owners can't afford to race without big-ticket sponsors, and Fortune 500 mainstays are skittish about their spokesmen being compared to professional wrestlers while wearing fire suits plastered with corporate logos. It is understood that the negative publicity of a fight might cause a funding cutoff.
Yarborough was fined $6,000 for swinging his helmet at Bobby Allison 26 years ago. Robby Gordon says he was fortunate in not costing himself millions last September for flinging his helmet at Michael Waltrip's car after a crash at New Hampshire International Speedway. At the time he was negotiating with sponsors for the next season. He managed to keep them.
When Jeff Gordon shoved Kenseth, he says he immediately thought of the impact on DuPont, which has sunk millions into Gordon's No. 24 Chevrolet as a primary sponsor of the car since 1993: "When (the shove) happened, I knew that I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize my sponsors."
The garage culture has changed in NASCAR as much as the financial climate. Drivers spend downtime cloistered in plush motor homes and dashing to sponsor appearances, leaving little face time with peers to settle differences.
"They don't know each other anymore," Lowe's Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler says. A race promoter for more than 40 years, he refers to motor homes as impenetrable "multimillion-dollar dungeons."
"I never thought I'd see anyone e-mail because they didn't like what someone did on the track, but that's the next thing, if it's not already being done," Wheeler says. "In the old days, it was more basic."
Petty, the seven-time champion, says drivers in the 1960s and '70s worked side by side on cars, borrowing wrenches and gears from neighbors. The camaraderie made it easier to approach an angry competitor and defuse a dicey situation.
"We lived together a lot more than these guys do," he says. "Every time we had a problem, we could go behind a truck (and fight). You didn't have to worry about it being reported. Now they're under the microscope so much. They can't cuss each other out or give each other the finger because someone is always watching."
A growing media corps, the arrival of network television and wall-to-wall coverage by cable's Speed Channel has brought unprecedented exposure. Fox recently trumpeted a new high-definition camera that can cover 250,000 square feet on a suspension wire.
Stewart was incensed when Jeff Green and Dale Jarrett were caught on videotape arguing inside a gated motor home lot after the Daytona 500. "There's no private place to hash out differences," Stewart says. "We can't settle it without a TV camera capturing it all."
Balancing Act
Spokesman Jim Hunter says NASCAR faces a balancing act between keeping order and maintaining drama that drives TV ratings and attendance.
"We don't want to sterilize it," Hunter says. "But if you have people hitting people, that sends the wrong message. Years ago we had a lot of that, but we didn't have the eyes of the world."
With a blizzard keeping the East Coast indoors Feb. 18, 1979, millions of first-time viewers saw the most famous fracas in NASCAR history. The dustup began when Donnie Allison and Yarborough collided in a final-lap battle for the marquee Daytona 500. Bobby Allison stopped to offer his brother a ride.
"Cale hit me in the face with his helmet. Then he went to beating on my fist with his nose," Bobby says.
The race drew an impressive 10.4 rating - topping the NBA All-Star Game (7.9) from two weeks earlier, setting a Daytona 500 record that stood until 2002 and securing NASCAR's place on live TV.
Short of drivers using their cars as weapons, Evernham says emotional fireworks are warranted: "I don't think we can have bench-clearing brawls, but two guys pushing and shoving and yelling or throwing water bottles, have at it."
NASCAR, though, has been aggressive with meting out punishments. Kevin Harvick lost two crewmembers to one-race suspensions when they jumped on Ricky Rudd's hood during a shouting match at Richmond in September 2003. A month earlier, Jimmy Spencer was benched for smacking Kurt Busch, the last punch thrown after a Cup race.
No Enforcer in Today's NASCAR
When he intentionally rammed Casey Mears under a red flag at Phoenix International Raceway two weeks ago, Kyle Busch didn't apologize after the race. He asked teammate Brian Vickers to give Mears his cellphone number.
Busch has tussled with Stewart twice this year but avoided postrace meetings because "emotions are very high at that time."
The debate on handling spats splits along generational lines. Drivers born after 1970 - such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Harvick - advocate a cooling-off period. Waiting doesn't appeal to the over-40 group of Kyle Petty and Jarrett.
"You ought to be brave enough to walk up to somebody and say, 'My fault, dude,' " Petty says.
Cantankerous veterans once took it upon themselves to school younger drivers - a famous example is David Pearson cold-cocking Tim Richmond for an obscene gesture at Daytona International Speedway in July 1984. But the Cup series lacks enforcers such as the late Dale Earnhardt.
Jeff Burton, a 12-year Cup veteran who remembers being put in his place by crusty drivers Jack Ingram and Sam Ard, says the vacuum of vigilante justice has fostered an environment where drivers run roughshod with impunity. "The drivers can't police themselves anymore," he says. "Anytime someone retaliates, they get penalized, but if you wreck someone, you hardly ever get penalized."
Stewart would prefer drivers "have an area ourselves to deal with it," off limits to the media.
Wheeler's suggestion: a padded room. "Just make all the drivers go there and stay for 10 minutes no matter what, as long as they come out alive," he says. "You'd want to charge a lot of money to see that."
(May 5) - Why are there so many wrecks in NASCAR? Maybe because there are fewer fistfights.
As NASCAR has evolved from regional phenomenon to mainstream sport, those face-to-face confrontations prevalent decades ago have given way to unresolved tensions among drivers played out in crashes.
Rowdy behavior, once as much a badge of honor as grease under the fingernails, has become a blemish in a sport driven by image-conscious sponsors who demand clean-cut, well-spoken drivers who avoid controversy. It's an unwritten code of behavior: Fight, and you could lose a sponsor.
Four years ago, when driver Tony Stewart threw a punch at a photographer after a race in which he did poorly, he says sponsor Home Depot almost fired him. Stewart attended counseling with a sports psychologist.
Because drivers aren't familiar enough with each other to vent face-to-face and fighting is understood to bring suspensions and sponsorship loss, the outcome has been a rise in wrecks triggered by road rage.
USA TODAY database research for 2005 shows 253 on-track incidents (defined as accidents and spins), a 24% increase from 2004 and 8% from 2003. There are 60 through nine races this year, 11 more than at this point in 2005.
When Stewart was racing in a no-holds-barred sprint car series instead of the major leagues of NASCAR, the routine for resolving wheel-to-wheel disagreements was simpler, he says. Bang into a competitor, brawl after the race, then break bread.
"Sometimes you got in a fistfight with a guy and then you helped load each other's cars up and you ate dinner together," he says. "If you did something wrong to somebody, there were consequences."
In the 1970s and '80s, the fireworks that followed on-course collisions - the bare-knuckled, rebellious roots of a sport spawned by moonshine runners - were a boon to the popularity of stock car racing. The 1979 Daytona 500 put NASCAR on the map when its first flag-to-flag live telecast concluded with Cale Yarborough squaring off against Bobby and Donnie Allison.
While promoting races in the minor leagues, Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage told a group of drivers not to fight but to "get out to the start-finish line if you do." Cup team owner Ray Evernham says that applied when he raced in the '80s at Wall Stadium, a New Jersey track known for wrecks followed by roughhousing.
"If you fought on the track, it was a one-week suspension, and if you fought in the pits, it was two weeks," Evernham says. "One day I asked why, and a race official says, 'Because at least if you fight on the racetrack, the fans can see it.' "
Because NASCAR wants more competitive races and has issued rules that limit what teams can do to alter cars, a chaotic atmosphere has been created where "the only way to get anybody out of your way is to run over them" on the track, Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip says.
Several feuds have erupted through nine races this season - Stewart vs. Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle vs. Kurt Busch among them - heading into Saturday night's race at Richmond International Raceway.
But none of these feuds has led to an in-person altercation, aside from Gordon's shove of Kenseth, which drew gasps at Bristol Motor Speedway on March 26. "If that happened 15 years ago, nobody would've paid any attention to it" because altercations were so common, Richard Petty says.
Stewart says drivers now bottle their rage and take it out driving on the track rather than working it out immediately after a race.
"Instead of settling the problem right away, you leave mad and frustrated. And by morning, it's a bigger problem then," Stewart says. "Everybody's more frustrated now than ever with each other because we can't settle it ourselves. We don't have that freedom to confront someone and say, 'Listen, you screwed me over.' "
Fighting Not Worth the Risk
The consequences for conflict have grown - while the opportunities have decreased - as NASCAR has attracted companies willing to make $20 million investments in teams. Owners can't afford to race without big-ticket sponsors, and Fortune 500 mainstays are skittish about their spokesmen being compared to professional wrestlers while wearing fire suits plastered with corporate logos. It is understood that the negative publicity of a fight might cause a funding cutoff.
Yarborough was fined $6,000 for swinging his helmet at Bobby Allison 26 years ago. Robby Gordon says he was fortunate in not costing himself millions last September for flinging his helmet at Michael Waltrip's car after a crash at New Hampshire International Speedway. At the time he was negotiating with sponsors for the next season. He managed to keep them.
When Jeff Gordon shoved Kenseth, he says he immediately thought of the impact on DuPont, which has sunk millions into Gordon's No. 24 Chevrolet as a primary sponsor of the car since 1993: "When (the shove) happened, I knew that I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize my sponsors."
The garage culture has changed in NASCAR as much as the financial climate. Drivers spend downtime cloistered in plush motor homes and dashing to sponsor appearances, leaving little face time with peers to settle differences.
"They don't know each other anymore," Lowe's Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler says. A race promoter for more than 40 years, he refers to motor homes as impenetrable "multimillion-dollar dungeons."
"I never thought I'd see anyone e-mail because they didn't like what someone did on the track, but that's the next thing, if it's not already being done," Wheeler says. "In the old days, it was more basic."
Petty, the seven-time champion, says drivers in the 1960s and '70s worked side by side on cars, borrowing wrenches and gears from neighbors. The camaraderie made it easier to approach an angry competitor and defuse a dicey situation.
"We lived together a lot more than these guys do," he says. "Every time we had a problem, we could go behind a truck (and fight). You didn't have to worry about it being reported. Now they're under the microscope so much. They can't cuss each other out or give each other the finger because someone is always watching."
A growing media corps, the arrival of network television and wall-to-wall coverage by cable's Speed Channel has brought unprecedented exposure. Fox recently trumpeted a new high-definition camera that can cover 250,000 square feet on a suspension wire.
Stewart was incensed when Jeff Green and Dale Jarrett were caught on videotape arguing inside a gated motor home lot after the Daytona 500. "There's no private place to hash out differences," Stewart says. "We can't settle it without a TV camera capturing it all."
Balancing Act
Spokesman Jim Hunter says NASCAR faces a balancing act between keeping order and maintaining drama that drives TV ratings and attendance.
"We don't want to sterilize it," Hunter says. "But if you have people hitting people, that sends the wrong message. Years ago we had a lot of that, but we didn't have the eyes of the world."
With a blizzard keeping the East Coast indoors Feb. 18, 1979, millions of first-time viewers saw the most famous fracas in NASCAR history. The dustup began when Donnie Allison and Yarborough collided in a final-lap battle for the marquee Daytona 500. Bobby Allison stopped to offer his brother a ride.
"Cale hit me in the face with his helmet. Then he went to beating on my fist with his nose," Bobby says.
The race drew an impressive 10.4 rating - topping the NBA All-Star Game (7.9) from two weeks earlier, setting a Daytona 500 record that stood until 2002 and securing NASCAR's place on live TV.
Short of drivers using their cars as weapons, Evernham says emotional fireworks are warranted: "I don't think we can have bench-clearing brawls, but two guys pushing and shoving and yelling or throwing water bottles, have at it."
NASCAR, though, has been aggressive with meting out punishments. Kevin Harvick lost two crewmembers to one-race suspensions when they jumped on Ricky Rudd's hood during a shouting match at Richmond in September 2003. A month earlier, Jimmy Spencer was benched for smacking Kurt Busch, the last punch thrown after a Cup race.
No Enforcer in Today's NASCAR
When he intentionally rammed Casey Mears under a red flag at Phoenix International Raceway two weeks ago, Kyle Busch didn't apologize after the race. He asked teammate Brian Vickers to give Mears his cellphone number.
Busch has tussled with Stewart twice this year but avoided postrace meetings because "emotions are very high at that time."
The debate on handling spats splits along generational lines. Drivers born after 1970 - such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Harvick - advocate a cooling-off period. Waiting doesn't appeal to the over-40 group of Kyle Petty and Jarrett.
"You ought to be brave enough to walk up to somebody and say, 'My fault, dude,' " Petty says.
Cantankerous veterans once took it upon themselves to school younger drivers - a famous example is David Pearson cold-cocking Tim Richmond for an obscene gesture at Daytona International Speedway in July 1984. But the Cup series lacks enforcers such as the late Dale Earnhardt.
Jeff Burton, a 12-year Cup veteran who remembers being put in his place by crusty drivers Jack Ingram and Sam Ard, says the vacuum of vigilante justice has fostered an environment where drivers run roughshod with impunity. "The drivers can't police themselves anymore," he says. "Anytime someone retaliates, they get penalized, but if you wreck someone, you hardly ever get penalized."
Stewart would prefer drivers "have an area ourselves to deal with it," off limits to the media.
Wheeler's suggestion: a padded room. "Just make all the drivers go there and stay for 10 minutes no matter what, as long as they come out alive," he says. "You'd want to charge a lot of money to see that."
Comment