This week has already been a busy one in NASCAR. To start, rain washed out what is supposed to be the usual Sunday raceday occurrence, leaving Martin Truex Jr. to snap his 847-race winless streak. The way that FOX sold his win, you might have forgotten that he won a race in the last decade or that he also earned a championship at one point.
Yes, Truex had not won in 54 races, but really, that’s not even two years of Cup racing. For a 42-year-old driver who had 31 wins on his resume prior to Monday (May 1), this win follows the trajectory for many racers that still circle the tracks after turning 40.
At some point this week, another champion made a surprise announcement by having his Legacy Motor Club team switch to Toyota next year. The team, formally known as Petty GMS, now called Legacy Motor Club, and partially owned by Jimmie Johnson, will be ditching its ties to Chevrolet to get its engines and support from Toyota in 2024.
Such a move will surely make fans of Petty thrilled. The desire to express anguish toward Toyota has been the target of some of the fan’s xenophobic nature since the Japanese-based company joined the Craftsman Truck Series in 2004. By 2008, when Kyle Busch earned the organization its first win, the vitriol seemed to stay at a particular level and has hovered there ever since.
With Johnson and Petty, Toyota is now backing two of the biggest names statistically in NASCAR, who hold 14 championships between them. Any outcry should be directed toward the notion of economics and what it takes to run a championship-caliber team.
While that news may have been shocking, the National Motorsports Appeals Board issued another decree, this time aimed at Austin Dillon and Richard Childress Racing. Apparently, RCR is no Hendrick Motorsports, and tinkering with the underwing means the 60-point, $75,000 fine will stand.
While it may be fun to debate the penalty and what happened and go into specifics, the bigger matter that arises is just how busy the pit police and appeals board have been this season. One might think that teams are running contraband cars, something straight out of Mad Max, the way penalties are being issued.
This latter element is part of the bigger issue surrounding NASCAR at the moment.
One of the things I often ask my students is a rather simple question: what are we watching? The question is simple but often means that we are overlooking something bigger, so we…
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