Brian's new NASCAR vs Humpy's old NASCAR
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Who would you rather have in charge of promoting your race track - Brian France or Humpy Wheeler?
Prince Brian is known for statements like the following - which was in answer to the question....
"Would you agree that NASCAR has been a little too heavy-handed in administering punishments? Going forward, will you be perhaps less inclined to fine for points and money for transgressions like shoving or swearing?"
Brian France " Well, I would certainly agree that we're relooking and making sure that our policies of enforcement don't make it where our drivers can't express themselves. There are lots of characters in our sport. There's lots of emotion flying fast and heavy at the events.
If you were in our position, what you're always worried about really isn't necessarily the specific incident, it's really escalation. That's what commissioners and officials in any sport are mostly concerned with."
OK, thank you Brian. Now for Humpy - aka The PT Barnum of auto racing...
We need to make this car of tomorrow work ... [Do] whatever NASCAR's got to do to make it work, and get us back to racing, [to] where we were putting black donuts on the side of the cars and not making felony offenses out of 'em. And when we do that, it's all going to change and turn around and we can do all of the other stuff ... ."
I don't want to get into dissecting the whole State of NASCAR address from early this week. Darren Fauth and others have done a fine job that. Besides, Steve and I argued about the whole thing for too long ON PIT ROW.
It's pretty obvious - despite the France Republic's spinning of things - that NASCAR sees problems within the kingdom. I live in a city that seems to always be paying some consultant big dough to identify problems or quantify opportunities - or benchmark this or evaluate that. Guess what? They keep finding that the city has problems - just as NASCAR has issues.
Enough talk about it already. What NASCAR needs is a good ol', car-smashing slobberknocker. Big Bill France and Bill France Jr. were brilliant, visionary businessmen. Maybe Brian will prove to be one as well. But the elder Frances were elite promoters - and Prince France has yet to make his mark in that category.
Auto racing is a promoters business. I think I'd be listening to Humpy.
Picture credit: Newsrecord.com
My vote's with Humpy!
Posted by: RevJim | January 26, 2008 at 05:34 AM
I kind of knew that it would be Jim. Mine is too.
Posted by: Charlie | January 27, 2008 at 10:20 PM
I kind of knew that it would be Jim. Mine is too.
Posted by: Charlie | January 27, 2008 at 10:21 PM