A good year for motor sports
With the racing season winding down, here’s my list of 10 good things that happened this year in American motor sports.
1. ALMS Solidifies Growth: The American LeMans series, headed by Don Panoz and Scott Atherton, continues to rise in prominence, no doubt helped by its great TV package with NBC. Keep an eye on this series, as every type of sports car made competes here. It’s sports car and endurance racing at its best.
2. Tony Kanaan Wins IRL Championship: The popular Brazilian competed in every single lap of competition that the IRL offered this year (3,305) and ran away with the title. It capped off a great first year for car owner Michael Andretti, who deserves lots of wins.
3. Chase for the Nextel Cup: For all the complainers when NASCAR first announced the new “playoff” system, it seems the excitement now has everyone jumping on board. We loved it from Day One.
4. NHRA Drag Racing Revs Up: Seems more and more race fans are giving the NHRA PowerAde series a look. What they find is the sport’s most exciting event, hands down — i.e., a 4-second, 330-mph nitro run. They can’t help but go back for more!
5. Soft Walls: Those who saw David Reutimann hit the wall at Texas last month in the Craftsman Truck Series race know that soft walls, when combined with all the other onboard safety equipment, save lives. It was a vicious hit that knocked the future star unconscious. Take away the soft walls and the HANS neck safety equipment, and David Reutimann might not be here today.
6. SPEED Channel Popularity: Motor sports and car nuts always have this channel to tune to for car and race programming. Dave Despain’s “Wind Tunnel” call-in show and the Barrett Jackson shows are top-notch. There’s much to enjoy on this cable station, and loads of live racing, too.
7. Nextel Cup Driver Announcements: Cheers to Rusty Wallace, Terry Labonte and Mark Martin for announcing their reduced schedules or complete retirement from active competition in 2005 and 2006. These drivers have more to lose than gain after brilliant careers, although Martin remains a sentimental favorite to win his first Cup championship. He deserves it.
8. Drive for Diversity: NASCAR is doing quite a bit these days in its drive for diversity, as few minorities currently compete in Busch and Nextel Cup competition. However, that’s not the case in other forms of motor sports, specifically the NOPI Import/Sport Compact Drag Racing and NOPI Car Shows, where Asians, blacks, Hispanics and whites number in the thousands and work side by side in harmony. They also compete as if there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps one reason is cost, as running a Honda, Nissan or Cavalier sport compact on the drag strip will not run $14 million a year. Diversity is alive and well on the nation’s drag strips, and NOPI is the leader.
9. More “Old Timer” Programs: There’s nothing more popular these days than nostalgia racing, be it stock car, sports car or drag racing. When nostalgia cars are added to regular shows or are promoted as stand-alone races/shows, lots of people come out to see “the good old days.” Rebuilding these older cars also helps the racing industry, which is already multi-billion dollars in scope.
10. Media Acceptance: It wasn’t long ago that major newspapers and TV stations looked down on racing and concentrated solely on stick and ball sports. If they tried that now, they’d be disregarding the nation’s No. 2 spectator sport, behind the NFL. They’d probably also lose their jobs.