NASCAR Recap November 19, 2017

I sort of meant to cover NASCAR’s Championship race at Homestead-Miami today.  The big news was that this was Dale Earnhardt Jr’s last race before retirement.  He might race a bit more, but not full-time.  I started this blog (actually on Myspace) doing NASCAR recaps and covering his ascendancy.  It felt like I should put a coda on it.  Unfortunately, I was at the hospital with my dad.  We watched a bit, but never got into it. 

Later at home, I ended up watching Stadium’s coverage of the Patriot League Volleyball Championship during the early part of the race.  American University beat Navy in straight sets.  This might be my last volleyball match of the year, unless I run into some NCAA Tournament action.  Morgan Uber (I can’t get over that name) was working the sidelines during the match.  Afterward, she interviewed the tallest player on AU.  This girl must have been over 6’5”, because she was at least a foot-and-a-half taller than Morgan.  They made an odd couple on screen.

 

I suppose all I really have to say about Junior is that future NASCAR fans (that may be a presumptuous assumption right there, assuming there will be any) are going to wonder what the big deal was.  He didn’t win a championship or that many races.  All the gushing commentators could really say about him was that Junior had won the Most Popular Driver award fourteen years in a row.  It’s telling that that was his major accomplishment.  The one year he was really in championship contention, he cussed on-air in Victory Lane and was docked points.  It was all downhill after that.  (Getting caught in a fire inside a Corvette at an ALMS race didn’t help either.)  It’s almost impossible to overestimate Junior’s value in mainstreaming the sport.  It’s also just as hard to explain how that happened.            

On a similar note, Danica Patrick was also taking her last regular turn at the wheel.  She’d had sponsorship troubles this year that precipitated this early retirement.  “The Danica Experience,” as I called it, had its moments, but was mostly just about her, not her on-track accomplishments.  Meanwhile, Matt Kenseth too was leaving after this race.  Though still racing at a high-level, he couldn’t find sponsorship to pay him enough to keep him employed either.  I still blame his first championship season, where he only won one race, for foisting “The Chase” on us. 

Along with Carl Edwards’ sudden retirement and Jeff Gordon hanging it up recently, there are complex issues with this sport that are forcing drivers out.  I don’t have the inclination to bother discussing them.  I just don’t care.  Now there is a definite problem for the sport: a former huge fan, rendered apathetic.  Maybe next year, during the Daytona 500, I'll have more to say and maybe some pointless suggestions.

Congrats at least to Martin Truex Jr, an easy-to-like fellow.  It would have been a shame if the best driver this season didn’t win the championship because of the stupid, gimmicky championship format.  There was even some drama at the end, with Truex and Kyle Busch fighting for the race and championship win.  NASCAR got lucky there.  I guess we’ll see how NASCAR handles not having Junior around on track (he’ll be in the booth) next year.