Presented by Frontstretch.com
The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!
Mar. 4, 2015
Volume IX, Edition XXIV
Wednesday's TV Schedule can be found in Couch Potato Tuesday here.
by the Frontstretch Staff
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Professor of Speed
by Dr. Mark Howell
We have reached the middle-point of the semester here at the small college where I teach, so allow me to assign a short quiz:
Question: Which of the following situations have been part of Atlanta Motor Speedway's legacy as a NASCAR track?
a) Having a favored Labor Day race date replaced by one in early March.
b) Seeing its two annual events trimmed to a single race.
c) Okaying the removal of grandstand seats because of decreased attendance.
d) Home of NASCAR's most-glaring technical inspection snafu.
e) All of the above.
The correct answer? Sadly, the right response would be e).
Don't get me wrong: Atlanta has been home to many, many historic moments in NASCAR history. It's where Jeff Gordon made his Sprint Cup debut in 1992. It's where "King Richard" Petty, that same year and at that same event, drove his final race. It's where Kevin Harvick outran Jeff Gordon in 2001 to win his first career Sprint Cup race as a replacement for the late Dale Earnhardt, just three weeks after "The Intimidator's" death at Daytona.
If you want to recall major events in NASCAR history, Atlanta is one of the truly great speedways to consider. Unfortunately, it's also one of the racetracks most affected by the sport's diminishing popularity.
How bad has it become?
Bad enough for Atlanta Motor Speedway (or rather Speedway Motorsports, Inc.) to begin dismantling 17,000 seats so "low demand" race attendance will not look so horrible on television. All this downsizing at the track newly-minted-NASCAR-Hall-of-Famer Bill Elliott called "home" – as in "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville" who scored five wins (and five poles) at AMS in 62 career starts.
If you can't put fans in the stands, just remove the stands. Such drastic measures, in the "bottom line = finish line" view of NASCAR, are often necessary. That's how Atlanta lost one of its two race dates (starting in 2011) and its choice Labor Day/late summer schedule slot (starting in 2014).
And the hits just keep on coming….
Consider last weekend's Sprint Cup event at AMS. All eyes were on "the Peach State" as NASCAR rolled out its new rules package. Less horsepower and less downforce would mean better racing as straightway speeds decreased slightly in favor of higher speeds in the corners. Toss in a driver-adjustable track bar and suddenly, Atlanta Motor Speedway had the makings of a 190 miles-an-hour laboratory. Race No. 2 on the 2015 Sprint Cup schedule looked to be a great one….
Until Travis Kvapil had his No. 44 Team Xtreme Chevrolet stolen from a nearby hotel parking lot, a circumstance that caused the team to withdraw from Sunday's race. This incident was, without a doubt, a most horrible occurrence, but the theft seemed almost minor when compared to the debacle of technical inspection prior to the first round of "knockout" qualifying.
Oh, yeah. That's another piece of poor judgment from NASCAR, as we learned from first-round qualifying for the Daytona 500. At least we didn't see wrecks and crumpled stock cars like we did during the opening knockout round for "The Great American Race."
At Atlanta, we saw 13 cars fail to clear tech inspection and turn first-round laps. Those drivers failing to run against the clock constituted a "Who's Who" of NASCAR Nation. The entire inspection/qualifying experience seemed like something culled from a bureaucratic nightmare – all red lights, red tape, and red faces.
Luckily only a handful of fans were present to witness the fun….
On the bright side, there were slightly more spectators present on a cold, damp Sunday to watch Jimmie Johnson win by a margin of almost two seconds over Kevin Harvick. If NASCAR still released attendance numbers, we'd actually know how many were there.
Judging by the empty seats seen on television, I understand why the sanctioning body sits on such statistics each week. The truth is sometimes hard to take….
And the truth is: Atlanta Motor Speedway is a tragic example of NASCAR's shifting fortunes. Swapping race dates and dropping events has always been the excuse given for growth; moving into new markets and drawing new audiences is necessary for building a strong future.
But is such growth good when your future is built on the wreckage of legendary tracks with rich histories?
Granted much of the chaos surrounding last weekend's Cup race had nothing to do directly with Atlanta Motor Speedway. To use an already-exhausted adage in 2015's NASCAR schedule, last weekend at AMS was a "perfect storm" of bad weather, bad circumstances, and bad luck that resulted in poor decision-making on the part of NASCAR administration.
So teams who struggled to get though tech last week at Atlanta will suffer an assortment of P1 penalties at Las Vegas this week solely because NASCAR's inspection process was too strict? Teams routinely push the rule book into all kinds of gray areas, but is that not part of the sport?
As Richard Petty once said, "It's only cheating if you get caught."
What wiggle room teams used to get from NASCAR has wiggled its way into obscurity. Such is the case when a league or sanctioning body wants to flex its bureaucratic muscles and show who the boss is.
The boss, as Atlanta Motor Speedway has seen over the past few seasons, is NASCAR.
Maybe SpongeBob SquarePants can make sense of all this mess now that he's tied his boat to Brian France's corporate dock. We'll see come Kansas in May….Dr. Mark Howell is a contributor for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at mark.howell@frontstretch.com.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~TODAY AT FRONTSTRETCH:
Tuesday's Answer:
Q: In 1997, Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosted the final race of the 14-month 1996-97 Indy Racing League season. Tony Stewart would waltz out of the track with the championship, but Roberto Guerrero was lucky to be able to walk out of the track by the end of the night. What happened?
COMING TOMORROW
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