|
I
am sometimes atypical as a gay man - I love
watching the NFL (American Football) and NASCAR
(American Oval Racing). And
being the rather anal person that I am, I notice
things that have patterns. For
instance, I noticed that former NFL Philadelphia
Eagles quarterback, Donovan McNabb, telegraphed
whether the play that he was going to execute as
he went to the line was going to be a pass or a
run. When it was a pass, he
moved his head side to side. He did
not do that at any time when a run was
called. I would yell at the tv
calling out the play and I was dead on accurate. So
when my next favorite sport deployed a new race
car this 2013 Season, I took notice.
Something smelled and smelled
badly. Let's revisit why I
should suspect something was up. In
NASCAR you have some huge teams that field
multiple cars and names like Hendrick Motor
Sports, Roush Racing, Penske Racing come to
mind. Hendrick Motor Sports is a
team that gives off all the aura of a mafia or
less than honest collection of
players. I'm basing my observations
on what I see and sometimes read and I offer the
following observations as to why I don't trust
them. First,
Rick Hendrick, the owner of the team, has had
some shady business dealings in his
past. He is a huge dealer
conglomerate selling many new cars in many
brands. But back 20 or so
years ago when Honda was just gaining traction
in the US, Hendrick was caught by the feds in
illegal business actions that negatively
impacted consumers - price fixing and other
details. Hendrick was
convicted and punished and was a
felon. Evidently Hendrick was
also a big Democrat donor (!) and managed to get
a pardon during Bill Clinton's furious last days
of pardons being issued.
Hendrick now appears clean as the new driven
snow and also suffered cancer which he
beat. One
of Hendrick's teams is a multiple championship
winner - Jimmy Johnson - who drives the 48 Lowes
sponsored race car. To say that
Jimmy Johnson is one of my least favorite
drivers is an understatement.
During his five plus championships, he and his
team have been caught AND penalized by NASCAR
for cheating no less than 14
times. Let's just say the
apple of the Hendrick Driver tree don't fall far
from the felon Hendrick's own shady
dealings. It should be noted that there
are few years that Jimmy Johnson won a
championship where his team wasn't caught and
penalized cheating. In the
modern era of NASCAR no single team and driver
have been penalized and caught cheating more
than Jimmy Johnson, Chad Knaus (his crew chief)
and Hendrick Motorsports.
With the backstory
of why I noticed this race team, I also caught wind that NASCAR
would be changing its race car that it fields - the car that was
raced last year was the so-called GEN FIVE car named because it
was the Fifth Iteration of the type of NASCAR approved
racecar. This vehicle had been created to maximize
safety for the driver and gained momentum in development after
the death of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001.
With the
deployment of the GEN 5 car, it became evident that the Hendrick
Motorsports team had found the secret to making it fast and
Jimmy Johnson won many of his Championships driving the
vehicle. He was more than competitive and it
became evident, until last year, that no one was as good
at racing this generation of NASCAR approved model.
Quite simply,
Hendrick Motorsports ruled the tracks.
The Generation 5
car really isn't a Ford, Chevrolet, or Toyota. It is a
common vehicle that only had different engines for each company
and some graphics added to make a car look like a different
brand, but ultimately this was a common car with minimal
changes.
Until 2012,
Hendrick Motorsports ruled with this Generation Five vehicle but something
happened - the competition started winning and ultimately for
the second consecutive year, a Hendrick car did not win the
championship and last year it wasn't even a Chevrolet (Impala).
|
From reports that
I have read, Hendrick Motorsports was a major proponent of the
GEN Six vehicle (pictured above top) and there is some evidence
that Hendrick was insistent that NASCAR push forward the debut
of the GEN SIX car and that the rationale wasn't to improve
competition or overall safety of the drivers, but to give
Hendrick an advantage - you see - Hendrick had been one of the
principal developers of the vehicle and had an inside edge on
its design features. It
should be noted that there were "cosmetic" reasons for
the deployment of the GEN SIX cars - the GEN FIVE cars did not
look like the production vehicles and the GEN SIX car was to
address this by allowing some additional differentiation in the
front and rear and the greenhouse of the vehicle.
Additional decals that gave fake headlight and tail light
treatments were also approved. The front end clip of
the car with the bumper assembly was also slightly different for
each brand. It
became obvious once the GEN SIX car was released and on the
track that Hendrick's role in developing the product did in fact
translate into performance on the track - this is insider
information that would be unlawful in the stock market, but in
NASCAR, apparently this is not only legal, but encouraged. Across
the board, the Chevrolet SS, a car that was not available for
sale when the GEN SIX version started racing this season ended
up recording serious success - Johnson won five times with it,
other SS teams had a total of approximately 8 more wins - a
total of 13 wins out of 31 races - and the other major player in
this GEN SIX development, Joe Gibbs racing, had a total of at
least 11 races. It
is clear that having your paws on the car during development
gave you an advantage on the track! What
separates the Toyota effort from the Chevrolet teams is that the
Toyota Camry which the GEN SIX version is based is readily
available for sale to consumers - the Ford Fusion version of the
GEN SIX car also was readily available all season. HOWEVER.......the
Chevrolet version that Hendrick developed is still not available
for sale to consumers despite 31 races of the 36 week
"season" already having been performed.
This means that NASCAR has approved a car that not only was
never available for sale for the first 26 races which allowed
drivers to qualify for the "playoffs" but already with
half of the 10 "playoff races" having been run, the
vehicle is still not available for consumer
sale. I know this because of monthly sales
charts released by each automaker and the September sales
results showed NO CHEVROLET SS sales! So
why is this a big deal? NASCAR
has long stipulated the availability of a consumer version to be
available for that respective racing season. Sometimes
this has allowed a month or two to go by before the consumer
version became available for sale, but NEVER has NASCAR allowed
an entire qualifying for playoffs race period go by before a car
was available for sale to consumers - this means the car you saw
on the track never existed! Furthermore, since half
of the playoffs has already transpired, the teams that ran an
unlawful car to get into the playoffs are now winning in the
playoffs and within at least 3 points of the title lead! Considering
the lack of significant penalities to the Hendrick Motorsports
team of Jimmy Johnson when they have been caught cheating 14
times over the past few years and the specious past of Hendrick
and the non-existant nature of the consumer version of the car
and Hendrick's involvement in pushing the car into use this
year, one can conclude without much blushing that Hendrick and
NASCAR are colluding in a major league cheating scandal that
violates several NASCAR rules and intent on even playing
field. If a car's availability to consumers is
REQUIRED to qualify the race version, then the entire 2013
NASCAR season is about to become FRAUDULENT!
|
No comments:
Post a Comment