With the season preview series of media interviews we inch closer to this year's later edition of Speedweeks with the stock car portion kicking off at the end of February as opposed to the second to third weekend.   And with the media whirlwind we've gotten anticipation for the coming 2012 season.


But we also got reminders of what has turned a lot of people off NASCAR in recent years.  


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We start with Robin Pemberton.   During the Media Tour he said that NASCAR will "re-evaluate" its Boys Have At It philosophy because on-track thuggery "got out of hand."   That he's saying this as if it was some kind of surprise speaks to the system-wide incompetence of modern NASCAR.   Boys Have At It is a failed philosophy, and it failed because it was based on a myth - the myth that driver personalities were somehow being stifled by NASCAR and that drivers should be able to police themselves.   The problem is there is no such thing as drivers policing themselves - on the contrary, what we have is driver escalating on-track thuggery because they've been given quasi-official sanction to do so.  


NASCAR says it will re-evaluate their policy - but we need real example that they have, something along the lines of a multi-race suspension of a driver and his team for on-track thuggery. 

Then there has been the brouhaha over "secret" fines by NASCAR of drivers who speak out of turn.   NASCAR says their fines will not be secret anymore - except there's nothing to stop them from reneging on so flimsy a promise and given the credibility problems they have it's a given NASCAR won't live up to its word here. 


Brian France made a point of saying the sanctioning body will put down attacks on the integrity of the sport - fine in and of itself but less than reassuring since Mr. France has demonstrated throughout his leadership that his understanding of the term "integrity of the sport" is nebulous at best. 



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And of course there's the phobia about "2-car tandems" at Daytona and Talladega.   "We're working hard to find rules packages to break up the tandem racing," Brian France stated.   This comes amid a rule change on rear bumpers that was largely overlooked - they are to be lowered by two inches.   Just what is thought to be accomplished here is as big a mystery as the entirety of the controversy.   Brian France has claimed "the fans" want to break up the 2-car superdrafts and "want a mixture of styles, including a return to more traditional pack racing" at the two restrictor plate tracks.   Yet there remains less than credible evidence that fans outside of some bitter types on message boards really do oppose the 2-car superdrafts - as mentioned on ROWDY's own coverage of Daytona testing, "Do the fans not like this kind of racing or does Brian France not like this kind of racing?"  



John Darby thinks "there will be a mixture" of superdrafts and conventional drafts a la pre-2011.   That Darby deserves to be fired is shown again here - he actually thinks drivers are going to stay off each other's bumpers for any kind of prolonged period contrary to ALL evidence.   Drivers will swap and rehook together just as they kept doing when NASCAR kept cutting grille openings down and down.   There is not a rule package that can ever neutralize a superdraft.   The physics make the superdrafts permanent.   NASCAR needs to understand this and accept it.

 
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Car owner Rick Hendrick meanwhile responded sharply when someone actually made the assertion that his team's association with Phoenix Racing circumvents the sport's four-car limit for team owners.   That someone made this point at all typifies the Race-Stream Media's lack of the confrontational ethos that has served the sports media's coverage of other sports valuable.   It has been glaringly obvious that Hendrick's "associations" with other teams is to circumvent the four-car rule, and it remains a stain on NASCAR that they don't call him out on it and force a breakage of such associations.  


That Hendrick isn't alone doesn't make him innocent - it merely reinforces NASCAR's dereliction of duty in breaking up the monopolies of race teams and engine programs.  

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 Brian France claims the sport is "in a very good place right now."   Yet what the sport has seen is retraction of some teams and a total lack of new blood coming in.   Costs remain prohibitive, spending remains unchecked, and the switch to fuel injection remains pointless.  


It's more of the same from NASCAR, and why I look toward the coming season with resignation instead of anticipation.