Oscar Gamble Society

Having been bumped out of his job at Hendricks by Junior, Busch the Younger will now take JJ Yeley’s ride in the number 18 car at Joe Gibbs Racing. Definitely an upgrade for Gibbs, though now Tony Stewart will be only the second biggest head case in his employ. With two very young drivers in Busch and Denny Hamlin, and Tony Stewart likely to drive for at least a few more years, one assumes Gibbs will expand to four cars within a year or two to accomodate either Brad Coleman or, more likely, Joey Logano, at least once Logano is old enough to actually get a driver’s license.

Kurt Busch’s win at Pocono yesterday only serves to highlight the competitive problem in NASCAR. Exhibit A: yesterday was the first time in two years that a Cup race was won by a driver from a team with less than three cars. Exhibit B: just look at Busch’s career since leaving Roush. In 2004 with Roush he was the Cup Champion. His win yesterday though was only his second since leaving Roush for the two-car Penske team.

From the New York Daily News:

Who knew NASCAR revved Paris Hilton’s engine? Driver Kasey Kahne was out at Les Duex in Hollywood Wednesday night when he bumped into the ubiquitous celebutant. “The two of them chatted for a while, and before they parted ways for the night, she leaned in and whispered ‘God, you’re cute’ and kissed him!” says our source.

Robby Gordon’s primary role in NASCAR is to make Tony Stewart seem like an exemplar of Solomonic wisdom and judgement, so when something sketchy occurs and he’s involved, the default assumption - not unreasonably - is that Gordon is at fault. But in Saturday’s Busch Series race in Montreal, Robby Gordon got hosed.

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Native Hoosier Tony Stewart won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis today, his second straight victory creating some nice momentum on the cusp of the Chase for the Cup. He passed Kevin Harvick for the lead with 10 laps to go, and once in clean air quickly pulled away from the pack. How much? With six laps to go, he took BOTH hands of the wheel and got a drink. Nice. Tough break for Junior, getting another DNF after his engine blew up with 25 laps to go. And props to Juan Pablo Montoya, finishing second in his first visit to Indy for his best performance on an oval track.

I am on record in believing that the impact of team finances on baseball teams’ success is wildly overstated. I am increasingly coming to believe, though, that the effect of team finances on NASCAR drivers’ success may be much greater than acknowledged, to the point of dwarfing the impact of differences in drivers’ skills.

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A day after Sunday’s race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, three drivers for Chip Ganassi - Reed Sorenson, David Stremme, and Juan Pablo Montoya - went to the Cubs game and led the crowd through Take Me Out to the Ball Game. They remembered the words and led the singing, and even remembered that they were at Wrigley Field. This is in marked contrast with the Prince of Darkness Jeff Gordon, who in 2005 told the fans how happy he was to be at Wrigley Stadium before forgetting the words to the song and being booed out of town.

* It is now official that Budweiser will NOT be Junior’s sponsor next year when he moves to the Hendricks team. The speculation that seems most informed is that Pepsi will be Earnhardt’s primary sponsor, both because they will contribute more money than Anheuser - Busch (reportedly in the $25-$30 million range) and because it will allow Earnhardt to be marketed to children in a way he couldn’t as the representative of a brewery. This should drive his fans even more berserk, as not only is he joining Jeff Gordon’s team, he is adopting Gordon’s sponsor (Gordon having driven with a Pepsi scheme a couple times per year).

* With the departure of Dale Jr., DEI has acted with impressive speed to prepare for a future without the sport’s most popular driver. First they merged their engine operation with Richard Childress Racing, to achieve some of the economies of scale available to the largest teams. Now a full-blown merger with Ginn Racing appears imminent. The biggest problem posed by such a merger - a combined total of six teams, versus the NASCAR limit of four per owner - looks like it’s getting resolved very quickly. The team just canned veteran driver Sterling Marlin (who has one of the best accents in the sport; he sounds like a real-life version of Boomhauer from King of the Hill) and appears poised to do the same to Joe Nemechek. While the merger is easily caricatured as two drunks holding each other up, it potentially positions DEI to emerge as a power in NASCAR. The combined entity would boast Martin Truex Jr., who has really come into his own this year, Mark Martin on a part-time basis, Regan Smith who has been a promising rookie under Martin’s tutelage, and Paul Menard unless DEI decides that Kyle Busch’s talent is worth the drama he seems to create.

UPDATE:

Well it is now official that Joe Nemechek has also been let go by Ginn Racing, and interestingly, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Busch driver, Aric Almirola, will move to Ginn and split time with Mark Martin in the 01 car sponsored by the Army. It will be interesting to see how much Almirola’s decision to leave Gibbs was affected by the debacle in Milwaukee (Almirola qualified for the pole, and when scheduled driver Denny Hamlin was late to the track, Almirola started the race and led for most of it before being called in for a pit stop to put Hamlin in the car, despite Almirola’s excellent performance and the fact that the stop cost the car more than a lap on the track).

I am only now watching ESPN 2’s off-season series on the ramp-up of Michael Waltrip Racing for 2007, after letting it languish on the tivo since the winter. It is especially interesting to see it now, knowing what a debacle the early 2007 season has been for Waltrip. Let me explain. No, there is no time; let me sum up:

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I don’t know how else to understand the hyperventilating over some fans heaving beer cans at Jeff Gordon’s car after a lame ending to a race that put Gordon ahead of Dale Sr. on the all-time victory list.

I’m not defending the decision to throw beer onto the track, mind you. Most of the cans were at least partially full, meaning that in total several cases of beer were senselessly wasted. NASCAR is fully justified in looking into whether some sort of drop-trou rule should be established to discourage the frivolous waste of barley-based beverages. Permanently banning a dozen people from Talladega (and subsequently a few other tracks) just invites scorn and ridicule, though. And far be it from me to pass up such an invitation.

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