You can’t put it any plainer than that. The season-after-season winners who have dominated NASCAR are not winning races this year, and NASCAR is losing its audience.
Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and even late-comer Jimmie Johnson, after posting back-to-back Championship Cup wins, are tanking this year. Gordon, Stewart and Earnhardt alone have a combined 131 career wins. Add in Johnson and together they have eight championships. Gordon, Stewart and Junior get more face time on TV, and they can move mountains of products, especially Junior.
This year for them there have been no trophy presentations, no confetti showers, no victory burnouts. So what’s the deal? This doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. But in the cases of Gordon, Stewart and Earnhardt, it has happened and the garage has snapped to attention and taken notice.
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t seem odd,” said Dodge owner Ray Evernham, who once crew-chiefed Gordon to 47 wins. “It says how incredibly competitive this series is and how difficult it is to win one of these races.”
Sure, that’s an easy explanation and it has validity, except our three leading-man leadfoots are always on the short list of potential winners. Gordon and Stewart have always had multiple-win seasons. Earnhardt is in a 73-race dry spell, but he too was a two-wins-or-more-per-year force until things started to go south under his step-mama’s roof in 2005.
So what gives? Well, probably several things. For starters, the Car of Tomorrow along with its quirks has leveled the asphalt some and made matters more unpredictable. And the musical-chairs personnel moves that sent Earnhardt to Hendrick Motorsports (Gordon’s home) and Kyle Busch to Gibbs Racing (Stewart’s turf) have maybe spread the focus and energy in those organizations.
Nobody at Hendrick was heavily invested in Busch for most of last season, when Gordon and teammate Johnson combined for 16 of the shop’s 18 wins (it has one in 2008). No one at Gibbs was wrapped up in J.J. Yeley, when Stewart won three times. Now the wealth is being shared more. Busch, for one is taking advantage. Others are cutting into the dominance Hendrick enjoyed last season.
“You’ve got cars winning races that weren’t even in freaking competition last year,” said Kyle Petty. “You throw those cars into the mix, the competition is tougher. If there are 10 horses in the Kentucky Derby, I have a 1 in 10 chance of winning. If there are 20 horses in the Kentucky Derby, I have a 1 in 20 chance of winning. This year, there are more horses running. All of a sudden, you have more cars capable of winning races.”
There’s also the age factor. Nine of those 11 races have been won by drivers 30 and under, whereas Earnhardt, Gordon and Stewart all are between 33 and 37. They’re not close to over the hill, OK? They can still bring it. But you combine youth and aggression with the Car of Tomorrow, maybe that guy’s more inclined to steer closer to the edge from the get-go while everyone grapples with a learning curve.
Whatever the case, the Big Three’s absence from victory lane may diminish the allure of the sport, some. “I think it probably hurts a little bit,” said Petty Enterprises Vice President Robbie Loomis, another of Gordon’s former crew chiefs. “What keeps fans coming back is if this is going to be their guy’s week. This is going to be Stewart’s week; or this is going to be Earnhardt’s week. It definitely takes a little shine off the product, makes it a little more bland.”
The drivers themselves may empathize with their fans more than they realize. “I feel like a win is just around the corner,” Earnhardt said just before the spring race at Talladega. He, Gordon and Stewart still are waiting, but there may be more at stake than just a bad season for this trio, and their disappointed fans.
It’s no secret, even to NASCAR officials, that this hasn’t been the snazziest of seasons. With empty seats, stale competition and no visits to victory lane by the circuit’s marquee drivers, NASCAR has its share of troubles but they aren’t the only concerns. NASCAR is getting reminded this year, theirs is not the only dog in the race.
What NASCAR precisely didn’t need this year was Danica Patrick winning Indy. True, the France family business is in no danger of being leapfrogged by the IRL, but the entire springtime buzz was about open-wheel reunification and Patrick’s possibilities for a monumental win that could rekindle memories of the early ‘90s, when Indy cars and the stockers ran neck and neck. Since it didn’t happen, NASCAR can now exhale with that behind them, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the woods, yet.
While Patrick didn’t deliver on the month-long hype that preceded Indy, she still has the potential to pull significant attention in NASCAR’s newest, tenuous audience … women. If Patrick can continue to capitalize on her breakthrough IRL win in Japan in April, her star will shine even brighter.
Similarly Chip Ganassi may be seeing things in a different light. He wants it all but hasn’t had much lately to show for his appetite. His three-car NASCAR team has managed only one win over the past five-plus seasons, and he’d last ruled Indy in 2000. But, Scott Dixon’s dominant performance all month and at Indy was a major boost for the organization. If things in his NASCAR garage don’t start turning around, his investments may start paying less attention there.
Rick Hendrick is especially feeling the pains this year. A season ago, his drivers won 18 of 36 races on the NASCAR tour. This year, he’s batting 1 for 12. Johnson had slipped from sixth to ninth in the standings as of the end of May. That was one spot in front of still-winless Jeff Gordon. Strange as it sounds, neither is a shoo-in to remain top-12 and make the playoffs.
Dodge, on the other hand, seems to be making the best of the situation. Seizing the season opener at Daytona with a trip to victory lane by Ryan Newman, Dodge drivers have taken this season by storm. Kasey Kahne pulled out an all-star triumph, followed eight days later by a win in the Coca-Cola 600. He was accompanied by Elliott Sadler (eighth), Bobby Labonte (11th) and Sam Hornish Jr. (season-best 13th).
Stewart can’t seem to catch a break. It’s bad enough that he hasn’t won in nine months of Sundays and Saturdays. Worse yet, he’s zip-for-10 and snake bit in the Coca-Cola 600. He lost a roll of the dice on fuel in 2007 and a gamble on tires this season. Two bad calls, two chances squandered.
We can place Humpy Wheeler in the winner’s category this season. Charlotte’s promoter extraordinaire outdid himself with the Coca-Cola 600 pre-race spectacle and outflanked ex-boss Bruton Smith with a preemptive presser, at which he announced his resignation. Wheeler was roundly applauded all weekend, and deservedly so. Well-known for his ability to draw a crowd, he certainly did for his last race, and in doing so, may have single-handedly saved NA
