Posted on 06/26/2007 9:11:42 PM PDT by NYTexan
NASCAR owns and assigns car numbers to an owner(s). NASCAR reserves the right to revoke or transfer car numbers to another owner/team at any time. Car numbers are non-assignable and non-transferable, except by NASCAR. NASCAR works with teams and sponsors when a specific number is requested.
DEI does not own the number they do have first rights to the use of the number. What HMS wants from DEI is for DEI to not request the use of the number next year. Then HMS will ask to use it. In return for DEI not asking for the number HMS will “compensate” them for the favor.
So, let the fans have their say. There are about 5 Free The 8 petitions going around including Riki Rachtman who will pass out shirts on Speeds Raceday show.
It CAN be up to DEI to tell Nascar they ARE willing to give it to Hendrick. If they do that and Nascar says NO there will be a horrible fiasco and Nascar doesn’t need any more bad publicity. They are in the same boat as Teresa as far as negative publicity lately.
Jr made the 8 what it is. I have to reiterate once again that his father Dale Earnhardt Sr gave him that number specifically because his grandfather Ralph Earnhardt drove that car number. So in our minds it does belong to him. What would Dale Sr want???? Greg Biffle driving the 8, Joe Schmo? Someone else?.........I don’t think so!
From truckseries.com ... NASCAR announced today that Ted Musgrave, driver of the No. 9 Toyota in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, has been suspended from competition until July 3, penalized 50 championship driver points, fined $10,000 and placed on probation until Dec. 31 for a rule violation he committed during the race at the Milwaukee Mile on June 22.
Musgrave was found to be in violation of Section 12-4-A (actions detrimental to stock car racing; hitting another competitor’s truck during a caution period) of the 2007 NASCAR rule book.
[During the race Friday night, Musgrave and rookie Kelly Bires were involved in an accident early in the event. Immediately afterward, Musgrave restarted his truck, ran down Bires and drove his truck into the wall in retaliation.]
In addition, Bob Germain, owner of the No. 9, has been penalized 50 championship truck owner points.
LOL They suspend Musgrave for a week, yet they let Kurt Busch race after he nearly ran over a man!
http://www.thatsracin.com/242/story/5136.html
NASCAR’s punishment far too harsh
Darrell Waltrip
When NASCAR put the templates they use during inspection on the No. 24 and No. 48 cars at Sonoma, they fit. Those cars were legal to race.
Not allowing the Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson to qualify and starting them at the rear of the field are pretty big penalties in and of themselves. I just don’t see how NASCAR justifies docking the drivers and teams 100 driver and owner points and suspending the crew chiefs six weeks with $100,000 fines apiece.
I know you’re going to say, “DW, you’re on the Hendrick payroll.” I’m not. I’m a competitor who has driven cars and owned teams. I look at these situations through the eyes of someone that has been in NASCAR for a long time.
Have you seen the egg crate, the cradle that they built for the little Car of Tomorrow baby? It’s huge. It drops down over the top of the car and incorporates every template known to man. There’s hardly an area on the car that it doesn’t document and verify.
Obviously, they forgot to put a template or a check point on at least one area of the car because that’s the area where No. 48 crew chief Chad Knaus and No. 24 crew chief Steve Letarte worked. Ever since we’ve been racing, teams have put templates on the cars and looked at what’s left. If there’s a place where you can kind of work around that template, that’s always been acceptable. That’s never been a problem.
In the past, if NASCAR saw something on the car that the template didn’t check, they might say, “Don’t bring it back that way anymore. We’re not going to accept it. We don’t want to see it.” Or they might even make a template off of that car that weekend so you and others don’t try to do it again.
In 2005, Knaus brought a right rear shock to Dover. It wasn’t illegal, but it was a shock that it was built in a manner that NASCAR had never seen before. They didn’t even know how to check it. It was just different, but it wasn’t illegal. They didn’t disqualify him, and they didn’t penalize him or anything else. They just said, “We’re not going to allow it.” Then, they made a bulletin the next week, disallowing shocks that were built that way.
That’s been the norm in this business ever since I’ve been in it so when a competitor shows up at a track with something that nobody else had thought of, you don’t disqualify them. You may take that part or car away from them. You may tell them not to do it again. But that’s the end of it. You don’t penalize the team. If I were going to penalize anybody, I would penalize the people that built the templates with which they check the car. They left an area open that someone can manipulate a little bit.
If you ask anybody that’s ever raced, when the templates fit, your car is legal. If there’s something wrong outside that template area, they can make you fix it, but they don’t disqualify you, suspend you or fine you. That may be old school or old NASCAR, but that’s the way we’ve always done it. And it’s always been accepted by everybody.
To paraphrase the late Johnnie Cochran, if the templates fit, you must acquit.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/story/6952372?CMP=OTC-K9B140813162&ATT=167
What about the long history of the #5? It’sa two-time champion. What about the 25? Both car numbers have significant meaning to the Hendrick family and HMS. What about Alan Gustafson being moved aside for Eury Jr, or maybe Casey Mears’ team being disrupted just when they are really starting to gel together? There are two sides to all of this, but as usual, Earnhardt Nation doesn’t give a fig about anything or anyone else. Believe me when I tell you that there will be some resentment in the ranks at HMS over some of this. The only reason we 24 fans are choking down our resentment is that we’re following Jeff’s lead.
Strict limits
By Jonathan Baum, Yahoo! Sports
June 26, 2007
SONOMA, Calif. – Last month, No. 8 crew chief Tony Eury Jr. was suspended and Dale Earnhardt Jr. lost points when their Car of Tomorrow failed inspection at Darlington.
Now with Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson’s teams being hit with significant penalties Tuesday following failed COT inspections Friday at Sonoma, it becomes even more clear that NASCAR has no tolerance when it comes to bending the rules – or fenders, as it may be – on the Car of Tomorrow.
NASCAR officials said as much Friday at Sonoma when the failed No. 24 and 48 car inspections were first announced. And while they wouldn’t quite acknowledge whether the penalty for a similar infraction with the old car would have been dealt with quite as severely, that has been the implication.
“What we’re going to do, and what we’ve said along, is that we’re going to keep control of this car,” NASCAR spokesperson Ramsey Poston said. “We’re going to make sure this car doesn’t get twisted and doesn’t get turned around. We want the emphasis to be on drivers, not on engineers.
“Engineers are always going to be part of this sport, but anything we can do to put winning and losing – competing – in the hands of drivers, we’re going to do. And keeping this car in check is one of those things.”
Indeed, drivers pay the bills. It’s the sport’s marquee names, not teams, that draw rabid interest. And keeping those drivers on a level playing field benefits the on-track product with the kind of parity that leads to happy fans who are willing to spend more.
But for many, it’s also about the cars and teams. Many races aren’t won solely as a result of driver ability, but also because one team’s engine has more power (or better fuel mileage, like we saw at Sonoma) or another team’s aero package is superior, and so on.
And some of those gains, especially when it comes to aero packages, mechanical grip and the like, are made by teams and crew chiefs who are willing to push the envelope. But pushing the envelope is what NASCAR is putting a stop to, which is a departure from how the sport used to be run.
“You get used to (the sport) changing so rapidly,” said Alan Gufstafson, crew chief for Kyle Busch, a teammate of Gordon and Johnson’s. “I look back three years ago when I started crew chiefing and how much work we would do to the bodies. And in three years that’s gone from radical as you could get, which was a lot of fun (he laughs) to as controlled as you can get.”
And that difference in control not only applies to past vs. present, but present vs. present when it comes to some races being run with the Car of Tomorrow and others not.
So is NASCAR treating infractions on the old car with a lighter touch?
“It seems that way. I’m not going to complain,” Gufstafson laughed, “because any lax is good by me. If they are going to give us any room on the old car, then that’s great.”
The old car, maybe. But not the Car of Tomorrow.
In fact, NASCAR is being so strict with it that some believe they should just take the teams out of the equation altogether.
“If they don’t want anybody to screw with the bodies, then give them to us,” said No. 11 crew chief Mike Ford, suggesting that NASCAR could provide teams with cars rather than each organization having to build their own.
Ford, who saw the fenders in question on the Hendrick cars and was shocked that the alterations led to such stiff penalties, explains that with thousands of people building Cup cars every year, variations are inevitable. From his perspective, the problem is accentuated by unclear or nonexistent guidelines – especially in cases like the Hendrick cars, where the violation took place in an area outside those measured by NASCAR’s inspection templates.
“There really aren’t really any rules other than (the car) has to look a certain way,” Ford said. “It’s kind of like punishing your kid without explaining the rules.”
And, perhaps, not treating all of your kids equally.
“You (can) go down through here and pick bigger items on every one of these cars than what was on those (24 and 48) cars,” Ford said, motioning to the Cup garage.
All of this leaves crew chiefs in a difficult position, as they don’t know what will fly and what won’t.
“At the end of the day, if you fit all the templates and you do all the things they tell you you need to do, it makes it kind of hard to figure out what you’re supposed to do if you fit all that stuff but it still could be wrong,” said Todd Berrier, crew chief for Kevin Harvick’s No. 29 car.
But perhaps a little common sense could be used as NASCAR continues to make itself clear in this regard: Don’t mess with the COT. And if there are levels of messing that teams feel inclined to do, check with NASCAR first to see if those changes will fly.
It’s a message that gets louder with each passing penalty, and one teams seemingly are beginning to accept.
“As far as the penalties go, I understand that NASCAR doesn’t want to constantly chase these other areas like they have to (with the old car). They’ve put a lot of work and a lot of effort into (the COT),” Gufstafson said. “They’ve tried to build this structure to try to eliminate a lot of these things. If you mess with that structure, they don’t take it very well.
“I don’t necessarily blame them, but at the same time I don’t blame the guys for looking for an advantage, either. … It’s our job to try to get a technical advantage.”
So with stiff penalties the norm for COT infractions, and with at least some unpredictability – from the points of view of crew chiefs, anyway – in the inspection and penalty process, do crew chiefs find themselves more on edge than usual?
“You are halfway scared coming to the race track because you don’t know what’s going to happen, what’s going to change,” Berrier said. “What kind of box you are going to get out of that you didn’t know you were in? It kind of makes it a little touchy.”
Ford and Tony Stewart crew chief Greg Zipadelli say the bigger issue than being on edge is needing to know how innovative they are allowed to be as their championship-contending teams try to win races week to week.
“You don’t know where that limit is,” Ford said. “Yeah, we can build cars and come to the race track and suck, but the defies the purpose of a race. I don’t know where that line is.”
Glad to hear it!
A Sergeant?
Good for him!
Give him my best!
I suggest you ask Mr Hendrick those questions. He wanted Jr. he got him, now he seems to be willing to deal on the number of the car etc. I have no idea what they have planned, but we are all willing to take whatever we get. If it’s not the 8 it’s ok, if it’s not Budweiser that’s ok too. But you have to realize we have rooted for the red Bud #8 for many years now and it will take some adjustment which we all will do gladly because we support the driver.
We have many new Gordon fans on our Jr board and they don’t seem to have those feelings.
And, believe it or not most Jr fans myself included love Casey Mears and wish him the best. We don’t want to disrupt his team one iota. BUT you have to understand it’s not us that’s making the changes here, it’s Hendrick Motorsports and Dale EArnhardt Jr.
Sorry for all the posts, it’s raining I’m stuck in the house and there’s a ton of news today. Here is the OFFICIAL press release from Jr Motorsports on POPS!!! Yippee!
Eury Sr. Named Director of Competition at JR Motorsports
MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. has turned to a familiar face and proven winner to help lead the competition efforts of his race team, announcing today that his uncle and longtime NASCAR crew chief, Tony Eury Sr., has been named Director of Competition at JR Motorsports.
Commonly referred to as “Pops” around the NASCAR garage, Eury Sr. will oversee competition and technical support for all of JR Motorsports, which includes a full-time NASCAR Busch Series program, a USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series entry, and three late model teams. His new role at JRM will begin immediately, as he will work closely with crew chief Wes Ward, motorsports director Steve Crisp, and driver Shane Huffman in preparation for Saturday’s Camping World 200 NASCAR Busch Series race at New Hampshire International Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on ABC). The No. 88 Navy Accelerate Your Life team enters the weekend on the heels of consecutive top-10 finishes at Kentucky (6/16) and Milwaukee (6/23).
“Tony Sr. brings wins, championships, and an immeasurable amount of knowledge to JR Motorsports,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He also brings a sense of trust that you only have in family. This company needs his expertise, and I’m glad he sees the potential at JR Motorsports to want to work here. I hope I can provide him the same amount of success here that he has achieved over the years, and I hope he enjoys working here as much as I know he enjoyed working at DEI (Dale Earnhardt Inc.).”
Earnhardt Jr.’s latest addition continues a racing bond between the Eurys and Earnhardts that started more than three decades ago when Eury Sr. accompanied his longtime Kannapolis, N.C., friend, Dale Earnhardt Sr., to Daytona International Speedway in 1976. Racing in the NASCAR Sportsman Division (later renamed the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series) Earnhardt finished 13th in his first-ever race at Daytona. Eury continued to work on Earnhardt’s cars and travel to select races on a part-time basis through the mid-80s before joining Earnhardt’s company full time in 1987.
As a crew chief at DEI, Eury worked with a vast assortment of drivers who took turns driving Earnhardt’s Busch Series entry, including Neil Bonnett, David Bonnett, Bobby Hillin, Ben Hess, Jody Ridley, Michael Waltrip, Steve Park, and, of course, Earnhardt himself. His biggest challenge, however, came prior to the 1998 season when he was asked to mold an up-and-coming driver that had very little professional stock-car racing experience.
“I remember Dale coming up to me and asking if I could make a driver out of Dale Jr.,” Eury Sr. said. “My remark to him was I don’t know why we can’t. Why would you want to spend money on someone else’s kid when you can spend money on your own kid?”
The partnership produced immediate results. With Eury Sr. as crew chief, Earnhardt Jr. collected 13 wins, 34 top-five finishes, and back-to-back NASCAR Busch Series championships in 1998 and 1999. The pair made the inevitable leap to the Nextel Cup Series, starting with a limited five-race schedule in 1999 and then the full slate in 2000. Eury Sr. remained Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief through 2004, winning 15 races, the Winston All-Star race, and the Daytona 500 before turning the reigns over to his son, Tony Eury Jr.
“Pops and I have a long history together, and I’m excited to see what he can bring to this company,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We’ve worked really hard to build JR Motorsports to what it is today, but it’s time we take it to the next level. There is nobody that can motivate a group of people better than Pops. I think his leadership and knowledge of race cars will benefit all the teams and employees at JR Motorsports.”
Tell him thank you and welcome home please.
Leaving it all up to Rick with “free the 8” petitions? Hah! Trust me, the miniscule fraction of 24 fans who may post on Junior forums do not represent all 24 fans. There is too much long-standing anger at the way Earnhardt fans have treated Jeff, HMS, and most especially 24 fans for there ever to be any genuine embrace of Earnhardt Nation on the part of Gordon Nation. Junior, himself, is a different story, because most 24 fans I know like him as a person. And there is plenty of resentment among 24 fans over seeing Alan Gustafson get shunted aside, plus maybe losing the 5 or 25 numbers. I’m reporting to you what I hear and see among 24 fans, and also making sure the other side of the “free the 8” thing is represented. As for Eury Jr going to HMS, I’d say probably 98% of 24 fans think it’s a lousy idea. Or maybe to put it the other way around, one wag on the private JG forum I’m a member of said he’s glad Eury is coming, because he and Junior haven’t done all that much and he doesn’t think going to HMS will make a difference.
I would say Dale, Sr. wanted someone else to drive the #8 about as much as he wanted to see his son turn his back on DEI and go to HMS.
I would say Dale, Sr. wanted someone else to drive the #8 about as much as he wanted to see his son turn his back on DEI and go to HMS.
Alan Gustafson is an INCREDIBLE young talent. This is one of the stories no one is paying much attention to. He says he would “rather sweep floors for Hendrick than go be CC somewhere else.” Yet, if Eury, Jr. does go to HMS, there appears to me to be no place for Gustafson as CC, at least on Cup level.
If he had any sense, he would follow Shrub. They are an incredible team (at least on the surface). But his loyalties to Hendrick seem to be his biggest influence.
RE: Junior Nation and Gordon
I was watching Race Day from Infineon and was quite surprised. It has been what, almost two weeks since the announcement of Junior to HMS? Yet the Junior fans were still booing Flash.
Hope ya find a nice pacel of land.
If yer still in AZ next May, we’ll look you up. About a half dozen FReepers will be gathering for a visit.
Thanks WCG, are ya stay’n dry?
And thanks for keepin’ the thread bumped.
Seems like ya got lots of advice. Except one thing. A Camera!
Take lots of pics for us and have a great time!
Thanks, hopefully we wont have any rain issues this weekend!
Thanks for taking a moment to acknowledge Alan Gustafson. He is a terrific young CC. So is Darrien Grubb, who CC’s for the 25 team. A lot of the young guys who come up through HMS are very loyal to Rick and the company. That will change if Rick starts shafting a lot of the shop and raceteam guys just to make Junior happy. It may change slowly, but it will change. You’re right. This is the unrecognized impact.
All the Rodney King-like “can’t we all just get along” stuff we’ve heard from giddy Jr fans excited about him getting access to HMS resources and equipment is just on the surface. Junior Nation still hates JG, and they will once again turn on HMS if Junior isn’t leading the standings about this time next year. Any 24 fan who has been harrassed, verbally and sometimes physically abused, had their children and/or elderly relatives cursed and frightened by the boorish behavior of many (not all) Junior fans, etc., all these years is not thrilled to welcome Junior Nation into the HMS fold. And that is the truth of it.
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