Green Flag 05.01.08: Let's Force The Issues

Posted by Jim Carson on 05.01.2008

It's May Day, which is what Kevin Lepage was screaming at Talladega. Plus the only way to follow last week's thoughts on Danica.


Howdy, race fans.

We always strive for accuracy on the Green Flag, so when something goes wrong, we like to do the right thing: wait a week and then enter a correction. And this one's worse than my mistake from about a month ago in screwing up a link to 411Movies/TV columnist and race fan Bryan Kristopowitz.

Last week my rant against the ESPN family of networks for relegating Danica's victory at Motegi to Classic. That brought a response from an ESPN programming executive that the race WAS actually shown at 11 a.m. EDT the morning after the race on the Deuce. I didn't see it, and I remember flipping past both mainstream ESPNs throughout the day to check for either an IndyCar replay or a notice on the ticker at the bottom of the screen. But whom are you gonna believe, someone with an ESPN email address from Bristol CT, or a non-professional random columnist from Murphy NC? Yeah, I'd go with the guy who's included on the Best of SportsCenter credits too. I apologize for the mixup. And I am glad for the response, because the Green Flag doesn't get a whole lot of those.

It seems that we have another bit of gender equity motorsports news that tops the charts this week.


REMEMBER, THE FORCE WILL BE WITH YOU

Hey Danica, can you top this?

Ashley Force, the daughter of the greatest NHRA Funny Car drag racer ever, scribbled her page in motorsports history books by winning at Atlanta Dragway (which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta in the outlet mall haven town of Commerce). She's the first woman to win in Funny Car and the seventh to take a Wally at a national event in a pro category. And she's also leading the FC points, a spot she had after the previous race in Las Vegas where she reached the finals. Gee, Danica hasn't been all that close to the points lead in the IRL, huh? And Ashley hasn't posed for any swimsuit issues, but she was voted the hottest (female or male) athlete in an AOL poll last year as a FC rookie. Oh yeah, and the Funny Cars top out at almost 100 mph faster than IndyCars. One more comparison: Ashley, inheriting something important from her dad John Force, seems to be a more interesting interview than Danica.

The big key was that Ashley beat King John XIV in the final round at Atlanta (OK, John smoked the tires immediately off the line, but it happens). And if John had won that round, it would have been his 126th career national event win, and his mind-boggling 1,000th round win. John's been doing this for 30 years and Ashley's only been alive for 25. You think there might have been some butterflies in her stomach there? She did win the pair's first head-to-head matchup last spring, but that was in the first round as opposed to a final.

Besides the moment as a proud papa, the Summit Southern Nationals proved that John is back from his horrific and almost-life-threatening accident last fall at Dallas. John had suffered two first-round losses and a DNQ in the first five events of 2008, so he needed a day like he had as much as Ashley needed her breakthrough win. Before Atlanta John was accused of being the R&D driver while Ashley, Robert Hight and rookie Mike Neff were out to win races; those accusations are nowhere to be found now. And John is still, on average, the most hilarious interview in motorsports.

It's also nice to know that John's wife Laurie is not the bitch that she was made to look like in the A&E show Driving Force. She and especially John stood back after the final run and let Ashley have her moment in the sun, or darkness as the case may be because of the rain delay.

Congrats Ashley. Now can y'all somehow get Neff to get out of the first round one of these weeks?


EAT AT JOE'S TO GET THE NASCAR STUFF

Someone should tell Joe Gibbs Racing that the team didn't have to go to these lengths to take the big NASCAR Sprint Cup Series headlines from Hendrick Motorsports last week. Hendrick's only win in 2008 came when Jimmie Johnson stretched his fuel mileage just enough at Phoenix, and the points positions of the Hendrickers are Junior in 3rd, JJ in 5th, Gordon in 14th, and Mears in 24th. Meanwhile the lowest Gibbon is Baloney in 9th. (For some reason, some people are still paying attention to this mythical 12th-place cutoff, admitting that they don't know how to assure that a true champion is crowned.)

Shrub heading to Gibbs now looks like a work of genius for the Coach. At Talladega he captured his third win of the season, and he's the only multi-time winner in 2008 that isn't minoring in gymnastics. Like a handful of previous activities involving the Busch brothers, Shrub found a bit of controversy at 'Dega.

You see that yellow line on the inside of the track? That's the out-of-bounds line. At Talladega and Daytona, if you go below that line and improve your position, you get black-flagged. It's a safety thing; they don't want cars going below that line where the banking isn't as high as it is on the racing surface. Someone going down on the apron and then sliding back up into the tightly-packed traffic is bound to be out of control and be a danger, and heaven knows we don't need any more of those at the restrictor-plate tracks.

Well, Shrub ended up with his two left wheels well below that line when he passed JJ and Mikey to get the lead with five laps remaining. It was an EXTREMELY marginal move. I suppose you could argue that he was forced below the line by JJ, but I've seen drivers black-flagged for much less since the rule was put into place. Of course, I don't think we've ever seen a driver black-flagged for a violation of that rule THAT late into a race. Maybe NASCAR didn't want to be viewed the same way as the college basketball zebras who called late fouls on Villanova players to cost the Wildcats games against NC State and Georgetown this past season.

Before the Aaron's 499, the guy who used to be regarded as the top man at JGR was the one making the news. Rumors were flying about Baloney Stewart possibly leaving the team after 10 years and two (real) championships. Baloney's at that Junior level where someone of his stature would only go to an elite team, and (sorry, Richard Childress) the only ones at that level are Hendrick and Roush. Hendrick's got three super-studs and Casey Mears, and there has been too much time and resources invested in Mears and the sponsors like him. So strike Hendrick. The Jack in the Hat has to get down from five cars to four for 2009, and with the likely elimination tournament with Biffle, McMurray and maybe Ragan, there's no room there. So if Baloney is serious about his NASCAR pursuits, he's staying with the Coach.

Part of the discussion centered around Stewart's desire to own his own team or buy a huge share of an existing team, such as Haas CNC. Haas, which fields the #66 for Scott Riggs and the #70 for whoever the hell is driving it this week, gets engines and other technical support from Hendrick. Obviously Hendrick isn't giving its partner too many secrets, because the #70 is below the 35th Parallel and the #66 has been pretty invisible this season. But they do run Chevrolets, and General Motors is a huge sponsor of Stewart's USAC sprint and midget teams with up-and-coming drivers. That's the only possible basis for those Haas rumors. But something just smells fishy, as if Baloney was only after more money from his team.

Maybe Toyota can get more involved in USAC and sign a deal with Baloney's short-track teams. And maybe those engines can make more smoke than Stewart's people and the media hordes are blowing into this story.


QUICK LAPS

- We knew there'd be a "big one" sometime at Talladega, but the cars on the track at full speed can get into trouble by themselves; they don't need someone else thrown in. But that's what happened in the Buschonwide race. Kevin Lepage was coming out of the pits after a green-flag stop, and he's in one of those field-filler cars anyway. But instead of staying in the acceleration lane until coming around to turn two like NASCAR wanted him to do, Lepage tried to blend back into the flow in turn one ... right when 30+ cars were zooming by at full speed! Did this guy have a spotter? Oh yeah, it's his wife! Mike Wallace was running fourth, and he was the one who had to dodge Lepage first. Wallace collided with third-place David Reutimann and both spun, triggering a pileup that knocked around at least 14 cars. Maybe it wasn't all that bad because Reutimann and a few other Cup invaders were taken out (and no one was injured; Dario Franchitti broke his ankle in an earlier wreck ... get well soon Speedwagon), and only three of the top 10 finishers were Cup regulars. But knowing how polite Mike Wallace can be, he probably still feels bad and partially at fault; he's not going to call Lepage an idiot like some of the other drivers would do. Anyway, Lepage had the biggest impact in a Buschonwide race since he won in 1998 at Bristol.

- A last-lap pass attempt in the Buschonwide race by Junior didn't work; after the move he dropped from second to sixth. And no one built up the drafting momentum to pull off a last-lap lead change against Shrub in the Cup race. If you wanted a picture-perfect drafting move and a thrilling photo finish, it wasn't at Talladega. That came at the track formerly known as California Speedway, in the second half of an AMA Superbike weekend doubleheader. Ben Spies tailed teammate Mat Mladin by a couple of inches exiting the final turn, then slipstreamed his way to a win by about the width of a wheel spoke. Ben Spies was the 2006 Superbike champion, while Mladin won his sixth career title last season. And oh yeah, one or the other Yoshimura Suzuki riders has won EVERY AMA Superbike race for 24 months. If Hendrick wants to really dominate Sprint Cup, THAT'S the kind of statistic to shoot for.


That'll do it for this week. Go Penguins, and y'all enjoy the racing this weekend with NASCAR at Richmond, ARCA at Rockingham, NHRA at St. Louis, and the Supercross finale at Las Vegas, plus whatever is in your local area that you could or should go see.

---Jim