Green Flag 5.15.08: This Weekend's Real All-Star Tribute
Posted by Jim Carson on 05.15.2008
Sorry DJ, but you're too late to challenge Annika on the golf course.
This weekend is the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge. The race formerly known as the Winston just isn't one of my favorite events. In addition to being another dodgamn Saturday night Cup race, it's not a full-field race, so there is rarely an honest underdog to root for. The closest thing this year might be Montoya ... or the Green Flag's lead topic this week.
ONE FINAL RUN IN THE BIG BROWN TRUCK
This weekend marks the final NASCAR driving appearance by one of the sport's future Hall of Famers, 1999 Winston Cup champion Dale Jarrett. Younger fans might not remember him too fondly, because sadly DJ's most notable accomplishments since 2003 (outside of one 2005 victory at Talladega) all involved the fabulous UPS commercials where he resists and then finally gives in to racing the big brown truck. Last season was especially disastrous, as his first season in one of Michael Waltrip Racing's Toyotas resulted in a quick exhausting of his past champion provisionals and 11 DNQs, which ranked him second among the three Mikeymobiles in that category. This year he went out with his head held a little higher, as he qualified for the first five races of 2008 (one PC and once where qualifying was rained out, but it still counts) and landed the #44 UPS car above the 35th Parallel to provide some better nights' sleep for David Reutimann.
The most significant years of DJ's career were unquestionably 1995-2006, his stint with Robert Yates Racing. He began with Yates in 1995 as the full-time replacement for Ernie Irvan after his nearly-fatal August 1994 crash. Then when Swervin came back, Yates created a second team and talked Ford into sponsoring the #88 for five years through its service and financing divisions, then UPS for six years after that. For 11 years Jarrett was the rock of the team, while the former Irvan car kinda became the second Yates entry with drivers such as Kenny Irwin (RIP), Elliott Sadler and Ricky Rudd.
But the most important times for DJ came before Yates, and before 1992-94 when he was the first driver of the #18 Interstate Batteries machine for Joe Gibbs Racing (1993 was when he won the Dale and Dale Show at Daytona with his dad and former Cup champion Ned ruling the TV booth). From 1984-1989, the list of DJ's Cup car owners included Emanuel Zervakis, Eric Freelander, Buddy Arrington, and Hoss Ellington (OK, Cale Yarborough's team was respectable). Ever heard of any of those other fellows? I bet you couldn't spell them all if you studied for two days.
The point is that Jarrett was once the ultimate journeyman in NASCAR's top level (although he was a solid performer and two-time winner in the Busch Series through 1986), and look at what happened to him in 1993 and 1999, and even 1990 when he replaced the injured Neil Bonnett with the Wood Brothers team and won his first Cup race at Michigan in '91.
DJ, along with Mark Martin and Bill Elliott and Ken Schrader, are the last of the journeymen to make good in Cup. The majority of the regular drivers in the series now, even if they had a multitude of car owners in their short track days or even in the Busch or Craftsman Truck tours, have spent their entire Cup careers with the same team that gave them their first Cup rides. A few of today's full-time drivers come close to one-time journeyman status:
- Bobby Labonte: two full Cup seasons with Bill Davis Racing, then 15 including a title season with Gibbs, and now doing pretty well with Petty Enterprises
- Jeff Burton: a few starts with Filbert Martocci, two years including 1994 ROTY with the Stavola Brothers, then eight-plus with Roush and now with Richard Childress
- Elliott Sadler: a cup of coffee with Gary Bechtel who brought him up into Busch, then the Woods, Yates and now Gillett-Evernham
- Robby Gordon: one early-1990s start each for Junie Donlavey, Yates and Michael Kranefuss, then an almost-full season for Felix Sabates, then another for Morgan-McClure, then 1+ and three wins for Childress, then with his own team since then
OK, Robby's definitely in the journeyman category, especially with his CART days (two wins) and all the off-road and road-racing action. But in Cup, even Donlavey and Kranefuss were respected car owners as recently as the mid-1990s. Jarrett's got him beat when it comes to obscure car owners; Ellington had some big names at one time such as Donnie Allison, David Pearson, Buddy Baker and Fred Lorenzen, but his team was nearing the end of its usefulness when DJ appeared in eight races.
When the checkered flag falls at TRFKA Winston Saturday night, there will be current and former team members of literally all ages reflecting on their contributions and connections to Dale Jarrett, his 32 Cup wins and 668 career starts, not to mention his early career dating back to 1977 at Hickory Motor Speedway. The town of Hickory still lays a proud claim to Jarrett, and still will for many years since DJ will be an integral part of NASCAR coverage on ESPN and ABC.
Let's not forget one of DJ's most important early contributions to society: out of high school, he turned down a golf scholarship to South Carolina. That's got to make any Clemson grad smile.
Happy retirement, DJ. Tell us about it every chance you get.
QUICK LAPS
- The top two finishers in the Sprint Showdown will advance to TRFKA Winston. Then there's one more spot left open for the fan vote, as in the last few years. Past fan vote winners, if memory serves, were Kenny Wallace, Kyle Petty and Schrader. The voting will be all done by race time, but the catch is that the only eligible drivers are those that finish on the lead lap in the Showdown. That'll probably eliminate Petty because the 45 hasn't run worth a darn all year, and Kenny and Herman aren't in the Showdown field this year. DEI cars used to be the favorites of the fans, but since Junior's gone the fans probably aren't going to side with Wicked Stepmother Teresa. I'd bet on Dario Speedwagon, but he isn't recovered from his injury so he's not entered. So here are my predictions, in no particular order: Robby, Mikey, Awesome Bill, Kasey Kahne, and Joe Nemechek, with a slight edge to Awesome Bill in the popularity department and Kahne in the performance department. My own vote would go to either Robby or Dave Blaney.
- Some good news bits from Darlington. First, Blaney's nice ninth-place finish pushed him to the right side of the 35th Parallel; now we just need Sam Hornish Jr. to DNQ for the Coke 600. Second, there were only eight cautions in the Dodge Challenger 500, and the race took just over 3:30 and ended just after 11 p.m. EDT. Past Mother's Day Eve Darlington races have lasted past midnight. The Buschonwide race, 200 miles as opposed to 500, contained eight cautions and took almost two hours (many Cupsters were the ones crashing, and that was before Mark Martin ran out of fuel while running second on a restart), so smart fans were preparing for a marathon. Fortunately we didn't get one, and there were few wall hits any harder than the ones Shrub made on a regular basis.
- Race car drivers who are upset with the way their cars are running will often say that the car is running like a dog. Rarely does one say it's running into one, but that's what happened to GP2 driver Bruno Senna during the Turkish Grand Prix weekend, in the support sprint race before the Formula One headliner. A medium-sized white pooch wandered onto the Istanbul Speed Park, and after a near-miss with fellow competitor Mike Conway, Senna planted the dog straight on, damaging the right front wing and suspension and putting him (Senna) out of the race, and putting him (the dog) out of its misery. Another larger dog was also caught on the track at another point in the event, but that one made it out of the facility safely. There could be some blame assessed to the corner workers for not warning the drivers enough once the dog was near the racing surface, and there should be a ton of blame tacked on to the owners of the loose dogs, whether they're nearby residents or race attendees. But regardless of who's at fault, the scene was way too eeriely similar to Road America in August 2006, when Cristiano da Matta was testing his Champ Car and hit a deer on the track, nearly killing him (da Matta).
Let's have something happier to look forward to next week, when 411Movies' Bryan Kristopowitz and I bounce Indianapolis 500 thoughts off of each other's computers. Hey, it's the closest I can probably come to having an interactive column.
