Plenty of credit should be given to Riverside Speedway, which, despite nearly letting the Bill Elliott fiasco ruin their marquee event, has rebounded incredibly well in short order.For a while there last week, it looked as though the Atlantic Canada track was going to spout off and taint its own good name by getting into a war of he said-she said with the Cup Series driver Elliott. Instead, they got to work and landed 2 drivers that will help to erase that bitter scene.
Driver of the No. 01 U.S. Army Chevrolet Regan Smith is in -- and so, too, is one of the local heroes who can generate fan interest in these parts with the best of them, Ricky Craven.
There are 2 phenomenal aspects to this story. First, they put this together in a matter of a couple of days, when these things often drag on for months on end. Secondly, they get a guy in Smith that they need not defend to fans. He's a legitimate rising star in the NASCAR game.
Kudos.
6 comments:
Yes ..that was a fiasco for Bill Elliott . Let's hope the person that is announcing this has these drivers signed before they started promoting who would participate .
That was a Fiasco ABOUT Elliott, not FOR Elliott
Kfarrar
Your posts are obviously pro Elliot and con Riverside.
Pardon the pun but you must have the inside "track" on all the goings on related to the Bill Elliot fiasco in which he is being accused of being a last minute no show at Riverside.
Instead of just having an opinion and posting it over and over in different forms, how about you share the details of all this inside information that you must have. Give us the facts showing that Elliot is innocent as charged.
Mitch
Innocent as charged? I'm just saying that it is a "he says-she says" thing right now and I thought the speedway's press release on it was pretty classless. Based upon the postings I've seen (Motorsports Soapbox, Riverside Speedway, Bill Elliott's website) and my own experiences around driver appearances in the 80's at Monadnock and Thompson that you can not tell what happened in this case.
A fiasco FOR Elliott implies that he is scrambling PR people to cover his tail, he's not. A fiasco ABOUT Elliott is what I saw on the Riverside website, which they have since taken down either because they know they are blowing smoke, realized how classless it was, or just think they made thier point and are now moving on.
On the other hand, I'm glad the track was able to get Regan and Craven. Craven will actually be a better draw than Elliott I think.
KFarrar
They rebounded well.
Mitch,
There are only a select few who know the whole truth in the matter, but after everything we were told by Riverside, had they truly had an iron-clad, "no cancellation" contract, do you not think they would be suing him for breach of contract and lost potential earnings, etc.?
Come on now. When people sign contracts, they are binded by LAW to follow through with them. If he really did sign a "no cancellation" contract as Riverside stated, then they would have full reign to sue the pants off him.
This leads me and many others to believe that the track was putting the cart WAY before the horse on the Elliott deal.
I agree that there would likely be only a few in the know about the deal.
On the issue of lawsuits....Whether or not Riverside has a right or desire to sue Elliot for breach of contract or anything else they could dream up is another matter. Gees, if Elliot's story is correct perhaps he could sue them for using his name, likeness , picture and his website to promote a race he never had amy intentions of attending.
My point is that the ability or lack thereof of either party to sue has little to do with us making a judgement call that one side or the other is telling the truth.
Mitch
Mitch
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