At All-Star Speedway in June, we saw the dangerous side of including NASCAR's star power in racing at the local level.
Sprint Cup Series driver Kyle Busch drove a car owned by Steve Perry in the All-Star 200 the night before the Cup race in Loudon, and Busch throttled his way through the field. Problem was, he did so twice to win -- the second time after illegally changing tires on the car.
PASS North Series rules prohibit cars from making tire changes during feature events, unless it's to repair a flat tire. Busch pitted and reports from All-Star indicated that his crew intentionally punctured tires after the stop to make them appear to have been flattened during the race.
Controversy swirled after the checkered flag as teams started to receive word of what had happened.
Two central issues were at the core of the calamity.
First, Busch was not immediately stripped of the win -- that didn't come until the next day. Fans had to sit through a faulty victory lane celebration, one that only served to take a stab at PASS's credibility. Having Cup drivers compete in local events is good for everybody -- promoters, teams and fans. Having Cup drivers whip the locals only hurts the industry and certainly doesn't make short-track drivers look very good.
The other issue came in the form of a conflict of interest. Perry, now the owner of the television show Mainely Motorsports, was working as a marketing director for PASS at the time. Whether or not his car and driver were treated with favoritism was irrelevant. All it took was the appearance of that kind of favoritism to injure the PASS reputation.
Would Busch have been at All-Star without Perry's involvement? Probably not, especially considering their relationship during Perry's involvement with SP2 Motorsports, which fielded Oxford 250 rides for Busch in past seasons. But Perry should have either arranged for a seat for Busch is some other owner's car, or he should have cut ties with PASS at some point prior to the event.
Perry's heart may have been in the right place -- helping local short track racing and the Super Late Model division in particular -- but the execution of the entire All-Star night left a bad taste in the mouths of teams and fans alike.
*****
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10. Ben Rowe's 4th PASS North Series title
6 comments:
once again travis barret doesn't know what hes talking about, steve perry didn't bring Busch to all-star, the big mac brought him to all-star, all perry did was supply the car that the big mac wanted. if everything goes right Busch will be back to venge his loss and all that will do is fill the stands even more, so what t.b thinks is bad for racing once again proves he dont know jack! if you want to run a prim and proper operation you will have no one interested, but if you run a outlaw operation people love it, so on the way to just pure genius in short track racing all-star will stand alone, so just sit back keep flapping your gums and watch whos on top in 5 years.
MR.SHOWSTOPPA
Can you feel the love in here!
Funny, Bobby, I thought you said back in November you weren't reading me anymore...
TB
look at anything i post and you will see that people would rather read my [expletive deleted by administrator] than yours, so that means you should be kissing up to me any way you can. Just trying to do you a favor and give you one of the most reasons for people to read your blog, and thats me, so a thank you would be nice now and then, right now your not a house hold name but you can be thanks to the Showstoppa.
I sure as heck wouldn't be taking advice on how to run a race track from someone who doesn't average more than 300 people for his weekly events at a track 20 minutes from NH largest city.
I sure as heck wouldn't be taking advice on how to run a race track from someone who doesn't average more than 300 people for his weekly events at a track 20 minutes from NH largest city.
This race is typical of the issues that have kept PASS from being a premier racing series in New England. Their racers & fans deserve better. Let’s hope that they get their act together in '08 (pun intended).
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