Back in the day, a NASCAR fan was a Ford guy or Chevy, Pontiac or Dodge. Now the drivers are more of the stars than the cars. Team racing creates a conundrum: If your favorite driver is linked through a team with one your least favorites, what are you going to do? Fans learn to accept that the success of the organization can only help the favorite drivers on that team.
Team racing brings other positives to NASCAR. For instance, Hendrick Motorsports’ four drivers — Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne — know what’s working in which car by sharing information. This testing is critical to the success of the sport. The more people on your team, the more information and the quicker you can see what’s not working.
Teammates expect to race each other hard, but give each other a little room. They don’t squeeze each other into the corners or ride them up the wall because they have to work with them off the track. The job of these teams is to go as fast as possible by pushing the rules.
Fairness always is a challenge in NASCAR, whose role is to set and enforce boundaries. That means there are 43 teams against one organization. NASCAR is like the government, the FBI and the police force. The teams will come up with ways to get around a rule or find a “gray area” to take advantage of. But in most cases there are clues left behind.
Last year, NASCAR obviously frowned on the shenanigans of the Michael Waltrip Racing team to help teammate Martin Truex Jr. in the race at Richmond. In essence, one driver was told to take a dive so his teammate could gain another point. It’s up to NASCAR to decide what is within fair play, in the best interest of the sport, or what creates too much imbalance in competition. If you are NASCAR, you do the best you can to make the rules as tight as possible. If something comes up, you have to react.
Sponsors do not want to think that their car is being denied the victory lane, and all the free TV advertising time, because the car’s driver is helping a teammate.
What you saw last year after Richmond was NASCAR showing teams where the line was, where NASCAR is laying down the law.
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