Team racing in not anything new. You can go back to Raymond Parks and Carl Kiekhaefer in the 1950s, and my granddad (Lee Petty) had Jim Paschal and Tiny Lund in team cars.
Then it seemed to go out of style, but eventually it became the business model, and that’s why we have teams now. It has nothing at all to do with the sport. That’s not why people started teams.
Now, it certainly affects the sport as we’ve gotten into it. We saw that last year with Michael Waltrip Racing at Richmond and how team orders or implied team orders affect the outcome of a race. No matter how many times an owner says, “I don’t give my guys team orders,” you see it on the race track all the time with guys wanting to know where their teammate is. “Where he’s running? Does he need help? Can I help him? Why doesn’t he help me? That guy’s on my team; why doesn’t he pull over and get out of my way?”
You hear cussing, ranting and raving, and it has affected the sport.
Honestly, I don’t see a lot of positives in how it’s affected the sport, and I’m sorry. I don’t see a lot of pluses, except from the business side. And on the business side, it’s a huge plus. But teammates on the race track and teams that field multiple cars racing against themselves on the race track, I’m not sure that’s ever had a plus.
I don’t know if it hurts the credibility of the sport, but it’s just different than what it was. There’s been a huge consolidation of the sport in a lot of aspects. You have six or seven owners controlling two-thirds of the field, multiple crew chiefs sharing the same pool of knowledge, only three or four engine-builders.
There’s always the potential for team orders and things like what happened at Richmond last year because the sport is driven by the almighty dollar, and when a team sees an opportunity to advance itself financially and on the race track, they’re going to do everything they can to take it.
And things that happen on the track are hard to police and require judgment calls by NASCAR. “Did that guy block the other guy or was his car handling so bad that he went up the race track?” You can’t judge the intent of what the guy in the car is doing.
If that (Waltrip incident) had not been the 26th race right before the Chase, nobody would have questioned it. Could it go on in the fifth race of the season? Yes.
Will anybody be paying that close attention to it early in the season? I don’t think they will.
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