No posting this week, as two major deadlines loom.

A few quick thoughts, though…

• I’m with everyone who says the Pocono NASCAR races should be shorter. Hasn’t Michigan taught us that races can be 400 miles and still be exciting? I hope NASCAR continues to race the Cup series at Pocono – it’s such a distinctive track with a long history – NASCAR should go there at least once a year.
• I was really happy to see Heikki Kovalainen win the Hungarian Grand Prix (say that 3 times fast!). When it comes to Finnish drivers, I’ve liked Heikki more than Kimi – Kimi never seems to be having any fun. Anyway, hopefully this will be a confidence booster that will allow Heikki to be a good wingman and help Lewis get the World Championship this year.
• NASCAR in the rain at Montreal? Love it! NASCAR not letting the teams decide when to switch from wets to slicks? Hate it. C’mon, NASCAR, all the crews watch F1 and sportscars on TV – you know the crew chiefs are dying to make the wet-to-dry tires call. Let them do it the next time.
• Note to Goodyear: the good performance by your rain tires at Montreal does not take you off the hook for the Brickyard 400 fiasco. Not by a long shot.

Back from hiatus on Tuesday, Aug. 13. Promise.

Maybe the Kevin Cogan-starting line crash was more entertaining that what we saw yesterday at the Brickyard…

More in a little bit.

Major kudos to youtube user AJ1964!!!

Any Indy fan has to check out his posting of the 1982 Indianapolis 500 ABC telecast. I just clicked on “1982 Indy 500 – The Start, crash” start to watch the stupid, stupid Kevin Cogan-induced starting line crash…but the clip begins with the starting line-up. It’s hilarious! I must blog it. Here’s the clip:

Thoughts after the jump…

This is second in a series of promised posts about drivers I have rooted for in my attempt to understand why fans root for certain drivers and against others.

By the end of 1984, I was totally into auto racing, the way most 12-year-olds are into baseball or football. I watched like every race on ESPN (and there were a lot back then!) and I clipped articles from our local newspapers and USA Today and kept a scrapbook of every major racing series’ results.

I was still a Richard Petty fan, but I think, like a lot folks, I began to sense that a decline had begun with the King after the big 200th win. Plus, with dozens upon dozens of drivers in several major racing series (I’ll get into my Mario Andretti fandom later, promise), you could root for more than one driver. Couldn’t you? Well, in the winter of 1984-85, I totally bought into the hype that magazines like Stock Car Racing were selling that winter, and adopted, yes, Geoff Bodine. Why?

This is first in a series of promised posts about drivers I have rooted for in my attempt to understand why fans root for certain drivers and against others.

The first driver I was ever a fan of was…wait for it…Richard Petty. It feels awful to admit it now. I mean there is nothing edgy or hip about rooting for Richard Petty. Why did I like Petty?

I was still in graduate school in 2001 (still? – I had like 2 more years to go before I got the ol’ Ph.D.) when Dale Earnhardt Sr. died at Daytona. Like many readers, I found myself answering questions about NASCAR and motorsports to friends who knew little or nothing about NASCAR before Earnhardt’s death put NASCAR on the national scene. One silver lining to emerge from the Earnhardt episode was that a couple of friends wanted to see NASCAR in person. Months later we went to the spring Cup race at Richmond International Raceway. Anyway, one of my friends asked an interesting question – how do you decide which driver you are going to root for?

It is an interesting question. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done any kind of formal or scientific study of why fans root for certain drivers. It is something I’ve thought about quite a bit this year for a number of reasons: the harsh reaction NASCAR fans have had to Kyle Busch; the continuing obsession fans have with Dale Earnhardt Jr.; the fact that Scott Dixon seems to have no fans at all.

It’s easier to understand why fans don’t like certain drivers. If a driver wins a lot, and if he/she is not your favorite driver, one is inclined to root against that driver. I think that is a lot (but not all) of what is behind the antipathy so many NASCAR fans feel towards Kyle Busch. Personally, I’ve rooted against Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Ayrton Senna, the entire Penske Indycar team, Michael Schumacher, and Jimmie Johnson at various points in my career of motorsports fandom. I mean what’s more boring than seeing the same guy win week after week?

Again, I think there are other factors involved than simply winning a lot. Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch have both attracted a great deal of antipathy among NASCAR fans during their seasons of dominance. Yet, between his “Million Dollar Bill” season of 1985 and his 1988 Cup championship, Bill Elliott never received the boos that Gordon received in the late 90s and early 00s and that Busch receives today. Elliott won the Most Popular Driver award so many years, even when he stunk up the show.

So, why do some drivers resonate with fan bases, when others do not?

This is a question that I’d like to explore in a series of posts, discussing my theories as to why fans prefer some drivers over others. I’ll also by doing a series of posts describing the drivers I’ve adopted as my favorites over the years…sort of a fanboy psychoanalysis. I know, you can’t wait.

Well, here we go. This is my third or fourth attempt to start a motorsports blog. In the past, I’ve had pretty bold intentions, as far as all the things I wanted to do and say with a blog. But, when I’ve done this before, I’ve always put it to one side after starting it, or never felt I could justify the time. With this blog, my intention is to post twice a week. I’ve also been confronting something of a writer’s block with my professional writing, so I’m looking to use the blog to clear my head, knock out the writing cobwebs, and re-energize my historical writing. Let’s hope it works.

Once I make this blog public, we’ll see if anyone’s paying attention. Right now I see this as a hobby. So, if you are reading thanks a lot for stopping by.

Anyway, what kind of things am I going to do here? Well, I’d like to do some commentary about the world of motorsports and the intersections I see between motorsports, everyday life, and some of the issues, approaches, and ideas I’ve been exposed to and thought about in my career as a humanities academic. I don’t want to do individual race reports and that sort of thing – there are plenty of blogs and other places that do that sort of thing. So, we’ll see where this goes.

Again, thanks for stopping by!