Let's All Be Team Players !
by M.L. Morgan 8-29-1999
Well, race fans, in our racing world we often hear about the 'team' victories - "I need to thank everyone back at the shop", etc. - fairly commonplace in post-race interviews. Very admirable to share the credit. We all know the driver alone can't win the race. That's not brain surgery.
Not surprisingly, there is another definition for 'team' in the world of Nascar. It's used in the connotation of multi-car teams. In a sport/business such as Winston Cup Racing, which artificially promotes parity, the disparity in the words 'team' and 'team victory' are glaring. Let's take a look.
We are 25 races into the 1999 season. We don't do stat's very often but let's look at some now. Let's examine the alleged parity between the single-car teams and the multi-car teams. Might be interesting. Trust me.
Let's start with Poles - after 25 races, 19 of them - 76% - have been taken by multi-car teams.
Let's go to victories - 24 of 25 - 96%. The rest of the top-5 stat's are just as heavily loaded with the multi-car teams. 107 of the 125 top-5 finishing spots - 83% -have been won by the multi-car teams. I could recite all the minutia, but I don't think it's necessary.
I'm sure many of us enjoyed Tony Stewart's 1st win this weekend. He and his teammate have now won 5 races this season. Stewart is a very personable young man, and very talented. But with less fanfare, Ricky Rudd had to give up driving for his own team because he couldn't compete against the many multi-car teams. Rudd is arguably the best owner-driver since Alan Kulwicki. Didn't matter he is a good driver and a good businessman - he was never afforded a level playing field by Nascar.
Nascar has no reservations about changing their gossamer rules to help one manufacturer or another. Yet they turn a deaf ear to the independent, one-car teams. I don't like this one bit.
I think a lot of people would like to rationalize and say, "of course the Ford's are better than the Chevy's" or some other equally absurd crap, but that just isn't the case.
Even the most pathetic Ford team would be more competitive as a member of a multi-car team. I can only imagine how some of the marginal G.M. teams would fare.
Back in 1977 Dave Marcis came in 2nd to Richard Petty. Maybe he could win today.
Case closed.