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Welcome To Double Clutchin’-What The World Needs Is Another Blogger

First off, a thank you to Josh and the good folks here at FastMachines, for giving me the opportunity to talk a little NASCAR with you fine folks. But rather than jump right in with opinions about tonight’s race, I thought it might be a good idea to let you fine readers know a little bit about me, and let you decide for yourself whether or not you want to read these articles in the future (if there is a future, I mean, hey, the folks here could come to the realization that I suck and toss me out on my rear).

As a public service announcement, I’ll get this warning out of the way first, my writing style is not for everyone, some of you will like it, some of you won’t, and hey, you’re entitled to your opinion. There are some very good writers on this site that I encourage you to take a look at should you find my opinion idiotic (or offensive).

I’m not afraid to take a hard opinion on something or someone and I don’t pull my punches. I’m more interested in talking about drivers, personalities, and controversies, than I am in talking about why a car performed like it did in the last race, or in talking about the nuances of a certain track, so most of my posts will show that prejudice. There are other writers who break down those things much better than me. Also, in many of these posts I’m going to try to be humorous; so if you’re looking for serious treatment of racing in every article, you’re going to be angry and probably use bad words. And when I take your favorite driver to the wood-shed, you may find lots of new cuss words to use about me. Just keep my mom’s name out of it and that’s okay (I’m southern, that’s a no-no).

Now that I’ve warned you, in the next couple of posts, I’m going to give you a few of my NASCAR favorites, non-favorites, and opinions, as well as some background on my NASCAR fanhood.

Let’s go ahead and get the controversy started; because I know that this next sentence is going to fire up some people. “Exhales”, here we go:

I could not stand Dale Earnhardt.

There, I just committed NASCAR writer suicide, but hopefully you’ll give me the chance to confuse you more with this next statement:

My favorite driver is Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Confused? Good. Now I’ll explain.

My reasons for not liking Dale Sr. had absolutely nothing to do with his driving. He was the greatest driver that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and I have a tendency to think that in this age of team racing that NASCAR is missing the competitiveness that he brought to each race, and the fact that he wanted to not just win each race, but that he wanted to destroy everyone that was on the track with him. My reasons for not liking Dale Sr. didn’t have anything to do with the rumors about him not being the easiest guy to get along with off the track and the rumors that he really didn’t like fans bothering him that much. My reasons for not liking Dale were because of something else.

My dad was a huge Dale fan. As far as dad was concerned, there was no other driver on the track that could touch #3, I would sit next to him as a kid and listen to him cuss, fuss, and cheer on that damn black car for three-four hours of racing, and when I was little it was fun. We would go to dirt-tracks across the state together, and have an absolute blast. Then came the teenage years. All you guys out there know what I’m talking about. Those years when nothing that your dad likes could possibly be good enough for you to like too. I stopped following NASCAR for awhile, because it wasn’t the cool thing to keep up with, and as those teenage father/son battles heated up, I began to associate NASCAR and especially Earnhardt with my dad, and in all honesty, both kind of had similar personalities. They could be gruff, neither one of them really took much notice of any opinion other than their own, and in both cases it was their way or the highway. I had almost deserted NASCAR, and I wouldn’t have ever thought about what I was missing, had something not brought me back.

A few years later, I was working for a company that gave employees free race tickets to the Busch races at Bristol. Sorry, folks but there’s nothing like Bristol to reawaken a dormant NASCAR fan’s fire. And it was at Bristol that year I had the opportunity to watch Junior drive for the first time. I appreciated what he did on the track, but more than anything I really felt for the guy for the pressure that he had to be under, being the son of Dale. I knew from my own relationship with my dad that it’s not always bells and whistles, or hugs and kisses, and that probably the disagreements that I had with my dad were probably similar to ones that he had been through. I became a Junior fan.

Armed with someone to cheer for and a renewed interest in NASCAR, I started watching more races with my dad, something that continues to this day. I’ve learned most of my NASCAR from him, as we watched on TV, or listened to radio broadcasts on lazy Sunday afternoons. Then I had to watch as he went through the dark days after Dale’s death, without much interest in watching, until finally he started getting back into racing a few weeks later.

When Junior won at Daytona. I was cheering for Junior, but I’m pretty sure that he was cheering for Dale. And that was okay.

Next time, I’ll give you some of the things that I love about NASCAR, things that I hate about NASCAR, and I might even talk a little bit about Richmond. I might even talk about wanting to use Carl Edwards for skeet-shooting the next time that he backflips off a car. Hopefully, you’ll come back, hopefully I’ll be back. Hopefully, the two year streak of non-winning for D-88 ends tonight.

Enjoy the race folks.

Rock

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