You Asked For It! ~ "BuschWhackers"
3/11/2014
PattyKay Lilley
I bid you welcome gentle readers, to a column you haven't
seen before... a "test case" if you will. On Saturday during the
Nationwide race, two or three of you cornered me (Sounds like I'm a coon in a
tree, doesn't it?) and asked me to do a column on what I think of "all
these Cup drivers racing in the Nationwide races." I served warning that
it might not be exactly what you were hoping for, but the fans in question
assured me they seriously wanted to hear my thoughts on the subject. Now I'm
thinking this could easily become the format for some new articles... "On
Demand" as they say in the TV world... or, maybe not. We'll see how this
works out.
The Busch Series, as it was known when it came into being, officially began in 1982, and its name was derived from sponsorship by the Busch Beer branch of Anheuser-Busch, bottlers of Budweiser and Busch beers. In 2008, the series sponsor changed to Nationwide Insurance, after Anheuser Busch was "merged" into Inbev, a growing world-wide conglomerate of breweries, with the most recognizable here in America being Michelob. Thus, as has happened to so very much we used to see as "All-American", Budweiser, the Great American Lager... the Pride of St. Louis... became instead the Pride of Antwerp, I guess one might say. It's brewed here still, but the profits go elsewhere.
One thing I feel it's important for all of you to know is that the Busch Series wasn't really a new series at all; NASCAR simply took what we'd known for years as the Late Model Sportsman Division and "rebranded" it as the Busch Series, with megabucks involved in sponsorship to be sure. What's that you say? You're not familiar with the term Late Model Sportsman? You never heard of it? That is quite likely to be the case, and I'll tell you why. For reasons never explained, to my knowledge, NASCAR filled dumpsters with all the paper records of the Late Model Sportsman Division and shipped them off to the city dump to be burned. Why? Gentle readers, if I could answer that satisfactorily, I'd already be spending the advances on the book I'd be begged to write about it. They did it. That's the only fact I'm sure of. Speculation and familiarity with the operations of NASCAR suggest that money was somehow involved. You be the judge.
All of that merely leads to my point that "Buschwhacking" (Love that term and a gold star goes to whomever first coined it... it's SO appropriate) is nothing new and actually goes back probably just as far as the Late Model Sportsman Division itself, which has been loosely traced and verified as far back as 1950. Unlike many old codgers (folks my age), I don't see the sense in wallowing among names that I've only read in books and you've never heard spoken. I will however, go back as far as the beginning of the Busch Series as we know it today, which not so coincidentally coincided with the dawn of the TV age in NASCAR.
Did Cup drivers drop down to race in the Busch Series when it first began? Oh, you betcha! Looking over just the winners of that first year, 1982, one sees names such as Dale Earnhardt, Morgan Shepherd, Harry Gant, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson. One sees many other familiar names, but remember, we're talking about 32 years ago, so drivers such as Geoff Bodine, Dale Jarrett or Phil Parsons had not even begun their Cup careers at that time.
Back then, the Cup drivers that chose to mingle with the lesser series were welcomed with open arms... mostly. For one thing, adding their names to the entry list tended to greatly improve the gate, and since purse money usually consisted of a share of the gate, those that ran well made more money doing so, and everyone was happy. The second point in favor of having Cup drivers racing with the "kids" of the day was the invaluable experience those kids gained by racing with and against the best in the sport. That part simply cannot be simulated. It has to be experienced.
Those two points still hold true today; the Busch/Nationwide Series regulars still don't draw as well in a stand-alone race as they do when the Cup boys come calling, and every one of them will tell you they love the chance to race against them... but... something is very different today from those races back in the early 80s. When we look at ownership of the cars in that first year, we see most of the drivers mentioned driving cars they owned and prepared themselves. One that appears an exception, but really isn't, is Dale Earnhardt. His Busch car at the beginning is listed as owned by Robert Gee. Gentle readers, Robert Gee was once his father-in-law and is the Granddad of Dale Jr. and Kelley. Robert was a mechanic and probably did work with Dale on the car.
My point is that Dale was not driving a Busch car owned and supported by his then owner, Bud Moore. Darrell was driving a car owned by Darrell Waltrip, and the same self-ownership held true for Harry Gant and David Pearson. Those men were not driving for Junior Johnson, Hal Needham or the Wood Brothers. If Cup drivers wanted to drop down, most did so not for the money, but actually to aid the youngsters coming up through the ranks. What little they might have earned by running or even winning a Busch race was more than accounted for in expenses incurred in building and owning the car to do so.
However... that is not the case today. Yes, if I'm one of those starry-eyed youngsters getting a chance to race with someone I see as an absolute idol, I feel good about that, but conversely, when several of those absolute idols line up against me in equipment polished and spit-shined by Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske, Jack Roush, Joe Gibbs and Richard Childress, with Cup level crews in the pits, my heart has to sink. There will be no winning for me; not today, not tomorrow and maybe never, because I simply cannot afford to compete with those men and that kind of money.
Several years back, F1 decided, in a sudden lack of wisdom from Bernie Ecclestone, that testing was a bad idea and so it was banned. NASCAR followed suit just like an echo or a shadow, and with no purpose other than to conform to the madness of Ecclestone, banned testing on its cars as well. Remember our talks of unintended consequences? Car owners looked around and Voila! There was a perfect testing ground right in front of them... it was called the Busch Series. In no more than the time it takes to say, "Let's go racing", all the top teams had entries in the lower series, and many races found 20 or more cars from the Cup ranks on the entry lists.
You don't need me to tell you that wasn't the best thing in the world for that lower series. As the number of Cup cars increased, the number of entries received from those for whom the series was intended, decreased sharply. There was no room for them to even hope to qualify against that many high-dollar cars and teams. Eventually, and it took several years, NASCAR heard the cries and complaints from both fans and would-be Busch Series teams and came up with the rule that says one can only race for points in one series. That has limited the overflow of Cup drivers, but not entirely eliminated the problem.
In the race we just watched on Saturday at Las Vegas, of the top 6, only young Chase Elliott was not a Cup regular this season. Names such as Keselowski, Busch, Larson, Earnhardt and Kenseth occupy the other spots. Yes NASCAR, we still see a problem. Are you in the mood for listening? While it's true that only Chase Elliott receives points for the series, it is also true that he receives points and money for running 5th, not 1st as he might have done without the presence of cars and drivers for whom he presented almost no contest. We the fans fully realize that money cannot be eliminated from the sport; indeed, it has become the very lifeblood of the sport, with cars no longer running on gasoline, but dollars... lots and lots of dollars. What could be eliminated is purse money for a full-time Cup driver wanting to play in the Busch/Nationwide playground. They don't get series points for winning. Why should they take the winner's share of the purse money? If they no longer feel the urge to drop down and "get a feel for the track", well... so be it.
Alternatively, if you simply must pay them for beating the kids, then severely limit their visits. We seem to see a couple of those names in almost every Busch/Nationwide race run today... Busch and Keselowski. Perhaps a Cup driver could be allowed to run one race but then must sit out the next 4 or 5 before being allowed to enter again. That would stop a whole lot of cherry picking in my estimation. I'd love to see a rule that makes the drivers enter their own cars, not ones built by the Cup car owner, but there are more holes in trying to enforce that than can be found at a Swiss cheese factory.
You see, gentle readers, it's not as simple as it sounds. In truth, I'm neither "fer nor agin it"; it all depends on how it's done. It worked well once upon a time, but that time is gone and we are now living in the happily ever after phase. Uh-huh!
We keep bumping our shins on those unintended consequences. NASCAR, here's a freebie. Try it; I think you'll like it. Those overheating engines that need to be cooled because of the new qualifying system... the answer is right there in front of your eyes, and no one at NASCAR is named Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. Just vent through the hood and let 'em add cold water through it. No need to open hoods or police anything. It's kind of like siphoning gas. Any kid knows how to do it. Don't go messing around with the qualifying. It's great. Just let them ice those engines down and there's no need to crawl around track aprons. Sooner or later, that WILL lead to bad things. You're welcome...
(Well, what say you
gentle readers? Do you want to try asking questions to see if I can come up
with the answers? I'll be happy to give it a whirl if you like. No, I sure
don't know all the answers, and have never made anything close to that claim,
but I do know where to look to find most of them, and we can learn together in
many instances. It's up to you)
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~
PattyKay