Holding a Pretty Wheel: There’s Nothing Silly About the Season’s Vital Role in NASCAR
It’s called Silly Season and it’s more important now than ever before.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
It’s called Silly Season and it’s more important now than ever before.
One thing I was really focused in on was making sure that when we go back to a track the second time, that my team would be better.
After a dominating day, it was Kyle Busch’s own mistake on a green-white-checkered restart that cost him the win at the Glen.
The Chase was contrived before. With the addition of the wildcard, it’s contrived and cheap.
Joey Logano was so close to victory he could smell it, and it smelled a lot like rain on a humid summer day. Unfortunately for Logano, who had grabbed his third career pole on Saturday, the rains let up, the race ran its complete distance, and the third-year driver faded to a disappointing 26th. For Logano, who is breathing a sigh of relief now that Edwards is no longer a threat for his ride, Silly Season isn’t quite over until other potential replacements like Clint Bowyer, Brian Vickers and Mark Martin have contracts somewhere else. Good finishes still have extra importance for the No. 20 right now.
Racing is a sport of emotion. Passion runs deep, emotion often runs deeper, feelings get hurt, egos get bruised. That’s as old as the sport, and hopefully it will never change.
However, there is a fine line between racing passionately and racing without scruples. It’s a line that drivers will sometimes cross unintentionally in the heat of battle, and when they apologize and move on, can occasionally be forgiven for. But it seems like that line is being crossed quite often lately, without remorse or consequence. And NASCAR not only allows it, it seems that at times, when it suits their purposes, they condone it.
The line has a name. It’s called sportsmanship.
Paul Menard’s Brickyard win means that Brad Keselowski will likely be left in the cold unless he can catch another win.
Somehow, the fall of the Southern 500 and the ride of the Brickyard 400 manage to encapsulate all that is wrong with today’s NASCAR in one package.
Sonoma was actually planned to be a start-and-park, so we were going there with intentions of qualifying the best we could, running a few laps …
When NASCAR stripped the win from Ryan Newman after an illegal carburetor spacer was found on his modified, my first reaction was, wait, WTF?