Home for the holidays ... if you are lucky
Teams these days never rest. This sport is not a hobby. This is not something we do part-time. This is a 365 days a year job and it's pretty much 24/7 for some. It takes its toll and it's a real grind, but you do try to sneak a day off every now and then. If you are one of the lucky ones, you will get off on Christmas Eve about noon, but then you'll be back to work the morning after Christmas in the shop. And that's the way it will be for New Year's — you'll get off maybe noontime on Monday to celebrate New Year's Eve, rest a little bit on Tuesday, and then back to the shop on Wednesday. There really are no holidays in racing. The lights are never off in these shops because there's somebody working all the time. People may be working on engineering things, mechanical things, sponsor things, administrative things, personnel things ... somebody is in the shop all the time working on stuff. The lights never go out.
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This year, there's probably going to be even more midnight oil burned than any other year since after the 1980 season when we switched from the 115-inch wheelbase cars to 110-inch wheelbase models. I know that my team, with Tim Brewer as crew chief, Jeff Hammond and a bunch of other guys, built 11 race cars in about 11 weeks back in 1981. The guys worked around the clock and followed the same routine: Build a car, test it. If it's not very good, they went home and built another one. Build a race car, test it, take it to the windtunnel, go home and build another one. That's kinda what's going on with this COT.
As a quick aside, when I say the COT, this is the same COT of 2007. We've called this car the COT which stood for Car of Tomorrow, but now it stands for Car of Today. Until we get accustomed to calling these things Impalas, Camrys, Chargers and Fusions, I think COT still works as a name for the car model. From now on, starting in Daytona, I'm just going to refer to it as a COT because it's been that since its inception and I think it's a good way to identify that car.
Anyways, there's a lot of guys that are putting in a lot more hours than they ever have before to switch these cars over. First of all, think of the inventory that these teams have to replace. They have to take out all the current stuff they have in their shops — just about every piece of the race car that they have in stock is obsolete now. They have to take all that out and store it, sell it, give it away, auction it off — whatever they decide to do with it — and replace it with all new parts and pieces.
Not just is it labor intensive to have to do all of this in the garage, but you have to make changes to things like your crash car and hauler. These cars are bigger and taller, and some teams have had to modify their haulers to adapt to this new car. Every piece of equipment that you have starting in '08 will be brand new or it will certainly be different. Top to bottom, I don't care who it is, this is a huge undertaking. So cleaning out the shop, getting reorganized, going through the procedure within a single team, and training the people as to how these cars have to be built is going to take a lot of hours. Obviously, we have some experience with this car and it's not like we are starting off cold turkey, but now this car is our total focus.
Speaking of focus, once you give these teams one car to race all the time, I think it's really going to make a difference. One of the things that has hurt the performance and the acceptance of the COT, in my opinion, is that at about the time you have run it in a few races and got comfortable with it, you switched back to the old car. Guys loved the way that car drove because we've had years and years of development with that car. When drivers jumped out of that car and back into the COT, they said "I hate this thing."
I think next year we'll hear a lot less complaining about the COT. I'm not saying that the things that are wrong with it are going to go away, I just think that what will happen is the guys will get more comfortable and adjust to that car and they'll start complaining about other things, like each other or NASCAR or debris cautions. Do driver's complain about too many commercials during a race? I'm not sure, I don't think I've ever asked one. I may ask that question when I get to Daytona.
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| Winged stock cars -- like Pete Hamilton's winning car in 1970 -- will be making an exciting return to Daytona in 2008. (Daytona International Speedway / Special to FOXSports.com) |
This next year is going to be an exciting year. Think about it — we have got so many things to look forward to. Yeah, we are all going to sit here and say, "Oh this is good, this is bad, etc." That's just the nature of our business. But we do have the new COT, which we are going to see for the first time at Daytona come February. Since the late '60s, we've seen winged stock cars at Daytona International Speedway. This will be almost like a flashback to those winged Dodges and Ford Torinos and those big bad cars coming off Turn 4 at the 2.5 mile superspeedway looking like prehistoric animals — we are almost to that point again. It won't be the first time we'll have winged cars at Daytona, but it'll be the first time in a long time so we have that to look forward to.
On top of that, we have all these open-wheel guys coming into the sport that we kinda have to focus on for awhile to see how they are going to do. My opinion is, and I tell every one of them whether it is Juan Pablo, Jacques, Patrick, or whoever it may be, "If you perform, you will be a star in this sport. If you are just out there riding around, then you are just going to be out there riding around and that's not going to get you a whole lot of publicity and TV time, so you've got to perform." We have to follow that to see how they do and how they fit in. So far it looks like everyone's been accepted pretty well, we'll see how it continues.
In the Chase for the Nextel Cup, we gotta see how it develops and see if Hendrick Motorsports can continue their dominance.
Speaking of Hendricks, obviously the big thing this year is how Dale Earnhardt Jr. will do with his new team and how his old team, DEI, is going to fare — I mean TEI. It's been TEI most of this year, but now it's definitely TEI.
There's a lot of things to keep an eye on next year and it's going to make it interesting, particularly when we kick off the season with the 50th running of the Daytona 500 live on FOX. One of the things I'm most excited about is that race and having all the former 500 winners at Daytona International Speedway in February. Mario, A.J., Marvin Panch, you name it — everybody will be there. We had a little roundtable back in July with those guys and I hope we do that again.
We are going to do some fun things on FOX next year, some very special things — and I'm not saying we are going to have any trick graphics or anything like that — but we are going to have a lot of fun insight into some of these old drivers and how special the 500 is for those guys and what it means to them to come back.
There's a lot on the table and I look forward to getting started. For a broadcaster that hasn't worked since basically July, these have been the longest six months that I can remember. I'm anxious to get back in the booth and start talking about what I love, what I have a passion for, what I care about. Me, Larry, Mike, Jeff, Chris, Steve, Doc, the whole crowd are anxious to get going again. We love what we do, we love telling the stories every week, and we are excited to get back in the booth and share them with you. This will be our eighth season of NASCAR on FOX, which seems almost impossible, but it will be and we are anxious to get going.
Can't wait for '08.
Oh, by the way
I sometimes think that when you are amongst greatness, or when you are amongst teams that do extraordinary things, sometimes they get lost in the shuffle. One of the most impressive things about Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus and that No. 48 team is not just what they did this year, but what they've done the past two years. To dominate a season means you got the right car and the right everything at the right time. But when you start to dominate two seasons, and have a pretty good shot at doing it again, that's a dynasty. Looking back at the last two seasons, Jimmie's won 15 races.
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| Jimme Johnson celebrates his championship with his wife Chandra in New York. Johnson has dominated NASCAR for the past two years and will be a force to be reckoned with in 2008. (Brad Barket / Getty Images) |
Here's another thing that blows me away — this Cat has won over $30 million in that time span. Here's the tally: Two championships, 15 races and more than $30 million in two years. That's extraordinary, that's a career for almost anybody I know. It's impressive what he's done. He's exemplified what our system is all about — He not only was consistent, he was consistently fast and he was consistently winning.
That is the mark of a true NASCAR champion.
Now I know I could fall into that old trap of "It's not the way we used to do things." Unfortunately, as my brother reminds me all too often, we just don't do it that way anymore, so you might as well get used to it. That's kind of how I feel about the Chase. Sometimes my heart hurts for Jeff Gordon, and I hate to be in his shoes, but we just don't do it that way anymore. So my hat's off to Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus. You can ask anybody in our sport, if you can win two or three races, you've had a pretty good year. He won 10, and four in a row. That's extraordinary.
I'm amazed that Johnson's won over $59 million in just seven seasons. NASCAR's all-time leading money winner, Jeff Gordon, also had another outstanding year and he's now closing in on $100 million in career winnings driving a stock car. You can put those numbers up against Tiger Woods or any other professional athlete, those are huge numbers. They are impressive and it's right under our nose so sometimes we fail to recognize it.
A special "Oh, by the way"
When I was talking about the people we lost this season, I forgot to include my old buddy G.C. Spencer. He passed away this year and was my hero, so I wanted to make sure people remembered him.
Beginning in 1958, he drove for himself mostly but also for the Pettys and a few others. He competed in a total of 415 Cup races in 20 years, claiming 55 top-fives and 138 top-10 finishes in that period. Also in the year, he ran the most races (47 of 55) and finished a career high fourth in 1965 — Ned Jarrett ran 54 races on his way to the title that season.
I wanted to mention him and recognize him because he was my childhood hero. He was the first race car driver I ever remember and I've told people before that he was my favorite because he drove a car called the "Flying Saucer." That car, with its flathead GMC six-cylinder, made a unique sound like no other on the track at the time. I always thought he was a cool guy and at six years old, I got to meet him. I remember him being a kind sweet man, and I just wanted to recognize him.
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