Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images for NASCAR
The way AJ Allmendinger’s drug failure story developed, you didn’t expect the admission that took place Tuesday.
Allmendinger’s camp did everything it could to make it sound like one of those Major League Baseball drug failures. The 49th of 53rd products on the back of some health supplement sold at GNC contained just enough of this or that to barely trigger a positive. Allmendinger’s minions were going through his kitchen, his bathroom, the DNA remnants on his Dodge Charger if they could, trying to figure out how in the hell this freak event occurred. The strategy hinged on sympathy.
And it was all garbage.
We now know the truth (well, maybe). According to Allmendinger’s interview with ESPN, he was tired, and some anonymous human being in Louisville, Ky., offered him a mysterious pill, um, “workout supplement,” just two days before the drug test that sidelined him. It turned out to be Adderall, a controlled substance.
Let’s be clear. A controlled substance, minus a prescription, which Allmindinger didn’t have, is about as legal as crystal meth, which ended Jeremy Mayfield’s career.
I may take issue with Brad Keselowski, who went a little far by saying Flintstones vitamins shouldn’t be allowed. He especially shouldn’t say stuff like that when he chugs beer from his sponsor, Miller Lite, in Nationwide Victory Lane when he has a Sprint Cup race to compete in the following day.
Keselowski’s hypocrisy notwithstanding, his concern now makes sense to me. Not only is he apprehensive about racing with a drug addict. He doesn’t want to race with somebody stupid enough to take a pill given by a friend of a friend. (Again, that’s working from the premise that Allmendinger is telling the truth.)
If Keselowski doesn’t buy Allmendinger’s story, he wouldn’t be alone. All of Allmendinger’s PR push following the announcement of the first positive test is now called into question. If I took an “energy” pill two days before I flunked a drug test, I wouldn’t be so clueless as to where the positive test originated from.
This whole deal puts Allmendinger in the impossible stupid/liar spot, one that many politicians have been stuck in over the years. If his explanation is true, he is a moron, and major sponsors would be on drugs themselves if they signed him for any brand of motorsports.
Or he is lying, in which case major sponsors would be on drugs themselves if they signed him for any brand of motorsports?
He can’t win.
And since he couldn’t win when actually was in a NASCAR ride, his career is toast.
Contact Josh Stewart on Twitter @JoshNASCARWWE
