By suspending Kurt Busch, NASCAR made a definitive statement regarding personal responsibility.
Too bad it didn’t follow its own standard Sunday.
With the repaving of Pocono Raceway came a change in the timing loops on pit road that access speeding penalties. According to NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton, revised loop maps were available in the NASCAR hauler — if anyone bothered to ask.
Here’s my question: Did NASCAR not have that thing before the race called a drivers meeting? You know, that thing drivers and crew chiefs are required to go to, where they go over any pertinent issues in hopes of having a cluster-you-know-what-free event?
Do you think NASCAR’s brass could have carved 30 seconds out of schmoozing with race grand marshal Vanilla Ice to be a hair proactive and let everybody know that they had all these maps in their hauler with “REVISED” on the top? They must not have, since team members were sprinting to the hauler for said maps while the 22 speeding penalties were being handed out.
Thirty seconds of common sense, and Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach aren’t spending the first half of the first race of TNT’s scant schedule questioning whether the race held any legitimacy whatsoever. Thank God three judges in Las Vegas butchered the Timothy Bradley-Manny Pacquiao decision in a fashion that would make Hannibal Lecter jealous. Otherwise, NASCAR would have won the weekend for incompetence.
There’s no gray area here. NASCAR screwed up. But you know what, everybody screws up. I just don’t understand why NASCAR can’t admit it.
“The bottom line is, every week when we go into a race track, there’s maps that are printed back here for the crew chiefs to come get. Some choose to get ‘em, some choose to measure their own lines, and some go off of last year’s measurements,” Pemberton defiantly maintained to NASCAR Wire Service.
If the ground rules changed at Yankee Stadium, would the umpires mention said change at home plate when the lineup cards are exchanged? Or would they wait for utter confusion, then absolve themselves by showing the media 30 copies of a MLB mandate that were available in their dressing room had somebody knocked on the door?
A man shouldn’t be the sheriff of anything if he isn’t willing to write himself a ticket.
I didn’t think anything could make me feel even a little bit sorry for Kurt Busch.
I was wrong.
