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Sunday was the end of two weeks of the good the bad and the ugly with the media gearing up for free for all on Hendrick drivers, wait and see. Junior is going to get the worst of it this year with Mark Martin comming in second on their list.
After watching Nascar since the sixties Sunday was the worst piece of media broadcasting I have ever saw. Waltrip had a big mouth when he was a driver and now he has an even bigger mouth. He had no business making the statement Jr. did wrong when the wreck happened. This was just as the wreck was happening. Jr. may or may have not been at fault, it was not Waltrip's place to say. It was his job to report and analze after the entire accident had infolded. Hell look at the times he wrecked Dale senior, were those acidents on purpose. I have my own opinion. Junior had a bad day and he got the blame for a lot of problems the other drivers were having. He should take some of the blame but Vickers should have known better than to block at that time in the race against a much faster car. He knocked Jr into the grass and at a 180 miles an hour getting the car out of the grass sent Jr. back into the rear of Vicker's car. That is a fact as seen on the tape.
Perhaps the worst of the problems was the penalty in the pits over the line he was setting on. Nascar has to start defining the rules better. It's like playing school yard marbles and following the rules as they are made up.
The media is going to be a big problem for a lot of the major teams this year with Gibbs having a new rookie driver, Stewart working on being an owner and driver and of course with the ford and dodge boys always coming from behind they will have plenty of tagets to work off of. Perhaps Speed channel should send their broadcast staff to school for journalism for a few weeks before each season to assure they understand what they are supposed to be doing.
Now a few more thoughts on the line penalty. First if one looked real close I doubt if the foot print of the tire was even on the line, and if so a one lap penalty was really stupid. Nascar needs to come into the twenty-first century and have instant decisions for the inspectors in the pits. If millions of fans could see he was just an inch or less on the line and there was no danger and Nascar has all of their important people in the skyboxes watching the race they can make instant decisions. The inspector should have been told to keep out of the way, there was no real penalty or danger there, but we all get bitch about Nascar, I guess that is one of the reasons we love to watch the show