Running 2023 Motorsports thread

What is it that prompts most NASCAR drivers to retire? The risks being too great for the rewards? They've got enough money and they want to spend it? The lose their edge? They just become too expensive to find a decent ride?

 

No. Yes. Maybe. Yes.

Before the TV money rolled in, second-tier or independent drivers without major sponsorship would drive into their 50s or even 60s because they loved it despite the danger and it paid the bills -- Donnie Allison, Buddy Baker, Harry Gant, Buddy Arrington, just off the top of my head. J.D. McDuffie was one of the unlucky ones who bought the farm.

Darrell and Richard stayed in it way too long but they had the sponsors and fans, and NASCAR enabled them -- with the Champion's provisional -- to be back-markers for much too long.

With the advent of super teams like Hendrick, Roush and Gibbs, most of the guys who started in the 1990s are retiring with more money than they know what to do with. Gordon had nothing left to prove. Stewart got bored/disgusted and decided he'd rather own a team. Johnson had a fling with IndyCar. Junior never was right after the concussions.

But yeah, guys like Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne, Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards and the like just didn't run well enough (or created negative issues for sponsors) to be worth the amount of money they were getting paid. Elliott Sadler, Jeremy Mayfield, Jimmy Spencer and a few others just tore up too much stuff.

And as sponsorship has dried up, cheap young drivers are available by the helmetful. So it's the Busch Brothers, Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, somebody related to Richard Childress, Bill Elliott, Dave Blaney, Matt Kenseth and a bunch of guys who would normally still be in the Xfinity Series.

 

If they have exceptional recall from childhood, there might be a couple of 26-year-olds in the sport who remember watching Dale Sr. race live. Otherwise he might as well be Elvis or Robert E Lee to the current young guns.

 

J.D. McDuffie raced because that was the only way he could put food on the table. Same for most of the independents. It would kill me to cross the country all the time knowing I was probably starting and parking, if I even made the show. Few did anything after driving, save Buddy Arrington, who built engines in the aughts.

 

That's only part of NASCAR's problem. What's worse is there's very few 26-year-olds in the stands, and the people buying tickets are getting older every season.

 

Amazing to think of how it used to be the norm for drivers to keep competing in their 50s. Darrell and Richard both went winless the last 8 years of their respective careers. By contrast, Harry Gant won four straight races in 1991 (would have been a record fifth straight if not for losing his brakes at North Wilkesboro) at the age of 51. Earnhardt had a career rebirth at 49, and showed ever sign of competing for titles in his final three-year contract for RCR, and would have been 52 when he retired.

 

Wasn't Doug Richert the youngest? I believe he was 20 when he took over as Earnhardt's crew chief midway through his 1980 championship season.

 

IIRC, there was a brief moment — and by brief, I mean maybe 30 minutes — where Dale Sr. had a shot at that eighth championship during the 2000 season. During the later stages of the Southern 500, there was rain coming in. Earnhardt gambled and stayed out while everybody else pitted. He got to the lead while points leader Bobby Labonte did pit and got shuffled back into the field.
Earnhardt stayed out as long as he could, but the rain didn't come. He ended up having to pit, and not long after the rain did come. By that time Labonte had moved back to the front and won the shortened race.
If it had ended with Earnhardt in front and Labonte back in 20-something place, the points swing would have put Earnhardt either in the lead or right on Labonte's bumper. The way it played out, Earnhardt finished 11th and lost points he was never able to make up.

 

You may be right.

 

Seven days til the Rolex starts.
15 days until the stadium exhibition nonsense.
Which I guess means 29 days to the 500.

 

You also have to remember that most of those guys' rookie season came much later. They didn't get Cup rides before they were old enough to drink in Victory Lane.