Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Here are a couple of pretty good segments with Dale Jr. and Hank Parker. If you know anything about my world, you'll know why I appreciate these two talking.

 

Great race in Singapore.

 

I loved the Hank Parker episode. The rapport between them made for a great interview. I also liked it when he interviewed Hank Jr. three or four years ago.

 

Is it bad that we used to yell "GHOSTBUSTERS!" in the media center when Hank Parker Jr. was announced?

Great kid. Unlucky to land in places where the team suddenly went belly up on him.

It doesn't hurt to have a famous dad but he got rides because he could drive, not because of the name.

 

I've heard forever cries of "because of his dad!" in every motor racing series across the globe. I just shrug. It's not like it's the NFL or MLB. Historically, race teams were privately owned and often financed by the competitors themselves. It's just the nature of the sport.

 

For every kid with a rich father, I can name a ton of second-generation drivers from racing families who became legends on their talent alone.

Richard. Super Tex. Ironhead. Big Al. Little Al. Uncle Bobby. Mario's kid. Davey.

And then there are the Vukovich-Parnelli-Gurney-Donohue-Rutherford-Allison-Mears-Gordon-Johnson guys who made their breaks count in the biggest way.

Sure, John Wrecks Weekly and Buckshot Jones probably got a big boost from the family business, but they're a lot fewer in North America than perhaps on the F1 ladder system. Racing is all about cubic dollars but if you don't have the talent, the dollars dry up very quickly.

 

I don't disagree at all. F1 is sort of the outlier. If the richest grocer in Brazil pays for his son to have a ride to be Schumacher's blocker, that's not really a family operation.
Richard won on his talents (and factory backing), but I'm sure there was some Lee Petty seed money for that first ride.
Earnhardt may be the real exception because Ralph died and never had a huge budget in the first place.
I guess most top Indy type teams aren't real "family" teams up until Andretti and Rahal, but were Michael and Bobby not going to put their sons in a car?
I remember Davey talking about him and his high school buddies building his first ARCA car out of parts, but he did it in Bobby's shop.
Maybe I equate family operations more to NHRA than other series. Of course Don Schumacher, Connie Kalitta, John Force, Kenny Bernstein, and many more were going to put their kids in cars they owned. Alan and Blaine Johnson were brothers. Allen and Roy Johnson are son/father along with Warren and Kurt Johnson. The list is endless.

 

Sherry Pollex, Martin Truex Jr’s ex-girlfriend who fought ovarian cancer, was originally given a 30 percent chance of making it five years. She battled for nine years before dying Sunday morning. She was 44.

Gluck: Remembering Sherry Pollex, whose inspiring legacy will live on

 

Tony Stewart won in Top Alcohol Dragster at Reading, moving into the points lead.
Jerk or not, you can't argue that he doesn't know how to race.

 

Wow. That's eerie, particularly thinking about Richard Petty's drag racing foray when Chrysler pulled out of NASCAR before the 1965 season. His Barracuda veered into the stands at Southeastern Dragway near Atlanta and killed an 8-year-old boy.

 

Wasn't the person killed Petty's cousin or something? His name was Randy Owen like the lead singer of Alabama.

 

I don't believe so. From what I remember, Petty, the track and Chrysler settled out of court with the family. He buried that car behind the Petty garage in an effort to alleviate some of the grief.