Whitlock nails Danica Patrick

Bad idea.

Here's why I take this with an entire container of salt rather than just the one grain: Allied Signal's "Fram-Autolite team" never existed. Allied Signal's Fram-Bendix-Autolite division sponsored the entire SCCA Trans Am Series during the 1980s and Newman drove Datsuns (and earlier, Nissans) for a team he co-owned with Bob Sharp in that series during its last heyday, which happened to be the mid-1980s. The concept of sponsoring an entire series is obviously different from sponsoring one team in a given series, but Ms. Kimbrough clearly doesn't have the ability to understand the difference.

 

Whitlock hasn't heard of you, so what you say does not matter. ;D [/cheapshot]

 

Jason:

Despite the fact that you have a big fan who's an ad agency copywriter and former "director or marketing at Memphis International Motorsports Park" - the Podunk Press of racetracks, BTW - you still haven't shown a single shred of evidence that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is hated by his peers.

As for your assertion that Chip Ganassi "stole" Juan Montoya from F-1, nothing could be further from the truth, either.

This is how Ganassi opened his press conference with Montoya last week: "As some of you may or may not know, this guy (Montoya) and I have had some success in the past. He called me up a few days ago and said, 'hey, you looking for a driver?' He said, 'I want to drive that car.' I said, 'do you know which car I'm talking about?' He said, 'yeah, the 42.' He said, 'yeah, I want to drive it.' I said, 'OK, fine.' "

So while your column about Danica was a thoughtful and well-written take, two of the critical NASCAR points you made were flat-ass wrong.

Hey, you were great with Le Batard this week on PTI. On balance, not a bad week.

But please, now it's time for supper. And unless you can prove your points, I see a big, heaping bowl of STFU in your future.

 

Jason, I'm not being nasty to you or hypercritical. You get enough of that here. Not that you give a fuck, but I enjoy most of your work. But using a valentine that some corporate bot wrote you to justify something is lame.

Every thread about you here exists to supply you with your share of fan mail. (And a goodly portion of hate mail, but more good than bad from what I've observed). There's no need for L. Kim Kimbrough. That was chickenshit.

 

jeff, appreciate the clarification.... unfortunately, you're just a prop for these anonymous clowns in their never-ending fruitless war to stop me from writing about whatever in the f i wanna write about. that's why sportschick has you pegged as the authority on nascar when you only cover a few races a year.....

my words in the column are being taken out of context because these bozos wanna keep me in my place. i wrote that ganassi put together a deal to lure juan pablo away from f1.... to make the point that ganassi likes to be in the mix when it comes to doing unconventional things in racing.... these clowns want a thesis on how pablo came to nascar.....my point about dale jr and danica was that any young person who receives a great deal of hype in whatever endeavor is going to deal with a lot of jealous competitors. i was going to use jeff gordon as an example but my friend, a former driver, talked me into using dale jr. as the example. when dale was at the height of his dominance and hype, there was a lot of the very predictable jealousy and anomosity directed his way. dale was the golden child.

carry on....

 

kim, just like yours truly, signs her name to her opinions. nothing chickenshoot about that.

 

Dale was the golden child?
This is the father, we're talking about, right?
The Golden Child?
Yes, in the same way the Raiders are Sesame Street or something.

And this -- "my point about dale jr and danica was that any young person who receives a great deal of hype in whatever endeavor is going to deal with a lot of jealous competitors." -- is a generalization that already has been proven by folks who know to be inapplicable in this case. A little bit of substance, that's all. If the jealousy was that widespread, it must have hit the papers in NC or Tennessee.

 

Your words weren't taken out of context, Jason. Your points were, and are, wrong. Period. You were wrong about Ganassi - Montoya came to him, not the other way around. You're wrong about Earnhardt, too.

For example: " ... when Dale was at the height of his dominance?" WTF are you talking about?

Although he has many fans, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is not and was not a dominant driver in Nextel Cup. In six full years on the circuit he has no championships, no runner-up finishes in the series and only one points finish higher than fifth. That's dominant? No, that's a wrong assertion on your part.

Before you start calling us clowns and bozos, get your facts right. Believe it or not, some of us know this beat better than you think you do.

 

Gluck ≠ Glick   

(Any relationship between Jeff Gluck, Rocky Mountain Times, to Shav Glick, legendary racing writer for the L.A. Times, is purely alliterative.)

 

Well, you get a gold star on your forehead for that.

When are you going to write a book about the Chiefs? I think you could write the hell out of something on the Schottenheimer teams. Show everyone how well you work your corners now (and circa 1994). Not some dumb compendium of your columns either, a real book.

 

No, what we clowns want is accuracy. Ganassi did not put together a deal to lure Juan Montoya away from F1 and he wasn't being unconventional. "Desperate" is a much more appropriate word choice.

In five-plus seasons with two first-rate teams, Montoya never developed into a world championship contender. He was never quite physically fit enough for the demands of an F1 car and when McLaren officials put him on a fitness program last year, he promptly injured his shoulder in a motorcycle crash in Spain. At the start of this season, he was basically told that 2006 would be his last year with McLaren. None of the other frontline F1 teams are interested in an underperforming driver who tends to get into car-destroying wrecks. No appropriate seats in either Champ Car or the IRL are available.

At the same time, when Casey Mears bailed out of Ganassi's ride, Ganassi was in a quandary. The dearth of young talent in the NASCAR Busch Series and lack of available first-rate free-agent drivers in Nextel Cup left Ganassi with no options until Montoya called him (at least, if you believe that story; I tend to think Montoya's agent suggested it to him).

Does your friend design bobsleds, perchance?

 

That's your response? You're kidding, right? How does being in the employ of Roger Penske and George Bignotti not equate to the backing Johnny Rutherford had? And Johncock ran for Pat Patrick and Bignotti. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were too young at the time to have any clue. But now that you're an adult, you need to give up the childhood fantasies.

Such "memories" kill your credibility when it comes to opining on where Danica can succeed. I notice you had no response to my take on that.