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Will Karma Smile on NASCAR? 02/16/2017 David Nance |
With Speed Week fast
approaching, one of the biggest questions may be how Karma will look upon
NASCAR at Daytona. You see, the last
couple of months have not been kind to the Premier series as
-Long time series sponsor
Sprint exits stage left, replaced by Monster Energy who got the series
sponsorship at a fraction of the cost Sprint paid
-Attendance and viewership
continues to decline
-Wall Street projections are
not encouraging
-Car counts are down and major
teams have downsized and have leased charters
-Concerns with the
"product" as aero-dependency is still an issue with the cars
-Continuation of the Chase
under the alias of Playoffs
-New Enhanced Race Format
which divides the race into segments and awards points to segment winners and
finishers to incentivize drivers to race harder and make every lap matter.
-New Damage Repair Rule that
negates all incentives to race hard
-Tony Stewart (49 wins, 3 Cup
championships) retired, Carl Edwards (28 wins) abruptly vacated his seat, Greg
Biffle (19 wins) who finds himself without a ride will no longer be on the
track. Add to that Jeff Gordon's (93
wins, 4 championships) return to the booth after filling in for Dale Earnhardt,
Jr. last season. That's 189 wins and 7
championships now absent.
-Two weeks ago the NFL had a
record breaking Super Bowl with the New England Patriots winning their fifth in
the Super Bowl's first Overtime game.
-FOX's "Daytona
Days" promotions transitioning from the Super Bowl to the race receives
lukewarm reception by the Super Bowl TV viewers.
In all, hardly the way one
would like to see the 2017 season begin.
Some would say NASCAR could use Karma's smile.
Looking back at NASCAR
history though, Karma has a way of stepping in and smiling on NASCAR, usually
at the Daytona 500 Pole.
In 1993, the sport was still
reeling from the tragic losses of Davey Allison and 1992 Cup Champion, Alan
Kulwicki in separate aviation accidents.
Also lost in the Kulwicki crash were three employees of Kulwicki's sponsor, Hooters of America, Inc.-Mark Brooks,
Dan Duncan and Charlie Campbell. Tragedy
continued as the 1994 Speed Weeks opened with the losses of veteran driver Neil
Bonnett and Cup rookie Rodney Orr in separate practice accidents.
However when qualifying
ended, it was rookie, Loy Allen Jr. in the No. 19 Hooters Ford who
clocked the fastest time and started the Daytona 500 from the pole.
Karma? Some would say that it was.
Allen wasn't a one-hit wonder
though, as he went on to score two more poles that season - Atlanta (site of Kulwicki's 1992 Championship and home track for
Atlanta-based Hooters) and Michigan (home track for Ford). Those would be the only poles he would win in
his short Cup career.
Some would say that Karma
smiled again in 2013 as Cup rookie, Danica Patrick landed her first and only
pole (so far) at the 500, making her the first female driver to win the pole at
Daytona.
2014 saw the return of the #3
to the Cup Series for the first time since the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt
there thirteen years earlier. When
qualifications ended Austin Dillon in only his 12th Cup attempt started his
first full season in the Premier series by putting the #3 on the pole. It was the first pole for the #3 since
1996. It would be another two years
before Dillon would score his next pole.
Was it Karma?
At the end of 2014, then 92-win
and four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon announced 2015 would be his final season
in Cup. As Karma would have it, he
started his final year off by putting his No. 24 on the pole for the Great
American Race. It would be his first
Daytona 500 pole since 1999 and the first of four poles in his final full
season.
2016 saw Karma smile down
once again as rookie Cup driver, Chase Elliott hopped into the seat vacated by
Jeff Gordon and put the No. 24 Chevrolet on the pole for a second straight
year. It was Elliott's first career pole
in six Cup starts. The son of four-time
Daytona 500 pole winner Bill Elliott would go on to get his second pole later
at Talladega.
Will Karma smile down this
year? If it does, will it be on Dale
Earnhardt Jr. and his return to Cup?
Will it be 2016 Xfinity Champ and Cup rookie Daniel Suarez in his first
ride in the No. 19, formerly driven by Carl Edwards? Can Clint Bowyer put his new ride, the No. 14
formerly driven by Tony Stewart on the pole?
Will Mike Waltrip close out his Daytona 500 career with his first pole
in ten years and his first ever Daytona pole?
Or will it be someone totally different?
The 2017 season is off to a
less than ideal start and whether Karma smiles down on NASCAR or not, on
February 16th at 5:00 pm the engines of the Cup cars will fire up for the first
practice. At that moment all concerns
mentioned above will be drowned out by their roar.
As the Cup cars take the track for the first
time, qualifying for the 2017 Daytona 500 pole will be forty-six hours, ten
minutes away. And Karma... will she
smile?
We will know soon enough.