Open Wheel ‘Invaders’ Not Given A Fair Chance?

The uproar began when the dominos began to fall after a fairly successful season by Juan Pablo Montoya in 2007 prompted a mass of open wheel drivers to migrate to the ranks of stock car racing. Since then the uproar has turned into to a murmur as one by one the ‘threat’ seems to be succumbing to the difficulties associated with being successful in the upper ranks of the sport.

Without going into all of the details that have been published and broadcasted plenty in regards to the problems that have plagued the transplants, the nuts and the bolts of it is that sponsorship has been hard to come by and expectations of performance were possibly set way too high.

The initial concept seemed brilliant, place a past Indy 500 winner, Formula 1 star or IRL Champ in a stock car and the sponsors would be beating down your door and the team would be running in the top 5 consistently. The problem is it didn’t happen that way, not even close.

It’s no secret that the ‘other’ forms of auto racing in the U.S. have in recent past been taken over by drivers who have names that are hard to pronounce and give their post race interviews with accents so thick that the average stock car fan has a hard time understanding them. There was a certain amount of nervousness that the same fate my occur in the top levels of stock car racing.

Right or wrong it was a concern that was voiced on the call in shows, chat forums and other website message boards in large volumes by the fans. They weren’t happy at all about the changes occurring in the sport.

It seems a little silly that everyone was so upset given the outcome, but maybe the boisterousness of the fans is what initiated the problems for the ‘invaders’. It’s not speculation that sponsorship has been the biggest thorn in the side of the open wheel converts and we’re talking about teams that have not had issues solidifying sponsorship in the past.

Perhaps companies were reluctant to jump on the bandwagon with a well known driver from other racing series in fear of actually doing more harm than good with their affiliation with an ‘outsider’. Keep in mind that the sponsor’s goal is to win over NASCAR fans and convince them to buy their products and if their logos are on the hood of a car driven by the ‘enemy’ how’s that going to work for them?

The other issue that should be glaringly obvious whether you are for or against these guys coming in seems to be the fact that they weren’t given much of a chance before the rug was pulled out from under them. Half a season to prove themselves or in some cases, just a handful of races isn’t a very good representation of their talent. If that was the norm we would have no second season drivers in the series, because if they didn’t go out and win a couple of races as a rookie they would be gone. It doesn’t seem like the open wheel transplants were given the same courtesy as what is normally given to a rookie driver in NASCAR.

If you figure in most cases these guys were given cars that were first season with no owner’s points or out of the top 35 when they took the ride over and had to qualify their way into the races, they had a huge hurdle to clear. Even the series ‘regulars’ who were in the same position had a hard time making races. Names like Joe Nemechek, John Andretti, Johnny Sauter, Ken Schrader, Mike Skinner, Bill Elliott, Jeremy Mayfield and Scott Riggs all missed races this season by not qualifying. With that said, what chance did these guys have with limited experience in a stock car going up against experienced veterans in equal equipment?

This is not intended to be a commentary piece written to make you think about being unfair to ‘outsiders’ or that we should make special consideration for drivers based on their pedigrees in other forms of auto racing, but more just a statement of the facts.

The drivers were not necessarily welcomed by the fans, sponsorship seemed to elude the teams and the timelines given to them to perform were unusually short. If nothing else the message has been sent that if you think that the money looks good over here in NASCAR land and you want to come jump in a car that goes in circles and only turns left, you may want to think twice.

NASCAR is a tight-knit sport and is often referred to as a family of sorts, so it’s no wonder that when unfamiliar names were trying to come in people objected. Given that the list of names shown above who are drivers who have arguably put in their time and paid their dues in the sport and yet are some of the drivers forced out by the open wheel drivers, it’s easy to see why some fans were unhappy.

We NASCAR fans want drivers with names that are easy to spell and pronounce like Gilliland, Kvapil, Earnhardt, Keselowski, Reutimann and Nemechek [sarcasm]. But what we as fans do want is drivers who have paid there dues in the sport, coming up through the ranks and earning their place in a premier stock car ride. Not having one handed to them because they have a recognizable name in another form of auto racing and expect a free pass to the top in NASCAR.

A definite exception to the rule is Scott Speed who was an American seemingly unwelcome in Formula 1 who has come back to the U.S. to give stock car racing a try. He is doing it right running in the ARCA Series where he has attained legitimate success as well as in the Craftsman Truck series with wins in both series.

This season has definitely served notice to the team owners who thought that they could take the express route to hiring a marketable driver and open wheelers hoping to cash in on the NASCAR boon, that you are not guaranteed a spot just because people know your name. You have to pay your dues and the sponsors have to know that the fans are behind you, otherwise it’s all and exercise in futility.