The Good, The Good and The Ugly

At the season opening ARCA race the national anthem was sung respectfully and in tune by a young woman from Daytona Beach. The command to start engines was given by the marketing manager of the company sponsoring the race, and he said nothing other than, “Drivers start your engines,” without undue histrionics. Almost all of the cars finished the race intact.

There was a car in the race which was identical to a car driven in 1990 by Davey Allison; black and white with a touch of red, and the number 28 in metallic gold. Davey, you may or may not know, was the son of Winston Cup champion Bobby Allison and died in a helicopter crash in 1993 at age 32. The car yesterday was driven by Brandon MacReynolds, whose father was Davey Allison’s crew chief. I enjoyed that.

Then the “big boys” of the Monster Energy Cup series got on track and showed the ARCA youngsters how not to do it. Seven time champion Jimmie Johnson caused a 17-car pileup (only three cars were not involved in the wreck) and then blamed it on the car that he “dumped” to start the disaster.

In the booth, two announcers were saying that Jimmie “turned into” and spun Menard while Jeff Gordon, former teammate of Jimmie and future owner of Hendricks Motorsports for whom Jimmie drives, kept insisting that he had seen Menard wreck himself by turning down into Jimmie’s front bumper. Right.