There are plenty of people who will criticize Michael Waltrip, Greg Biffle and Ken Schrader for one thing or another.
However, all three are experienced NEXTEL Cup drivers so their collective view has to be given some weight. In fact, my thought is their views should probably be given more weight than anything the ESPN announcers have to say about much of anything. Also, what they explain does make quite a bit of sense.
In this case they all seemed to be in agreement as to exactly who was responsible for the wreck between Montoya and Harvick.
Here is the transcript from Monday's Inside NEXTEL Cup on SPEED. The panel was Michael Waltrip, Greg Biffle and Ken Schrader with Dave Despain as the moderator.
MW:Let me explain what I think about that. When you block somebody all the way down to the edge of the road into a right hander at that angle and you get hit, it is your fault. You know, you can say that wasn't Juan's fault. It was Juan's fault. Juan drove the 1 [Martin Truex, Jr.] all the way to the bottom of the road and the 1 hit him. I mean you don't cut somebody off like that and not expect a bump. So you better be prepared for it and that was just...I wouldn't blame Martin for anything.
DD: So Harvick had reason to be mad, just not the reason he thought.
KS:Harvick was just in the wrong spot. But when you're going down the straightaway and your over here and all the sudden somebody is way over there, there is no reason to think anything good is going to happen down there at the end, you know.
GB:You can see that Martin started axle hopping or something happened because you can see Martin's car, you know, fishtailing in the back and then he got into the ----
MW: But the reason why they got over there was because Juan took them over there. That's road racing at it's finest. Harvick didn't know. He just knew he got wrecked and he knew that the 42 [Juan Pablo Montoya] hit him. He didn't know or he didn't really care what led up to it. He probably doesn't care today what led up to it.
Contrary to prior public statements by both drivers made earlier in the week, the chill continues between Stewart and Hamlin following their wreck in Daytona and Stewart's comments during the race.
During
an interview in his car prior to qualifying in Chicago with Lindsay
Czarniak on SPEED, Stewart was asked if he had a chance to speak with
Hamlin, Stewart very tersely replied, "I've been busy this week."
Stewart didn't even reply to Czarniak's first follow up question.
After
Hamlin's qualifying run, Hamlin was asked how things were between him
and Stewart and Hamlin said, "We're at the track, so we're teammates."
The tension between the two was palpable.
This
has to raise major questions as to what this driver fight is going to
do to these two during the chase. Sponsors should also be scratching
their heads as to where the leadership is at JGR.
So
Tony Stewart forcefully puts his nose into Denny Hamlin's rear end.
Hey, if that's what you're into, fine by me, but it really didn't look
like Hamlin enjoyed it that much.
Stewart could have at least taken Hamlin out for dinner or something. But , no. Instead, Stewart
climbs out of the car and goes into full Cry Baby mode and then
proceeds to verbally do to Hamlin what Kyle Petty said in Sonoma just a
couple of weeks ago:
"The No. 11
just stopped for no reason, right in the middle of Turn 4. I'm sure he
was getting tight because for three laps in a row we were catching him
through the center and the exit of the corner.
"All of a sudden
he just stops on the exit of four in front of 42 cars and I guess
expects all of us to drive around him. I don't know. It's tore up two
really good racecars. He tried to wreck us in practice on Friday and
didn't get it done. At least he finished it off today. He's a young guy
and he wants to be successful, but I don't know if he knows what the
definition of team is right now."
Stewart's
reaction is amazingly similar to what happened when Stewart crashed
David Gilliland's #38 car just three weeks earlier and Stewart went off:
"He
checks up at the end of the straightaway, and we run into him. It
really #### up a really good racecar for [Sunday]. It didn't need to
happen. It shouldn't happen.... I went to [Cup Series director] John
Darby and asked if he'd bring him in and talk to him about it. That's
why you have the Busch Series. That's why you have the Truck Series.
That's why you go through those growing pains in those series before
you get to the premier series in NASCAR.... You look at every race, and
if there's somebody that's having a bad day, it's normally him."
Following Stewart ripping Gilliland, Ricky Rudd fired back at Stewart:
Tony
is Tony. What else can you say? You can't question his driver ability.
Everybody knows he's one of the best if not the best out there, but he
kind of has a habit of running his mouth at the wrong time. David got blamed for that wreck, but that wasn't David's fault. No one ever came around and asked anybody else what happened, but the videotaped clearly shows what happened and Tony #### up. He just misjudged his distance and ran into the back of David.
After what has happened, Hamlin might think of Stewart as his old insane uncle.
What happened on the track was racing. It was an accident. The fault is secondary. But we'll get back to that one....
The big deal here is how Stewart handled it. It is part of a pattern. It is part of Stewart being The Cry Baby.
When a reporter asked Hamlin about Stewart's comments, Hamlin said he would "be the bigger man."
While
that is a pretty low standard in reference to Stewart, Hamlin is. He is
also the better team mate. His on track performance has also made it
clear that he is the better driver.
Any measurable you want to
look at, Hamlin has outperformed Stewart since the start of last
season. Points, DNFs, wins, laps complete, races finished on the lead
lap. It isn't even close. Hamlin had one DNF and one other bad finish
in April last year. Since then, the Pepsi 400 was his first finish
outside THE TOP 28.
"I
had an inkling that something like what happened between him and Tony
Stewart at Daytona was coming ... just didn't think it would happen so
publicly. Earlier this year, when I wrote a piece on Hamlin for SI, I
got the feeling that Stewart was starting to get frustrated with two
things: first and foremost was his failure to win even one race; the
other was all the attention his teammate was starting to get. When
you've been the top dog for as long as Stewart has, I guess you can
only be asked to sing somebody's praises so many times. The good thing
about Saturday night was that Hamlin handled the whole thing like a
champ -- something we may all be calling him at the end of the season."This is getting into another post, but this
looks like a much bigger issue of Joe Gibbs Racing operating like a
highly dysfunctional family with poor leadership and worse
communication. As far as what happened on the track goes....
"On the highway, if you rear-end another car, it's your fault. In most
cases, the same is true on the racetrack. If Stewart could see that the
handling on Hamlin's car was deteriorating, why was he glued to his
bumper out of Turn 4?"
There is one
difference between what has happened here with Stewart and Hamlin that
is different from Stewart's blow up with Gilliland: The big NASCAR
media didn't just write it the way Stewart spun it. With Gilliland,
they took it hook, line and sinker.
Something that might not have happened if it wasn't for bloggers like Merri over at SNAFAM who made lots of noise and helped generate lots of emails to reporters when they let Stewart get away with ripping Gilliland.
The Black Flag is NASCAR NEXTEL Cup news, information, commentary and humor. CCR1d3r provides his irreverent, out of the box thought provoking perspective on stock car racing at the highest level.
