Bob Jennings

 

Subj: Tony don't do this to us!  Date: 3/29/02 5:07:36 PM US Eastern Standard Time From: BJenni7107 To: tony@tonystewart.com

Tony,

What are you doing? I hear and read that you've withdrawn from the 86th "Indianapolis 500." This is terrible!

Your fans in Indianapolis want you to fulfill your destiny and become a winner of the "Indianapolis 500." Your image needs to be on the Borg Warner Trophy.

NASCAR. NASCAR. NASCAR. NASCAR. NASCAR.

Come on Tony don't abandon your fans from 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, . . . Now you've got an especially tough guy to beat in Sam Hornish. Everybody in open wheels is going to be at Indy in May. Don't let your old IRL fans down. Get in there and kick some CART ass, guys like Paul Tracy, etc. even if you do drive for a CART team. This would be a real contest between the best racers going right now. And you have your pick of Penske Marlboro or Target Ganassi to get that "500" win.

You can still win the Winston Cup if you do Indy. Last year you finished third at Charlotte. What's wrong with that? And you almost won Indy.

Tony you're breaking my heart.

Bob Jennings

Indianapolis

*****

"I'm driftin' like a ship out on the sea. Driftin' and driftin' like a ship out on the sea. Ain't got nobody in this world to care for me." 

*****

I don't know why it took me so long, but I became a huge fan of Eric Clapton in 1998. I saw "EC" perform with Cream at Clowes Hall on a snowy wintry night in March 1968 with a blonde, buxom, 18 year old named Debbie. Debbie was the best example of voluptuous I've seen in all my days and nights and I was far more interested in what might happen after the show than what Cream was playing on stage. So I missed out on Eric Clapton until I got a car with a cd player in January 1998 and then saw "old Slowhand" perform at the United Center in Chicago little more than 30 years after I watched Cream at Clowes with luscious big, blonde Debbie the body.    

After the 1998 concert in Chicago, I bought every old Clapton cd I could find, saw Eric perform last June at Conseco Fieldhouse and purchased every new recording. I wanted to discover every thing I'd missed when it happened the first time. My favorite Eric Clapton presentations are the low, down "bluesy" arrangements of the classics originally put down by guys like Robert Johnson, Charles Brown, etc. Hell I don't know the old blues masters' names but I sure like the way Eric Clapton plays their music.   

Doesn't my e-mail to Tony Stewart above carry some sort of a feelin' the blues mood? Listening to "E.C. Was Here" on the DVD drive as I write this sets the mood as I write these words. True enough, not having Tony Stewart in the 86th "Indianapolis 500" isn't as bad as losing your woman, your job or not having any money, but it's still bad. 

It's the worst news of this season for me. The high point of racing in 2001 was having Tony Stewart come back to the "Indianapolis 500." While Stewart led last year's "500" during the race's second half, it was the most exciting time in racing for me since the 1997 "Indianapolis 500" when Tony and Arie Luyendyk put on a classic battle for most of the race. 

When the stories began circulating last month that Roger Penske was bidding against Chip Ganassi for Tony's services this May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the prospects for a Stewart win in the "Indianapolis 500" win improved even more. Things looked good and I was anticipating a classic "free for all" in the "500," in which 20 to 25 of the best open wheel racing drivers, including the best racer in America - Tony Stewart, battled like a bunch of kart racers to win the 86th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.  

It's still going to be a classic "Indianapolis 500" even without Tony Stewart but a lot of the excitement is going to be missing for me at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway without the "Rushville Rocket" in the middle of it all.

I can't recall exactly where I read it first, but I think it was something written by Steve Ballard in The Indianapolis Star, in which one of Stewart's crew members on The Home Depot team suggested that Tony might not be racing for either Penske or Ganassi in May. I believe this tidbit was reported in the days leading up to the "Carolina Dodge Dealers 400" at Darlington. 

One of the first things that crossed my mind when Stewart crashed at Darlington, once I learned he was going to be okay, was whether Tony's plans for Indianapolis would be affected. When Stewart spun on lap 366 of the "Food City 500" at Bristol, I thought more about what might or might not happen in May.  

On Good Friday morning at work, my boss told me he'd seen an item on the ESPN2 program RPM2Night the previous reporting Stewart had decided to forego the "Indianapolis 500" this year in favor of putting on a dedicated effort to win the Winston Cup championship. That prompted me to write the e-mail to Stewart, which didn't prompt a reply. Over the next few days the story came out in the media capped by Tony's press release on April 1. 

Beyond the obvious disappointment that Stewart won't have the opportunity to win the "Indianapolis 500" and the fact his absence at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is going to lessen the excitement I'll feel as I anticipate next month, another thought that keeps coming to mind is how much I wanted to see Tony battling Sam Hornish, perhaps a battle of the two best American racers to come along in this era.       

It's not going to happen though. Tony Stewart is staying in Charlotte on May 26. I just have to hope that Al Unser Jr. is up to the task of bringing old Bob Jennings an "Indianapolis 500" victory in 2002. Maybe next year for Tony Stewart. In the meantime, NASCAR can go to hell!

Brock Yates wrote powerful words on the Speed Channel website recently. Unfortunately Yates' commentary didn't make me very happy like Brock's column last November, when it looked like the house of cards that is CART was ready to collapse.   

"Just when you thought it was safe to visit this website, here comes this whack-job out of the ozone with his nutball ideas and opinions. Due to a bit of back-office confusion during the change-over from Speedvision to the Speed Channel, you were relieved ever so briefly of my off-the-wall dogmas. But that has all changed and I’m back, like a dose of the clap. I apologize if it in any way ruins your day.

But come to think of it, I don’t. Live with it.

I spent Sunday afternoon watching the Bristol race and the IRL show at Fontana. The results once again blitzed the conventional wisdom about how to succeed in motorsports.

You know the drill: Build a sparkling new, giant, high-speed super-speedway in a major market. Produce tight, wheel-to-wheel racing and they will come. Short tracks located in rural areas are for goobers who wouldn’t know a motor race from a hog-calling contest.

And how did this thesis work on Sunday?

Bristol, Tennessee is what you call rural. It is located in staggeringly beautiful country, but so far out of the mainstream that they pump in daylight.

Fontana, by contrast is within the perimeters of America’s second largest market. The Big Time.

Forty-year old Bristol is a .533 mile bull-ring roughly one-quarter the size of state-of-the-art Fontana.

The IRL cars were lapping Fontana almost exactly 100 mph faster than the Cuppers at Bristol in high-tech (relatively) rear-engine, bewinged creations that made the Cuppers look exactly like what they are, antiquated, front-engine crocks employing 1960’s technology.

And the results, please: Bristol was jammed to the rafters with 155,000 screaming fans tiered sky-high around the little bowl while the crowd (a liberal use of the term) at Fontana would have fit nicely into a Bristol’s men’s room.

While the finish at Fontana was thrilling, it contained a "so what" factor that was totally immersed by Kurt Busch’s fender-banging madness at Bristol. The sight of tiny, pencil-thin IRL cars whizzing around Fontana at hyper-speed was a dozer compared to the smash-mouth, body-slamming action that went on at Bristol.

And the Fontana excitement was hardly enhanced by Sam Hornish Jr.’s victory interview in which he astutely observed that his 0.028 second win over Jaques Lazier was "real close." Young Sam is a great race driver, but radiates all the charisma of your average Wal-Mart clerk. If the IRL hopes to ride to popularity on the back of this talented but dishwater-dull kid, they’re in more trouble than they think.

My wife, the lovely Lady Pamela, is a tepid racing fan. But she spent some time watching Bristol and was fascinated by the energy of the show. "It’s easy to see why people like that kind of racing," she observed. "They’re driving real-world cars. It’s a great fantasy. Everybody in that grandstand can think, ‘I can do that. I could be down there acing with those guys.’ The connection works."

The connection does not work with the IRL or CART, no matter if they lap Fontana at 300 mph and finish the race four abreast in a dead heat.

Big-time open wheel racing has lost the connection with the average American racing fan and no amount of hype, much less the excellent leadership of CART’s new boss, Chris Pook, will fix it.

We’re talking about a new sheet of paper here. And it better be scribbled on quickly before NASCAR sucks the last breath of air out of both open-wheel series and leaves only a crippled Indy 500 as a relic.

And speaking of Indy, word has it that the bloom is off the US Grand Prix bush. Advance ticket sales are said to be in the dumper. I wouldn’t imagine that is the case with the Brickyard 400.

Next week: Let’s do some scribbling of our own."                                                                       

Wow! Old Brock wasn't mincing words? The scariest part of his observation was the "so what factor" Yates refers to when he analyzes Indy car racing. 

The crowds at all three Indy Racing League events this season were disappointing. Miami and Phoenix were bad enough but the race at California Speedway was a catastrophe. It was embarrassing and I bet Tony George was sorry he let Bill France talk him into doing the race the race at Fontana this year. 

It's been reported the IRL wanted to wait until 2003 to make their California debut but were persuaded by International Speedway Corporation to come this season. That's an understandable acquiescence by Tony George and company because ISC is an important business partner and the reception the Indy cars received at Kansas Speedway last July more than made up for the disappointments at Miami, Phoenix and California. But the crowd at Fontana was still worrisome especially when compared to the crowds that have turned up at California Speedway for the CART races. However let's be reminded the CART race is part of the Fontana season ticket package critics so like to remind us about when they discuss big crowds at IRL races.    

It's too bad and a unfortunate for the people who should've shown up to see the Indy Racing League at California Speedway. After uncharacteristic power displays by Sam Hornish in Miami and the Penske team in Phoenix, the race in Fontana was a thing of beauty. The drama of watching Hornish, the Red Bull Cheever Infinitis and Jaques Lazier battle wheel to wheel at 200 plus mph for 400 miles was intense and adrenaline was pumping throughout the two hours it took to run the race. The last lap battle between the IRL wunderkind Hornish and the younger Lazier brother was as good as it gets. But if no one was watching, what difference does it make?

It's too cold for April 7. Last year the trees were in full bloom by now in Indianapolis, but spring is making a late arrival this year and except for patches of green on the ground, it still looks like February. I'm going to Anderson Speedway this afternoon to see the USAC Midgets and Sprints and I'm going to dress warm. Despite the anticipation of seeing my first race in person for 2002, I'm feeling low. Things aren't going my way.

Not to forget, 34 years ago today I got a knock on my boarding house apartment door in the 3100 block of North Pennsylvania Street. It was my sister who came to tell me Jim Clark had been killed racing in Germany. That was the worst racing day of all. Despite having a hangover from the previous night's 21 year-old revelry (with Debbie), my first thought upon hearing of the magical Flying Scot's death was where I could find a half pint of Heaven Hill since it was Sunday and the bars and package stores were closed.  

***** 

" I got ramblin'. Lord knows I got ramblin' all on my mind. I got ramblin'. I got ramblin' all on my mind. I hates to leave my baby but she treats me so unkind."