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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Author
We’re closing in on the ultimate handful of weeks of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Sequence season, the inventory automobile sequence’ seventy fifth anniversary marketing campaign. To have a good time, every week by way of the tip of the season, Ryan McGee is presenting his prime 5 favourite issues concerning the sport.
Prime 5 best-looking automobiles? Examine. Prime 5 hardest drivers? We have it. Prime 5 mustaches? There may be just one, so perhaps not.
With out additional ado, our 75 favourite issues about NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of inventory automobile racing.
Earlier installments: Hardest drivers | Best races | Finest title fights | Finest-looking automobiles | Worst-looking automobiles | Greatest cheaters
5 largest what-ifs
For greater than a month now we now have offered our NASCAR 75 top-five best lists, and never surprisingly, they’ve all been met with lots of questions. Significantly lots of “Yeah, however what if … ?” questions.
Ah, what-ifs. There has by no means been a extra confounding query ever requested. What when you hadn’t damaged up with that one particular somebody again in highschool? Or what in the event that they hadn’t dumped you? What when you had taken your pal up on that funding scheme again within the day? What if Tom Cruise had mentioned sure to the position of Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. had by no means gotten the casting name?
It by no means takes a lot to ignite a breathless debate amongst NASCAR followers, however when you actually need to kick-start a mind-bending dialog round a campfire within the Kansas Speedway infield this weekend, casually drop considered one of these subjects on the group. Then do not anticipate to sleep since you’ll be speaking about all of it evening.
So, seize a Ouija board, a rearview mirror and a replica of Hugh Everett’s 1956 “Many Worlds” multiple-timelines thesis and skim forward as we current our prime 5 largest what-ifs in NASCAR historical past.
Honorable point out: What if Invoice France Sr. hadn’t stealthily taken management in 1947?
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In December 1947, almost 40 bootleggers and businessmen gathered on the Streamline Resort in Daytona Seashore, Florida, to debate the consolidation of inventory automobile racing, trying to convey the unruly patchwork of racers and sanctioning our bodies underneath one operational umbrella. In these days, the game was whole chaos scattered throughout the USA with seemingly no likelihood of being simplified.
Enter the person who organized these conferences. Massive Invoice France, who labored the room like a talented lobbyist from his hometown of Washington, D.C., and in the end took cost. Seventy-five years later, his household nonetheless have their palms on the NASCAR steering wheel.
What if he hadn’t been so stealthily easy, although? Would inventory automobile racing nonetheless seem like at present’s brief monitor racing, an entertaining but additionally endlessly scattered alphabet soup of organizational names and funky guidelines nobody however hard-core racers know learn how to comply with? Likelihood is, sure.
For extra on that first assembly and the way Massive Invoice seized management, learn this piece from final winter.
5. What if David Pearson had truly raced for championships?
The Silver Fox ranks second solely to Richard Petty in profession wins (105) and poles (113), and his profession successful share is a shocking 18%. Pearson not often ran full-time schedules, although, selecting as an alternative to deal with the most important races with the most important purses, as did the group with which he did essentially the most injury, the Wooden Brothers.
In consequence, he made solely 574 Cup Sequence begins, nearly precisely half as many as Petty. In reality, the one three seasons he ran a full schedule — 1966, 1968 and 1969 — he received his three championships. So, how gaudy would his stats have been had he chosen to stay to all the calendar? I requested him in 2011, when he was elected within the NASCAR Corridor of Fame’s second class.
“If that phrase ‘gaudy’ means good, then yeah, fairly rattling gaudy.”
4. What if Petty had signed with Hendrick Motorsports?
Talking of The King, all of us bear in mind his 1984 marketing campaign, when he earned his 2 hundredth profession win in dramatic trend over Cale Yarborough on July 4 at Daytona. What folks do not bear in mind is that he spent that season driving for file govt Mike Curb due to monetary troubles at Petty Enterprises. Curb’s scenario wasn’t significantly better, and that win ended up being the ultimate victory for His Royal Fastness.
What most individuals do not know is that Petty was all however inked with brand-new group proprietor Rick Hendrick, a Charlotte automobile supplier who was moving into NASCAR. The deal fell aside on the final minute, and Hendrick signed Geoff Bodine, who wound up successful three races in 1984 and 7 whole with Hendrick.
What if Petty had been in that Chevy as an alternative as Hendrick Motorsports rose to grow to be the group Petty Enterprises had been? What number of wins previous 200 would he have earned?
3. What if Corridor of Fame crew chiefs stayed with their Corridor of Fame drivers?
Compounding Petty’s issues in 1984 was that he was with out the crew chief who had known as the pictures for 188 of his wins and all seven of his championships, cousin and fellow NASCAR Corridor of Famer Dale Inman. Inman left Petty instantly after that they had received their seventh Daytona 500 collectively in 1981 and went on to win races with Dale Earnhardt and Tim Richmond in addition to the 1984 championship with Terry Labonte.
It is a frequent story.
Ray Evernham parted methods with Jeff Gordon after they received three titles in 4 years and 47 races. Gordon received yet one more title in 2001 however by no means returned to his earlier dominance. Kirk Shelmerdine, elected to the Corridor final 12 months, received 4 titles with Earnhardt however abruptly left to pursue a driving profession. Even Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson broke up in 2018 after seven Cups and 83 wins. Johnson by no means received once more and Knaus received as soon as with William Byron earlier than Johnson and Knaus retired from full-time Cup racing in 2020.
2. What if Matt Kenseth hadn’t stomped the Cup discipline in 2003?
Again within the day with the longtime Cup Sequence factors system in place, it was commonplace for drivers to have a good time clinching championships with races nonetheless remaining on the schedule, and mathematically we regularly had recognized they might win means earlier than that. However in 2003, Kenseth not solely basically locked up the title early however did so whereas successful just one race all 12 months, rolling into the season finale having cranked out 25 top-10s with just one DNF.
It was the ultimate straw for NASCAR management, who responded by introducing the Chase format the following season, bolstering factors for wins and carving out the final chunk of the schedule and calling it a postseason.
Regardless of how a lot the Chase/Playoff format has modified through the years, it has remained polarizing for followers and created lots of “what if?” questions on who would have received Cups had the outdated format remained. (Spoiler alert: Gordon could be a lot happier together with his trophy case.)
1. What if Earnhardt had survived?
In a sport the place dying may be the price of doing enterprise, the checklist of what-ifs on the subject of who would have carried out what’s a protracted one.
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Earnhardt Jr. remembers the day of his dad’s deadly crash
Dale Earnhardt Jr. remembers again to what the day his father’s deadly crash was like.
Earnhardt admitted many occasions that had Richmond, Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison been capable of proceed their racing careers, then his file probably would have seemed completely different. Since Feb. 18, 2001, although, when Earnhardt died on the final lap of the Daytona 500, not a day has passed by when those that knew and liked The Intimidator have not puzzled what at present’s NASCAR would seem like if he had been nonetheless round.
Would he have received an eighth championship after his resurgence in 2000 that noticed him end runner-up to Bobby Labonte? Would Dale Earnhardt Inc. now stand alongside Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing as a juggernaut of the game? Would his powers of persuasion over NASCAR brass have prevented strikes just like the Chase and stage racing, or would he have supported these adjustments?
On the flip facet, would we now have the essential security improvements carried out within the years since? Not a single driver has died since Earnhardt did.
I do not know the reply to any of that. I simply know I want he had been nonetheless right here so we may have seen it for ourselves.
For extra on this subject, return to this in-depth sequence in 2021, written on the anniversary of Earnhardt’s dying.