by richard teague tinynascars@yahoo.com
Is Kasey Back? Freddy Is! Now that’s a good question and I think that the answer is yes! Why, you ask? Well, for the only reason I can think of, Ray Evernham is back doing what he does best, working with his teams in the shop and at the track. I mentioned a few weeks back how Mayfield left (got fired or whatever) Evernham Motorsports because he was saying that Ray wasn’t around much. Rumors had it that he was too busy… Let me phrase this carefully here: personally overseeing his newest young driver. Arrows flew and words were exchanged between Jeremy and Ray, then the next thing we know, Mayfield is looking for work. After all this, Ray would spend time in court with Jeremy and his wife then more time in court with his own estranged wife.
All these clouds of rain inside the shops at EMS caused problems with Kasey, the young innocent type guy he is, and put him out in right field with no leadership. Three great Cup seasons under his belt this year has been terrible for Kahne, until Ray finally admitted to the world he and Crocker where involved. I can’t dream how things where in the shops at EMS. It must have been like quicksand for the people there. They couldn’t say nothing about what they knew or thought was happening because of the Mayfield affair and the Crocker affair. There is no wonder that all the teams suffered from this soap opera crap, which, by the way, doesn’t belong in NASCAR, even if racing is headed toward that kind of stuff.
This wasn’t the only thing that was keeping Evernham out of the day-to-day preparations for races. Now Ray Evernham was a crew chief for Jeff Gordon and when they split he got Dodge’s blessings to open up a multi-car team, not as a chief, but big time owner. Ray ain’t the owner kind of guy. He finally said so early this season and he went looking for a partner. He has certainly found the right guy in George Gillett Jr. (that’s all we need is another Jr. in NASCAR) and it seems like a marriage made in on the infield. With Gillett taking over the front office and majority ownership of the newly named Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Ray has gotten back to basics. “This will allow me to focus on our racing operations and team performance, while the Gillett family will focus on our business operations.” says Evernham.
It appears that all the BS is moving out of the way for EMS, and especially for Kasey with his showing at Bristol this weekend. He starts at 23rd in the Busch Series race and finishes first, then, on Saturday night, he’s got the pole leads and the most laps but he comes in second. With only two top-tens this season in Cup and now a top-five, it would seem that Kasey Is Back and so is Ray.
Dumb, stupid, ignorant, greedy, goofy and a host of other words could be used to describe (you guessed it) Michael Waltrip. You know the real words that are needed to be used here is WHY! Why did Waltrip race Kahne so hard when he was trying to pass? Why didn’t Waltrip let the leader go by as is customary in racing when you’re a lap down (in his case two laps)?
Let me move on to other things here. The AT&T vs. NASCAR vs. RCR vs. Sprint lawsuit. Yeah, I know Richard really ain’t got any say in the matter, but him and RCR (along with us fans) surely will be the losers if Brian France wins this bout. RCR and Jeff Burton will lose their sponsor if AT&T cannot have the logo on the #31 car just because NASCAR (and we know who that is don’t we?) won’t let them. Poor Richard (not the almanac) sounds like a poster boy for Save The World when he said, “There’s room for all of us.” and “To find a way where all of us can survive in this world would be good for RCR, good for the sport.” You know NASCAR made the deal with Nextel and then Sprint bought them up, so next season it’s going to be the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series soooooo why can’t AT&T be on the car?
Here’s a little background on Mr. Wagenhals. Fred joined a super nice guy by the name of Stan Gill a few years after Stan had started Racing Collectors Club of America. Things went well and business was good. Collectors were happy because the diecast cars were being made in small numbers and just two scales, 1/64th and 1/24th with all the top and not-so-top drivers that Stan had signed to RCCA. As in all good things, they do change, and RCCA wasn’t left out.
Most of the time the changes helped all involved, but this time only Freddy got the good end of the deal. The way I heard it was that Gill was left by the roadside (or rather sh*t out of the company) and Freddy took control. According to the news release issued by the Motorsports Authentics (their new name) the other day, which is now owned by Bruton Smith and Brian France, Freddy was the founder of Action Racing Collectables. I won’t dispute this, but it really seems to me that Stan came up with the name. But since he’s out of the picture what’s he going to do? What has happened is that the name Brian and Bruton came up with (Motorsports Authentics) ain’t working, so they bring Freddy back so they can use the ARC brand instead. Funny thing is that when they bought Freddy out a couple of years ago, I heard he was still on the payroll and never left.
So now MA has the RCCA brand. They didn’t give up and they are bringing back the ACR brand to bring back diecast collectors when all they have to do is stop making so much stuff and lower the prices instead of raising the cost of those little pieces of metal. Even with a lock on the market, it looks like the company ain’t working. So, like I said, here Comes Freddy “Krueger” Wagenhals and it ain’t a pretty sight for the real NASCAR collector!! By the way, Stanley is still around these days and just as good a guy as ever. He’s still making them little pieces of diecast metal, but they’re now boats and planes with just a few cars. You can catch him at his website – diecast-badass.com. Hey Stan, you want to go drag racing at Thunder Bolt?
Well that’s me for this week but if’n you need to get me I’ll be at tinynascars@yahoo.com and like always, If it ain’t NASCAR, It ain’t s**t!
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