Daytona

Kenny Roberts at Daytona

I got a chance to see Roberts at Daytona quite a few years ago. The Missus and I celebrated our 10th anniversary by going to Florida and watching the races - quite the romantic, aren't I? On Saturday, the day before the 200, Roberts came out in the last practice session and I got a chance to see him come out of one corner and stand the bike up, shift a couple of times, set it back down just in time for the horseshoe, round the corner and then while still at about a 45 degree angle, stand it up again and ride off back to the garage. Pretty impressive. The bikes that race at the 200 have gone through some changes over the years. No more two-stroke TZ's. The focus shifted from pure racing machines to stock based bikes. Understandable, but not that much different than the bikes that were racing in the Superbike class. 

Most of the fiddling by sanctioning bodies seems to produce identical machines in order to control costs or speeds and to keep one marque from dominating the racing. Occasionally it borders on just plain silliness. Today is the 500 at Daytona, NASCAR's big day. They've been tinkering with things for the last fifteen years or so to the point I no longer watch them race. The last time I was going to watch a race was about ten years ago. I sat down to watch the 500 and after about 45 minutes of BS, which included a Bon Jovi song and the people in the audience participating in a commercial for a razor, I decided the racing had become secondary to the marketing and took the Missus to see the World's Fastest Indian at the cinema. Haven't seen them turn a wheel since. I did read in the paper the other day that next year the cars will once again be identifiable by brand. The Ford's will look like a Ford and the Chevy's will look like a Chevy instead of identical looking jelly beans covered with stickers. 

I understand trying to grow your brand but you should never forget where you came from. The good old boys from down south might not have been politically correct but they produced some great racing. According to Wikipedia, the Daytona 500 was carried live for the first time in 1979. That was the year Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison got together on the last lap with the resulting fight in the pits later. While I'm not advocating fist fighting among the drivers, swapping paint and close racing is what a race fan comes looking for, not pomp and circumstance. I remember watching that race and I watched just about every 500 after that until my boycott started. Maybe I'll give it another try next year when they have cars that look like what you and I drive. It is after all stock car racing.