I'd like to qualify my following thoughts on the cheating that's going on in NASCAR by letting you know that I don't know a lot about racing. My interest in the sport is however growing. I'm not one to watch many races in their entirety, but if I have the clicker in my hand and the race is an option, I will generally go to it on a few occasions to check the progress and perhaps catch the ending.
Now with that being said, I don't understand the cheating. Hearing Michael Waltrip say he knew nothing about the problems which caused NASCAR to suspend his crew chief David Hyder is a joke. Hyder became the fifth crew chief to be suspended since Tuesday after NASCAR officials found what's been described as jet fuel in the intake manifold of Waltrip's car.
NASCAR seems to be sincere in efforts to clean up the mess, but this is a sport that is growing by leaps and bounds. Its popularity rivals that of the NFL. I would encourage them to not ruin it. If anybody thinks these crew chiefs are acting on their own without anybody else, including the drivers knowing about it, then I have some land in the Florida Everglades for sale.
Sunday's Daytona 500 is not only NASCAR's opening race, but it's NASCAR's biggest and most popular race. Yet there's been far more discussion about the cheating by five race crews and not the race itself.
If you want to correct the problem, how about suspending the drivers. Tell Michael Waltrip he can't race in the biggest race of them all on Sunday. Same goes for Cambridge, Wisconsin native Matt Kenseth and the other teams that have come under fire. I guarantee you if NASCAR said Dale Earnhardt, Tony Stewart, Jimmy Johnson or one of it's other stars would sit this Sunday's race out, cheating would become far less prevelent and the focus would once again be on the sport, where it belongs.