New Feature: "Bench Racing" with NASCAR Mechanic Patrick Reynolds

Bump Drafts is pleased to announce that mechanic Patrick Reynolds, who worked most recently in the garage for Mike Wallace’s #7 Nationwide Series team will be contributing a weekly feature we’ll call “Bench Racing.”

The following is Reynolds’ first piece. I’m always looking for something a little different and I am coming to appreciate Patrick’s authenticity and that unique inside view into racing that few of us will ever know.

Reynolds will cover a variety of topics, covering everything from car technology from his own observations from the “been there, done that” perspective.

Without further delay, Patrick Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen:

NASCAR IDENTIFICATION AND A LITTLE HISTORY

Who is your favorite NASCAR driver? Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Jeff Gordon? Jimmie Johnson? All very popular answers to that question. Maybe your answer isn’t one of the usual suspects for a top ten finish every week. What about a Robbie Gordon or a Paul Menard? Also good responses to the question, both of whom have their own fan bases. How about Todd Owen or Brad Soll?

Now some of you may be wondering who those last two are. Others may be thinking “Right on. Good for the little guy.” Owens hails from Somers, CT and finished eighth in SK Modified points at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway. Soll, from Arlington, NE, tallied a tenth place standings finish at Greenwood Nebraska’s I-80 Speedway late model division. Each one of them is somebody’s favorite NASCAR driver.

But in the expansion of auto racing coverage we have gotten away from the accurate meaning of the word NASCAR and inserted it for the name of the country’s biggest stock car series currently under the Sprint Cup title. And as bright as the spotlight shines on names like Burton or Edwards, drivers like Owens and Soll and thousands of others, share a little less of that same light.

The words Sprint Cup and NASCAR can be exchanged sometimes, but all too often appear in incorrect context and have shaped a lot of newer fans views of the sport’s structure, sometimes inaccurately. It evolved over a period of time and left some current grassroots NASCAR competitors missing some attention they may have had years ago. Let me explain.

As a young child in the late 70’s- I remember the term “Grand National” being more recognized than the acronym NASCAR. It meant Petty, Pearson, Baker, and the Allisons. The country’s top stock car drivers competed there. But I was asked on more than one occasion by school friends who didn’t follow auto racing, which was about all of them, “what does NASCAR mean again?” Anyone wondering? National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

The 80’s and 90’s showed tremendous growth for the then called Winston Cup Series. Go back slightly further to 1979 and that was the first Series event to be shown live flag to flag on network TV. The 80’s brought the birth of ESPN and some grand timing. The new cable channel needed some programming to fill the new 24 hour a day sports format and NASCAR was wanting to get it’s top division more television airtime. Races televised grew in number and the sport went from 1979, with the first complete live event, to 1989, the first year every race on the Cup schedule was on. In a decade, race fan’s Sunday morning questions went from “Is the race on?” to “What channel is the race on?” At that time tracks negotiated broadcast rights for their individual races. So the entire Cup season was spread over many different networks from one race to the next.

At the conclusion of the 1985 season, smack dab in the middle of all the 80’s growth, NASCAR decided on a renaming of the top two series it sanctioned. The Grand National division that competed for the Winston Cup Championship was now just called the Winston Cup Series. And the original Budweiser Late Model Sportsman division was now the Busch Grand National Series, adopting the former title held by the top tour. By creating a name of a car based on a sponsor, NASCAR was trying to get maximum exposure for their backers. Here is where some confusion began.

Some media outlets had a policy to leave out sponsors of any sport they reported on, not just auto racing. Whenever a sponsor name was mentioned in a quote, it was deleted in the news story. The question posed now was how to cover the newly named Winston Cup Series without naming sponsor Winston. The answer for some major media outlets as the 1986 season began was: NASCAR stock cars.

True? Yes. Entirely accurate? Not exactly. The Winston Cup Series machines are NASCAR stock cars. Just not the only ones. Accompanied by the growing exposure it was now receiving, the weekly Winston Cup Series race was often referred to as the NASCAR race. As the sport acquired new fans during this period, they relied on fellow fans, newspapers, magazines, and television reports to educated them. But even some media staff were new, and some knowledgeable fans had only been following the sport a few years.

Racing has evolved to what is presented today with NASCAR often being inserted in a sentence when someone means Sprint Cup. Examples frequently heard: “How many races are in the NASCAR schedule?” or “Where is NASCAR racing this weekend?” There is no “the” NASCAR schedule. There are many schedules ranging from the three national touring series, to the six regional touring series, to the eighty six home tracks that NASCAR sanctions races at in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. So to answer the latter query, NASCAR is racing all over this weekend.

Even since the new TV broadcast format started in 2001, networks have heavily marketed programming under NASCAR’S banner. Totally NASCAR, NASCAR This Morning, and Inside NASCAR to name a few shows. NASCAR Raceday is a current one showing on SPEED Network during the season. But do they really live up to their titles? If a show is called Totally NASCAR, how in depth did it cover last week’s modified feature at Grandview Speedway in Pennsylvania? Or the sportsman feature at Rockford Speedway in Illinois? In reality we watch shows that should be called Sprint Cup Raceday.

A few years ago here in the Charlotte area, a local morning news host was describing the upcoming October race weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. She said it was a big sports weekend “with the NASCAR race on Saturday night and the Busch race on Friday night.” Both are NASCAR races, and some newer fans getting information from this program could be misinformed about how the sport is accurately tiered.

NASCAR is big, which is a good thing, but there are thousands of teams and competitors that deserve a little bit more of that big spotlight that shines on the sanctioning body. A driver at a local short track is every bit a NASCAR racer as a Sprint Cup superstar.

Who is my favorite NASCAR driver? Todd Szegedy of Ridgefield, CT. He competes on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and is an old friend of mine. The cars he drove were my last to work on in Connecticut before moving to North Carolina. Thanks for asking.

CREDITS: (NASCAR garage photo by Steve and Suzy. Todd Sezegedy in Turn One at NHIS photo by sdowen. More of their photography can be found at flickr.com.)

Patrick Reynolds most recently worked as a mechanic for Germain Racin with the Nationwide Series team for Mike Wallace, driver of the #7 Geico Toyota. Reynolds also contributes for Race Talk Radio.com, and Spin Out Zone.com.