Drivers Meetings

04/30/02

Well, the first race of the new season is in the books and I’ve got a couple of questions. My biggest concern lies in the driver’s meeting. I’ve been going to some of the driver’s meetings all along but maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention.

First off, there are fifty or sixty drivers and crew chiefs crowded around the NASCAR trailer. Now I know for a fact that about a third of them weren’t paying any attention. How do I know? Because I, myself, was paying more attention to them than I was to the speaker. Some were talking, some were daydreaming, some were tugging at their underwear, but at least a third had no idea what was being said. I’ll assume that these were the guys that already know it all and didn’t need any help.

Of the two thirds that were paying attention, half of them couldn’t hear what the speaker was saying. How do I know this? Because they were standing further away than I was and I couldn’t hear a thing that was being said.

So now we have determined that just about one third of the 30 starters for the race have the potential to get the race information being given out, assuming they were awake and not faking (and it’s awful hard to tell when they have sunglasses on). Again, I am going to assume that the other two thirds are smart enough that they have no use for that information.

The ten or so drivers that wanted or decided that they needed the information were quite intent on getting it. I heard a lot of questions being asked. Some made sense to me, some didn’t, some didn’t make much sense to the official that was being asked, and a few, I’m sure, didn’t even make sense to the guy asking the question. At one point I heard the official that was speaking tell a driver that he needed to limit his questions. Now whoa! If I’m going to be on the track with this guy I want him to have all the information available to him. Don’t tell him he can’t ask! If some of the other guys already know the answer to the questions, they can continue to daydream, hitch their underwear, or move to the back where you can’t hear anyway, but, if a driver is asking, let’s assume he needs to know and tell him. In the end, it was a very well handled and informative driver’s meeting. If the Lee USA race was an indication of how the officials will conduct themselves in the 2002 season, we should have a pretty darn good year.

I’ll tell you what is really scary, though, is the fact that some of these guys have been out there running races for years not knowing the answers to some of the questions they asked in that meeting!

As always, send Questions, Comments, Hate Mail, and Indecent Proposals to, Fish c/o Busch North Scene or e-mail them to fishy@cybertours.com