WORLDWIDE MOTOR RACING COVERAGE, OPINION AND ANALYSIS

NASCAR SERIES TITLE SPONSOR MAY BE SOLD; GM CUTTING WAY BACK IN NASCAR

Like the rest of us, NASCAR has been having all kinds of financial problems. Some large organizations, including well-known huge businesses and some which are not companies but rather are connected to the Pentagon, are leaving their multi-million dollars sponsorships of teams, races and racers as soon as the current deals run out. (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in his National Guard-sponsored Chevy leads the Toyota of ex-open wheel star AJ Allmendinger in a Sprint Cup event).

Now we come to find out that NASCAR's most important sponsor, the title sponsor of the entire series, Sprint Nextel, is apparently not only open to acquiring some partners by selling parts of itself, but might even allow Sprint Nextel to be taken over by a South Korean company. More on that a bit later, but first some background:

Just last week, the US Navy announced they are dropping their multi-million sponsorship of the #88 Chevrolet in the Nationwide Series, driven by Brad Keselowski, after the contract runs out at the end of this season. JR Motorsports is a first-year team in the series, owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Both Earnhardt and Keselowski have worked hard for their Navy money, the military service going so far as to create a "Dale Jr. Division" an 88-person boot camp division at Recruit Training Command.

General Motors announced cutbacks this morning amounting to more than $10 billion, and no motorsport will be immune from cutbacks. GM has already notified two racetracks that run NASCAR events that their current contracts will not be renewed as part of an overall $10 billion cost-cutting program. And no one likes to cut racing from their budget because ... apart from the potential marketing and promotional boosts, it's so much fun! The execs are not sitting in some Detroit office when they're at the track. (Dale Jr., and his mother, Brenda, after one of Junior's wins).

"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" was for decades the non-stop mantra of car-makers and their hotshot marketing departments. But the facts are that motor racing, especially in the US, doesn't have that kind of direct influence on the public anymore.

GM's cuts are just the first in what could be a huge drop in support by GM, Ford and Chrysler for tracks and teams in NASCAR, the NHRA and more in the face of the weakest US auto sales in a decade. Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns eight tracks that hold NASCAR events, already has been told GM will not renew contracts at two tracks — New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Bruton Smith is CEO of Speedway Motorsports, and, like International Speedway Corporation, which was created by the France family, both are public corporations and answer to stockholders above all else. (With tobacco thankfully gone from almost all motorsport sponsorship and advertising in the US and worldwide, NASCAR decided to accept advertising from hard liquor distillers and distributors; a family sport?).

GM has contracts with 12 of the 22 tracks where NASCAR's top Sprint Cup series races and is the title sponsor for the fall race at Richmond International Raceway. GM and the other American car companies will to continue purchasing hospitality, suites and track displays, although perhaps not at the same level. Which probably means more potato chips and pretzels and fewer shrimp cocktails in the hospitality suites of NASCAR (GM prides themselves on always having the largest shrimp at their numerous cocktail receptions). All of the Detroit Three and other companies paying the way for racing in NASCAR and other American series will be forced to make cuts before long if the economic downturn continues. The way things are going with the economy and the value of the dollar versus the Euro, it might be cheaper for Formula One to run their entire series in the US for the foreseeable future.

The Navy says about the newly-formed division: “Everything JR Motorsports does is centered around excellence, teamwork and professional development, and that squarely places them in that number one seat – and that’s where the Navy sits in the defense of our nation." They also have a cool website with a talking Dale Jr., kind of like one of those audio-animatronic characters at Disneyland, and you can visit by clicking anywhere on this line ... And oh, when you visit there, remember: no flash photography, please. At least that's what they always say at Disneyland, just before "Mr. Lincoln" gets up from his chair and speaks ... (Brad Keselowski is driving his Nationwide Series Chevrolet, with big-time US Navy sponsorship, to a possible series title; they're dropping the sponsorship at the end of this season. The Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and US Border Patrol have all been major sponsors in NASCAR over the years. If the US public knew how much the Pentagon and Homeland Security were spending on NASCAR alone, do you think they'd be surprised, or shocked or want to see more of it in the sport?).

A couple of ironies here: Keselowski is a good bet to win the Nationwide Series this year, meaning that Navy is losing a pretty good chance of next season sponsoring the series champion. Also, while JR is losing the Navy, team owner Earnhardt, Jr., driver of the #88 Chevy in Sprint Cup, appears safe for next season with the National Guard ... yes, the National Guard ... as his primary sponsor. These are not coincidences, these are ironies. You should know the difference, especially at your age ... (And yes, that is a Dale Jr., Barbie).

Click below to find out more about NASCAR's financial problems and the possible impending sale of the Sprint Cup series title sponsor to a South Korean company.

Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, Champion Off-Shore Racer, Sportsman, Benihana Founder, Is Dead at 69

Rocky Aoki, who founded the theatrical Benihana chain of over 100 steakhouses worldwide, where Japanese chefs with flashing knives double as performers, died Thursday night, July 10, in Manhattan, NY. He was 69.

The cause was pneumonia, said a spokeswoman for the family.  He was also known to suffer from diabetes and hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion. In 1964, when Aoki opened his first Benihana steakhouse, on West 56th Street in Manhattan, he introduced New Yorkers to dining as theater, and chefs as culinary acrobats. Seated around a flat steel grill, customers watched chefs sharpen their knives, toss them in the air, drizzle the grill with oil, sizzle the chicken, shrimp or steak on the grill, and flip the food onto the plates. Children stared goggle-eyed. Benihana’s style of food is called teppan-yaki. (Aoki was a skilled and championship-winning offshore boat racer, but he was nearly killed more than once in the unforgiving sport; Below, Aoki had his own look and style, clearly comfortable with himself).

Aoki also introduced many Americans to Japanese food. “He was the first one who made it accessible for non-Japanese people to enjoy the Japanese experience,” said Drew Nieporent, whose Myriad Restaurant Group runs a number of restaurants including Tribeca Grill and Nobu. “The key thing was he made it fun,” he said.

Before Benihana opened, most Japanese restaurants in New York were styled only for the Japanese population, Nieporent said. Aoki changed the environment. (Some of the information in this posting is from the NY Times' obituary on Aoki, and let's face it, isn't that where we all want our obits to be, too?).

Living in New York with my family at that time, I can remember going to a Chinese restaurant somewhere   in Brooklyn which was known to us kids by the name, "Avenue M," though that almost definitely wasn't the place's real name. But to our family it was the height of Asian cookery, though we didn't call it Asian, we called it Oriental or used some slang term. The thought of going to a Japanese restaurant never entered any of our minds; we certainly didn't know anything about what Japanese people ate, and don't think we'd ever even seen a Japanese restaurant, and this in the world's most cosmopolitan city. If it were Chinese, though, or of course, Italian, there were always Chinatown and Little Italy, right next to each other, on Manhattan Island, and those areas are there to this day, more than 40 years later.

But when we moved to Southern California in 1969, I was exposed for the first time in my life to Japanese people, in my school and working at local businesses. Being brave (at least I thought so) I even visited a few of the Japanese restaurants in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, and liked some of what I ate, and as time went on I learned what Japanese foods I enjoyed and which I didn't. During this period, while the Vietnam War was still on, with Orange County serving as home to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base and the Marine base called LTA, because it had housed submarine-hunting dirigibles before WW II and the letters stood for Lighter Than Air (with the two largest wood buildings in the Northern Hemisphere serving as the blimps' houses; buildings so large they had their own weather!).

BERNARD CAHIER, PREMIER F1 JOURNALIST, 81

Formula One photojournalist Bernard Cahier, who began photographing Formula 1 in 1952 and was instrumental in founding the International Racing Press Association (IRPA) in 1968, has died in France at the age of 81.

Cahier was perhaps the witness to the "Golden Age" of Grand Prix racing who began his life work in 1952, using a Leica, and later Pentax, to bring us a unique and intimate description of the world of his closest friends: Juán Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Jim Clark, Phil Hill and Dan Gurney, Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi, and so many more heroes who raced when motor racing was too often deadly yet always exciting, sexy and flush with international characters and money ... always the big money.

Cahier began his career in Grand Prix racing in 1952 and was a leading figure in F1 until the early 1980s. His photographs, and those of his son Paul-Henri, also an F1 photographer of note, have chronicled the sport’s history. (One of the last of the true "LeMans starts," which had drivers run across the track to their cars, get in and belted, then take to the course; Photo by Cahier).

He was born in Marseilles, France, in 1927 and caught the racing bug early after attending the Marseilles Grand Prix at Miramas in 1932. He was 12 when World War II broke out, and at 17 he joined the resistance in Brittany. After the war he went to UCLA and became involved in the Southern California sports-car scene.

Cahier worked at Roger Barlow’s International Motors, the largest import-car dealership in Los Angeles at the time. One of his fellow salesmen was a young man from nearby Santa Monica named Phil Hill, and the store's chief mechanic was Ritchie Ginther. For non-racers, Hill became the first American Formula One World Driving Champion in 1961 and is still a force on the world's racing scene at age 81. Ginther was the US driver who piloted Honda to their first victory in the F1 in the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix. Ginther died at 59 in France in 1989. (Ginther's racing life was chronicled to some degree in the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie Grand Prix, with James Garner playing the Ginther character and Toshiro Mifune appearing as "Izo Yamura," modeled on Soichiro Honda, founder of the eponymous company; Ginther himself appeared in an uncredited role in the movie as "John Hogarth," a driver in the Japanese-funded Yamura (Honda) team. He was also acted a technical advisor for the movie).

(The infamous Mercedes "Silver Arrows" at the 1954 French Grand Prix; Photo by Cahier).

In the days before motor homes, when reporters were on a more equal level with the drivers, Cahier was one of the best-known people in the paddock, a true 'international jet-setting racing celebrity' before there were jets. One motor journalist from that time wrote, "I was at the hairpin in Sebring in 1957 and Bernard was nearby. Stirling Moss slowed and Cahier handed him a bottle of Coke. The next time around, Moss threw out the empty bottle and Bernard retrieved it and put it in a safe spot. Those were the days."

Cahier handled European PR for Goodyear when they entered road racing and his party each year during the Monte Carlo GP weekend was the social highlight of the season. For a time, he was President of the International Racing Press Association. Cahier produced a two-volume book containing many of his classic photographic images of the period, writing his own behind-the-scenes stories and photo captions. In 1952 he moved to Paris and quickly became part of F1’s inner circle. He then became the public relations consultant for Goodyear in F1. He continued to play a role in F1 until 1983, when a change in Goodyear management meant the end of his job. He stepped away from the sport, leaving the work to his son, Paul-Henri, who is one of today's leading Grand Prix photographers.

The voluminous, amazing "Cahier Archive" can be found by clicking here. It is a "must stop" for racing fans who appreciate the Web for all it offers, and for non-fans interested in the history of the sport which Cahier documented in its modern era. All of Cahier's photos and books are available there. (Phil Hill muscles his Ferrari through a corner in the 1961 Dutch Grand Prix, on his way to the World Driving Championship that year, the first by an American; Photo by Cahier).

PLANES CRASH; MORE LOSS FOR KALITTA FAMILY, AND CALLS FOR FAA ACTION

(Doug Kalitta, cousin of Scott Kalitta, takes-on the traditional 1/4-mile-long race course in a Top Fuel NHRA race car, an 8,000-horsepower monster which can cover the 1,320 foot track at over 320 miles per hour and in less than 4.5 seconds).

Incredibly, bad news keeps coming for the Kalitta family. Drag racer Scott Kalitta died on June 22, killed when his Funny Car exploded and crashed into a retaining wall at an estimated speed of over 200-miles-per-hour during the National Hot Rod Association's annual event at Englishtown, New Jersey's Raceway Park. Almost a month before his death, one of the B747 freighters owned by his father's charter company, Kalitta Air, broke into pieces on a taxiway in Belgium. Now the news is worse for Kalitta Air, with another B747 crashing this past weekend in Colombia, killing two people on the ground. And another huge jet freighter, not one of Kalitta's, crashed in Mexico this past weekend, also, but all three planes have something in common, something which might lead to answers for all of these air accidents.

Three different airplanes owned by two different private companies. Two crash, one in Colombia, another in Mexico, and one falls apart, literally, on a European airport taxiway, all in the span of less than two months. These are huge jet freighters, B747s and a DC-9-15 which regularly fly the globe, carrying everything from flowers to car parts to soldiers, weaponry and secret diplomatic materiel and, possibly, more dangerous items, such as radioactive waste. In fact, the US announced just this past week that the moving of 550 metric tons of radioactive, enhanced yellow cake uranium from Iraq to Canada has been completed --- and on one leg of that trip, aircraft were used to fly this sinister payload, though officials say military, not privately-owned, planes were used. (Scott Kalitta in his Funny Car; these cars are often both faster and quicker than their Top Fuel relations).

Here's what all three privately-owned freighters had in common: They were all based at an  industrial airport just outside Detroit called Willow Run Airport. Located between Ypsilanti and Belleville, Michigan, the Willow Run Plant was built during World War II by Ford Motor Company for production of B-24 Liberator aircraft. The site of the plant was a farm owned by Henry Ford. Ford, like virtually all of the United States' industrial companies, directed its manufacturing output during World War II for Allied war production. The firm developed the Willow Run site to include an airfield and aircraft assembly facility. At its peak, in August 1944, Willow Run produced 428 B-24 aircraft, or almost 14 planes for each calendar day.

The airfield continues to operate as Willow Run Airport to this day. After the war, ownership of the assembly plant passed to Kaiser Motors and then to General Motors, which still owns and operates part of the facility. The airfield is primarily used by cargo, charter, private and corporate general aviation aircraft. When the government "gave" the plant to Henry Kaiser following WW II, he assumed ownership for a king's ransom price of $1.00. The area around the airport is dotted with car- and parts-making operations and other heavy equipment manufacturers, both in the US and nearby Canada (which is, interestingly, actually south of Detroit).

We think the Federal Aviation Administration has some very serious questions to ask about the maintenance facilities and the people working at them at Willow Run.

On June 22nd, the NHRA's Kalitta family suffered tragedy of the worst kind with the death of second-generation drag racer Scott Kalitta, The Kalitta family patriarch, Connie, was one of the sport's first champions who worked hard to help popularize professional drag racing nationally and worldwide. (One of Kalitta Air's 18 B747 freighters lies in pieces after breaking apart while awaiting take-off at a Brussels, Belgium Airport on May 25, 2008).

But there have been two other tragedies which befell the Kalitta family and others, just before and after Scott's death. And they involve sadly, unfortunate deaths.

The family business, Kalitta Air, is a Michigan Limited Liability Company owned 100% by Conrad "Connie" Kalitta. Kalitta Air began service in November 2000 with three Boeing 747 aircraft and the fleet has grown to a present total of eighteen B747 freighters. Capable of air express delivery of virtually any type of freight, the company provides scheduled or on-demand charter service for customers in the United States and around the world.

Click below for more on these events and what some think might possibly be a cause.

NHRA SHORTENS RACES TO 1,000' --- IS THE 1/4-MILE GONE?

Following the death of two Funny Car drivers and the near-crippling of the sport's most-popular figure in just over a one-year period, the National Hot Rod Association has determined that shortening the traditional length of drag racing's 1/4-mile track is one answer to these troubling problems.

Is racing made safer by making the race track shorter?

If most of the serious crashes in the Indy 500 are found, after study, to occur in the final 10% of the race, or the last 50 miles, does that mean running the Indy 450 every Memorial Day weekend would result in fewer serious, injurious and even deadly wrecks? Or maybe changing the length of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the world's first-ever purpose-built auto racing track, from 2.5 to, say, 1.5-miles would make for safer events and a better show for the fans. (Scott Kalitta's Funny Car leaves the line for a 1/4-mile drag race; Below, Scott's cousin Doug Kalitta in his Top Fuel racer).

These are just some of the questions, both serious and foolish, which the National Hot Rod Association, NHRA, is going to have to publicly answer as they have, in one fell swoop, changed the sport in a way some thought improbable, if not impossible.

Between March, 2007 and today, NHRA saw an over $120 million purchase offer for much of the organization fall through at the last minute, a driver on John Force's Funny Car race team, Eric Medlen, was killed in a testing session and Force himself, drag racing's best-known and most popular driver, was nearly killed in a racing wreck which has left him with injuries he'll carry through his lifetime. And Scott Kalitta, a member of one of the founding families of the sport, died in yet another Funny Car accident. The popular sport now finds itself in a bind: NASCAR, following the death on live television of its most important driver, Dale Earnhardt, in a crash during the 2001 Daytona 500, went on a crusade to develop safer cars and equipment for its drivers, so, must NHRA go a similar route?

In the wake of the death of long-time NHRA star racer Scott Kalitta at Englishtown, New Jersey on June 22, NHRA has made a surprising decision which on one hand seems reasonable enough, but on the other --- is going to stir-up strong emotions on every side of the issue. And there are at least two sides to every issue in auto racing.

The 57-year old sanctioning body has unilaterally decided to shorten the races in the sport's two fastest professional classes, Top Fuel and Funny Car, from the traditional 1/4-mile, or 1,320', to 1,000' even. The reasoning can be found below in NHRA's official notification and statement on this change, what most fans, racers and observers would probably call the single biggest change in the history of professional drag racing. (Ashley Force's Funny Car seen from above; Below, Angie McBride pilots a Pro Stock motorcycle).

Only those two classes of NHRA race cars use nitromethane and other toxic, highly-explosive chemicals as fuel, producing incredible speed from the cars and an in-person experience as visceral as, some say, being on-scene for the 1960s-era Saturn 5 rocket launch of an Apollo moon rocket. Top Fuel cars are known to some as rail dragsters; a long, low body with small bicycle-like tires up front, the driver to the rear and the massive engine behind. Funny Cars are basically the same as Top Fuel racers, but with fiberglass and carbon fiber bodies on top of them to give something of an appearance of a road-going car. NHRA's fans love the Top Fuel cars; NHRA sponsors love the Funny Cars (because they have more space for their corporate logos and names).

Their engines make somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 horsepower, and that's only an estimate because there's no way of measuring such high horsepower figures from a V8 engine, no engine or chassis dynomometer built for the job. Seeing an NHRA event in person is something not easily forgotten; the chemicals used in the fuels sting the eyes, nose and throat and the engines, when fired, suck the breath right out of your lungs. A visit to the races creates either a lifelong fan or a person feeling as if they're witnessing the end of the world. And Top Fuel and Funny Car races are over barely 5 seconds after they've begun with the cars now regularly hitting speeds over 300 miles per hour.

Will changing the length of the races, in reality adding another 320' to the run-off, or slow down, area  allowed the cars in both lanes, solve whatever NHRA perceives to be the "problem?" With the investigation into the Kalitta crash and his death still near its beginning, with very few hard facts known and at least two organizations, the NHRA itself and the New Jersey State Police conducting their own inquiries, why make drastic changes to the sport before the facts are in hand? But, on the other hand, if those in the NHRA hierarchy have considered tracks with too-short run-off areas as being a systemic problem throughout the sport, why have they waited until the death of a favorite driver to make the change?

For the NHRA's statement on the topic and other opinions on these sudden and surprising changes to the sport, click below.

HOW NHRA's $120-MILLION SALE FELL THROUGH

In mid-2007, things were looking up for the National Hot Rod Association, the NHRA, for over 50 years the nation's premier promoter and sanctioning body for amateur and professional drag racing. HD Acquisition Partners seemed a money-flush suitor, and described themselves thusly on their website: "HD Partners Acquisition Corporation is a special purpose acquisition company formed in 2005 for the purpose of effecting merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition or other similar business combination, with one or more domestic or international operating businesses, in the media, entertainment or telecommunications industries." HD Partners Chairman Eddy Hartenstein, founder of DirecTV, led the charge on buying NHRA. (Angie McBride leaves the line on a Pro Stock Motorcycle, below, Ashley Force is a top Funny Car driver; NHRA has always welcomed women in the sport as fans, team members, owners, sponsors and racers, well-ahead of all other motorsports in the US).

And this group was offering around $120 million for the NHRA, lock, stock and Wally Trophies. Though there was a lot of snickering by long-time NHRA followers and some of the sport's more savvy businesspeople, feeling that HD was getting away with buying NHRA for much less than it was worth, as things worked out, everyone, in a sense, became a loser.

In January, 2008, months after HD's purchase of NHRA had been trumpeted worldwide while fans and participants hoped for the best, HD Partners decided against the deal, and in fact, in April of this year, HD Acquisition Partners was itself dissolved, liquidated, they were, as Mel Brooks might have said, ka-put.

Bruton Smith, a wealthy and successful drag racing strip and NASCAR track owner and promoter, might be waiting in the wings to make a new attempt to take over NHRA.

The episode left NHRA and its top officers looking foolish, to say the least, with the final drama happening just days before the running of NHRA's annual season-opener, the Winternationals, at Pomona, CA. Quietly, though, many of the sports' biggest promoters and sponsors and racers were happy with the outcome, glad with NHRA continuing as the sport's biggest sanctioning body. And all involved knew that if another buyer was to be found, $120 million would be the minimum, the starting bid, as it were.

Here's how Jim Peltz in the LOS ANGELES TIMES wrote about it in February of this year:

“I felt like someone punched me in the stomach,” NHRA driver Ron Capps said shortly after shareholders  of HD Partners Acquisition Corp. rejected the deal. HD Partners executives did not comment on the failed deal. The Santa Monica company would have paid $121 million for NHRA’s Glendora headquarters building, four race tracks and its Powerade Drag Racing Series. NHRA planned to use the money to finance its popular amateur racing program, and HD Partners hoped to run the Powerade series as a for-profit business.

Some drag racing industry insiders believe that the deal fell apart because of the troubled financial markets. Others suspect that savvy investors were leery of investing in a lesser-known racing circuit that lagged far behind the popular NASCAR series.

“I think the real bean counters on Wall Street looked at [HD Partners] and said, ‘What are you thinking?’ ” said Jeff Burk, publisher of DragRacingOnline.com. “I think they started to wonder, ‘Where’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?’ ”

Longtime drivers and team owners were stunned last May (2007) when NHRA announced plans to sell most of its assets, including its pro racing circuit. “In years past, the NHRA said that selling anything was pretty much a closed issue,” said longtime racer and team owner Don Prudhomme. “Then, lo and behold, someone figured out how to sell it.” (End of TIMES story excerpt). (NHRA's top personality, John Force, drives a classic Mustang while Carroll Shelby waves at a Ford Motor Company event; Force has suffered through the death of a team member and his own near-death crash in the past year, and he now says he is committed to leaving a legacy of safety in the sport).

Another factor which might have affected how the NHRA looked to HD was the non-profit status of NHRA. Formed in 1951 as a group dedicated to traffic safety, taking drag racing hot rods off the streets of America and putting it on professionally-run race tracks, the group has remained a non-profit to this day. This status affected how NHRA could handle their own money made from TV rights and other ventures.

When I interviewed several Top Fuel an Funny Car drivers in the 1990s for a British TV show, all of them said that NHRA had, for lack of a better term, put its claws into each of them, trying to control every aspect of the products each driver could sell at their own souvenir trailers at the races or by mail or internet sales. One of them told me that NHRA "allowed" the drivers to "keep" just 10% of monies they made selling items with their own image or name on them, giving 90% to NHRA. "And we signed those contracts if we wanted to race," she said. (Wally Parks, in suit on right, and his wife Barbara, seated, talk to young racing fans about the NHRA at a Los Angeles event in the 1950s).

Many teams and drivers feel that the non-profit status might have made sense when NHRA began, but as  time has gone on, more and more of the organization should have been made a for-profit business. This way, even while its non-profit status could have been sustained, but relegated to a separate foundation, such as the NHRA Museum in Pomona, CA, and other appropriate uses, it would free-up other cash for needed track repairs and other high-cost maintenance jobs. Such a plan might have been able to achieve everything NHRA was trying to do, remaining a sort-of home-town safety-oriented group, but allowing whatever growth the market would bear as far as its four best-known and professional classes (Pro Stock Motorcycle, Pro Stock, Funny Car and Top Fuel).

In the meantime, though, while some in the NHRA's executive suites might be looking out their Glendora, CA, office windows, looking for Bruton Smith bringing baskets of cash down the smoggy 210 Freeway to lay at their feet, unfortunately NHRA has been going through one of the most tumultuous periods in its 57-year existence, none of it doing with the HD acquisition. With founder Wally Parks having passed away in September, 2007 at age 94 and many of its early personalities long gone from the scene, a fourth generation of well-financed teams and racers are taking the sport into the 21st century, having to deal with serious questions of safety which need to be handled realistically, professionally and transparently.

The fans, racers and sponsors demand and, more importantly, deserve, no less than that.