NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Whole Lotta Hatin’ Goin’ On
Jeff Burton blames close competition for on-track tensions...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted June 11, 2010   Brooklyn. MI
Jeff Burton is in 6th place in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points standings. (Photo: Getty Images)
Brad Keselowski vs. Carl Edwards.

Jimmie Johnson vs. Jeff Gordon.

Denny Hamlin vs. Kyle Busch.

Busch vs. Jeff Burton.

Joey Logano vs. Kevin Harvick.

How matter how you slice it, that’s a whole lot of boys having at it.

If you’re a big fan of hating, this year has been solid gold in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, with more plots, subplots, accusations, confrontations, finger pointing and verbal slapping than a month of soap operas.

It seems as if every week in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage, there’s another dust-up either during a race, afterwards or both. Part of it might be NASCAR’s stated goal of letting the drivers show more personality after years of being progressively more neutered. But those in the middle of the fray say there are a lot of factors involved in the new era of aggression.

“I think part of it is we race more,” said Jeff Burton, known in the Sprint Cup garage as “The Mayor” for his ability to articulate complex issues. “It sounds silly, but the difference between racing 32 races and 38 races — you wouldn’t think is a lot, but it really is. You almost have to get over things more.”

Mark Martin, at age 51 the oldest full-time driver on the circuit, said he things that NASCAR’s adoption of double-file restarts, along with the wave-around rule, has led drivers to be much more aggressive, especially in the closing laps of races.

“This movement has been gaining momentum but when, through race cars getting more and more equal in speed and the field getting more and more equal in speed, more numbers of cars, same speed, more cars on the lead lap, now with that wave-around rule that really increases,” said Martin. “And the double-file restart on top of that really magnifies it. So track position becomes ever more important and you can steal those spots by making a wild and crazy move that works inside the last 10 laps, you're going to see more of it. That's the future of our racing; that's where it's headed.”

Another crucial factor — back when Martin broke in the early 1980s, top teams almost never hired young drivers for fear that they’d tear up too much equipment. But ever since Rick Hendrick hired Jeff Gordon in late 1992, team owners have been much more likely to take a chance on a young driver.

“Twenty-five years ago you needed not to wreck a car because if you wrecked very many, you would get fired,” said Martin, who is in his second season with Hendrick Motorsports. “Now, it's different. So you had to drive a certain way and adapt to those circumstances 25 years ago or five years ago or today.”

Edwards, who famously had the dust-up with Keselowski and once cocked his fist to teammate Matt Kenseth, said settling spats are much more complicated at the Sprint Cup level than the were when he was racing short tracks in the Midwest.

“I grew up in Columbia, Missouri. If you had an issue with somebody, you go and take care of it,” said Edwards. “You can’t let it be because it won’t fix itself. What is different now is that you are on television and everybody has an opinion and it gets twisted around. That is one dimension of it.”

Edwards also blamed the personalities of certain drivers.
Mark Martin sees NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing changing. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

“The second part is that some of the participants understand that very well and manipulate it,” said Edwards. “They don’t act like normal people and use you guys (the media) to make whatever reality they want to be. It becomes very difficult as a driver to decide what to do. You think it would be great if you could pull a guy aside and work things out. If you can’t work it out then whatever, but you can’t do that now. It is like this big mess now.”

Burton said the depth of competition is a huge factor as well.

“There are more people that you to pay attention to,” said Burton, who enters Sunday’s Heluva Good 400 at Michigan International Speedway eighth in points. “You’re racing Kyle Busch this week, and you’ve got something going on, well next week you’ve got Jimmie Johnson and the next week you’ve got, you know, Kevin Harvick you’ve got to race. The competition is so high.”

So is all the hating a good thing? Maybe for the fans, but for the racers maybe not so much.

“The racing is changing,” said Martin, long regarded as one of the gentlemen of the sport. “Years ago it didn't used to be that way. But it is this way today. ... And in some ways I'm glad I'm 51 and not 31 because I'm going to enjoy watching these things in the future instead of dragging them in on the hook.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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