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PETTY: Tradin’ Paint at Phoenix with Tom Jensen
Written by:
Kyle Petty
04/14/2008 - 07:01 AM
Avondale, Arizona
The Phoenix sun sets over the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway on April 12, 2008 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) ยป More Photos
Kyle Petty and host John Roberts along with special guest Tom Jensen from SPEEDtv.com at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale, Arizona.
John Roberts "The heat is on in Phoenix for race number 8 of the Sprint Cup season and we're ready to trade some paint in the desert under beautiful sunny skies, a hotter than normal weekend, tradin'paint, the show on speed where opinions count, we may disagree but will always part friends to. I am John Roberts and thank you for joining us for this desert edition of Tradin' Paint. As normal my left, Kyle petty driver in the number 45 dodge."
Kyle Petty "Thanks for having again me today."
John Roberts "Good to see you Mr. Petty, and with us our special guest today, Tom Jensen from SPEEDtv.com. Tom, how are you doing?"
Tom Jensen "Great, glad to be here."
John Roberts "We are going to jump right into this here because allegations of drug use is one thing but when a driver comes out and admits that he used heroin on a race day, that is a whole different subject, and that is exactly what happened last week as Aaron Fake of the NASCAR craftsman truck series said he used the drug before a race. Tom, we'll start with you, is that a tell tale sign that mass car needs a broader drug policy? Because there is one somewhat already in place isn't there?"
Tom Jensen "NASCAR is like the population at large, there are substance abusers I'm sure in the garage just like there are in society as a whole. I do think they need a tougher drug policy but the question is how do you administer it? Do you leave it up to the teams, and the teams have to certify the people. The drivers have called for it and if I was a driver, which I am not, and perhaps Kyle can speak to this, I would be worried more about mechanics more than I would drivers. You don't want a guy with substance abuse working on your car and worrying about it so I think this has to get looked at and taken very seriously."
John Roberts"Kyle, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne among others have, hey I have never been tested in my whole time here in NASCAR, what is your opinions on this subject?"
Kyle Petty "Why would you test them? Have you seen any bizarre behavior from them? Have they ever done anything out of the ordinary, have they ever given you any reason to drug-test Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick Kasey Kahne, any of those guys,? The answer to that is no. They haven't. Aaron Fike, I’m sorry, I hate that you get to the point where you are an addict and have deteriorated and fallen into the black vortex of a hole where things don't seem right and do you use heroine on Raceday. I can see how you would fall that far. What troubles me is, now he is sober and he comes out and says it. You have to be stupid to admit it after the fact and then say well, NASCAR should have tested more, and I should have been tested. It is not NASCAR's fault and I don't believe that. We have a solid-enough program in the garage area that we police ourselves. There have been guys thrown out of the garage area in the past for odd behavior and stuff like that, their own teams and other people turned in so, no, I don't think we need more testing."
Tom Jensen "But they test athletes in other sports."
Kyle Petty "I don't care; this is not going in for a lay-up. This is not dragging your butt at of a bar at midnight; this is life and death out there. if I thought there was another driver who was abusing a substance that was sitting there on a Saturday night drunk on his butt alcohol-wise, let's just use alcohol for an example, I would go to NASCAR and say, look, I saw this guy out at 11:30 last night and now here at 7:30 rolling out on the racetrack with me, I am not putting up with that crap, you guys need to go talk to him."
John Roberts "Here is the concern, Aaron Fike's point, what he was trying to say was that he flew under the radar, he had that problem and no one knew about it until he admitted it, until he got arrested Kyle."
Kyle Petty "Obviously, he deteriorated pretty fast, if you listen to some of he went from this to that the pretty fast. At the same time, we're comparing apples to oranges. We're comparing NASCAR's elite top division to another division. it is still NASCAR, don't get me wrong but there are other guys who have flown under the radar and have been kicked out for it."
Tom Jensen "What do you do on a team basis? Do you test your guys regularly?"
Kyle Petty "Yes, petty enterprises does, we test our guys because that is part of our insurance policy, part of our program. I am going to say straight up, not naming names, but we have let guys go from petty enterprises go, because of this very issue here."
Tom Jensen "If every team does that, can you just turn your data over to NASCAR, or indicate to NASCAR when a person is let go?"
Kyle Petty "No, no, not any – I can't legally turn tom Jensen's medical records over to any other employer or agency, that is our private stuff. Now, if somebody calls me up and says, hey, we have tom over here applying for a job and we understand he came worked for petty enterprises, I would say I would look somewhere else and that is all I would say."
Tom Jensen "What I am saying Kyle is you guys are doing a thorough job, and it sounds like all of the teams are, do we need NASCAR to have separate policy on top what the teams are doing, are you satisfied that the teams are policing."
Kyle Petty "I am thoroughly satisfied that the majority of the teams police themselves. I think it is important for NASCAR to have a policy in place because then we get into, understand, all the drug testing covered under credentials, from hot passes to weekly SEL's and stuff like that. if you are my guest at the racetrack and you walk in the garage area and are doing something goofy, it reflects on my drug-testing policy. This is a far broader issue than drivers and teams that we think have hard cards."
Tom Jensen"That's true and like most issues in NASCAR, there are people out there who tell you there is a simple answer but anything you do will have a ripple effect and it is much more complicated than it might first appear."
John Roberts "And when you look at some other sports, and nationally televised sports, comparatively the numbers are very low in NASCAR compared to other sports, and the official statement from NASCAR was that they think their policy works, and that is what they are going to stick with for now."
John Roberts "When we come back to this edition of Tradin' Paint here from the phoenix international raceway we we'll talk about tough choices that some teams will have to make and we will also talk about testing and set up what may happen this weekend in Phoenix."
John Roberts "Had you gone to speedtv.Com last week, and we certainly hope you did, you would have read tom Jensen's many articles on that site, especially the one about Jeff Gordon and the 24 team, only the second time in his entire career Jeff Gordon finished 43rd on a racetrack. There is something about Texas that is rough on Jeff Gordon but also he slipped out of the top ten in points right now, that is a place he is not used to being, and tom I like the way you put it you hit it right on the head. There is a sense of urgency at that race team right now, but not a sense of panic."
Tom Jensen "It sounds crazy but even after seven races, guys have to pay attention to points, because historically if you are in the top twelve, you tend to stay there through the 26 race regular season. Jeff Gordon in seven races this year has three top fives and three DNFs and the DNFs have really bitten him so he has to concentrate and make sure they are in the top five and the top ten consistently so he gets himself in a good buffer to be in the top 12. if they have more DNFs than they do top fives, they will be in trouble like they were a couple of years ago when they missed the chase."
Kyle Petty "I am going off of the Richard Petty theory on a lot of this stuff, this is a very cyclical sport, what goes around comes around and you have good luck at one time, you will have bad luck another. Let's go back and look at last year and some of the races Jeff won, Pocono, and rain shortened Darlington, my god where did that luck come from? Now he has three DNF's in the first 7 races, so it balances itself out. You can't count any of these teams out; he knows there is a sense of urgency that every week they have to make the most out of it. When you have a 43rd place finish, you do not make up for it by one win. One win does not offset that 43rd place, it takes two wins to offset that 43rd place, when we are already seven races into the season looking at our eight races, and you are only looking at 26 races, you are getting close to being a third of the way to the chase so there is a sense of urgency."
Tom Jensen "You only have 18, 19 races left so you don't have much time left. People think a 36 race season, but it is a 26-race regular season and if you don't get it done then, it doesn't matter what else you get."
John Roberts "And you do get the reset when you get to that ten race cutoff, you do get a reset and everybody gets squeezed together. if you are a team of that caliber, you just have to be 12th just ask Clint Bowyer about that."
Kyle Petty "You just have to make it to that 26 races, that is the thing I thing a lot of people lose sight of, early in the year they are thinking 36, 36 races, it is 26 and 10, and the teams that are in that top 12a they look at the history of the sport, and they know that."
Tom Jensen "And a Darlington counts as much as Daytona and Richmond counts as much as the brickyard and people forget that too."
John Roberts "Tom, we get some heat and I'm sure you do to, people say you are crazy to start talking about the points race six races in the season. if you took the NFL season and all of a sudden chopped a third of it off, and says this is where we are going to decide, I mean we have chopped it by one-third and now as you say, we're a third into it."
Tom Jensen "John, if you look after Bristol, historically in the first 4 years of the chase, eight of the top ten guys in points stay there. I mean, it is just mathematics. it sounds crazy but that is how it works out and if that is how it works out, that is what you have to look at and say it is the barometer say ok and where are these guys now? You are not going to make a big rush all of a sudden."
Kyle Petty "It is so competitive in this sport right now. You don't come from 18th or 9th to crawl your way back in the top five. it doesn't happen that way because at the same time you are having those good finishes, that other guy is having them right behind you. "
John Roberts "Perhaps Greg Biffle put it best when he made his first chase, he made the first one, missed the second one, he said I feel like a second class citizen not being in the chase because all the focus is on those other guys."
John Roberts "When we come back we'll talk about the green-white checkered and what one crew chief had to say about the way we finished the race in Texas."
John Roberts "Welcome back to Phoenix, everybody, we are Tradin' some paint under a beautiful sunset. in order to curb the number of races that were ending under caution, a couple of years back NASCAR instituted the green-white-checkered after last weekend's race in Texas, mike ford, crew chief for the number 11 Denny Hamlin, said this is absolutely crazy. We won't use the word he used to describe it but, tom Jensen what do you think of the green-white checker? Does it promote reckless driving and wreck up a bunch of good racecars?"
Tom Jensen "Well, of course it does, that is the whole point to get some enthusiasm, get some excitement, and yeah people it is crazy. Yeah, people are going to overcook it on the last lap. There are guys who drive perfectly patiently for 450 miles and then get in the last half mile and get in wreckers or checkers mode. NASCAR wanted some excitement and fans hate races ending in yellow, they hate it with a passion and they had to do something about I think it has been a good solution but it has been an expensive one and if I was a car owner or crew chief, I can see not liking it but as a race fan, yeah, it is a great thing."
Kyle Petty "I agree 100%, once again we as competitors are idiots. What I am saying is , we hate green-white checkers. it does promote that type of driving. You got a guys that is in tenth, he knows with good tires he can make it to sixth or seventh. We saw it last week with Clint. Clint drove around those guys and got up to third or fourth, and then in the last lap when it equaled out, he was in the accident towards the end of the race, so that is a bad situation. What I mean by us being idiots, we think the race is about us but it is not about us, it is about the people who buy the tickets. That is truly what it is all about. Putting on a show for people watching and that is what the green-white checker does. I think NASCAR does a tremendous job if we go back to the beginning of the inception of the green-white-checkered, mark martin had one of the most horrendous accidents I have seen at Daytona. in the second and third green-white checkers that we tried to end the race on in the fourth of July race, that was a bad situation, so when we went to one, I am all for one."
Tom Jensen "I'll go you one even better there was an ARCA race a couple of years ago where there were seven green-white checkers and
That is absurd."
Kyle Petty "Yes, that is absurd, you get one shot, that is it. That is the way to do it."
John Roberts "I hate to say, we kind of agreed on that one."
Kyle Petty "Yes, we did."
John Roberts "It just kind of went down and that is okay, we're allowed to agree. When we come back, we are going to talk about a policy that will a lot of people don't agree on and that is testing. Should it be limited or expanded? We'll talk about that and other subjects when we come back to phoenix."
John Roberts " NASCAR's' testing policy has changed quite a bit. There is a limit on the number of NASCAR sanctioned tests where you get the real Goodyear tires that you will run at that racetrack but that does not stop teams from testing non NASCAR racetracks, tracks where they do not have an event in their series but in this situation tom Jensen, Humpy Wheeler among others have come out and say man, they are going to test any way, open up the tracks, let them use the tires they are going to use in the race."
Tom Jensen "This is purely a publicity stunt for Humpy, who is the greatest promoters of all time"
Kyle Petty "Great call, great call."
Tom Jensen "That is all it is, it is nothing else, and let me tell you guys something, Kyle you know this more than I do, if you give race teams a dollar, they are going to spend that dollar. You can say don't spend it on testing and they will spend it on simulation, you can say don't spend it on simulation they will spend it on something else. They are going to spend their money and you can never stop race teams from spending money. You can put in every rule you want, but you are not going to stop them. And I think this testing is, you know, they are going to do it. "
John Roberts "So Kyle, you think the testing, is it out of control, these guys going to Kentucky and Lakeside?"
Kyle Petty "No, it is not out of control. We're not, that is true testing. Humpy wants us to come to charlotte to set up for the all-star race and the coca-cola 600, that is not a test. That is a setup session. This is true. And Tom Jenson just called humpy right out here on speed, that is perfect, I am still wondering what happened to the "Humpy Bumper" went because we have never seen that after they had that bid press fiasco too. My issue is this, as we look at testing, he is exactly right, we're going to do it on simulation, on something. You to go Kentucky, we're going to specific leave test springs, shocks, engine packages, aero, you to go Milwaukee, you don't get the proper tire to run there t, makes it a true test. You have to test something because you are not set up to run the race tracks. When we to go Daytona in February, January, that is a setup session for Daytona because you take us down there for eight weeks and we only get six hours of practice. Humpy is just mad because the guys in the garage area didn't vote on coming to charlotte like they did in the past. They wanted to to go Pocono and other places so, no, this is strictly PR."
Tom Jensen "That is all it is, and there is nothing wrong with that, Humpy sells tickets, that is a great thing. But you know NASCAR is not going to do that, he put out a press release saying I invited the teams, nah"
John Roberts "Well, he got us talking about now, unless your television set was broken or you have been living under a rock, you saw Michael McDowell's qualifying accident from Texas. it was horrific but he got out of it ok, and tom that prompted you to write that we're giving the car of today an A-plus in safety."
Tom Jensen "Well, there were a number of priorities that NASCAR put down for the car, safety, competition, controlling costs, you can argue about competition, and controlling costs, you cannot argue about safety when you see something like that. You know, I was pleased to see him walk away and we had seen a number of hard hits. I mean, Jeff Gordon, his hit was harder than Michael Mcdowell's and he got out of that car. So it is good to see safety things in place. The car can be refined down the refined down the road. The safety things have to come first."
Kyle Petty "If we go back and play old tapes of the show, anybody who sat in that seat that argued about the C.O.T., the one thing I said was, you are losing sight of it, it is a safety issue, it is all about moving the driver over, it is all about a bigger greenhouse, it is about the crushing zones. That is what Gary Nelson, Bret Bodine, all the guys at NASCAR who originally came up with the concept, that was concept for the car. This was brought about because of the accidents we had with Adam and Dale, Sr. and Tony Roper. That is what the car is about, and that is their legacy, when I see something like this, I think my god there before the grace of god go i, and you look at it and say the legacy of Dale Earnhardt, Sr, the legacy of Adam Petty, the legacy of these guys, it is the car of tomorrow. They will refine it as we go to make it more competitive, they will have to at some point in time, ore over time, but that what you saw there right there and the things we have seen with Jeff Gordon, that is what it is all about."
Tom Jensen "You can tweak the handling and the competition, you can put bigger spoilers, different front air dams, you can do a hundred different things but if you don't get the safety right, you blew it."
John Roberts "And bottom line after what we have seen the last couple of weeks, that is a darn safe race car out there and that is a very good thing for NASCAR, especially seeing Michael McDowell walk out of that wreck. When we come back to Phoenix, we will look into the crystal ball and see what we might be writing or reading about or talking about at the water cooler come Monday morning."
John Roberts "The sun is setting over the desert, beautiful night, wonderful weather, but it's going to be hot for the rest of the weekend, and that will test the conditioning of a lot of drivers. We were talking with tom Jensen from speedtv.Com that's what he is looking into his crystal ball and he is saying that one of the drivers in the best shape is probably going to be the one who comes out on top."
John Roberts "Headline for this week, Carl Edwards wins 4th race in 8 starts, can anybody stop Roush-Fenway? Last year it was can anybody stop Hendrick; this year it is going to be can anybody stop Carl?"
John Roberts "That is what a lot of people are scratching their heads about Kyle"
Kyle Petty "I have no headline this week, but I have to about halfway agree with that. I read some stuff, and rode out on motorcycles with matt, and I think the Roush organization has made the biggest gains over the winter and nobody was paying attention to them, everybody was looking at Gibbs and Toyota, everybody was looking at Hendrick to come out and start dominating right where they left off towards the end of the season. And all of a sudden then when I look at another car the 26 car, McMurray is on a little bit of a roll. He was outside the top 2 or 3 few races, and all of a sudden he is up 15th or 16th in points. So I think there's a lot of momentum there.
Tom Jensen "And they all run good. David Ragan has been looking good this week."
Kyle Petty "He has been the most consistent if you look, he has been the same week in, week out. The 26 was here, the 17 and those guys, matt and those guys have had good runs, but have not been able to close, but Carl has closed"
Tom Jensen "Ragan will win a race before the year is over, I really believe that"
John Roberts "Will we read the same quotes that we read at Texas, being that that is an intermediate racetrack and the car handled different there, being that we're back on one of the shorter tracks, will we read the same quotes from drivers about not being able to drive this car?"
Kyle Petty "No, because I don't think we read them after this race last year. Because it's a flat track, it is a handling track, you have to get your car to go, and it is not the aero part. it is not getting behind somebody, there's a lot of stuff that is taken out of the mix, it's all about springs and shocks and making this thing turn, and that's where the cream will rise to the top. That is why when you look at mark martin having four or five second place finishes, and winning races here, when you look at the guys who have won here, they are driver's drivers."
Tom Jensen "What you will read is somebody who is mad at each other because somebody got into each other; somebody put somebody into the wall. There's going to be some of that short track beating and banging, and there will be some tempers."
Kyle Petty "This is Phoenix, and that's the fun part about phoenix. The fun part about phoenix is that it is an old style racetrack where you are going to get a little bit of that, a little bit of racing, you are going to have some excitement and when it is all said and done the cream is going to rise to the top, it could be Carl."
Tom Jensen "And tracks position is still going to matter. it's go going to be important to get those pit stops. Somebody drops a lug nut, you're done."
John Roberts "And we are out of time here on Tradin' paint. A big thanks to Kyle petty, a big thanks to tom Jensen from SPEEDtv.com"
SOURCE: SPEED/Edited by Michael Pomeroy and Steve Keller
Kyle Petty isn’t one to mince words. Kyle goes toe to toe with members of the media as they discuss and debate the top stories in NASCAR. Fans bombard drivers LIVE trackside with in your face questions that demand answers. The clock is ticking and guests must answer before time runs out. It’s nonstop action that will have race junkies on the edge of their seats. If you have what it takes to go head-to-head with the pros, “Tradin’ Paint” with Kyle Petty is for you.
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