wake me up for the Daytona 500

We have come to the end of a very exciting racing season, both in Champ Cars and NASCAR. the IRL had its moments, and frankly, I hardly watched any Formula One at all, but understand that they made it clear that it was not going to be Shumacher or Ferrari winning anything this year.

Bittersweet for Joe Gibbs yesterday as his team couldn't beat the Raiders while his driver captured his second championship in 4 years, this time doing it without punching anyone (that we know of). Congratulations to Gibbs and Stewart and all the hard working team. Talk about a long and arduous season for the entire NASCAR teams and officials. They barely have a month before they start concentrating on Daytona and the 2006 season. And I know that in that month they test and test and test some more, whether its at the shop or on the track. it never ends in NASCAR.

I think its nice that Roger stuck up for his new driver following his incident with the cops a couple of weeks ago. Clearly his current team let him down by suspending him for the last two races, but Penske has been sticking up to him. The change in atmosphere and crew will do Busch some good. He's got the talent, and maybe he needs Roger's glare to keep him in line. It was a sad way to end the season for NASCAR, but at least they didn't sugarcoat anything. During the race in Pheonix, they repeated the story many times on the air, they talked to his crew and Kurt himself. I give them props for not sweeping the story under the rug. they faced it and handled it as best they could.
Controversy is part of sports and ultimately facing up a problem, being as honest as possible with the viewers and dealing with it is the right thing to do. These days with jackasses having their own blogs all over, its too easy for rumors to spread and things to get out of hand before long. We don't mind our athletes making mistakes (or our presidents, to a certain extent ;) ) as long as they admit it, and face the conquesences and don't hide behind PR or anything. Tony Stewart learned his lesson, admitted his past problems and we forgave him and he went on to win the right championship, the one the team wanted and deserved, without all the controversy. good for him. good for the sport. and good for NASCAR, since it wasn't one of the big two winning it! Next year should be as exciting. everywhere.