Racer Magazine "Racers of the Year"

After having to take some pain pills for a Kidney Stone, I slept off and on for most of the day so now I find myself awake and looking for something to burn some time. Here is my commentary on some of Racer Magazine's "Racers of the Year" from the March 2009 issue that recently arrived in my mailbox.

Racer of the Year: Kyle Busch
This is hard to argue with. Kyle Busch and an amazing 2008 season; he was successful on short ovals, mid-size ovals, and the superspeedways. He was successful on the road courses. He was successful in three different kinds of cars: Sprint Cup cars, Nationwide cars, and Craftsman trucks. What's more, he also was frequently racing a short track car during the week and on his offtime. There is no doubt that his Sprint Cup season ended on a disappointing note, but if you take his season as a whole in all three series I doubt you can find a much better racer.

Oval Racer of the Year: Jimmy Johnson
I have to take exception with this choice. In my opinion, even though Johnson won his third consecutive championship Kyle Busch was the oval racer of the year. Why? See above.

Road Racer of the Year: Scott Pruett
My Road Racer of the Year would be Alan McNish. I still can't get over his drive in the 2008 Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta. With the support of an outstanding Audi team, he won the LMS championship against a much faster Peugeot. McNish rarely put a foot wrong and more than atoned for it when he did (see Petit LeMans). Despite having the slower car, you never heard McNish publicly complain; he simply put his head down and got on with the job at hand.

Racer's choice of Scott Pruett is one that I can understand, but I have lost some respect for Pruett over the last few seasons. He has complained too much and has proven himself to be a hypocrite. He cries when another driver lays a fender against him but yet he has no problem laying a fender against someone else. You can't have it both ways. If you're going to use your bumper don't complain when someone uses theirs on you; if you're going to complain about someone using their bumper on you, don't use your bumper on them.

Rookie of the Year: Joey Logano
I'm not sure that I would have picked Joey Lagano as Rookie of the Year. He didn't really do a full season in any of the major series in 2008. If he did well this year, he would certainly be a candidate for Rookie of the Year. Personally, I think that Gibbs Racing is doing him a disservice by putting him in a Sprint Cup car this year; he should do a full season of Nationwide or Trucks before going fulltime in the Sprint Cup series.

Team of the Year: Target Chip Ganassi Racing (Indycar)
Given that choices like Hendrick and Roush in NASCAR would have been much more popular choices, I like the choice of Ganassi's Indycar team. I think you could also have just as easily picked the Ganassi Grand Am team for Team of the Year. Both did exemplary jobs in 2008; no one in either series showed up more prepared, exercised better strategy, or adjusted to changing conditions as they did (with the arguable exception of Penske in the IRL). What sets them above Hendrick and Roush is that they did it with 2 cars, not 4 or 5.

Mac McCormick III
kf4lmt@comcast.net