Ride buying at Indy

Ryan Hunter-Reay waits on bump day for the Indy 500.
(Photo: Getty/Daylife)

The results of one of the most dramatic bump days in Indy 500 history are changing. Why? Andretti Autosport has purchased a ride for their driver, Ryan Hunter-Reay who was bumped late in the session by his teammate, Marco Andretti. Hunter-Reay and his team was left on the outside looking in without enough time to make another attempt.

That evening, rumors began to fly that A.J. Foyt and Michael Andretti were working on a swap that would put Hunter-Reay into the Indy 500, taking the ride of A.J. Foyt's driver Bruno Junqueira.

Unfortunately for Hunter-Reay, he is left as the face of this ugly business side of pure, loser-goes-home style of racing.

It's left IndyCar fans complaining that Hunter-Reay is missing the race, and mentioned the fact that nearly two of IndyCar's biggest American stars nearly missed the race because of the rain. It's been the mark of sarcastic humor as the FakeBrianFrance twitter account made fun of IndyCar stealing one more thing from NASCAR. But is it right or should IndyCar adopt a provisional style of qualifying?

In my opinion, the Indy 500 has it right. Nobody should be locked in and the fastest 33 should always race. Now if teams want to trade drivers and buy rides, I am perfectly okay with that. That still creates a penalty for the team missing the race rather than just being able to lock themselves in without a second thought. It creates urgency and maybe, just maybe a team won't want to deal and it will result in a top flight driver missing the race.

Is it unfair? Not at all. Do we go into baseball season saying the defending World Series champion gets an automatic playoff berth? Do we do that in football, hockey, or basketball? This is a concept that sports is very familiar with. If you aren't good enough, you miss the show and you don't get to play. In fact, NASCAR is the only major sport in the world, that I know of, that guarantees their top teams an attempt to compete for a championship.

I actually wish NASCAR and the Daytona 500 would actually take IndyCar's lead on this and remove provisionals and "locked in" positions by owners points for the biggest race of NASCAR's calendar. There are enough chances to get into the Daytona 500 through pole qualifying, the Duel qualifying race, and you could even have a second round of qualifying as they used to have. It's the biggest race, the 43 fastest teams should make the race. It puts the focus and increases the drama and it's not a gimmicked drama, either. It also reduces confusion between "locked in" and "not locked in" drivers during the qualifying races.

It requires the top teams to be on their A-game or they go home. I have zero issues with it, but if a team wants to go buy a ride for one of their sponsored drivers to gain exposure for their company, they can.

Let racing figure out who qualifies for the race, let business figure out who actually races. If a company can't deal with the potential of their driver not racing, in a sport where everything should depend on how fast you can go, maybe they need to consider spending their advertising dollars somewhere else.

Stenhouse shows what Nationwide is about

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. celebrates his win in Iowa.
(Photo: Getty/Daylife)

ESPN calls them "opportunity races." Races that aren't companion events with the Sprint Cup Series and usually see less Cup Series drivers. Sunday afternoon's NASCAR Nationwide Series event at Iowa Speedway was certainly that.

Only two Sprint Cup Series regulars, Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski, made the trip to Iowa in order to compete. Edwards would be fresh off his million dollar victory in the Sprint All Star race the night before in Charlotte.

There are many fans who find themselves wondering the point of the Nationwide Series. Is it a playground for Sprint Cup drivers or is it a developmental series as the next step before Sprint Cup?

NASCAR has been non-committal in their determination of the series. They don't want to limit the Sprint Cup drivers in the series because they feel they need the star power to sell tickets, but they don't want to commit to making it simply a developmental series.

Kenny Wallace gave an interesting statement during an interview for NNSRacing.com's Lee Montgomery when asked how he would change the Nationwide Series. He says they race too much and that NASCAR is trying to treat it like the Sprint Cup Series. I completely agree.

The Nationwide Series needs it's own identity in order to survive. Right now it's caught in limbo between being a development series and being a playground. There is no need for the Nationwide Series to follow the Sprint Cup around every weekend making trips all over the country at all the big tracks Sprint Cup runs at.

There are plenty of great smaller tracks around this country that could use a race. There is no need for the Nationwide Series to be Cup lite or to visit the same track twice or race 35 weekends a year. Scale back to 25-30 races, visit tracks once, select some different tracks than the Sprint Cup Series runs at and a representative sample of the bigger tracks for drivers to get some experience on the big tracks.

Other sports have a clear development ladder. For NASCAR, it's unclear what it is. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the Truck Series could be considered NASCAR's Double-A Series. Nationwide was the Triple-A Series where drivers went to get experience on the bigger tracks. Now the lines are blurred. Sprint Cup drivers regular compete in the lower divisions, something that has always been done but never to its current extent. It makes it much more difficult for younger drivers to break into the series and get an opportunity unless you have someone who will write you a big check to make sure you're driving a competitive car.

With his victory in Iowa, Stenhouse Jr. showed just how far he has come in a year. Last year in Iowa, Stenhouse tore up two race cars and used his teammates backup car to compete. Just a year later, he finds himself in victory lane celebrating his first Nationwide win. This is the same development other drivers can get if owners were to stick with them and give them track time.

A young driver got an opportunity and has gone from a driver who couldn't keep his cars out of the wall to a driver who is fast and has the talent to win races. Young drivers are getting talked about on ESPN the most they ever have. Why? NASCAR changed the point system to eliminate the Sprint Cup drivers from being eligible for the Nationwide Series championship. ESPN now has to talk about guys like Reed Sorenson, Justin Allgaier, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

However, if you want a picture of why the Nationwide Series struggles to find sponsors go take a look at NASCAR.com right now. Carl Edwards, a former Nationwide Series champion and Sprint Cup driver who nearly always runs up front, only has sponsorship for half of the season and has been unsponsored in several races this season. Why? Do you see anything about the Nationwide race on the front page of NASCAR.com?

Right now I see an article about Edwards' Sprint All Star Race win. I see video of the Hall of Fame inductions. I see a set of headlines that talk about the Hall of Fame, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Edwards' All Star Race win. Nothing on the finish or the results of the Nationwide race, and that is why advertisers question their involvement in the series and want a driver who will help them get exposure. You'd think a Nationwide only driver finally winning a race for the first time in over a year would be bigger news. Let alone when it's potentially one of NASCAR's future stars.

What's worse is that on the Nationwide Series' own page (nationwideseries.com) the race article from the race at Iowa is simply a Sporting News Wire Service article that has seven sentences recapping the race. There is no true race recap. Kyle Busch wins at Darlington a week ago, that article by the same wire service has more than seven paragraphs and three quotes. Does NASCAR.com need someone to cover the Nationwide Series? Where do I sign up for that?

NASCAR needs the Nationwide Series to be a development platform and they need to focus and market on these future stars so that they can get funding to go racing. Without that, the Nationwide Series is just another series that is essentially a glorified local late model series with more television coverage, but still little true media coverage. And because of that, there really is no path to the Sprint Cup Series and we'll eventually find a series much like we have now that won't have a true rookie in the Cup Series in two seasons.

So far, Raikkonen doing it right

Kimi Raikkonen. Racing fans know him as the 2007 Formula 1 World Champion. On Friday evening, NASCAR fans were introduced to him as he made his NASCAR debut driving the #15 Perky Jerky Toyota Tundra.

In his debut he would finish 15th, up sixteen spots from his 31st position qualifying spot. That's probably more cars than Raikkonen ever passed in a single Formula 1 race. He had a good truck, but struggled with finding track position. Ultimately, it wasn't too shabby for a stock car racing debut.

Today it was confirmed that he would be driving the #87 Perky Jerky Toyota Camry for NEMCO Motorsports in Saturday night's Nationwide Series race at Charlotte. The car will be prepared by Kyle Busch Motorsports. The Nationwide car won't be as good in comparison to the competition as the Truck was, but it should provide Raikkonen another look into whether he wants to pursue a long-term commitment to NASCAR.

Open wheel racing has increasingly provided a surprising feeder series for stock car racing. It started years ago with Tony Stewart jumping from the Indy Racing League to Joe Gibbs Racing in NASCAR. For years before that, NASCAR had been pulling drivers from traditionally open wheel feeder series' like USAC. It went silent for a few years before Juan Pablo Montoya came from Formula 1 to try his hand at NASCAR for his former IRL owner Chip Ganassi.

That led to a couple other drivers trying the same thing. Dario Franchitti had some glimpses of what he could accomplish in NASCAR, but ultimately the lack of sponsorship forced him back to IndyCar for Ganassi where he picked up where he left off, winning the last two championships to give him a personal three straight. Sam Hornish had sponsorship and the commitment from his owner, but ultimately sank after Penske Racing signed another sponsorship agreement forced him out of his ride when the sponsors conflicted.

In comparison, Montoya has had the most success of the recent open wheel defectors. With his pair of NASCAR Sprint Cup victories (2007 at Infineon, 2010 at Watkins Glen) and a Chase appearance in 2009, he has secured that role in a virtually no competition victory.

Danica Patrick raised some eyebrows with her move to NASCAR, but unlike Montoya, Franchitti, and Hornish she has taken the time to run in the Nationwide Series. While largely viewed by fans as a development series, the Nationwide Series allows you to compete at the same tracks with most of the same drivers and with a very similar car as the Sprint Cup Series, but for a fraction of the cost. This allows her to be placed in competitive equipment to get a real feel for her abilities behind the wheel.

She had a slow start last year, but showed some definite improvement through the first part of this season as she's begun showing that she has the ability to contend for top-10 finishes. For me, this shows that she made the right decision of testing the waters.

This seems to be what Kimi Raikkonen is doing.

The Finnish driver lives in Europe and commutes to the United States. He is 31 years old and likely has a very comfortable lifestyle in Europe. Do you completely uproot yourself to test your feet in NASCAR when you aren't sure if you want to commit? I see Kimi running several races over this season as he tries to determine whether he wants to give this a chance. When that decision is made, I think you will see him commit. Moving to the United States, getting as much seat time as possible as he attempts to become a competitive Sprint Cup driver.

And the move further illustrates just where NASCAR stands on the world wide stage. That international stars like Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen would even consider NASCAR is a huge change from just a decade ago.