Full Throttle

And the question, as posed in an email that landed in the Hallowed Halls of the Full Throttle Press Room (Bathroom, truth be told but keep it under your helmet) is; “Why haven’t you picked a NASCAR All-Star winner or anything else on the weeks events?”

“Who cares” was the response then and now. But lets look into why a bit further.

Everything from the opening event of the week until the drop of the green flag for the Open should be called The Shamesty Presented by Hokey Hokum.

Fake from start to finish, NASCAR and with no small influence from Bruton Smith, wanted to mimic the all star events of the stick and ball sports. And that’s what they got.

You want to mimic an NBA slam dunk contest? OK, Bruton and Humpy delivered with something called a burnout contest. Thats got to be worst idea since some Christian thought he could beat a pack of lions. Or was it the other way around? Whatever, you get the idea who cares?

You want a NASCAR version of the MLB home run hitting contest that allows the sluggers to do nothing but slug?

Check that off NASCAR’s list of mimicry, it’s called a pit crew challenge that allows the unsung and mostly unknown members of the pit crews do what they do best, fling jacks, slosh gas and spin lugnuts. All under 14 seconds if it were real, but that’s the rub, it’s not so who cares it’s just another reality show.

NASCAR, apparently wanted to mimic baseball’s fan voting on All-Star lineups, and they did by allowing fans to spam a poll, er… I mean vote online for one driver to be entered into the All-Star line-up that otherwise wasn’t eligible.

Someone wake me up when a Fan Fav voted in comes close to winning the All-Star event. Until then, ho-hum, more reality show biz.

I’m not here just to bury Caesar, so to speak, but offer a “real” reality show.

Take those professional pit crew members and replace them for the Pit Crew Challenge. With each ticket purchased by fans to enter the speedway comes a number, call it The Pit Crew Lottery number if you want.

The day before the event numbers would be drawn and winning ticket holders would compete in the Fan Pit Crew Challenge using the same format used by the professionals now.

You want reality, you got it. TV reality that is, which really isn’t, but the end result would be Comedy Gold.

Young, old, even a couple pot-bellied members of NASCAR’s old guard fan base - old guard meaning from the days of Smokey Yunick and Fred Lorenzen - might end up as part of the event.

It can’t get more real than that.

As for the second part of the original question, who will win the All-Star event?

I haven’t the foggiest idea, I gave up my Nostradamus Hat long ago when my percentages fell below the Mendoza Line, and this event is always a crap shoot.

Considering it is a special week in the NASCAR season I’ll dust off the hat for this occasion and predict a car, presumably with 4 wheels (barring a last second “spin-to-win” maneuver resulting in a three-wheeled winner) with multiple colors and multiple logos adorning each and every square inch of the vehicle and enveloped in a cloud of smoke immediately after crossing the finish line (not the be confused with a burn out contest)!

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