Thursday, May 24th 'What If' Question

Wednesday afternoon NASCAR announced their 2013 Hall of Fame class. The five men who will be officially place into the Hall on February 8, 2013 will be Buck Baker, Cotton Owens, Herb Thomas, Rusty Wallace and Leonard Wood.

As noted in his HOF biography on NASCAR.com, many call Wood the innovator of the modern pit stop among the many other things Leonard's credited with. And along with brother Glen, Wood Brothers Racing based out of Virginia, has become one of the most celebrated teams in the garage.

Elliott Sadler earned his first career Sprint Cup Series win in the Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford at Bristol in the spring of 2001. While drivers have come and gone in their cars, the success up and down, they've remained a constant on the track. Doing everything they could to get to the next track, the next race, the next season.

Then a young Tennessee driver named Trevor Bayne came along and gave the fabled team their second wind. Bayne went out and won the 2011 Daytona 500 after an impressive Speedweeks in which he gained the attention of champion and future Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon.

The win was the first for the Wood Brothers since Sadler's 2001 feat, the first Daytona 500 win since David Pearson in 1976. It was just the second career start for Bayne who had turned 20-years-old not even 24 hours before.

It was a sensational story that the NASCAR world latched onto. Bayne became its new star who was only running a partial Cup schedule for the Wood Brothers while competing for Jack Roush in the Nationwide Series. When Bayne got sick weeks after his win and was sidelined for a few months, the Wood Brothers stayed loyal and said the No. 21 was his.

He came back in late 2011 and tried to pick up where he left off but it's been a steep learning curve. Saturday night in Charlotte he'll be behind the wheel of the No. 21 in the Coca-Cola 600, a race that he missed last year. He's eager and excited to put another race under his belt, starting 13th, and certainly now that one of his team owners is a Hall of Famer.

But ...

What if the Wood Brothers hadn't won the 2011 Daytona 500 with Trevor Bayne and then been the focus of so much media attention for a year and a half because of his win, illness and comeback / success, would Leonard Wood still have been chosen as a nominee for the 2013 Hall of Fame class?


@cruetten no. He would've gotten in obviously, but not as soon.

@NancyatStudioN OMG - Yes! They have 97 wins w 17 dif drivers over 59 yrs. A shame they don't have financing to run TBayne fulltime

@RJ_Number8 They would've gotten in now. We're talking about THE men who invented the modern pit stop; a major contribution to the sport.

Wednesday, October 26th 'What If' Question

A popular opinion in the NASCAR world currently is that the new style of drafting at Daytona and Talladega does more harm than good. In both racing and entertainment and now added to the list is competitiveness.

This past weekend at Talladega rumors circulated that there had been team orders in the garage that Ford drivers were only supposed to work with other Ford drivers on raceday. Roush Fenway drivers Greg BIffle and Carl Edwards teamed together while Matt Kenseth and David Ragan did as well. Even Chevy drivers and teammates like Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton stayed committed to each other all day.

Things were going smoothly and according to plan until the final two laps. Chevrolet driver Jeff Gordon was left without a partner and Ford driver Trevor Bayne said he would work with him. On the restart however, Bayne bailed on Gordon and went to work with Kenseth who also needed a partner. In another twist, Tony Stewart said that Paul Menard was told to dump him so that teammates Burton and Bowyer could go on to win the race.

Fans and drivers have been unhappy about the race all week. Team orders have no place in NASCAR they say. The problem though is not that there were drivers dumping each other at the race, the problem is that it was being categorized as team orders. See, drivers have always hung each other out to dry in plate racing. It's common knowledge that over the final few laps it is every man for himself and you go where you will be fastest and with whom you believe will give you the best shot to get to the front.

Except when fans and drivers heard that there were "team orders" of who could work with who, suddenly it became a sin to be dumped by your partner. Now going forward drivers are going to remember that day in Talladega and as long as the new stye of drafting is around, someone is going to be left without a friend.

But ...

What if there was no public knowledge of 'team orders' @ 'Dega, would fans really care as much about drivers being dumped @ the end? #NASCAR

@philenespanol I think if it hadn't been said on friday that people heard ford drivers were told to work together, no one would have found it suspicious when Bayne went with Kenseth. People get dumped all the time at superspeedways, but it's what surrounds the whole thing with sort of a black cloud.

@JoJo_6040 No. Before the tango, drivers were always movin n dumpin and prob with little orders. Let the drivers drive!

@NancyatStudioN Nope! The team orders are what makes it cheating. We might be mad at a driver for dumping our driver, but we would think they did it as "every man for himself" and we'd get over it. I agree with @TerryBlountESPN who said it has become a Jersey Shore episode on wheels.

Jose L Acero (via Facebook) Fans do not react the way we did if we have no knowledge of team orders BUT we would have had a said to the issue!