When Good Guys Go Bad

Fan Commentary by Grandstand Bob

Those of us who admit to watching professional wrestling for some time will remember the way we felt when Hulk Hogan became a bad guy. Suddenly, the flag-waving all-American hero was an evil phenom, and though we realized it was all BS, it was hard for us to imagine a hero gone bad.

There’s a little of that going on in Winston Cup racing these days. Even that milk-moustache boy Jeff Gordon and the mild-mannered Texas gentlemen Terry Labonte are getting into the act.

Gordon pushed and shoved his way around The Winston, like a fat kid on his way to a buffet, while Labonte just plain nailed Jeff Green in the ass end on the final few laps of Pocono this past weekend. Jeff Gordon has never been a squeaky clean driver – remember Dale Jarrett threatening to “put the SOB into the wall the next time” – but Labonte’s Pocono incident was akin to seeing Superman peeing in a phone booth.

No, I don’t think Terry nailed Jeff Green on purpose. There was little motivation for him to do so, and Terry knows well enough that a wreck at that particular junction of the track can be (and was) extremely violent. Rather, I think that Terry was just a little more aggressive than usual, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Same with Jeff Gordon. I don’t mind seeing these guys throwing everything they have at winning a race. All of them are fierce competitors, and it takes every ounce of restraint to keep that competitive spirit from encouraging you to do foolish things. Sometimes, though, that restraint fails, for even a brief instant, and drivers find themselves making moves that they wish that they could take back.

I’m sure that, if he had a chance to drive that race again, he would have backed out of the gas, because he sure didn’t want to take out one of the strongest cars in the race and put a driver in harm’s way. However, he had a split second to make that decision, and he was encouraged by his competitive spirit to make the move he did.

Speaking of competitive spirit, I don’t blame Ryan Newman at all for keeping Tony Stewart a lap down at Dover. Tony clearly had a strong car, as evidenced by his finishing position that race, and would have been a much larger threat to win had Ryan given him his lap back.