They need to take the “I Rock” show where it belongs. Any skeeter-bitten dirt track will do.
You know, someplace where the drivers and fans converge on the front stretch after the feature, throw half-pint whiskey bottles at each other for a while and then fight all night.
That would be about right for the cheap thrills that transpired in Friday’s International Race of Champions at Daytona International Speedway as Dale Jarrett rolled to victory after Eddie Cheever and Dale Earnhardt Sr. played some tag.
The once-classy IROC hasn’t been worthy of the name for years. It has amounted to the annual scrounging up of some human punching bags, from half-baked racing series, for the NASCAR boys to beat up on.
That way the NASCAR crowd can guffaw and slap backs and call each other “the greatest race drivers in the world”–albeit a nice, safe width of the Atlantic away from the Michael Schumachers and Mika Hakkinens.
Once A.J. Foyt and Bobby Unser would come snorting out of Indy cars to mix it up at the Daytona track. Emerson Fittipaldi drove in the IROC as reigning world champion of Formula One and George Follmer out of the then-mighty Can-Am series.
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Graham Hill of England. Jody Scheckter of South Africa. Ronnie Peterson of Sweden.
Those were international champions. That was IROC.
But European teams and sponsors wised up and no longer wanted their world-class drivers risking their necks on what is considered the madness of American ovals. And the big-name drivers didn’t fight the issue–not for the pittance paid by this supposedly all-star series. IROC withered and atrophied.
And now it’s I Rock–as in first-person, by the man to whose deification the lightweight circus has been dedicated for some years now: Dale Earnhardt.
I Rock and Everybody Else Better Roll Over.
That, or I’m gon’ git mad, and my fans are gon’ throw stuff. That was about the size of it Friday, as one of the weaklings dared hit back.
This is no defense of Eddie Cheever–as nice, as witty, as bright a gentleman as you will find–but a journeyman racer, save the single claim to fame of an Indy 500 victory in 1998 against an enfeebled field.
Cheever made a mistake Friday and admitted as much. He crowded Earnhardt down onto the infield grass as the two dueled for the lead in the I Rock. From there Earnhardt couldn’t Rock to a cheap victory, as he is accustomed.
For this Earnhardt vengefully rammed Cheever’s car from the blind side on the cool-down lap and spun him out. The fans, of course, roared approval of their hero’s retributive tantrum.
Here in 1995, when the IROC still was clinging to a thread of credibility, Earnhardt and Indy-car driver Al Unser Jr. were dueling for the victory. Earnhardt stuffed Unser into the third-turn wall so hard that Unser didn’t know what planet he had landed on. At that a whoopin’ good time was had by all. Just good hard racin,’ huh, hoss?
Unser was the umpteenth victim of Earnhardt’s notoriously roughshod career. But it’s OK for Earnhardt to do it. Good show.
Let Earnhardt get it done unto him and the fans rain garbage down on Cheever, and Earnhardt’s good NASCAR buddy Ricky Rudd stomps into the press room and calls Cheever “an idiot,” and allows as how “you don’t know if you want to run with him anymore.”
And Dale Jarrett, who went on to win the race, paid his share of homage to the almighty Intimidator, saying that by keeping his car from spinning out entirely under Cheever’s pressure, “Dale Earnhardt showed that he’s the greatest race driver in the world.”
Guess Jarrett wasn’t here in 1975. On that same apron and grass inside the first turn–and over that same edge of control that Earnhardt rode Friday–the late Peterson of Formula One not only retained control but blew by Foyt, Bobby Unser, David Pearson and Richard Petty all in one swoop, to take the lead.
That was a world-class driver. That was IROC.
This stuff?
Take it to the boondocks.