How Soon They Forget!
Garage area changes, tire woes, and the MBNA 400 from Dover, Delaware.
More Garage Area Talk.......
The talk persists around the rumor mill about the upcoming changes concerning the amount of fans that NASCAR will allow to enter the garage areas at different tracks around the circuit. These changes are being considered for the 2003 season, so a lot of ideas will be tossed around between now and then.
The latest media coverage has the drivers whole-heartedly agreeing that something needs to be done about the throng of fans who are entering the garage areas and keeping the teams from concentrating on, and doing their jobs with their racecars. Some of the drivers, one in particular who is always crying about the racecars going too fast, are stating that allowing these fans in the garage area is what has made the sport of stock car racing so great. That's a bunch of rubbish!
First of all, this idiot would have you believe that the mainstream of fans are allowed to visit the garage area and obtain autographs from drivers, owners, crewmembers, etc. That isn't how it works. The only ones who have access to the garage area are the so-called special people who know somebody that knows somebody that got them a hot pass. Most of the racetracks sell pit passes that allow fans to enter the pit areas before and after the races. These pit passes have nothing to do with getting into the garage area. You have to have what they call a "hot pass" or "media press pass" to be admitted into the garage area. Out of the average of 100k people who attend races weekly, there are only a few hundred who have access to hot passes. The mainstream of fans who attend a race never get the opportunity to get a driver's autograph, and probably never will. The image of fan participation that NASCAR tries to exude is very misleading. Fan participation in NASCAR is and always has been, limited to a select few, and a very few at that.
These hot passes are given out by drivers and owners to their families and friends. They are also given out by the different sponsors, and this is where things have been known to get dicey. There are hundreds of different sponsors who have associate sponsorships on racecars. Each of these sponsors have a certain number of hot passes assigned to them for different tracks, depending on the size of the track and its garage area. These sponsor hot passes seem to be the ones that people are misusing.
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