Snubbed: Terry Labonte Should Have Been Inducted Into 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame Class

The 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame class was announced on Wednesday, May 21 and the sixth Hall of Fame class is the first to be comprised entirely of former drivers. Former champions Bill Elliott, Joe Weatherly and Rex White received the call, as did 26-time winner Fred Lorenzen and Wendell Scott, the first and to this day only African-American driver to ever win a race in NASCAR’s premier series.

All five inductees are no doubt Hall of Famers. But, there is one snub – who like Bill Elliott was on the ballot for the first time this year – that I thought should’ve been a no-brainer selection on the first ballot. That person is two-time champion Terry Labonte.

I think Elliott, Weatherly and Scott are all no-brainers for different reasons and would have included all three on my ballot had I had a vote. However, I don’t think the selections of White or Lorenzen were merited over Labonte.

It seems rather strange for a one-time champion in White to get the call over a two-time champion in Labonte, especially when White has only six more career wins. But, the reason likely lies in the fact that White is the sport’s eldest champion at 84 and the voting committee wanted him to have a chance to be inducted while he was alive. Labonte is merely 57 and actually still competes in the occasional Sprint Cup Series race, despite having been retired full-time for nearly a decade. This is a reasonable explanation as to why White was chosen over Labonte, but I don’t necessarily feel the age of a nominee should be a deciding factor over racing resume.

The selection of Lorenzen over Labonte is more curious. Lorenzen is not a champion of the sport, but that likely has much to do with the fact that he didn’t run a full season schedule in an era where many drivers did the same. Lorenzen also only has four more career wins than the two-time champion. The case for Lorenzen’s induction over Labonte has to do with his importance in the sport as a very popular driver, his incredible winning percentage (including winning half of the 16 events he entered in 1964) and like White the committee might have wanted to induct him before his death. Lorenzen is 79 and living in an assisted living facility.    

I think Labonte’s two championships alone should have gotten him inducted over White and Lorenzen. With the induction this year of Weatherly this leaves Labonte as the only multiple time champion in NASCAR history who is eligible for Hall of Fame induction that hasn’t been inducted.

Terry Labonte’s career is truly mesmerizing. His first race came in 1978 and he has raced at least once in every single NASCAR season since (that’s a 37 year span), including as recently as just a few weeks ago at Talladega Superspeedway. At one point Labonte was the sport’s “Iron Man” for most consecutive races with 655, before the record was later broken by Ricky Rudd and eventually Jeff Gordon.

His first championship came in 1984 in the prime of Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip winning championships and his second title came in 1996 in the midst of one of the sport’s greatest runs ever by Jeff Gordon. This means Labonte won titles in the prime years of likely three of the five greatest NASCAR drivers of all-time. The 12 year span between championships is also the longest between titles in NASCAR history, by quite a margin, which shows how consistent of a driver Labonte was for a long time. Labonte finished in the top 10 in the season’s end points standings 17 times in his career (in 26 full seasons); including a top 10 season finish in four different decades.

If you need more evidence as to how Labonte was snubbed in being left out of the 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame class you need look no further than his three closest peers who have recently been inducted. In the last three years Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett and Bill Elliott have all been inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, all on their first year on the ballot, despite each having one fewer career championship than Labonte. The one thing all three drivers have in their favor is 10-plus more wins in their careers than Labonte (Wallace and Elliott doubled Labonte’s career win totals). But, doesn’t championship rings usually determine an athlete’s greatness more than anything else in almost every sport?

I’m not saying that Labonte is an all-time better driver than Wallace, Jarrett or Elliott, by any means, but what I am saying is that his resume and hardware is proof that he should’ve received the same treatment by the Hall of Fame voting committee as that trio of legends.

Terry Labonte is going to be a future NASCAR Hall of Famer. This is a fact and thus might make this entire piece much ado about nothing in the eyes of many. But, when you’re the sport’s greatest eligible champion and you have to wait another year while arguably inferior candidates are chosen ahead of you that’s a disservice to your career and legend. I hope and believe that Terry Labonte will be a member of the 2016 NASCAR Hall of Fame class in Charlotte, but in my book he’s already been enshrined. 

Mark Martin: More Than Just a Runner-Up in Everybody's Book

Mark Martin is going to go down in the history of NASCAR as the sport’s Ted Williams, Karl Malone and Dan Marino … the best of the sport to never experience the glory of a championship title. But, despite the fact that it’s this blog post’s lede and will undoubtedly and unfortunately be synonymous with him for the remainder of his life and long after it ultimately doesn’t matter, because he (and the others like him) will still remain legends and all-time greats despite never reaching their sport’s summit.

Martin always seemed to be the runner-up in NASCAR – finished second in the point standings a record (and whopping) five times. He also never seemed to be the best driver at any one point in his long and successful career – but, only because he was being bested by truly iconic names like Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. But, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t get the job done (NASCAR is a team sport, just like baseball, basketball and football) and sometimes your failed by other things like your pit crew or just dumb luck. Martin, in fact, had not one, but two championships essentially taken from him by rules infractions seemingly out of his reach.

Championships should never be a measure of a true sports legend, period. Mark Martin may not have a championship, but won 40 premier series Sprint Cup races in his career and almost 100 races when you add up his victories from the three NASCAR series (he’s second in all-time Nationwide Series wins and the only driver in the history of NASCAR with 40-plus wins in both series). Bill Rexford won a NASCAR premier series championship, in 1950, but only won one race in his career. No offense to the late Rexford, and granted he only ran 36 career NASCAR races, but you tell me which driver is the true legend of the sport. Hint: It’s not the one with the championship.

Mark Martin is not just a true NASCAR legend and an all-time great because of his skills on the racetrack. He’s also a legend, because of the man he is. I’ve been watching NASCAR for 12 years and in that time there has never been a more respected man within the NASCAR garage and among race fans than Mark Martin. Few, if any, drivers in NASCAR history have probably been as respected and liked as Martin. This is because Martin was the ultimate gentleman racer who didn’t ruffle feathers on the track by beating and banging or off the track by running his mouth about fellow drivers. Drivers knew that Martin was going to race them clean, so they had better return the favor … and they always seemed to do just that. I can’t remember a single time in my 12 years of watching this sport where I ever saw Martin and another driver have a spat either on or off the track. Everybody simply liked Mark Martin.

It’s this respect and attitude that Martin showed that stands out the most to me about his career, even more so than winning races, despite having seen almost a quarter of Martin’s career wins in the Cup Series, including one of his most successful seasons in 2009 when he won five races, including the last of his career at New Hampshire Speedway, and finished runner-up in the championship for the fifth time in his career. Mark Martin was 50 years old that season and was better than anybody on the track, including drivers half his age.

Mark Martin is going to be missed on the racetrack for many reasons, some of them including the fact that he won’t be there to show the younger drivers the right way to race and treat each other and that he’s maybe the last throwback to the good old days of racing when the sport featured workingman-like legends like Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarbrough, Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett and on and on.

Mark Martin is truly a beloved relic of the sport of NASCAR. His career spans more than 30 years and multiple eras of the sport. He’s a guy who entered his first race in an event won by the legendary Richard Petty and finished his career in a race culminating in a championship for Jimmie Johnson. If there was a legend in the sport of NASCAR the odds are that Mark Martin not only drove side-by-side with them, but also beat them.

It’s going to be weird watching NASCAR without Mark Martin in the field, but it was a damn pleasure doing so for all of those years.   

Mark Bechtel's 'He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back' A Must-Read for NASCAR Fans

Over the years I have read many different nonfiction sports books from all sorts of sports: baseball, basketball, football, etc., but have always found that books about NASCAR and its highly entertaining and interesting history are the absolute most enjoyable. Mark Bechtel’s “He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back” about the 1979 Daytona 500 and NASCAR premier Winston Cup series season is right at the very top of that list, along with Ed Hinton’s “Daytona: From the Birth of Speed to the Death of the Man in Black” and Joe Menzer’s “The Wildest Ride.”

The 1979 NASCAR Winston Cup season may be the greatest season in the 60-plus year history of the sport starting with the Daytona 500 race that helped to put the sport on the map as far as major sports go all the way to the very last race of the season which saw one of the sports closest all-time points finishes with a veteran and thought to be fading Richard Petty edging out the young, brash and universally disliked (at least at the time) Darrell Waltrip.

Bechtel’s book is incredibly well written with the author mixing in a great knowledge of not only the sport, but the country at the time in 1979 throwing in stuff about the struggles President Jimmy Carter faced at the time with the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran and how a young college basketball rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would soon help to grow the NBA in a similar way to NASCAR’s budding growth. With interesting story after interesting story Bechtel’s book is a brisk read, even though it approaches nearly 300 pages.

Bechtel’s book differs from the previously mentioned books by Hinton and Menzer in that it focuses solely on one NASCAR season instead of the sports beginnings and history. This allows for it to give even the most hardcore NASCAR fans new facts and stories about the sport, whereas many NASCAR books simply re-tell already known, but so fantastic you don’t really care stories. It also allows for the most extensive and thrilling coverage of the 1979 Daytona 500, which is almost certainly the most important race in the sport’s history. Not only was the Daytona 500 going to be the first full race broadcast live on a major television network, but it also occurred on a day when much of the country was snowed in with little more to do than watch television. The race started much like every other one before it had, but by the end the nation would see something that few could imagine: a duel at the finish resulting in the two leaders taking themselves out and an all out brawl post-race in the speedway’s infield.

“He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back” is truly a must-read for any NASCAR fan and will tell you everything you need to know about the 1979 season and the likes of Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Donnie Allison and a young, determined rookie by the name of Dale Earnhardt. NASCAR’s past is the most interesting of any sport I’ve ever read about because it’s filled with realistic and utterly entertaining characters like those aforementioned above. This book will not only fill your head with all the facts of the 1979 season, but will leave you smiling with stories about some of the greatest auto racers to ever strap on a racing suit and helmet.    

Nice to See Nice Guy Dale Jr. Win Again

One-hundred and forty-three races is an eternity to go without winning if you’re the biggest star and name in NASCAR. But that’s exactly what Dale Earnhardt Jr., the face of the sport, had gone through in the last four years. 

Luckily for Dale Jr., NASCAR and NASCAR fans that streak came to an end at Michigan Speedway on Sunday afternoon in dominating fashion as Dale Earnhardt Jr. just blew away his competition. When Junior crossed the finish line and received that checkered flag his next closest competition, Tony Stewart, was a whopping five-plus seconds behind him. 

I know that Dale Earnhardt Jr. may be the most overrated athlete in sports and I know that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is probably not one of the best 10 drivers in his sport. However, I’m thrilled for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Junior Nation and really the entire sport of NASCAR in general. 

Why? 

Because Dale Earnhardt Jr. might be the nicest guy in NASCAR. 

Sure, guys like Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards have done a lot of winning over the last four years when Junior was struggling and not even close to Victory Lane, but if given the chance to spend an afternoon or have a beer with any of those guys I wouldn’t take it. I seriously wouldn’t. They all come off as jerks … which, unfortunately, means that many of NASCAR’s biggest names or stars are jerks. 

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has never once come off as a jerk, even amidst an epic losing streak that gave him every reason in the world to be one. He’s friendly. He’s humble. He’s down to Earth and fits a good ole boy mode that once was commonplace in the sport, but doesn’t seem to exist much anymore. Sure, Dale Earnhardt Jr. got a lot of his fans because of the family name. But, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is his own man, he’s not as arrogant or hard-headed as his father was, he’s more of the nice guy next door that you’d love for your daughter to date. Dale Jr. is good people and in a sport that seems to be lacking sometimes in good people it’s refreshing to see him succeed.

NASCAR Still Has Ways to Go on Safety

When Dale Earnhardt died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 it essentially set off a race to make the sport as safe as it possibly could be as quickly as possible. NASCAR has come an incredibly long way since that tragic day with the mandating of the HANS device for all drivers, SAFER barriers and a much safer car. You could say that Earnhardt’s death set off a safety initiative that essentially makes the result of his death just as important as his legendary Hall of Fame career.

Yet, as safe as NASCAR has become … I’ve said myself on multiple occasions that the days of NASCAR drivers dying from wrecks may be a thing of the past … there are still moments that pop up every now and then that remind me that NASCAR shouldn’t stop efforts to make the tracks and racing safer.

Last season proved that Pocono had severe safety issues in each of the tracks two races. In the spring race at the track close quarters racing on the final lap saw Kasey Kahne’s #9 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford dart to the infield grass in a boneheaded attempt to pass his blocking teammate A.J. Allmendinger in the #43 Ford. The grass, as it so often does with cars, sent Kahne out of control and in front of oncoming traffic that included the #16 Roush-Fenway Racing Ford of Greg Biffle, #5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Mark Martin and the #56 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota of Martin Truex Jr. Upon hitting the nose of Martin’s #5 car Kahne’s car was sent airborne and almost cleared the short outside wall that would have sent him tumbling into the trees that line the outside of Pocono Raceway.

Upon coming back down from his short flight Kahne’s wrecked car sat in front of more oncoming traffic and took out more contenders like the #24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Jeff Gordon, the #6 Roush-Fenway Racing Ford of David Ragan, the #19 Richard Petty Motorsport Ford of Elliott Sadler and more.

Kahne’s ill-decision that led to him almost sailing out of Pocono proved that the track’s walls were far too low if a car could almost find its way out of the track. As a result of this accident and the backlash from the wall being too low, after all NASCAR only seems to fix things when they have been proven to be dangerous, Pocono installed a high catch fence around the track. You can see this new catch fence in the video below of Jeff Gordon’s 2011 spring win at Pocono, if you look really closely at the outside wall.

The late summer race last season at Pocono proved once again that the track had some serious safety issues that needed to be looked into when Elliott Sadler recorded the hardest hit in NASCAR history, since the sport started keeping impact record of hits. Sadler’s wreck was the result of either losing control or being tapped from behind and spun out (there’s really no good video footage of the start of his accident) behind a wreck involving the #2 Penske Racing Dodge of Kurt Busch and the #33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet of Clint Bowyer ahead of him on the track after Jimmie Johnson in the #48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet wrecked Busch. Sadler ended up hitting the wall at an uneven angle which caused the most severe impact recorded in NASCAR history and destroyed the car so badly that the entire engine came out of the car and sat on the track in close proximity to his mangled Ford. Footage of Sadler’s horrific wreck can be seen below, but is very brief as the camera was following the initial wreck involving Busch.

Uneven walls or openings in the walls at some tracks are responsible for many of the ugliest and scariest crashes in NASCAR. Sadler showed a second weakness in Pocono’s safety in 2010 and the track made $3 million worth of safety changes before the 2011 season that included a SAFER barrier where Sadler hit to lessen the impact in the event of future wrecks.

Pocono Raceway can still do more when it comes to safety though as you can see from this 2011 ARCA series wreck involving Buster Graham that happened less than two weeks ago.

Now this incident involving Graham’s #59 Dodge might not look serious, but it could have and honestly should have been much, much worse. You see, it had down poured the day before when this race was initially supposed to be held and the race was pushed back to the next morning. Because of all the rain the infield grass was still wet and enabled Graham’s car to pick up so much speed that it actually ramped or jumped over the wall and onto a little piece of the track inside the infield. Graham was incredibly lucky that his car did indeed jump over that wall, because not only is that not a SAFER barrier, but it also is directly in front of a piece of land that unevenly juts out into the infield grass. I shudder to think about what would have happened to Graham had he not gotten a little luck from the drenched grass. I have a terrible feeling that he’d at least have made a trip to the local hospital or even worse, as ARCA cars aren’t quite a safe as NASCAR cars.

Safety issues are something that shouldn’t come up very often at all in NASCAR, but here they have popped up again after Monday’s race (rain pushed the Sprint Cup race back a day) at the road course in Watkins Glen, N.Y.

There were two absolutely terrifying wrecks at Watkins Glen on Monday, a single car wreck involving the #11 Gibbs Racing Toyota of Denny Hamlin and a multiple car incident involving the #6 Ford of David Ragan and the #00 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota of David Reutimann. The multiple car wreck involving Ragan and Reutimann on the final lap of the race will probably look worse to the casual fan, because it’s scarier looking, but Hamlin’s wreck was just as hard, if not harder.

With 25 laps remaining in the race on Monday Hamlin’s Toyota blew a tire that reportedly cut the brake line and sent Hamlin into a tire barrier at a much higher speed than it would have had Hamlin had brakes. Now these tire barriers are supposed to act similar in style to the SAFER barriers by deflecting some of the impact of the hit, but as you can see in the video below, Hamlin just so happened to hit the tire barrier right in a spot where it was held up by a concrete base. Therefore, Hamlin’s impact wasn’t really deflected that much, as I’m sure you can tell by the drastic shortening of his car’s nose.

Watkins Glen should probably look into adding a SAFER barrier to that section of the track, and around the entire track (only certain areas of the course have the SAFER barriers). They should also do away with the concrete base behind the tire barrier and guardrail as that essentially did the majority of the damage in Hamlin’s accident.

Hamlin’s wreck was no doubt serious business, but it might pale in comparison to the biggest problem that Watkins Glen has right now and it is a problem that has seemingly popped up multiple times over the last few years.

The problem, once again, is the uneven wall angles. The uneven wall angles on the guardrails, coupled with the deflecting tire barriers, at Watkins Glen have led to so much carnage over the last few years that it can no longer be ignored, and frankly the fact that it’s been ignored this long is extremely disturbing.

In the 2008 Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen, the #00 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota of Michael McDowell and the #38 Robert Yates Racing Ford of David Gilliland were battling hard for ground when McDowell forced Gilliland into a tire barrier that sent him back onto the track in front of oncoming traffic that led to the horrific wreck, you can see below, that severely damaged not only Gilliland’s car but also those of Bobby Labonte (#43), Dave Blaney (#22), Sam Hornish Jr. (#77), Max Papis (#70), Joe Nemechek (#78), Ryan Newman (#12) and Reed Sorensen (#41). All of the drivers were unharmed, but Labonte had to be taken to a local hospital for further evaluation.

The very next year in 2009 the same exact thing happened when the #9 Kasey Kahne forced the #77 of Sam Hornish Jr. off the track and into a tire barrier, which sent Hornish out into the oncoming traffic of Jeff Gordon’s #24 and Jeff Burton’s #31 Richard Childress Chevrolet thoroughly destroying all three cars.

But, just in case that’s not enough to drive the point home it happened once again in the 2010 Nationwide Series race at the Glen when Jason Leffler’s #38 car gets out of control hits the bad wall angle and is basically thrown back out onto the track in front of almost the entire field, causing an 11 car pileup.

The worst of any of these bad angle wrecks at Watkins Glen, though, came on the final lap of Monday’s race when Boris Said in the Phoenix Racing #51 Chevrolet got into Ragan’s #6 Ford sending it into a bad angle on the left side of the track which shot it back in front of Reutimann’s #00 Toyota effectively sending it into a bad angle on the right side of the track. Reutimann’s impact with the wall was so horrendous that it lifted his Toyota airborne and he was simply along for the ride from there. Both Ragan and Reutimann’s cars were junked and both drivers were extremely lucky to walk away. In post race interviews both Ragan and Reutimann agreed that the track should have SAFER barriers in the locations where they each hit.

There is absolutely no reason at all for tracks like Pocono or Watkins Glen to really have these safety issues in the first place in 2010 and 2011. Every single track on the NASCAR circuit should be mandated to have SAFER barriers on every single wall whether it’s an outside wall or inside wall, no matter what. Driver safety should be the most important thing on NASCAR’s mind and Watkins Glen now is something that must be fixed before the series returns in 2012, above is four consecutive years of horrendous accidents for the same reason.

Jeff Burton said it best on Twitter following the race on Monday at his Twitter handle @RCR31JeffBurton: “We need 2 look at the wall angles, and make some changes. All tracks have spent a fortune on softer walls. We need to keep working.”

NASCAR always needs to keep working on safety, it’s come a long way since Earnhardt’s death, but recent events seem to suggest there is still a little ways to go.