Filed under: Roush Fenway Racing, Daytona Int'l Speedway, Sprint Cup, FanHouse Exclusive, SPEED TV, NASCAR
Editor's Note: Ben Blake is a long-time racing reporter and commentator known for his honest, perceptive and irreverent commentary. He started covering NASCAR and motorsports in 1982 with The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and later spent 10 years as chief NASCAR editor for Racer magazine and for SpeedTV. He is author or co-author of five NASCAR-related books, including Dale Earnhardt: Determined, the authorized biography of Dale Earnhardt. Well, I've been watching Brian France again lately, and heaven still my pen.
I haven't paid much attention to Brian in the four or so years since I came off full-time NASCAR beat coverage, but he still strikes me the same way - an arrogant punk with the smug look of someone born on third base thinking he hit a triple.
Brian (right), current chief officer of NASCAR, just doesn't seem to have focus and grip on the huge product he inherited, third-generation scion of the France clan of motorsport moguls. Sure, he played a large part in developing NASCAR's network-television packages in 2000, and for that we'll give him some credit. On the other hand, he's responsible for that abortion called The Chase to the Sprint Cup championship, and other mental breakdowns.
Funny thing though: Scribes older than I, ones who came to the game when founder Big Bill France was unquestioned Big Chief, thought pretty much the same of little Billy France -- William C. France, or Bill France "Jr." -- who was given the controls in 1972, when his father, Big Bill, decided to back away. Billy (left) was 38 when he ascended to the throne, about the same age as Brian was when Bill Jr. stepped aside in 2003.
Billy was an arrogant punk, the old hands said, a smart-a**ed kid who got the job through the lineage rather than through any demonstrated aptitude.
Moreover, the old man had bequeathed to his son the beginnings of a series sponsorship, from R.J. Reynolds, which over its 33-year lifetime grew to multimillions of dollars annually and pretty much kept the game alive during the cruel years following the Detroit pull-outs of 1970 and 1971 and the OPEC oil embargo in 1973-74.
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