Harvick Disses' Junior.....

[Panther_99FS]

http://www.racer.com/nascar/item/143...tful-earnhardt

[Daveroo]

have to agree whole hardheartedly with Harvick.ive been saying this same thing for years.Jr maybe the "most popular" driver,but he falls far being in raw talent and performance.his father is as man i would have loved to competed against,as much as i disliked him,he and i would have butted heads the same as wallace and waltrip did with him,and yes,had i been on the ball and just accepted Junie Donlevys offer,id have been in the busch series with Martin,Earnhardt ,Wallace and Benson in the '83-84 seasons.and i also feel very confidant in saying i could have competed with them,i stopped raving full time in 1981 at age 19,yet i got the offer from Donlevy in 83 and to this day people will ask me "are you the Dave Kauffman Jr who ran at...."

anyway..its allways bugged me that Jr got all the praise and glory that should have been for other drivers...like Matt Kenseth,hes a much better driver than Jr,yet people discount him,mostly i feel for his busch series battles with jr..


oh the hell with it.....im wrong as usual im sure....

[jamminjames]

Jr isn't that great of a driver, but I don't think he has stunted the growth of Nascar. If anything people know who he is that don't even watch Nascar. So maybe he has brought some people to the sport. IMO what has hurt Nascar is rules written in pencil and too many laps run under caution flags.

[wombat666]

What really hurts Nascar is the lack of wins awarded to the Pace Car drivers .........

[Panther_99FS]

Jr isn't that great of a driver, but I don't think he has stunted the growth of Nascar.

Exactly!.....

[stansdds]

No, Dale Junior turned out to be a whole lot less successful than his father. The same can be said of Kyle Petty. Did either one of them stunt the growth of NASCAR? No.

I think what is hurting NASCAR is an economic crash with a painfully slow recovery and the people who really enjoy car racing are getting older. Young people do not have the same level of interest in car racing as us older farts, plain and simple. And us older farts no longer have the spare cash to buy tickets to the races. So, NASCAR's revenues are in decline and NASCAR is trying to reinvent itself. When that fails to bring back the revenues, you start the blame game.

[Daveroo]

"The growth in [NASCAR] has not reached the levels that it should have because our most popular driver has not been our most successful driver," Harvick said. "Dale Earnhardt Jr. has won the 'Most Popular Driver' for however many years in a row (14) and he has been our most popular driver, but he hasn't been anywhere close to being our most successful driver."


i feel this is correct,he means that nascar would have grown leaps and bounds had he won more and lived up to the hype,but he didnt,and people (no names here) bitch and complain about nascar to no end,had he won more and lived up to it,new fans would have come..."oh look at this,this guy is considered the best and he proves it week in week out"

but no,people look in and say,"**** this guy is the most popular driver,yet he rarely wins a race?..what-a-joke,i wont watch"

[eddie]

I don't know what Harvick is going on about, what has he done to bring people to NASCAR? He hasn't exactly run up a stellar record in NASCAR, except for being a hot head at times.

[joe bob]

Jr's popularity didn't stunt anything. Nascar chose to go the playoff gimmick route to draw in new fans at the expense of hard core racing fans. Eventually the fair weather fans cease to be impressed by yet another format change and their attention wanders. That bubble was always going to burst.

[Terry]

Junior has always known he wasn't a great driver as did Jr. nation, this is nothing new. A driver has two points that cause people to like or dislike him, driving skill and personality. To have both these qualities at a high level is very rare. The prime example is the King who would do anything to keep his fans happy. So Jr has a great personality but has not achieved greatness on the track while Kevin is just the opposite. Neither hurt NASCAR, Brian did that!

[edakridge]

I agree, Junior has done nothing to take away from the appeal of NASCAR. This has been done by Brian France and Mike Helton by turning NASCAR into a glorified IROC series and by changing what appealed to the fans into what doesn't.

[Panther_99FS]

I don't know what Harvick is going on about, what has he done to bring people to NASCAR? He hasn't exactly run up a stellar record in NASCAR, except for being a hot head at times.

Yep!
He should have looked in the mirror first before opening his mouth!

[PRB]

Harvick, as a voting army of one, doesn't, be definition, get to decide who the "most popular" driver is. Nor does the most popular driver, for that matter. Harvick only get's to vote on who Harvick's most popular driver is. That's how it works. But just to pretend, I wonder who Harvick does think should be NASCAR's most popular driver, since Dale Jr. doesn't deserve it. He didn't say did he? Can't be himself, because he doesn't have that many more wins than Jr., and would therefore "stunt the sport" only a little bit less than Jr. has...

[wombat666]

I know that old saying about Richard Petty (He never saw a fan he didn't like..............or something like that!) but he was enormously popular with people outside of NASCAR.
Despite the knockers who go on about him running up victories at minor local events he was a major drawcard for NASCAR (as it was back then) and a personal favorite with me.
If there are 'problems' within NASCAR they are linked to the economy and the way the series is governed, or rather not governed.