What Is The Biggest NASCAR Story of The Last Decade?

I’m disappointed in myself. Yesterday morning I was writing this article that I wanted to put up around the 27th, but time these last few weeks has been fleeting at best.

Anyway, I finished it yesterday afternoon and posted it up and then went to nascar.com to see what they’ve got going on over there as I hadn’t been there in a few days and what to my wondering eyes should appear? David Caraviello’s article about the same thing.

No problem I think, and then I read what he wrote and man oh man “Houston we’ve got a problem”.

You see Caraviello’s article is exactly like mine (almost) but better written - his time isn’t as fleeting as mine I guess.

So now I’ve got a problem. You see his article is so close to mine it would look like plagiarism by me if I kept my article up, so I pulled it down. And I know its not plagiarism by him as he posted his first and I spoke to no one, including him, about what I was writing. Great minds really do think alike.

Darn, if only I had kept on schedule and put it up on the 27th.

Basically what I wanted to say in my article was this:

There were a lot of stories this past decade and some of the biggest were; Jimmie Johnson, The introduction of The Chase, NASCAR’s new Drug Policy, SAFER Barriers & HANS Devices, The CoT, Toyota in Cup, Dale Jr driving for Hendrick, and the collapse of Petty Enterprises and others like Evernham, DEI, and Robert Yates Racing.

Pretty much what Caraviello said too, although he did had a few other things like the plane crash near Martinsville that still affects Hendrick Motorsports even today.

In his article Caraviello states the biggest story in NASCAR for this decade is the death of Dale Earnhardt.

I totally agree and that is what I originally wrote in my very similar article;

Without a doubt the biggest NASCAR story this past decade has been the death of Dale Earnhardt.

Earnhardt’s death changed the face of NASCAR and the effects are still being felt even 9 years later.

One can only speculate what NASCAR would be like now if Earnhardt had not crashed that fateful day in Feburary during the Daytona 500 in 2001, but I do know for sure that his death is the reason why some of the stories mentioned above are even stories.

SAFER Barriers, HANS Devices, the introduction of the CoT, and Dale Jr racing for Hendrick are good examples of the ripples still being felt in NASCAR after Earnhardt’s death.

One would like to hope that some of these changes would have happened even if Earnhardt hadn’t crashed, but let’s be realistic this whole safety thing wasn’t addressed after the deaths of Petty, Irwin, and others - it was only addressed in earnest after the death of NASCAR’s superstar.

So do you agree or not?

Let me know.

One other thing that my article had that Caraviello’s didn’t is that Mark Martin is ending this decade the same way he started the 90’s; fighting for a Championship! Perhaps that is the most feel good story of the last 20 years in NASCAR.

Finally, I think the biggest story in racing right now is Ricky Byers and why he still doesn’t have a sponsor. Go here for the latest on Rickyand his quest to Race For a Cure, I think Karen did a great job writing the article.