In all fairness to Steve Turner, he’s been here for a while. But as an owner he’s relatively new to the game – and it sounds like he could soon be one of the biggest independents in the sport.

FoxSports first reported on Saturday about the possible sale of Braun Racing to Turner. It’s been common knowledge around the sport for some time that Todd Braun is/was willing to entertain offers. We are hearing, barring any last minute issues, Turner is the new owner of Braun Racing.

So far this season Turner has been linked to at least two other teams – Phoenix Racing and Randy Moss Motorsports – in his quest to expand from his existing two truck operation.

What Turner would get in the acquisition of Braun is equipment, and perhaps most importantly, several lucrative sponsorship deals – add those to his existing deal with Ricky Carmichael and Monster Energy Drink.

Turner, if you’re not familiar, is the president and COO of Texas-based RedHawk Energy, an oilfield services company. He joined that organization after the sale of his own Xxtreme Group (another oilfield services company) to RedHawk late last year.

Throughout racing circles, Turner has been a familiar name for some time as the benefactor of young NASCAR driver James Buescher (Buescher dates Turner’s daughter Kris).

He formed Turner Motorsports last season, running select Truck Series races with Ricky Carmichael and Scott Wimmer. Carmichael has run the full truck schedule this year, and Buescher has been in all but a few races in a second truck. As an owner, Turner has already collected six top-fives and 11 top-10s.

Though many around NASCAR are once bitten, twice shy with new team owners (see Alex Meshkin and Bobby Ginn), I think Turner could prove formidable. While he may be moving a little fast (I’m personally a fan of the Kevin Harvick, KHI model) he appears to have some wealth and a solid business background, and he understands the cost of racing (only 1 of 2 Turner Motorsports Trucks is funded – Wolfpack Rentals is a RedHawk company) – something Meshkin and Ginn had absolutely no conception of.

We’ll see how everything turns out, but Steve Turner is definitely someone to keep an eye on. He’s shown over the past several months a strong desire to become a player in NASCAR – with the right resources and right moves he could be there very soon.

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NASCAR has perception problems – with fans, with the media (especially its own), and with the mainstream. It’s something I’ve written about twice (here and here). After spending what I’m sure was a lot of money on consultants, I think NASCAR finally believes it too – and they’re doing something about it.

This week they announced the reorganization of their communications department. According to Sports Business Journal:

Members of the communications team will be embedded in other departments, such as consumer, brand and corporate marketing, in an effort to broaden and help NASCAR’s communications efforts evolve both inside the sanctioning body and with the sport’s teams, tracks and sponsors.

What this means is NASCAR is going to be adding more PR people, what SBJ said could be 20 to the existing department of about 25, and hiring a chief communications officer. Among other things, this will, in theory, allow them to do a better job of shifting and crafting a more positive narrative for the sport. And lets be honest, the narrative has gotten away from them.

Right or wrong, we’re entrenched in a media environment that focuses heavily on the negative. I personally believe this has been the main contributing factor to the malaise among NASCAR fans – as Ed Hinton put it, NASCARmyalgia.

With the amount of negative coverage (and seemingly no coherent communications strategy from NASCAR), fans are just feeling down on the sport. There really isn’t one explanation either.  I refer you back to the Ed Hinton article. Pretty much all of the comments on the NASCAR PR story on SceneDaily.com went a little like this: “The product stinks. We don’t need NASCAR to spin things for us.”  It sounds good to say, but I’m not sure what there is to improve about the product (no one really articulated that). Maybe make the car look better? Shorten races?

I’m really at a loss for what’s so bad right now. I think a lot of people are. I certainly see issues, but I understand there have and always will be things wrong with NASCAR (just like every other sport). Nothing’s perfect. What I think we can improve on is how we talk about the sport.

For all NASCAR hopes to accomplish with this reorganization I think changing that conversation has got to be one of the top priorities. NASCAR is presenting a good product week in and week out, but if people aren’t seeing it, or interested in it, it really doesn’t matter.

We’ll see in the coming seasons whether this actually makes a difference, but it’s interesting to see how NASCAR is trying to improve things.

Oh, and if you need a job it sounds like NASCAR will soon be hiring…

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Wow, what a race! Drama. Damage. And a drag race!

What we saw Sunday in Montreal is why we all enjoy watching racing. There was no anointed winner, leading the most laps led to disaster, and the best funded team didn’t win. There was passion (and one middle finger), and boy was there carnage.

What really got me excited though was the very large and very passionate crowd. Our friends to the north love NASCAR and I’m starting to think they deserve more than just one Nationwide race a year.

NASCAR entered the Canadian market in 2004 and has since expanded with the acquisition of the former CASCAR series (now the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series), and the staging of that one yearly event at Circuit Gilles Villenueve in Montreal.

Unlike their four year foray into Mexico, NASCAR’s Canadian event has remained quite popular. And it’s no wonder given the occasionally strange, and always entertaining events Circuit Gilles Villenueve produces.

Some last week were calling for NASCAR to bring a Cup Series event to the track. And I say why not? Given the Nationwide races we’ve seen at the track I’d love to see what kind of hijinks the Cup cars could get into on the 2.71 mile road course. But honestly I’d be fine with a Cup race anywhere in the country. I thinks the fans have earned it – I think they deserve it.

Have you heard about the proposed Canadian Motor Speedway in Fort Erie, Ontario (near Buffalo, N.Y.)? It’s nothing more than an idea right now, but the developers are working with Jeff Gordon and they’re in talks with racetrack architect Paxton Waters to build the one mile tri-oval. They’re still a ways from anything being built, but the potential is interesting.

In the meantime we have a perfectly good (or as I should say, exceptional) facility with a group of people who can’t get enough stock car racing. I’m always an advocate for bringing the sport to people who want to see it, so why isn’t NASCAR doing more?

As we just wrapped up the scheduling for 2011 and saw what could have been pretty big changes turn into some cosmetic moves, we got a front row view of the politics involved.

NASCAR is privately owned by the France family. The France family is the majority shareholder (with 70% of the voting stock) in the publicly traded International Speedway Corporation. And then we have Bruton Smith and his publicly traded Speedway Motorsports Inc. Those two control all but three of the tracks that have NASCAR Cup Series dates and neither is giving up one of their very valuable dates anytime soon. Ask Jerry Carroll how hard it is to get a Cup date to your track.

Still, Canada is a market NASCAR should be more involved in. We’ll see in the future if NASCAR thinks so. I just hope Canadian NASCAR fans get the respect they deserve.

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Is it possible to be a successful, competitive team and not be located in Charlotte (or near it)?

This is something I was thinking about today as I saw the announcement that Regan Smith had re-signed with Furniture Row Motorsports through 2012. The Denver, Colo. based team has fielded a car in NASCAR since 2005.

Now don’t get me wrong, I write this not to bash the guys at Furniture Row. They certainly are able to do a lot given the difficulty of their situation. The fact is though, being in Denver is not ideal for any part of the operation of a NASCAR team.

While Furniture Row gets their chassis and engines from Childress, they are at a distinct disadvantage being away from the geographic center of NASCAR. They don’t have the pool of personnel to draw from (heck, even Petty Enterprises, in late 2007 moved closer in to Mooresville, NC because of difficulty in finding/retaining quality help willing to commute to Randleman), and they aren’t close to the equipment suppliers. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t have easy access to the technical support (the wind tunnels, k-rigs, shaker rigs, etc.) that all of their competitors do.

That said there are a couple of relative success stories.

Orleans Racing operated out of Las Vegas for years. Brendan Gaughan, driving for his family owned team, scored eight Truck Series wins and came very close to winning a championship in 2003. Though the team didn’t have as much luck upon Gaughan’s return in 2005 (they shut down in 2007), they ran a tight ship and maintained solid equipment. Still, the Gaughans spent a lot of money keeping up with their counterparts back in North Carolina.

Another relative success story is Thorsport Racing out of Sandusky, Ohio. The team has fielded a truck since 1996. While they haven’t been prolific in victory lane (they have just two wins in 464 starts), Matt Crafton has finished in the top-10 in points in five of the last six seasons (including second in 2009).

Still, running in the Truck Series is vastly different than running in the Cup Series. Thorsport gets a lot of technical support from Kevin Harvick Inc. and the Gaughans have a lot of money (thanks to the Coast Casinos, Southpoint and Boyd Gaming) – not to mention the length of schedules and lower budgets across the board.

Even with stable funding, I think there is a limit to how successful a team can be when they’re not in the area. You’ve got to hand it to Barney Visser though he is committed to making his race team work.

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It’s official… NASCAR has released the schedules for the 2011 season, and seasons of speculation are finally over – both Kentucky and Kansas got their long-anticipated Cup dates.

I’ve never been the biggest advocated for giving Kentucky a Cup date and Kansas a second Cup date. They’re really just more of the same. That said, I’m glad NASCAR, ISC and SMI are bringing racing to fans who appreciate it.

Though I haven’t been the biggest proponent of adding dates to those two tracks, I (and TC) have been a proponent of taking a date away from California. The racing is never very good and for whatever reason the crowds just couldn’t be maintained. Some markets just cant support two dates.

I believe that’s the story in Atlanta. Though I like the track and the racing it produces, it too was having issues with attendance. From a business prospective it made more sense giving its second date to Kentucky – a place I think will be able to support the event.

Other welcome news was that SMI didn’t pull a date from New Hampshire – I thought for sure Bruton would use the police issue in Loudon to give Las Vegas a second date. The man in the gawdy sunglasses surprises.

Overall, while the 2011 schedule does bring us changes, there aren’t really a ton of surprises. As always, the internal politics of NASCAR, ISC and SMI keep the possibility of changes to a minimum. I’d certainly like to see a Chase that was more representative of the whole schedule, but I’m good with what is hopefully just the beginning of a truly improved schedule in NASCAR.

Some Thoughts on the Truck Series Schedule

With 24 scheduled events for the 2011 season, and another one TBA, the Truck Series  schedule is much improved over this year’s. Gone is the three week break between Daytona and Atlanta, and the two week break between Atlanta and Martinsville. Those successive breaks were a little excessive – not to mention they killed the momentum of the season.

There are a couple of two week breaks early on in 2011, and a month long break in the middle of the summer, but all in all they’ve done a much better job keeping the series flowing.

As far as filling that TBA date, why not have a triple-header at Richmond in September? There might be some logistical issues with the haulers, but who wouldn’t love to see the trucks make their RIR return?

I’m not sure what NASCAR is working on for that date, but my plea is that they keep them at a short track.

And finally a couple of disappointing spots. Pocono is back on the schedule. I think we all know my thoughts on that. And I don’t really understand the reasoning for moving the Phoenix date. It’s going to be weird for them to have an off-weekend before the season-finale at Homestead – and we’ve had such great late season showdowns.

What are your thoughts on Kentucky and Kansas and all three schedules for the 2011 season?

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It’s not often I see press releases that truly catch my attention. I mean something beyond the standard pre-race and post-race (which are both useful enough). The last couple of weeks I’ve seen two that had me talking – one for the good, the other for the bad.

Something different? Go Red Bull!

This one was a first – and something I’ve been advocating for for a long time. Why not get creative with your communication efforts? Everybody puts out the same formulaic pre and post-race releases with a ridiculous amount of spin. We get it, you’re trying to turn a 30th place finish into a positive thing.

Lest we be disappointed by yet another post-race we’re probably not going to read, someone finally did something about it. Thank you Red Bull!

You may have seen this – it made the rounds on twitter – after Pocono the folks over at Red Bull, instead of doing a recap of the race that we all saw, injected some humor into their release with some fun facts.

The first bit on their release read:

Pocono Raceway is like the Death Star when it comes to rain. There’s some sort of triangular tractor beam that seems to suck in ominous clouds.

Haha. What? The Death Star? It continues like that, but I had to finish reading. They even managed to sneak in some information about their teams in there. All in all, not bad. Check out their turn by turn Watkins Glen post-race – equally entertaining.

The beauty of this is, they’re not running great, but they’ve got people buzzing about something positive. A win-win for the team.

The clock starts now to see how fast someone steals this from them – or tries to outdo them.

Bad luck? Or the funding fell out?

Generally start-and-park teams don’t put out pre and post race releases. It’s obvious why. But I found an exception.

Michelle Theriault has been running a start-and-park for Andy Hillenburg’s Fast Track Racing. After Theriault’s first race at ORP the sponsor’s marketing company (yes, a start-and-park with a sponsor) put out a release claiming it was bad luck that forced Theriault out of the race.

From the drop of the green flag, Theriault fought a tight condition which inhibited her climb through the field. The crew planned on making adjustments on the No. 48 ProGold Lubricants Chevrolet, but bad luck struck on lap 52. A kink in a line going to the radiator caused the motor to overheat, which relegated the rookie driver to a 32nd-place finish.

A kink in the line? Bad luck? Sounds to me, as Michael McDowell put it on his twitter page a few weeks ago, the funding fell out on the front stretch.

What’s worse than being a start-and-park? Trying to pretend you’re not one. This was just plain insulting to anyone who read it – and it all but guaranteed I wouldn’t be looking at another of their releases.

Luckily, though they’ve been putting out pre-races, they quit doing the post-race.

Sometimes its just best not to say anything at all.

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Before I begin, I just really need to get this off my chest…I told you so.

For the last week some in the NASCAR media have been trying to turn fleeting anger between Juan Pablo Montoya and Brian Pattie into the feud of the century…the ‘beginning of the end?’ some asked. I think Sunday proved how wrong that was.

Now the storyline is that this win has repaired that rift. Convenient how some are able to craft this story to make it look like they were right all along. 

The truth is, if any rift existed in the first place, that win probably wouldn’t have occurred. Chemistry is a delicate and important thing in racing, and when it’s off, or not working, wins don’t happen. This wasn’t the first time JPM has been angry at Brian Pattie, and lets be honest, it won’t be the last.

These ‘much ado about nothing’ storylines have plagued EGR over the last few seasons. It’s true there have been struggles, and layoffs. And things haven’t always been peachy in Concord, Indianapolis or Pittsburgh. But the dire predictions haven’t generally matched up with reality.

And now Chip Ganassi and his organization are proving that.

For most in motorsports, success is very cyclical. Sometimes you’re on top, sometimes you’re not. Such is the case with Ganassi and EGR. It was not so long ago they were laying off a third of the organization, and we’re at best a well funded back marker.

Today, EGR is a three time winner in 2010 - a distinction that puts them just behind Gibbs and Hendrick on the season - and consistently competitive (though the Chase is not likely this season).

In a sport dominated by massive teams they’re an anomaly among their peers. I saw someone had been trying to bring the term ’boutique team’ to the lexicon to describe EGR. It’s not a bad description – they’re small, efficient and good quality. It hasn’t really caught on, but it was a valiant effort.

Spend much time around this sport, or really any sport and it’s interesting to see how things change, evolve and grow (or flop). Yesterday’s titans are tomorrow’s old news. From the depths of two years ago when some were predicting the end of CGR to where they are today, EGR is on the upswing of this cycle, and Chip Ganassi is a very happy man.

As the great Mark Twain said, “rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

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