GOBS AND GOBS

Though one suspects upper management likely prefers otherwise, at present two different worlds evidently exist in NASCAR.

For the sake of brevity and ease of reading, let's just call 'em -- and your scribe has thought long and hard about it -- "Good Old Boys" (GOB) and "Wine And Cheese Crowd" (WACC).

(Cool, huh? Note to self: secure trademarks.)

The GOBs, in which Richard Childress (at left) is firmly ensconced, started with hardly a nickel in their respective pockets or, perhaps, even spread among themselves.

Unlike the GOBS, the WACCs who raced, also known as SOTRMITW (Some Of The Richest Men In The World), started with millions before racing and had still more millions after racing, like Rolex Series Trueman winner Mark Patterson.

For the SOTRMITW WACCs, staying in the race game wasn't, still isn't the end game and didn't require something on the order of Bill France Jr. once buying Childress, as he hisownself once stated, an engine, at Jon Hall Chevrolet, so as to facilitate a full Daytona race field.

Imagine, if you will, someone sitting down at a King Louis XIV-era desk and, pen in hand, cut a seven-figure check (that's seven digits LEFT of the decimal point, JJ) for about 10 months of racing fun. Throw in a brand new Riley as part of the deal and pretty soon we're talking money most folks have never and will never see.

A goodly number of SOTRMITW WACCs will do the same year after year.

When the GOBs started racing -- any racing -- they employed few people, if anyone at all.

SOTRMITW WACCs write checks that immediately employ tens, if not hundreds of others to make that racing thing happen.

This isn't, hasn't been a recent thing in sports car racing; it is woven within the sport's DNA.

BUT KNOW YOUR PLACE, BOY

Surfing the Web while 10,000 ft.- high-or-more in the air (on an airplane, JJ) and returning home following Road America, seen were a few blurbs in motorsports news about Nelson Piquet Jr. having been the first Brazilian . . . well, here it is, straight from NASCAR Media itsownself:

"Nelson Piquet Jr., driver of the No. 30 Qualcomm Autotrac Chevrolet for Turner Motorsports" . . . "made racing history on Saturday, becoming the first Brazilian to win a NASCAR national series race" at Road America.

In short, according to the folks so empowered, the first NASCAR national series race winner isn't the Brazilian who was the first Brazilian to win in Grand-Am, Oswaldo Negri Jr (at right).

Then again, maybe the Rolex Series isn't a national series. Well, what exactly makes a "national series?" One that competes outside of local, state or regional boundaries?

One might think the splitting of hairs to be operable, herein, one such being Negri having won his first Grand-Am race in 2005 when the sanctioning body wasn't a "Company of NASCAR."

Then again, Negri did win the 50th Rolex 24 At Daytona, not that the Rolex 24 is of any consequence whatsoever to anyone.

Well, after hearing a certain NASCAR series bellyache to no end about wanting more attention than a certain other NASCAR series, the subject now passes into air's thin wisps, which is where it would've gone, anyway.

IS BREAKING UP EASY TO DO?

By this reporter's give-or-take count, over the last three races -- Belle Isle, Detroit, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and Road America -- something on the order of four or more A-frames, have fractured or, put another way, failed in three or four Daytona Prototypes during that three-race period.

None of those failures were in Riley DPs.

For what it's worth, hitting walls -- more "glance" than "hit" in at least one case -- isn't exactly a healthy thing. Or, for that matter, neither is impacting another car but, truth be known, DPs -- whether Riley or otherwise -- have been doing such things for years and have, more often than not, continued the race in which such blows were struck or undertaken.

It just seems that one particular but still unnamed DP is presently a tad more "fragile" -- a condition not unknown to, ahem, prototypical race cars.

A seemingly logical extension of the above would include the possibility, if not probability, of that particular suspension piece to be more likely to fail as usage (cycles) increases, thus possibly and unexpectedly breaking when otherwise regular and expected stresses are induced, say, when scrubbing tires.

Just saying.

EARNING IT

Saturday at Road America, Emil Assentato, Jeff Segal (at left, respectively) and Toronto-based AIM Autosport won their third race of the 2012 Rolex Sports Car season in the No. 69 FXDD Ferrari 458 Italia.

As of the tents being stricken at Road America, Segal and Assentato lead the GT driver-points championship, thus far having compiled 220 points to Stevenson Motorsports' Robin Liddell's 199 points.

Segal is the team's "professional driver" while Assentato is the (pick one) "Gentleman," "Sportsman," "Bob Akin" or "amateur" driver.

It's familiar territory for the two drivers who, in 2010 and driving a SpeedSource Mazda RX8 bearing the same number and sponsorship as today's car, won that year's Grand Touring championship in an admitted year-end squeaker at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah.

The competition was wickedly thick during the whole of the Rolex Series' 12-race 2010 GT schedule, as 18 drivers would help capture one or more race wins. There still were 16 winning drivers that season when dropped are the two additional drivers, Nick Hamm and David Haskell, from the Rolex 24-winning SpeedSource No. 70 Castrol Mazda RX-8 regular-season team of Sylvain Tremblay and Jonathan Bomarito. Heck, the now estranged Andy Lally and TRG team alone accounted for three wins.

A tight points race the whole of that 2010 season, Assentato and Segal hardly ran away with the title, even though the pair twice won while, on the flip side, twice failed to finish within the top five. Between those extremes, the pair scored eight top-four-or-better finishes.

The team didn't have to finish as the best for each race, "just good enough" worked perfectly fine to score two Rolex championship "timepieces."

Assentato, beginning with the 2009 season and through the Road America race, has scored 17 podium finishes in 43 races.

On track in 2012 to be one of Assentato's best seasons yet, Assentato this season already has surpassed 2011's four podiums and has equaled his 2010 career-best five podiums.

As Assentato readily notes, the 2010 championship win -- by five points over sole second-place finisher and SpeedSource owner Tremblay -- came as a result of other championship contenders' carelessness or, perhaps, uncontrolled testosterone.

Yet, serving as a metaphor for "how life works," one often wins, whether on a race track, business or, even, love because others err.

As is the case for yours truly, Assentato is an admitted "old guy" but, unlike yours truly, Assentato doesn't wince upon gazing into an early morning bathroom mirror, being unsurprised at the sight of a non-25-year old guy returning his gaze.

Like most of those who are in their, um, "advanced years," Assentato has an ache or two which, in his case, is manifested by a slight but noticeable left-leg limp in his walk.

"It was the least serious of my injuries," which came when Assentato did what a lot of race car drivers do at one time or another: wreck.

Only this decades-ago wreck wasn't at all pretty, especially when doctors decided Assentato's seriously busted left leg would not receive anything but cursory treatment and was the very least of Assentato's medical woes.

"I was in my early 20's," Assentato said. "I loved racing and was good at it, too. I was fast.

"But the recovery time gave me a chance to think, it gave me pause and made me think about what I was doing, what I wanted to do and how I should (note: not "could") get there.

"I wanted to return to racing, but I was going to do it on my own terms. The only way to do that was get an education and a job."

"Fate" is a curious thing, often suggestive of a secretive "Mr. Wizard" hiding behind a curtain somewhere, throwing levers, pressing pedals and spinning dials that are the determinants of individual lives.

So, was fate at the root of Assentato's wreck? Had that wreck not occurred, would have a young Assentato excelled sufficiently to become a star and later revered race car driver? Or, had Assentato not wrecked, would he today be at the helm of one of the world's largest, privately held securities dealers?

"Getting back to racing took a little longer than I would've liked, but it is what it is," Assentato said.

Later,

DC

Excepting that of Richard Childress, the above pictures are the work of photojournalist Brian Cleary, who retains all rights of usage. To see more or get copies of his work, go to http://www.bcpix.com