Congrats to Car & Driver Magazine for pulling what could very well be one of the WORST April Fool’s jokes ever. By the way, when I read the article this morning – there was NO NOTE that it was an April Fool’s joke – and I read the article approximately 5 times.

I’m not positive on this, but I’m not so sure that if this is true, that our president knows precisely what he is doing. You see, from what this post from Car and Driver says, Obama has ordered Chevy and Dodge out of NASCAR at the end of the 2009 season, and states that Ford will face the same requirement if they choose to ask for bailout money.

I can see Obama saying that they can’t give out bonuses to employees with the bailout  money, but seriously, is he NUTS? What are Chevy and Dodge teams supposed to do next year? Beg Ford (if they can stay) and Toyota to take them on? And if Ford goes, then there’s only Toyota and what would be the point? How many teams might fold due to this? How many jobs might be lost if these drivers and crews have no where to go next season because their cars are gone?

Oh and one other thing – I see TONS of vehicle commercials during NASCAR races. During the rest of the week, not so much. So if you think that you’re going to help by cutting the car manufacturers out of the #1 place their ads are running, you’re not. Obviously Obama is not a NASCAR fan – otherwise he wouldn’t have even considered this as one of the requirements for bailout money.

Today on the NASCAR pre-race they were talking about Dale Jr and Tony Eury Jr. One of the questions that was asked was if Tony Jr would be Junior’s crew chief at the end of this season. Personally, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be. It isn’t Tony Jr’s fault that Junior isn’t winning races. It isn’t Junior’s fault that he isn’t winning races. It’s a team effort. If the car isnt’ want it needs to be, it’s not always that easy to adjust something and make it what the driver wants it to be. It’s a fine line from what I’ve seen and frankly, it’s not an easy thing to hit, considering that if you fix one problem, another is likely to crop up.

But my question wouldn’t be if Tony Jr would still be Junior’s crew chief at the end of this season. My question would be, if Rick Hendrick were to decide to change Junior’s crew chief, would it be any different than when  DEI tried to change Junior’s crew chief? That didn’t work out so great as I recall.