NASCAR HATES FORD (BUT NOT EDSEL)

It is not a happy time for fans of Ford Motor Company’s NASCAR program . . . .

Long-time Ford owner Robert Yates is retiring at the end of 2007 (although the team will soldier on . . . as the flagging Wood Brothers have after the first generation called it quits).

Iron-man Ricky Rudd may never drive again after his shoulder injury in the Southern 500 . . . Oops, Speedzzter means that boring California "cookie cutter" race that now occupies the sacrosanct date for the Southern 500 (RIP).

Ford also completely missed out on the biggest prizes of the 2007 season (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Joe Gibbs Racing, and Toyota's U.S. marketing and sales genius Jim Press).

As for what’s left of FoMoCo’s NASCAR program, Roush-Fenway managed to land only Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards into the elite twelve finalists for the 2007 Chase for the (last) Nextel Cup, guaranteeing that only a token one out of every six "chasers" will sport a Blue Oval (which is a far cry from when Ford held half of the Chase slots not so long ago . . . or back in the halcyon days of 1992, when the chase-less Winston Cup came down to a last-race shootout between Ford drivers Bill Elliott, the late Davy Allison, and the late Alan Kulwicki).

Now that Chevrolet has clenched its 31st Manufacturer’s championship (a number bloated by default, thanks to Lee Iacocca, Red Poling, and Henry Ford II killing Ford Racing DEAD in 1970) and the know-it-all scribes have mostly declared the 2007 Chase to be a Bow-Tie only affair among Hendrick-Chevy and Gibbs-Toyo . . . err . . . Chevy jockeys, it’s time to see what scraps NASCAR has left for long-suffering Ford fans.

1. Edsel hired by ISC:

According to the Daytona Beach News Journal and jayski.com, Edsel B. Ford II will become a director of International Speedway Corporation (ISC) in November. ISC, of course, is the holding company for the bulk of the tracks with valuable NEXTEL/SPRINT Cup dates . . . at least the majority of the tracks that are not owned by Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Incorporated (TRK).

Edsel is well-known to Ford Racing fans as " Team Ford Racing Member No. 1," and perhaps the only member of the Ford family which truly understands and appreciates the importance of motorsport to FoMoCo. Sadly, Edsel did not best cousin Bill Ford, Jr. in the internecine struggle to lead FoMoCo (which would have perhaps stemmed some of the unnecessary declines in Ford Racing over the past ten years and other damaging aspects of Bill Ford’s failed legacy).

The cynical fans will see the France family move to bring in Edsel to ISC as a meager morsel thrown to encourage Ford to "stay the course," even as NASCAR gave Chevrolet a wholly unnecessary (and completely non-"stock") new engine, allowed Toyota and Dodge to crib liberally from Ford’s NASCAR technology (for the benefit of the "show"), and has now drained reasonable hopes of a Ford comeback by forcing everyone into a bland, common-template/Car-of-Tomorrow future.

With ISC and SMI controlling the vast majority of major paved "stock car" tracks in the U.S., it is simply impossible for a modern-day Bill France, Sr., to develop a new, more "stock" stock car league to take on the NASCAR monopoly. But, locking in Ford family support for NASCAR’s brand of low-tech, homogenized silhouette racing is shrewd move (even as NASCAR maneuvers ever closer to becoming a "spec" series without any meaningful tie to any OEM product . . . or reliance upon any manufacturer). Putting Edsel on the ISC board appears to be an interim move gauged to protect the France family monopoly on "stock car" [sic] racing, plain and simple.

2. Edwards on track to win the Busch Series.

Carl Edwards may be discounted by the sports-writer intelligencia as a meaningful threat to the coronation someone from Hendrick Motorsports (Read: GM’s factory racing team) in the Nextel Cup Chase. But Edwards is the points leader and the solid favorite to win the last Busch Series Championship (Busch as a sponsor fizzles off into obscurity at the end of the 2007 season, apparently paving the way for the return of the time-honored (and as of yet unsponsored) "Grand National" moniker to NASCAR’s junior league).

If Edwards manages to hang on, his Busch Series championship may be the only thing Ford Racing fans have to celebrate on "Ford Championship Weekend" in Miami.

Parity in NASCAR apparently means doing whatever it takes to facilitate GM dominance in Cup, tolerating a little token Ford success in Busch, and encouraging the Toyota invasion in the "who-care-anymore" Craftsman Truck Series.