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  • Robert Yates, NASCAR Championship Owner, Dies at 74

    Robert Yates, NASCAR Championship Owner, Dies at 74

    Robert Yates, a renowned engine builder and NASCAR Cup Series champion team owner died Monday after losing his battle with liver cancer. He was 74. His son, Doug Yates, president and CEO of Roush Yates Engines, announced his father’s passing Monday night, onTwitter.

    “My Dad and Hero, Robert Yates, has passed and is with the Lord. Thanks for all the prayers and support.”

    “Hero — my dad’s my hero,” his son said. “My dad’s the toughest guy you’ve ever met. Never give up, always looking for the positive and looking for a competitive advantage, and that’s the way he raised myself and our family and everybody at Roush Yates.”

    In May, Yates was in attendance for his selection as an inductee into the 2018 NASCAR Hall of Fame, winning 94 percent of the votes. The emotion was evident in his voice as he said, “I don’t even know if I’ll sleep tonight. I’m so honored and I love this sport, and I want this sport to do the same thing it did for me, again and again and again.”

    At the induction announcement, Yates also recalled a former professor saying, “Robert Yates will never amount to anything. He’s working on a tractor instead of studying.”

    However, his expertise as a mechanic would lead to 77 victories as an engine builder. Yates made the move to NASCAR in 1971, working with Hall of Famer Junior Johnson. His engines powered Cale Yarborough’s cars and propelled Bobby Allison to a Cup Series championship title in 1983 for DiGard Racing.

    Yates’ 21-year career as a NASCAR Premier Series team owner began in 1989 where he went on to capture 57 wins, 49 poles and 270 top-five finishes. In 1999, he won the Cup Series championship with NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Dale Jarrett. Yates fielded cars for Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Ricky Rudd, Elliott Sadler, David Gilliland, Paul Menard and more. He won three Daytona 500s, one with Allison in 1992 and two with Jarrett, in 1996 and 2000.

    Yates will be missed in the NASCAR community, not only for his contributions to the sports but for the personal impact he made on the lives he touched.

    As three-time Cup Champion Tony Stewart said, “Our sport lost one of the most inventive minds and kindest personalities in Robert Yates. I’m glad I got to know him and proud our race team was able to honor him this year at Darlington. He leaves a strong legacy that is carried on by his son, Doug, and all of their employees at Roush Yates Engines. While Robert will certainly be missed, he will always be remembered.”

    Follow @angiecampbell_ for the latest NASCAR news and feature stories.

     

  • Logging Laps: Road course racing is perfect.

    Logging Laps: Road course racing is perfect.

    NASCAR is and has always been a southern sport. Even with the massive boom in popularity we saw from the early 90s till the late 2000s, NASCAR’s primary fan base and roots were always in the short tracks of the Deep South. Bumping, banging, and hard-nosed racing is where rivalries and champions were born. It’s what led blue-collar workers to become racers and race fans.

    However, like everything else in the world, the only thing constant is change. NASCAR is no exception to this rule, with the cars, drivers, tracks, and the very sport itself, being reshaped and remodeled over and over again in the last 15 years. We see more competition now that we ever have, and the cars and drivers are closer than they ever were before.

    On a typical race weekend, the difference between the fastest five cars and the rest of the top 25 is little more than a few tenths of a second. That makes aero, clean air, and track position more important than just about everything else now. That’s why we see so many races where the leader after pit stops is the leader at the next flag. Passing is so hard now that even with almost all the downforce taken off these cars, it’s still a rarity to see a green-flag pass for the lead. It creates a racing product that is a damned hard sell to new fans and a sport that has seen a massive exodus of its old, core demographic.

    Like I said before, times change. We can’t stop advancement in the sport any more than we could actually go back in time. It’s just not possible. However, there is a beacon of light in the garage. A small window to the past that we often times miss, road course racing.

    Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen have quickly become the only real analogs to the old style of racing that made NASCAR so popular. A race where tires fall off, drivers can show their skill, aero means almost nothing and if you’re faster than the guy in front of you, you can pass him.

    It’s almost ironic when you stop to think about it because NASCAR has always been oval-centric. There was a time when most of the teams took their worst car to the road course races and didn’t even try. It was the era of ringers where top teams would hire a specialist just for 1-3 races a year simply because they thought they would get a better result that way. They put little to no effort into the road courses because they didn’t matter. Drivers dreaded going to a road course race and would bemoan it. Now, the drivers, crews, and fans resoundingly love it, so much so that we’re actually going to see a road course (Roval) race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the playoffs next year.

    What is truly amazing is that when you watch the races from Sonoma or Watkins Glen, you see what the sport used to be – men and women, braver than most, wrestling an unruly 3400 pounds race car, side-by-side and bumper to bumper, for position. We see the bumping and banging that the old fans miss. We see the action at the front of the pack and the passing we used to enjoy. Tires fall off, tempers flare, and strategies come into play that we could never have predicted. It’s truly a great show for everyone involved and a microcosm of the sport we all remember and miss.

    Sure, NASCAR has evolved and the time when short-track racing at small fairgrounds across the country is gone. Yes, we’re stuck with 1.5-mile tracks that try every trick in the book to make something out of nothing, tire dragons, VHT, progressive banking, soft green tires, and more. Attendance is down and so are the TV ratings, but in my opinion, and based on what I’ve seen from the fans in the stands, the people online, and the crews in the garage, we have an antidote for the anemic state of racing we love so much – road courses.

    It’s as simple as tuning into the last few years of races and watching the action, the fender-banging, the last lap passes, the fuel games and the pit strategy. Road course racing is giving us everything you could want as a NASCAR fan, rivalries included. Just look back at Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski, Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers, Martin Truex Jr. and Keselowski, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth. The list of driver flare-ups over contact goes on and on.

    This is exactly what so many fans have been complaining about, boring races with no passing, no action, and no drama. Now, after another great weekend of road course racing, it appears obvious that we have a pretty simple solution to those issues, now don’t we?