I have a feeling that I’m going to make a great curmudgeon one day (editor’s note: One day?).
I’ll be that old guy rocking on the porch telling the grandkids all about the good ol’ days—even though I’m guessing that years of listening to heavy metal and hanging out in the pits at the racetrack will make it hard for me to hear whatever they’re saying in response.
One thing we’ll be talking about is the good ol’ days of motorsports. And I think I’ll be talking a lot about those good ol’ days of way back in, oh, 2019. It’s not that far of a stretch to say that these are the glory days when it comes to motorsports.
Consider the all-time greats who raced for checkered flags in 2019—seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon and six-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton. Over in rally, six-time champion Sébastien Ogier and nine-time champion Sébastien Loeb were still outrunning the kids.
Kyle Busch reached 200 major wins in NASCAR (with apologies to The King, of course). And I’ve got a feeling that Sliced Bread kid, Joey Logano, has a few more NASCAR Cup championships in his future—and I got to see his first in 2018.
I’ll be able to tell my grandkids about how Formula E was just beginning and how electric cars were setting records on Pikes Peak. Of course, by then, electric cars will be all the rage in NASCAR, the NHRA and maybe even IndyCar and Formula 1, and my grandkids will give me that “Jeez, you’re old” look.
I’ll also be able to tell my old racing stories and granddad jokes that I got to see NHRA’s greatest of the great—John Force, he of 16 Funny Car championships. On second thought, there’s a good chance Force will still be racing when I’m rocking, and my grandkids will probably get a chance to see for themselves the ageless Force race Funny Cars two decades or so down the road.
Then there are the stories I’ll have from the resurgence of sports cars in the U.S. Just consider that the 2019 Rolex 24 at Daytona alone brought out a field of who’s who of all-time racing greats, including Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya, Alex Zanardi and more.
Sure, racing in 2019 was missing Rolex 24 at Daytona co-king Scott Pruett, who drove off into his personal racing sunset a year ago in a tie with Hurley Haywood atop the Rolex wins list. But we got to see the racing great one last time in the role of grand marshal at the Rolex.
Ah, it’s good to be a race fan in 2019.
In about 20 years, feel free to stop by the porch, pull up a rocking chair and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it.
Motorsports Editor MIKE PRYSON can be reached at mike.pryson@hearst.com
