iNSIDE SCOOP: Key Word? Excitement

During the annual Media Tour prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season opener at Daytona next month, there’s always a feeling of anticipation, eagerness and…yes, excitement.

A few years ago, the word of the week was “appreciate.” This year, it’s “excitement, excited or exciting,” some variation of the theme.

Everyone is excited to get the season started. Duh. They’re excited because they can get back to the track, start seeing if all the work they put in over the short offseason is going to pay off or not, and start making money again.

I’m excited too, for some of the same reasons. Ooops, did it again!

Really, though, the reason they say they’re excited is because they don’t have clue one about how the season is going to go. They can’t. You don’t know until you leave Daytona, as a matter of fact, and go to Phoenix, because Daytona is an anomaly. It’s a plate track, the rules are different almost across the board, and the racing is different by necessity and regulation.

So they’re hoping it all goes well there and they make a little money, blow the rust off and get some momentum. Most of them are happy that they can be back in the saddle, but they really have no idea if it’s going to work or not, not yet anyway.

They can speculate. They can hope. They can even dream. But they don’t know. 

They have a decent idea, in the ballpark anyway. They know how their stuff works. They also know that there’s a lot they don’t know. They don’t know what the rules package is, not all of it, and they don’t know what the Chase is going to look like, either, not for another 18 hours or so.

So excitement is a decent fallback position.

Who knows? Ford could turn around a season that saw it not at its usual strength, and Jimmie Johnson could find out that the new road to the Chase title has a bend in it. Kyle Busch could be the hero this year instead of the bridesmaid, and Tony Stewart could find out that his surgically repaired right leg is even stronger than it was before he broke it.

We won’t know until it happens.

That’s why we’re all excited that the season is just around the corner.

Bring. It. On.