NASCAR Sprint Cup: The Curious Language of Firing NASCAR Personnel

NASCAR on-track interviews and statements are notoriously bland and uninteresting, as are many modern individual athlete interviews. Unfortunately, within the entire panorama of sports, NASCAR probably ranks somewhere between golf and water polo.

Almost all post-race driver interviews usually devolve into one of three basic scenarios:

The driver is either elated with his team and car and dutifully thanks his sponsors, disappointed with his result but confident that the team will turn it around next week and dutifully thanks his sponsors or the driver is particularly disgusted with the actions of a fellow driver and, again, tips his cap to the sponsors/owner.

That's about it.

Carl Edwards is notorious for this. Jimmie Johnson is not much better. Matt Kenseth seems as though he tries not to do this, but inevitably the better part of his interviews fall into this ilk. 

There are some exceptions, notably Tony Stewart and Kurt/Kyle Busch, but even they are prone to the vacuous remarks so prevalent in the current climate of blandness.

However, the language of a driver or crew chief being fired, while certainly not inflammatory by any means, has a more quizzical nature.

When Kurt Busch was effectively fired from Penske Dodge after the conclusion of the 2011 season, the language of the sever was expressed publicly that the two sides had decided to "part ways."

This sounds diplomatic, almost as if Kurt Busch and Roger Penske came to the decision mutually and amicably over a cup of coffee at a local cafe. 

The truth, without doubt, is much more convoluted than that. Beyond that, do billionaires like Roger Penske ever simply part ways with a handshake and a smile? No way.

David Reutimann, former driver for Michael Waltrip Racing, was released under even more inauspicious terminology: a "business decision."

In other words, an opportunity presented itself at the 11th hour, in the form of Mark Martin, that left Reutimann as blindsided as an upstart, nameless Florida hurricane.

Reutimann was not even afforded the opportunity to thank his sponsors.

The case of David Ragan at Roush Fenway Racing ended under different circumstances, yet with a similar result.

UPS, the primary sponsor for Ragan's No. 6 Ford, expressed its intentions of curtailing sponsorship well before the conclusion of the 2011 campaign. In other words, he was way ahead of David Reutimann in relation to the availability of time to court new sponsorship before the commencement of the 2012 season.

Still, Roush Fenway felt it necessary to announce that Ragan had been "officially released to pursue other opportunities," or something to that effect. That "release" has, thus far, yielded no fruit.

In frank terms, Ragan was given the proverbial pink slip due to lack of new sponsor interest. Why can't the organization just say that and thank the sponsor (UPS) for its past support and move on?

This queer form of communication does not always end poorly for a driver. A.J. Allmendinger was released, officially, from Richard Petty Motorsports in very much the same language as Ragan.

Fortunately for 'Dinger, he was able to enter almost immediately into a new contract to replace Kurt Busch at Dodge Penske in his old No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Charger.

Thus the cycle is complete!

Allmendinger, upon inking his new deal with Dodge Penske, probably said something completely meaningless. Something along the lines of, "I am grateful to Roger Penske and and the sponsors for giving me the opportunity be a part of a great organization and to win races."

The quotes are dry as a bone when a driver is part of an organization; when they are fired, the language becomes awkward and evasive.

Getting fired in NASCAR should elicit more of the on-track philosophy that NASCAR has recently adopted: Boys, have at it!