Thrill of Victory, Agony of Defeat: NASCAR's Good Winners and Bad Losers

Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.—Henry "Red" Sanders
It isn't whether you win or lose but how you play the game.—Grantland Rice

After nearly every NASCAR race, there appears yet another in a long list of stories involving a frustrated driver saying or doing something that every one of his detractors points to and says "What a sore loser."

And every time it happens, that driver's fans rally behind him and come up with some "rationalization" for their favorite driver's behavior.

"The reporter goaded him on." "He was just frustrated." "Let them stick a microphone in your face at time like that and see how you respond." "He just doesn't like to lose, and why should he?" "Radio communications between team members are not meant for public consumption."

And the list goes on, as does the list of incidents of drivers exhibiting "bad behavior" that have drawn fan and media attention alike. Here's a few we saw in 2008:

• Greg Biffle spoke on-camera about how frustrated he was over consistent mechanical or pit road failures earlier in the year. Afterward, everyone began talking about how he might be looking for a new ride next year. The outcome: Biffle came on strong through the second half of the season and, with the help of some crew member changes, made it into the Chase. He then proceeded to win at Loudon and Dover, moving up to third in the points.
  
• Denny Hamlin threw his team under the bus during a post-race interview after an engine failure at Michigan. Pundits and fans alike conjectured about how much such an on-camera tirade was going to hurt team morale. The "damage:" Hamlin reeled off three consecutive third places finishes locking him in the Chase.
  
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. curses at his Crew Chief, Tony Eury Jr., over his radio nearly every race. At Loudon, owner Rick Hendrick finally stepped in and onto the pit box in order to calm his driver. All the Junior haters jumped with joy at this new chance to bash NASCAR's most popular driver. One of the most telling comments from that conversation: "I'm pissed off. Sometimes you go your fastest when you're pissed off. So we'll see." And we did see, as he recovered from a batch of bad tires and finished fifth.
  
• Carl Edwards and his Crew Chief Bob Osborne got into such a heated disagreement over a pit call during a red flag period at Pocono they had to separate themselves. After the race, they were still obviously wound up about it in their respective post-race interviews. Oh, by the way, Edwards won that day.
  
• When asked about his competitive spirit on the ESPN show "E:60," Joey Logano responded that although he is a "nice guy" most of the time, put him in nearly any competitive environment and, for him, "Second place is THE WORST." He then followed that by quoting Vince Lombardi saying "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." Suddenly, many wanted to brand him the "next great sore loser" and began decrying the loss of "good sportsmanship" amongst NASCAR's future young guns.
  
• Tony Stewart chewed out his crew after finishing the race at Richmond. The scene aired repeatedly in the post-race analysis shows. Speculation ran rampant about how bad things must be between he and Greg Zippadelli and how it must be affecting their championship chances. Stewart's finishing spot that day: second. In having to "explain himself" after the fact, Stewart seemed unrepentant saying "You show me a guy who doesn't get frustrated once in a while and I'll show you a guy I can beat nine weeks out of 10 every year for the rest of my life."
  
• Villain of all villains, Kyle Busch's list appears endless as he openly airs his frustrations nearly every time he crashes, gets bumped on track, or loses a race in the final laps. At the first Chase race in Loudon he streamed profanities over his radio about a penalty handed to him for "pulling out under yellow" to get back to pit road in a vain effort to fix a badly broken race car. The outcome: Busch buckled down and held onto an undrivable "rolling wreck" for another 20+ laps before it snapped loose and spun, leaving him with a badly damaged car. 
  
• To top it off, Busch had the unmitigated gall to leave the garage area without speaking to the media after finishing 12 laps down in 34th place. The tough race saw him fall from atop the points standings for the first time in 18 weeks all the way down to eighth, 74 markers behind the new leaders. Endless articles and editorials cropped up about what a "bad loser" he is and how he needs to "learn to lose gracefully before he can become a winner."
  

The fact is, by normal standards, everyone listed above could be called a "sore loser," and they are not the only ones.

How many times have we seen a crew chief throw his headset and storm off his pit box when something bad happens to his car or driver?

Crew members come to blows with other crew members, and sometimes drivers, when accidents happen that affect the outcome of the race.

The important fact to keep in mind is that NASCAR drivers and their teams don't operate under "normal standards." They are under extreme pressure to win from the media, their sponsors, their owners, their fans, and most importantly, the fires in their own bellies. 

Being a gracious loser is considered a virtue in most normal walks of life; no one likes to see a child throw a bat after striking out or watch as one friend belittles another after winning a game of checkers. No one wants to be called a loser—especially not to their face—nor do they want to be known as a sore loser.

Those who constantly cry "foul" whenever a driver vents his frustration in "socially unacceptable" ways don't seem to fully grasp that this is the Sprint Cup Series—NASCAR's premier series—where only the best of the best make it, and not all of them survive.

This is not tee-ball, this is not little league, and this is not the Special Olympics. Not everyone is a winner and not everybody receives a trophy or award at the end of the season. At NASCAR's highest level, only one will take home the trophy after each race, and only one will hoist the Sprint Cup over his head at the end of the year. 

Millions of dollars are at stake every race. Not all of it comes from prize winnings; much comes in sponsorship dollars, manufacturer dollars and support, fan support through merchandising, and overall good-will.

And most importantly in the minds of the drivers, the teams, and the owners, there's the immeasurable value of the championship points that determine who will walk away from the Awards Dinner in November with the biggest check in hand, bragging rights for a year, and the words "Cup Champion" forever fixed in front of their names.

Nowhere have I ever heard or read that being a "good loser" or even a "good sportsman" is a prerequisite to being a NASCAR Cup Champion. Very few people I know would describe either Kurt Busch or Tony Stewart as "good losers," yet they account for three of the last six Cup championships. And that's to say nothing of many of the champions of the 53 years before either of them took home a title.

Many people are quick to point out that drivers like Mark Martin and Jeff Burton always seem to show great grace under the pressure, and rarely, if ever, resort to on-camera tirades worthy of mention. But some facts are often overlooked in doing so. 

Martin and Burton are cited as examples nearly every time some other driver explodes in anger because they are more the exceptions to the rule than the rule, at least amongst the upper echelon of Sprint Cup drivers. As for those outside that elite few, it's much easier for a driver to be a good loser when he consistently finishes outside the top-20.

Secondly, both Martin and Burton have always been described as "nice guys" by their fans and by the media, and we all know the saying about where nice guys finish—and it's not generally first. Neither of them has ever won a Cup championship. Burton has four top-five and seven top-10 finishes in his 14 years of driving full-time in the Cup series. Martin has four second place finishes in the championship points, 12 top-fives, and 16 top-10s in his 20 years of full-time Cup racing. 

And finally, oftentimes fans and the media alike question whether or not being such "nice guys" is what keeps them from ultimately winning a Cup championship. Their fans, along with many members of Junior Nation (and others) wish their favorite would be a little less "sportsmanlike" and a whole lot more "aggressive" when it comes to dealing with other drivers on the track - particularly those as unrepentant as Busch and Stewart.

Bottom line, although there are many great quotes and philosophies about the relative importance of winning and losing, I don't think you can pick one and apply it across the board and expect the results to be the same. Nobody LIKES to lose, and some handle it better than others. For some the sheer hatred of losing is a driving motivational force, but makes them no less hospitable as people once they are away from the highly-rarified, highly-pressurized air that surrounds the track on raceday. 

Those who succeed at the uppermost levels of high-adrenalin, ultra-competitive sports handle disappointment on raceday in many different ways, almost all of them far different than how you or I might handle losing a game of Scrabble on a Saturday afternoon. 

In my not-so-humble opinion, the most appropriate philosophy that could possibly apply to all the NASCAR drivers is the Vince Lombardi revision of Red Sanders' quote: "Winning isn't everything, the will to win is the only thing." 

Beyond that, no single philosophy should be used to measure the character of a NASCAR driver, or any professional athlete for that matter.

As Alonzo Harris, Denzel Washington's character in "Training Day," tells Ethan Hawke's Jake Hoyt, "This shit's chess, it ain't checkers."

Different people have different temperaments and different things that motivate them, and those things change from situation to situation.

In closing, I believe David Byrne summed it up best in The Talking Heads' aptly-titled "Life During Wartime:"

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now.

That's my $0.18. What's yours?