Some people love the old joke about the young race fan who grows up believing the last four words to the national anthem are “Gentleman, Start Your Engines.”
Three calendar pages and a handful of races into the season, this much is obvious: We are not yet out of NASCAR’s Age of Schadenfreude — a strange and troubling period that, if things don’t turn around soon, may end up defining the sanctioning body in this century.
Another January has come and gone, and with it the favorite winter pastimes of dirt-track people: competing in or watching the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Midget Nationals, and then spending hour upon hour bitching about the very same Chili Bowl.
