Top Row Seat - Winston Cup Banquet
Dateline: 12/08/98This year as the "Good Ole' Boys" strapped on their tuxedos instead of five-point harnesses and headed off to the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City they had a new weapon awaiting them that was supposed to make them all look as suave in front of the camera as Bill Clinton giving his "State Of The Union Address." Yes, the magic of the teleprompter has arrived in NASCAR.
Over the last few years the NASCAR Winston Cup awards banquet has steadily become less and less entertaining as it has moved into the world of professional speechwriters and $1,000 haircuts. However this year NASCAR reached a new low as it took away the one remaining redeeming feature of the banquet, the drivers.
In the past you could always count on a few of the guys trying to wing it by not using index cards. These heartfelt and usually emotional speeches were without exception the best. This year the teleprompter completely drained the entire proceedings of any genuine humor or emotion.
Mark Martin gave what was probably a wonderfully real speech... the first thirty or forty times that he gave it. But in front of the teleprompter he "disconnected" from the words and blew through it with only the slightest hint that he was even remotely interested in what he was saying. Rusty Wallace was even worse. With that plastic smile glued to his face he tried mightily to get through his speech. But by the end he just wanted out of there. I actually felt bad for him.
This year's Winston Cup awards banquet combined the overproduced, cheesy and absolutely irrelevant "NASCAR Night In Hollywood" (which they showed WAY too many clips from) with pre-written, pre-practiced, and pre-dehumanized teleprompter fed speeches. The result had all the joy and suspense of a 1998 Darrell Waltrip qualifying run.
Please NASCAR, next year leave the teleprompter at home. NASCAR Winston Cup Racing is supposed to be about the people.
