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Saturday, August 4, 2012

John Wes Townley is out of the Cup race (I can hear a sigh of relief from the Cup drivers)

The case of John Wes Townley is quite interesting. He is known in many NASCAR circles as the guy who always wrecks, and often by himself for no reason. He had essentially bought his ride in the #32 car for this weekend, via sponsorship from a restaurant his father helped found, Zaxby's. It would have been his Cup debut, a start guaranteed by the top 35 rule.


But fate would intervene. While going out for his warmup lap, he wrecked the car in Turn 2 at Pocono. He never even finished the warmup lap; that’s got to be some kind of record. Soon it was announced that he was out of the ride for Sunday and Jason White was in. A wise move for sure.

But wait there’s more … it turns out may John realized he was in over his head and bowed out himself. This quote came from White when reporters caught up to him and asked about the strange situation.

"I was at an autograph session for the Camping World Truck Series and Frankie gave me a call and said the driver didn't know if he wanted to run the race, so they wanted to make a driver change," Jason White said. "I got signed up with NASCAR to get my Cup license. & Did all that, changed a few things with the seat and jumped in the seat right before the end of practice. I wasn't really prepared for it but it was pretty cool to come out here and run."

I’ll give Townley that much credit – he knew when to bow out, but really this wasn’t even necessary in the first place. He is nowhere near ready for Cup (though he should do fine in Trucks, where he finished top 10 and Pocono). You have to have a certain level of experience to race Cup properly, and he ain’t there. Not by a longshot.

Maybe next time he’ll think about that a little more before trying to buy his way into a Cup race. He’s young, and has plenty of time to learn and get better in the lower series before trying to move up. It would be silly to try to do that anytime soon.

Thankfully he won’t be on the track Sunday, as that could have been a disaster based on his past history.


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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Nailed that one, John Wes Townley is one of those drivers that are in the sport because they're daddy is rich, so he can buy him whatever he wants

August 7, 2012 at 7:19 PM 

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