4 Burning Questions: Should Accomplishments Outside the Cup Series Count Toward Hall of Fame Status?

Should accomplishments from outside of the NASCAR Cup Series make people eligible for the Hall of Fame?

Earlier this week, Dirty Mo Media and its crew lit yet another fire under the NASCAR fan base. However, this time was different. It wasn’t by calling for an increase to 900 horsepower or just a big interview guest.

Instead, during a discussion about the NASCAR Hall of Fame, one of the show’s producers touted his hot take that accomplishments outside the NASCAR Cup Series shouldn’t be considered in a person’s admission to the Hall of Fame. What followed was a look of shock on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s face and plenty of fallout across social media.

If there were ever a day for Travis Rockhold, the show’s producer, to turn off his notifications, it was immediately after this show aired. Since then, though, one of the sport’s most influential figures has come out in support of the stance. Enter Denny Hamlin.

That got everyone up in arms, with fans coming out of the woodworks to compare NASCAR to other forms of sports, which I’m just as guilty of doing in this very column.

The issue, though, is that context matters here. Major League Baseball has a Hall of Fame specifically for Major League Baseball. The NFL has the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

NASCAR does not have the NASCAR Cup Hall of Fame, NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Hall of Fame, etc. It’s simply the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and that makes it different than the rest. Why? Because that name denotes that you should be put in off merit, not just because of stats. And this year alone, we have one shining example of that being the case: Randy LaJoie.

The father of Corey LaJoie, Randy spent his best days in NASCAR in O’Reilly, where he won back-to-back championships in the mid-’90s. And if that’s where LaJoie’s legacy ended, he would still be considered one of the series’ greatest competitors. But it isn’t.

If you’ve been around short-track racing at all in the last few decades, there’s a good chance you’ve seen some of LaJoie’s handiwork in many of the cars that made laps on those summer Saturday nights. His greatest contribution to the sport is the strides he’s made in seat design and in-car safety.

LaJoie’s work has saved the lives of countless drivers on both the national and local stage. His contributions to stock-car racing at large are immeasurable, and he deserves his spot in the Hall of Fame purely based on those facts alone.

But just for the sake of the argument, let’s peek at his Cup Series stats, shall we?Not a single full-time season, and a career-best fifth-place finish at Martinsville Speedway.

I understand the place the take is coming from, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a sensible one. There are other Randy LaJoies out there, and the work they’ve done is just as, if not more, important than the guys who are winning on Sunday.

NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2026: Ray Hendrick, Mr. Modified & His Flying 11

Hendrick was known to race anywhere and everywhere.

Where would Corey Heim finish in the Cup Series this year?

One of the biggest blots on this season is that there’s simply not enough of Corey Heim in it, and it’s due to one reason alone: he doesn’t have the money. There are plenty of seats that fans have called for him to fill, including fellow young driver Riley Herbst at 23XI Racing.

What do the points say? Heim finished 28th in this year’s Daytona 500, where he had speed in spurts, but came back to win the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Darlington Raceway just last weekend. Thus far, those races, plus a fifth-place run in the Truck EchoPark Speedway event, are the only times he’s been behind the wheel.

At non-drafting tracks, Herbst has an average Cup finish this year of just under 25th. On a team with rocket ships like 23XI has at the moment, that’s mostly due to errors within the car or crew itself. Currently, Herbst is predicted to land around the 30th mark in points, which would still be better than his 35th-place finish last year.

There’s absolutely no way Heim doesn’t drive a well-equipped 23XI car to a top-25 points season, assuming he ran the entire slate. In fact, if Connor Zilisch is still predicted to land inside the top 20 in points by the season’s end, there’s more than good reason to put Heim in that same conversation. Both utterly dominated the lower ranks and would be more than competitive at the highest level. Toyota just has to find the money for Heim to go racing first.

Is JGR just after an extra pound of flesh from Chris Gabehart?

NASCOURT part two is rolling forward as expected, including a hearing on March 25. The judge in the case of Joe Gibbs Racing vs. Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports elected not to rule on a request for a preliminary injunction on behalf of JGR that would declare a court order that Gabehart not share any proprietary information from his previous employer.

The most poignant quote to come out of this trial thus far has come from the JGR camp.

“Every race that Gabehart and Spire compete using JGR’s proprietary strategies and technical information inflicts irreparable harm on JGR, whether through direct competitive disadvantage or through JGR being forced to compete without knowing if its ‘secret sauce’ is being deployed against it,” JGR’s legal team said in the initial filing.

There’s one problem with that statement. What in the hell is so secret about a spec car? If teams are supposed to purchase their parts from the same places and measure out the exact same through hours of scrutiny both pre- and post-race, is your secret sauce really that secret, or are you just trying to fire a guy twice, as Spire’s attorneys argued?

The evidence that JGR produced today was nothing more than a spreadsheet, made in what JGR called its own “style.” That’s like saying I’m infringing on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s copyrights by playing a G chord.

At this point in the proceedings, the narrative is dragging out, and if you were reading this column during the late proceedings of last year’s massive court case, you’ll know that the longer any of these proceedings play out, the person who is perceived to have the most power looks worse and worse. There are reasons large cases with high-profile individuals and organizations end up being settled 99% of the time, and this one will be no different.

Here’s What Happened With the JGR vs. Chris Gabehart/Spire Lawsuit This Week (March 14-20)

Look back at what transpired this week in the Joe Gibbs Racing vs. Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports lawsuit that included the first major hearing between the two parties.

Is NASCAR going to listen to fans and bring 750 horsepower to intermediate tracks?

In terms of the future, NASCAR is getting closer to figuring out its racing product. The first six races of this season each had character and raced a bit differently, making them the ideal start to a desperately needed rebrand. Part of that rebrand has been about running a higher-output package at tracks shorter than 1.5 miles, where the Next Gen car was shockingly bad.

Now, according to NASCAR vp of race communications Mike Forde, the idea is on the table for 2027 and beyond. The only trick here, though, is that the 1.5-mile package remains the one thing about the Next Gen cars that has never been bad in the first place.

In his interview on Hauler Talk, Forde made it seem as though NASCAR doesn’t want to spend time and money patching a hole in a ship that isn’t leaking, and I agree with him on this point. I would much rather see NASCAR completely fix whatever issues it has on short tracks first, superspeedways second and cookie-cutter 1.5-mile tracks third.

Additionally, there are those who yearn for the days of 900 hp again. However, many of those same people hated the racing last weekend at Darlington because the one car that was better than everybody else off the hauler ended up dog-walking the entire field. If 900 hp, or even 800 for that matter, are in the cards for the future, fans had better be prepared for whoever comes to the track that day with a rocket ship to walk away from the field.

I like where the 750-hp package is at. Let’s make it through a full year before we start making any additional changes.

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