Poor Bastard Of The Moment: The NASCAR Pit Crew Guy Who Ran Onto The Track To Retrieve A Tire

This happened about three weeks ago, but it's important enough for me to get around to it.

Auto racing is a form of recreation that would be great to do but not watch. I also don't think it's much of a sport; it's way more machine than man, and if driving a car and making four successive left turns (albeit in speeds reaching 200 miles an hour) is a sport, than me finding work every day should also be called a sport.

One other thing that grates: The pit crew seems to have a lot of responsibility in the outcome of a race when each member is assigned a super-specific task you would, in other work environments, give to an intern. But because this is a race, time is of the essence, and if you're not focused in doing your simple job, you'll cost your team. I'm still waiting to see two cars pit late in the race and both are squealing their tires trying to beat the other onto the track and the announcer goes: "Ooh, it's going to be a close race to the line and ... oh my God! The tire carrier dropped the tire! Jeff Gordon had to swerve to avoid the old tire the tire carrier dropped, and that lets Tony Stewart blow right past Gordon and onto the track!! Tony Stewart is gonna win the Daytona 500!!! And all because that idiot couldn't hold onto a stupid tire!!!!"

I can't imagine ... and I don't have to, now that Jimmy Watts, firefighter by day, gas man for NASCAR driver Marcos Ambrose on the weekends, committed one of the most colossally stupid, and yet one of the most understandable, mistakes I've ever seen in this "sport": He chased a tire that got away from the pit all the way onto the grass during the race. He's been suspended until April 22.

If I was there, I wouldn't retrieve the tire because I don't want to get my legs sheared off by an oncoming car driving at 200 mph. And yet if I saw something that got away from me and was going to get in the way of someone, especially if that someone was driving 200 mph, my first instinct is to go get it, especially if I was going to put the race under caution and make us look bad. That tire is our responsibility, and I would feel we have to do all we can to get our stuff away from the path the cars are taking around the track. Watts was working on instinct, and that good deed, that maturity in being responsible for your own stuff, has unfairly brought him scorn and his pit crew shame. He was trying to do the right thing! And now he might be shitcanned "due to the economy," of course. Man, what can you ask a man to do?