As I was watching the NASCAR “Sprint Showdown” on Friday evening, a 40-lap preliminary race that qualifies two drivers into Saturday’s All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, I knew in the back of my mind who would get the third spot.
The rules go like this — the 90-lap All-Star race field is determined by drivers who have won a race since the start of the 2013 season, plus any past winners of the event in the last 10 years. The Showdown is a race featuring the best of the rest, and the top two finishers qualify into the main event, while a third driver is voted in by the fans (via an online vote).
Clint Bowyer won Friday’s race with A.J. Allmendinger taking second to punch their tickets for Saturday night. Since two “big” names were not yet qualified, it seemed obvious to me who would be getting the fan vote — Danica Patrick. And perhaps the driver who brought back the famed 3 car, Austin Dillon.
In the moments after the race ended, the FOX Sports One broadcast team announced to the viewers who won the fan vote.
At this time, most race fans were probably getting up to get another beer and settle in for the Truck series race, which was next up after the Showdown. I myself walked out of the room for a moment.
So imagine the surprise when Darrell Waltrip announces that Josh Wise gets to race with the big boys!
This is a 31-year-old Californian who competes in triathlons. A guy who finished 18th Friday, and whose best career points finish in the Cup series is 19th.
In the world of today’s NASCAR, the Go-Daddy girl has captured the hearts of fans who don’t know a whole lot about the sport, but think she’s the second coming of Jimmie Johnson (according to ESPN).
Now, to be fair, Danica is not a complete hack. She did run competitively at Kansas Speedway a week ago en route to a career-best seventh-place finish, which I thought was damn impressive. And at the spring race at Martinsville last year, she fought her way to a 12th-place finish.
But the argument remains that she is often over-hyped. Last year, she was the recipient of the fan vote into the All-Star race, and was a dud. Considering the quality of equipment she is running (which is essentially a Hendrick car), most people would expect more than two good performances in a two-year career.
So when some no-name driver wins a fan vote — over Danica and Cowboy Hat (er, Austin Dillon) — it has to be a conspiracy, right?
Before the race, FOX broadcaster Mike Joy mentioned that one unnamed online user had voted over 84,000 times for a driver. I guess the big wigs didn’t realize the kind of power the internet had.
Basically, what it came down to was the online community known as Reddit. Earlier this season, when a couple fans noticed the impressive runs that Wise was putting together in the low-budget #98 Ford owned by Phil Parsons, they decided to start a fundraising effort to help fund the car. Instead of raising real dollars, folks raised “bitcoins”, or DogeCoin, which is a form of online currency, which apparently can be exchanged for real money. I guess.
It resulted in Wise’s car being sponsored (for $55,000) at Talladega two weeks ago, with an image of a Shiba Inu dog on the hood.
Here’s what Wise had to say about being voted in:
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, I guess,” Wise said. “This is huge for me and our team. Really it started with a 16-year-old kid posting something on Reddit.com about some good runs that we had had, and for whatever reason this huge, awesome community just got behind us, and everyone knows about them raising money to sponsor us at Talladega, and then it was on to the Fan Vote.
“I’m just super thankful to be a part of it, really. It’s been a pretty cool experience.”
This also made me think about something else. If a site like Reddit holds enough influence to vote an otherwise no-name driver into the All-Star race over a racing celebrity like Danica, what else are they capable of?
The whole story is almost as crazy as Tony Stewart using Twitter! I mean, hell would freeze over if that happened!
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