Everybody makes occassional mistakes, and everyone has an opinion about it. And we all know that Mattberg has an opinion on everyone and everything...as is his right. It's just that he refuses to agree with everybody, or frequently anybody, and few can understand why he takes that line. Only he knows the answer to that, and I doubt that he can explain it without slandering someone. There's a history there.

I work and race...national licenses in both. I've been fortunate to maintain a good raport with most drivers and stewards. I've never had to protest a driver for anything, but have always had that as an option. Most often, all that is required is a talk to a steward on channel B of the radio about the situation in question, vent my fears at the steward, and he talks to the driver. If the driver takes issue, then it becomes the steward's problem, not mine. If I feel the steward takes inappropriate action, then I have the right to protest the driver or the steward. Personally, I can never see doing that, but it's my option.

If I'd been at the corner in question, and had a near miss by a previous incident, I'd be nervous as hell everytime a car passed. At lunch, or whatever, I'd been screaming at the CS or the Safety Steward or someone in charge that something needed to be done to protect me and my crew from becoming statistics. We've all seen the incidents on TV where a worker was in a supposed safe position and was injured/killed by and errant car. We all know the dangers and try to prevent them.

Tim did nothing wrong, that I can tell from the video. Cheeze, if we held true to the white line rule, no one could ever clip an apex without a DQ! That would totally destroy the lines of a certain, well-known ITB driver!

While the statement, "Without the workers, we could never race" is true, it still grinds me. I love working a race as much as I love racing, as do most people I've worked with that do both. A lot of workers would love to race, but don't, for a miriad of reasons...economics being one, but certainly not the only one. Most of the people I work with truly enjoy do it because they love it. I agree with the statement, "Without the workers,
we couldn't race", but add, "Without the racers, we couldn't work." An example would be the CART race at Texas Motor Speedway a few years back that was cancelled the day of the races. I have several friends that showed up to work the race only to find out it'd been cancelled. Workers and no racers.