What makes for a good motor sports rivalry?
Despain: Colorful personalities. If Vern Vanilla and Bill Bland have a big rivalry, who cares? If a couple of drivers who already fire up the fans in their own right in turn fire up each other, and a rivalry ensues, that’s what we who cover the sport dream about. Varsha: A while back, Robin Miller wrote a piece on SPEEDtv.com lamenting the lack of good old fashioned hatred in racing these days. And he’s right. You don’t get very far in this sport without believing that you’re better than the next guy; otherwise, you’re beaten before you start. That doesn’t mean you need to hate the other guy to make it a good rivalry, but it takes both “black hats” and “white hats” for the fans to take sides. And when they do that, you’ve got a rivalry. Jensen: Two guys with comparable talent and equipment who absolutely loathe each other, who would rather crash both of them out of the race than win themselves. The closer the performance levels and the more profound the mutual hatred, the better the ri
