Okay, I should really be working right now, but I have to riff on this. Let me start off by saying that my personal opinion of smoking is that it is gross, and I can't understand why anyone would want to put a burning weed in their mouth and inhale the smoke from it, ruining their lungs. I personally support laws restricting tobacco advertising, too. Like I said, that's my personal opinion…but that's just some background on what I'm about to talk about below.

What the heck does Penske's tobacco sponsorship have to do with our 17 year old points leader (Colin Braun) racing on the same weekend in a different series? Before this asinine ruling, there probably would not have been any mention of tobacco products in either the Grand American race telecast or on site. But now that they decided that our young points leader cannot race, so the media coverage about tobacco will be heavy for our series. This ruling is about the dumbest thing I've seen in motorsports since USAC's new Silver Crown Cars.

The thing that really doesn't make sense is that Colin raced the same weekend last year! In addition, there have been other under 18 drivers that have raced on a weekend where another series has tobacco issues (F1 and Formula BMW comes to mind). How about some consistency?

Colin is handling this very well in public, and should be commended as such. I haven't had the chance to meet him yet, but from everything I've seen in the media Colin and his dad are class acts.

Someone with some sense and power (even though the two seem to rarely go hand-in-hand) needs to step in and do something here. We are lucky to have people who possess both in Grand American, and it would be nice to see it be used in this case. It would be great to see the same people who have sat drivers for FIVE LAPS for rough driving step up and defend thier points leader.

I think Grand American is to the point that they do not need to race at Homestead or with the IRL, so maybe that's some leverage to pay with. Either way, something needs to be done. It's a black eye to have your points leader not racing for something as dumb as this.

Colin's getting hosed.

Got comments on this article? Discuss it on the message board!