I don’t know if any of you have been clued in to this, but if not, I’m going to tell you right now: NASCAR drivers are crybabies.

Yes, that’s right, sniveling, whining, stick in the mud crybabies.

I wanted to write this column before but didn’t have quite enough oomph to make it a full-length feature. Now I have all the ammo I need between last week’s race and Sonoma to fill in the gaps.

Example 1: Tony Stewart

Disclaimer: The man can drive and win in anything with wheels. Generous philanthropist. Speaks his mind and often says what many other people wish would be said. Champion of animals. Hometown homebody.

Crime: Being a crybaby over an incident with David Gilliland two weekends ago.

We all know the story by now. Stewart was following Gilliland on the track when Gilliland made a sudden move with no apparent warning. This caused the two cars to collide, and also caused significant damage to the No. 20. Stewart actually stayed to help fix his car because the damage was severe enough to warrant another set of hands.

Stewart said (in brief and I’m paraphrasing here) that Gilliland had little talent and certainly not enough to compete at the Cup level, and that when Stewart asked Gilliland what the cause was for the sudden move, Gilliland allegedly had “no explanation” for the wreck. According to Stewart, this is the second time Gilliland has had no such explanation, stemming from an initial incident several weeks ago including Stewart, Gilliland and Jamie McMurray.

Stewart also approached officials to complain about the way Gilliland was driving. Then, once he aired his grievances with NASCAR brass, he aired it to a group of rapt media, including an ESPN camera crew and several reporters.

In his words, Stewart repeatedly called Gilliland a “kid.” He even went so far as to call Gilliland a “nice kid.” It was the most condescending and immature speech I have heard from Stewart in a while.

Let’s get the facts straight. David Gilliland is 31 years old and married with children. I think technically this qualifies him as “man.” If maturity was measured solely with these factors of marriage and children, it is Stewart who is the adolescent.

David Gilliland is not the most striking guy in the garage. He’s quiet, a little wooden but seems nice, awkward in speech and manner. He was a very unassuming replacement for the open, gregarious Elliott Sadler. Those are some big personality shoes to fill.

Skills-wise, it’s true that Gilliland has been involved in more than his fair share of on-track tussles. He was plucked straight from the Busch series after one magical win at Kentucky in 2006. His only additional Cup experience was when Robert Yates Racing decided to put Gilliland in the car when Sadler departed, giving Gilliland a whole fourteen or fifteen races to get acclimated.

It doesn’t make him a kid or any less of a man. He was given an opportunity that only a fool would turn down, and Tony Stewart mocks him for that. Coming from a man sometimes slept in his car because he was too poor to afford otherwise while racing, you would think he would at least give Gilliland the respect he deserves for being a bright enough star that someone noticed. Gilliland struggled for a lot of years too. Like Stewart, Gilliland didn’t have much handed to him.

Tony Stewart is a star and a champion. I wish he would act that way and be less condescending to those who don’t match his level of talent. Few people do. On Stewart’s radio show, a listener wondered why Stewart had even been following Gilliland so closely if he was concerned about Gilliland’s racing ability. Stewart didn’t really have a good answer for that. This firmly put him back in the category of crybaby for me. Hell of a racer, but I wish he would quit whining to NASCAR when someone doesn’t drive the way he wants them to.

This brings me to this week’s crybaby.

Example 2: Robby Gordon

Disclaimer: I am not a Gordon fan so I admit to not knowing much about him personally. I can’t speak for him having a warm and open nature because he often seems a little sour or confrontational, or sometimes both. Excellent off-road racer and a legend in other series.

Crime: Belittling fellow driver Juan Pablo Montoya’s first Cup win at Sonoma.

Gordon was quoted as saying that JPM didn’t really win the race; it was fuel mileage. Gordon said that JPM didn’t have the better car. For all intents and purposes, he lucked into the win, leaving the truly superior cars in the dust.

The truly superior car did win, Robby. It was the one that had the most efficient gas mileage, best timed pit-stops, and an excellently tuned engine. Differences in cars like fuel mileage are what differentiate them from others in the cookie-cutter COT. Gordon then went on to say that he was going to meet with the Roush-Yates engine builders to find out why his engine didn’t conserve fuel the same way.

Gordon has proven himself to be a sore loser more than once. He is in a unique situation to understand the driving talent that JPM has. Unfortunately, he had to succumb not to driving talent but to the driver’s powerplant. Sometimes it seems that nothing ever goes wrong in Gordonland, it is all the little things that happen outside it that conspire to keep the No. 7 from Victory Lane.

Gordon is under heavy and constant stress from being a one-man operation. It does not excuse him, however, from detracting from other people’s successes. It is too bad that Gordon has a personality that doesn’t mix with most others; he is a great, aggressive driver who has never really been able to show how talented he is because he lacked support from his teammates because of this sort of friction.

I sincerely hope he can learn to be the better man soon.

Have a question or comment for Samantha? Email her at samanthamaynard@sportsgrumblings.com