I'm a huge fan of both shows, but I have to say that I lost a bit of respect for Richard during the "Mega-Race" episodes. The challenge was to have each shop build a car on it's own, and then race it. I understand that Richard lost Aaron and that put him in a really tough position, but bringing in a professional team to engineer and help build the car wasn't inline with the spirit of the challenge. Yes, the car was technically built at Gas Monkey and the GM crew was definitely involved in the build, but ultimately a good portion of that build was outsourced to Laughlin Motorsports. I totally get why Chief was salty....that wasn't what they had initially agreed upon and Richard was simply using his bankroll to stack the deck in his favor.
Regarding the driver issue, as much as I like Chief I feel like his tirade about Richard refusing to drive the car was completely out of line. I understand his position but there's no way that he should expect someone with little to no experience to get behind the wheel of a car that powerful. Obviously there's a massive safety issue at hand but beyond that, Richard just doesn't have the experience to be competitive which then makes the race somewhat pointless or at least lopsided. Of course Chief is smart enough to know that, so my only theory is that he was also trying to stack the deck, perhaps as retribution for Richard bringing in Laughlin Motorsports.
In the end I'm glad that that MWSC won. They built a car with FAR less resources than their opponent, and still ended up winning back to back races against what amounts to a financial/professional juggernaut. I'll admit that they may have bitched and whined a bit along the way, but in my mind that was justified since Richard went way outside of the original parameters of the agreement.
Or it's all just manufactured television, I don't know.
