But if you look back at the history of the Daytona 500, you’ll find that they had “big ones” before restrictor plates. As a matter of fact, in the 1960 500, they had the biggest ever “big one”: 37 cars. Yes, 37 cars were involved in one wreck on lap one of the 1960 Daytona 500. The field was pretty big too: 68 cars.

My point here is that big wrecks aren’t caused by restrictor plates; they’re usually caused by human error or mechanical failure. I’m sure people will say that restrictor plates cause the cars to be bunched up together, and that’s true to a certain extent.  But cars are going to be bunched up together on other tracks. Take Bristol (please). Wrecks involving 25% of the field happen there regularly, but all we hear is the NASCAR propaganda that Bristol is one of the most exciting tracks they race on. Bull.

Anyway, here’s a little video of that big wreck at Daytona in 1960.

Click here to view the embedded video.

TRUCK SERIES: The truck series new rule about not having more than five men over the wall at a time showed itself to be stupid the other night. Trucks would come in and either get tires or fuel, then circle back around and get fuel or tires. I can see only having 12 pit crew members as a valid cost cutting measure. But it doesn’t make sense to force the trucks to make two pit stops under one caution. NASCAR already extends cautions too long to allow teams to pit; this just makes them even longer. If they want to do something crazy, why not have a rule that makes teams choose between fuel and tires on a pit stop under caution? In other words, if a caution comes out, you can pit, and you can choose to change tires or fill up with fuel. None of this “double dipping” nonsense we saw the other night.

LOGANO: I’m a little tired already of people telling me how great Joey Logano is. It kind of puts me off of him, especially when there are others as (if not more) talented than he is. Gibbs should have let him run a couple years in the Grand National series before giving him a Cup ride.

GRAND NATIONALS: (Since I don’t get paid to mention the series sponsors, I refer to it by its old name, the Grand National Series.) Saturday’s race was pretty decent. It shows that NASCAR should have left that aero package on the Cup cars up until the new car was mandated. They passed, they ran three wide, and, they didn’t have “the big one”.

RETIRING DRIVERS: Memo to Mark Martin and Bill Elliot – if you’re going to retire, then retire. I realize Mark is back to a full-time ride this year with Hendrick, to try to accomplish something he could never do with Roush (that is, to win a championship). But a few years ago, he announced he was retiring. Aging drivers run the risk of falling into the Petty/Waltrip trap: continuing to drive way past the time they should have gotten out of the car. Take a page from Rusty Wallace and Dale Jarrett – just retire.

PAINT SCHEMES: I have to say, I really like the scheme of the 24 Cup car this season. Don’t know what it is, but it’s really sharp. And who would have ever thought we’d see a #43 without a trace of Petty Blue? Seeing that it really solidified the fact that Richard Petty is now just a figurehead in “Richard Petty Motorsports”.

START TIMES: I realize the broadcasters want me to watch the pre-race shows, but frankly, I’m not interested. I want to see on my DVR’s guide when the actual race coverage starts. Back when I was a bigger fan, I watched all the coverage I could find. But now I actually have a life, and I’ve got other things to. By combining the pre-race coverage with the actual race coverage, I’m prevented from time-shifting the race without paying a little attention to the pre-race show. NASCAR has the start time on their schedule on their web site, but it was still 20 minutes earlier than the actual race start. And one more thing: NASCAR needs to move the start times up. This race should have started about two hours earlier than it did. If it had started earlier, it would have been over by the time the rain came.

ANTHEM: One of my pet peeves is the performance of the National Anthem. Nine times out of ten it’s just awful: the performers try to “make it their own” or show their improvisational skills or whatever. The one before the Daytona 500 was no exception. I don’t know who the guy was, but it sounded like he’d rather have been anywhere else but Daytona. Who auditions these people?

SELLOUTS: They said during the broadcast that it took until Saturday night to sell out all the seats for the 500. And for the first time I can ever remember, Bristol has season tickets available. Perhaps this might give the promoters a clue that their product is overpriced.

COMPETITION CAUTIONS: If NASCAR is going to mandate that teams come in for a competition caution to check tires, then the teams should restart in the same order they were running in before the caution. This is not like a caution for a wreck; this is something the teams have foreknowledge of. Plus, they shouldn’t let them make any chassis adjustments. Just change four tires, fill up with gas, and go back out in the order you came in.

SPONSOR RESTRAINT: It’s obvious that Verizon and AT&T have a TON of money to spend in sponsorships. That’s why it’s mind boggling that NASCAR would give the series sponsor exclusivity. So we have two sponsors that could help underfunded teams being shut out. As a result, they’re paying the TV networks instead of teams. I think one of the interesting side effects of the exclusivity deal is that AT&T and Verizon have more mentions during the broadcast than Sprint.

ROUGH DRIVING: Apparently there’s a different standard for rough driving in the Grand National Series than there is in the Cup Series. Jason Leffler did a move similar to Dale Earnhardt, Jr., but got penalized five laps for it. Imagine if it’d been Kyle Busch who’d made that stupid, boneheaded move that wrecked the whole field. We’d never hear the end of it. Busch showed a LOT of class and maturity in his interview after the wreck. Earnhardt’s excuse during the rain delay rang hollow. What, he doesn’t have a brake pedal?

2009: I was kind of excited for the racing season to get started back up again. But after seeing NASCAR’s blatent favoritism toward’s Dale Jr., it’s put me off. I’d kind of planned on watching more races this year than I had in the last few years, but I think I’ll probably have other things to do most weekends. So, thanks NASCAR. You’ve lost a fan, again.

Jack Roush, part owner of several NASCAR teams, has announced that he’s going green! Roush Fenway Racing has “announce[d] their pledge to sustainability and environmental protection”.

I’m so relieved. I thought for sure that global warming climate change was going to destroy the earth, but Roush and his organization have saved the day.

I’m sorry, but if you’re concerned about saving the planet, operating auto racing teams is the last thing you need to be doing.

Two of Roush Fenway’s drivers, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, were suckered into are buying “renewable energy credits”. I also am selling renewable energy credits. Send me your money and I’ll go buy a little windmill or maybe some solar cells. Geesh.

Now you may read this and think that I don’t really care about the environment, and you’d be absolutely wrong. But I draw the line at these scams that sell “carbon credits” or whatever so that people can buy them and feel good about themselves.

If you want to invest in renewable energy, then invest in it. Buy stock in a small company that can use the money to figure out how we can be more energy independent. You don’t need a third party to pat you on the back and say “Nice job, you saved the planet (while making me rich off this green scheme)”.

I don’t have a problem with going green per se. But do it for real reasons, not the made up global warming fairy tale. If you want to build a building that takes less energy to heat and cool, great. That’s a perfectly valid reason.

I wonder if there’s any government oversight on these companies that sell “earth shares” or “carbon credits” or “renewable energy credits”? If not, there should be. After all, someone needs to protect idiots from themselves.

From what I gather, whoever leases the track will have it on weekends. The Fair Board can do whatever they want on the property during the week.

Proposals are due by the 16th, review of those will be on the 23rd, and a final decision will be on the 30th. They’re doing in three weeks what would normally take six months to do.

And no, they’re not that efficient. They’re rushing this through, and at this point, it only looks like one “entity” will be submitting a proposal (unless Mattioli et. al. want to submit one).

As I mentioned earlier, one would almost get the impression that they don’t want the public to know when they’re meeting.

Woody lays the blame on several entities: City Hall (via the Fair Board), the economy, and race fans. I’d add one more group to that list: NASCAR.

Every time NASCAR has a Cup race on Saturday night, it keeps local fans away from the local tracks. NASCAR has been eating its own young for years this way. You can’t really blame a race fan for staying at home and watching a race for free instead of going to a track and spending $20 to get in plus about that much in food. And now with everyone deciding to have a recession, no one is spending money for anything, so that’s going to make the track’s survival that much harder.

I said a few weeks ago that I didn’t think there’d be any weekly racing in 2009. I still think that’s going to be the case. I took a lot of heat over it on one of the local racing forums, but other than some wishful thinking, I didn’t really see anything that would make me change my mind.

I think the best case scenario is that we end up with a year like 1979, where there wasn’t any weekly racing. But they did have about one major race weekend a month. Weekly racing resumed the next year, but by then folks had found other things to do on Saturday nights.

The Fair Board meets tomorrow, and what comes out of that meeting will have a big impact on what happens at the Fairgrounds in 2009. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the meeting (one almost gets the impression that they have them on Tuesday at 8:00 am in order to make it difficult for the general public to attend the meetings).

2008 was the last season ever of weekly racing at the fairgrounds

I say this for a few reasons. Commissioner Varney’s proposal pretty much means that the Board is washing their hands of the Speedway.

The first is that they gave LJ & J a lease for 2009 that no one in their right mind would sign. While the Board voted to extend the lease for one year back in March, LJ & J didn’t get that lease until the middle of October, and only had until the end of October to sign it. Apparently out of the blue in the lease was the fact that LJ & J would not get to handle the concessions, and that Metro had a blanket contract for concessions that would go into effect with the new lease. LJ & J says they didn’t have time to work out the details with the concessionaire so they made a counter offer on October 31. Tonight the board didn’t act on that counter offer, which means that LJ & J’s lease is up on December 31, 2008.

The second reason is that, while ostensibly they’re going to operate the track in 2009, they’re going to “lease it just like Wilson Hall.” So, if you want to put on a Saturday race, just contact the Fair office and lease track for that weekend. Sorry, but I don’t see that happening. And I don’t see the Fair Board hiring someone to run the track operations. Commissioner Varney already complained that in her time on the board, the money they had had shrunk from $6,000,000 to about $2,500,000 (perhaps Ms. Varney should see a correlation there). Spending money that would take away from the Fair just isn’t going to happen.

Another reason is that they’re going to get Metro Codes to come in and inspect the track facilities. I get the feeling that Codes is going to find a bunch of violations which will keep the track from operating until they’re fixed. As I said above, I don’t see the Board spending any money on the track.

And finally, they’re basically planning on just abandoning the property as a board and giving control of it back to the Mayor after 2009. They don’t want to meet their responsibility as a board and figure out how to use the current Fairgrounds to put on a Fair. Somehow they’re going to come up with a new piece of land somewhere (where there are no neighbors to complain about noise), buy it, build several thousand square feet of exhibit halls, and have the Fair and flea market there.

Now there’s always a chance that someone could offer to buy the property and continue to run the speedway in 2010 and beyond. But they only had one proposal for that, and since they pretty much told that company they no longer wanted to do business with them, I don’t see that happening.

So what will happen is sometime in 2009 the Mayor will make a big announcement about the Fair moving to another place and they’re going to buy the new land from the sale of the current fairgrounds. They’ll sell it to some developer (which probably won’t be anyone who submitted one of those proposals) and they’ll dig up the track and put condos or something on the property.

Nashville Speedway, it’s been a good run. I really hope I’m wrong and that Mr. Dozier comes up with some kind of plan that will allow teams to race on the old track one more year. But I think that’s the best-case scenario. What I’ve outlined above is probably the real-world scenario.

Read my report of what happened at the Fair Board meeting here.

I guess the reason was lack of sponsorship. Without Hamilton running the operation, I’d suspect that sponsors weren’t exactly breaking the doors down.

One also has to wonder about the management. You had to know something was up with the organization when Bobby Hamilton, Jr. washed his hands of the operation.

I remember when the Truck Series came to Nashville Speedway USA for the first time in 1996. It was when they still had “half times” during the races, where they would stop the race in the middle so teams could do unhurried pit stops. It also meant that teams didn’t have to spend a ton of money on pit crews.

Bobby Hamilton was there with a truck for that first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at the Fairgrounds. He wasn’t driving it; he left that up to his Nashville Late Model driver Casey Atwood. His pit crew consisted of himself and maybe two other people. They didn’t have a pit box, just a small tool box. Unfortunately, Atwood got caught up on a wreck early and exited after 5 laps. But still, it was pretty incredible being there at the beginning of what would become Bobby Hamilton Racing.

Bobby Hamilton was always helping local racers. He pretty much gave Casey Atwood his start at Nashville. He even loaned a car to Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in a Late Model race one year at Nashville. Earnhardt’s car was destroyed in a fire during practice, and Hamilton let him use one of Atwood’s backup cars.

It’s a shame that his race team couldn’t be saved, but I guess it’s better this way than trying to run a team that’s nothing but an also-ran.

• Top Dog: You’ve got to wonder what Jeff Gordon’s thinking. It’s been 40 races since he won. Have we seen a changing of the guard at Hendrick Motorsports? Remind me of when Roush started pushing Mark Martin out for his younger drivers like Kenseth and Busch.
• Retire already: What is it about motorsports that makes drivers who are past their prime think they can still win races? Kyle Petty, Mark Martin, Bill Elliot, Kenny Schrader, and much as I hate to say it, Sterling Marlin all really need to rethink their involvement in the sport’s highest level. Yeah, I know Martin’s going to “run for the championship” next year in a Hendrick car. While I’d actually like to see him win it, I don’t think it’ll happen. I don’t see Hendrick giving him the same equipment he’s giving Johnson.
• Is this the US? The race Sunday was a 500k race. I guess that sounds more impressive than the “CHECKER O’REILLY AUTO PARTS 311 PRESENTED BY PENNZOIL”. But still, this is the US. Make the race 300 miles like those at that gawdawful New Hamshire track.
• What’s Yer Point: Kyle Busch has to be cussing NASCAR for that new gimmicky points system. It’s gonna cost him a bunch of money. Under the old system, he’d probably end up finishing third. Under this new scheme, he could end up anywhere from 7th to 12th. NASCAR needs to fix what wasn’t broken to begin with.
• Mergers and Acquisitions: There’s a lot of talk about different teams merging and otherwise getting new ownership money. Before they do that, they ought to ask Ray Evernham and Richard Petty how that’s working out.
• No Testing For You: NASCAR has indicated that they’re going to possibly ban testing next year, at least for the first part of the year. This is in order to help cut costs for the teams. Here’s an idea: if you want to cut costs, limit the number of teams per owner (whether real or on paper) to two. Right now there are three or four owners who pretty much stink up the show. If your favorite driver isn’t driving for one of those teams, he doesn’t have a realistic chance of winning.

Next week is the last race of the season. I remember when I counted the days from the last race of the year to the Daytona 500. NASCAR has changed so much in the last few years that it’s just not much fun to watch anymore. And based on this year’s TV ratings (which are mostly flat or lower than last year’s), I’m not the only one NASCAR is losing. They’ve got to know that some of the stuff they’re doing is turning fans off. I don’t have the answer, but I know the product they’re putting out now can’t compare to even the mid-90′s. We’ve already seen some of the lower tier sanctioning bodies go out of business (ASA comes to mind). If I were a NASCAR stockholder I’d be concerned.

TV Coverage - ESPN shows how much respect it has for the Nationwide Series by broadcasting it on ESPN Classic, a network that maybe three people in the country get. I understand that it’s going to be simulcast on the Speed channel; yeah, that’ll help. NASCAR should specify in the TV contracts what networks the races should be shown on.

Qualifying Rain-outs - There have been more qualifying sessions rained out this year than in any other year going back to the last 50′s. Why is it that NASCAR couldn’t postpone qualifying a day? Or even have same day qualifying? Go to a one-day show format. The teams that aren’t in the top 35 deserve a shot at the race. And don’t get me started about having 35 provisional starting spots… seems like a few years ago, everyone complained about seven provisionals.

Time’s Up – Somewhere around here, I still have a hat I got from the Dodge announcement at Talladega in 2000 that they were coming back into the Cup Series. The front of the hat said “It’s Time”. Now that it looks like GM is going to gobble up Dodge, it’s unclear what will happen to those consumer brands. As to what GM will do with the Dodge brand on the race track? I think we can look at GM’s past to figure that out. How long has it been since you saw a Pontiac, Oldsmobile, or Buick on the race track? GM still sells those brands (at least I think they do), but they pretty much made everyone not in a Chevy have to make the choice of going to a new body style. It’s not good to give folks those kinds of choices; sometimes they go with a competitor.

Petty Politics – What’s the deal over at the Petty’s? Kyle doesn’t seem to know, and isn’t he the president or something? Maybe that was before they got those other investors, since he doesn’t seem to know from week to week if he’ll be driving the car. Face it: the Petty operation hasn’t been up to competitive levels in decades. That includes the cars and  Kyle. Bobby Hamilton was a breath of fresh air for that organization, and they managed to get a couple of wins with him as the driver. I think they’ve had one or two wins since him, but they’ve pretty much been a back marker for a long time. And now there’s talk about a Petty merger with DEI. This definitely ain’t your father’s NASCAR.