Category: Racing

I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact that I’ve just spent three hours watching one of the dullest NASCAR Cup races I can remember. All this week the press has been hyping the new track surface and in the pre-race show they talked about the new progressive banking in the turns, which, they predicted, would make for side-by-side racing.

While there might have been some side-by-side racing, it certainly wasn’t for the lead. Whatever the official lead change count comes out to be, I only counted three competitive lead changes: Kahne was passed by Edwards, who was passed by Kahne (who then led about 200 laps), then Edwards passed Kahne. Sure there were other leaders and lead changes, but those happened either under caution or during green-flag pit stops.

It seemed to me that Bristol still only has one groove, albeit a higher one than before. All the passing took place on the outside line. You know you’ve got a dull race when the TV network broadcasting it shows the battles for 13th and 17th with less than 15 laps to go. Edwards and Kahne both stunk up the show.

I guess I’m finally about finished with NASCAR, at least on the national level. They’re slowly putting the Saturday night short tracks out of business by continuing to have Cup races on Saturday nights.  And this mess with the AT&T sponsorship pretty much seals the deal for me. When the TV announcers call a blank car “the AT&T sponsored car of Jeff Burton” then what’s NASCAR and their nameless (at least by me) telecommunications sponsor gaining by preventing the logos on the car? Nothing.

I’d meant to watch the Truck and Busch races this week, but with the Truck race on Wednesday (which doesn’t make any sense) I just completely forgot about it. And the Busch race was on Friday night; I had better things to do.

NASCAR is slowly losing their base audience, the one that got them to where they are today.  To paraphrase a great president, I haven’t left NASCAR; NASCAR left me.

Tony Stewart was fined $25,000 and docked 25 points for saying a dirty word on TV the other day. As usual, NASCAR pops out the ever popular “Actions detrimental to stock car racing” as their basis for the fine and points deduction.

That’s BS.

I understand that NASCAR wants their drivers to be good representatives of the sport; I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the deduction of championship points for an off-track incident.

Can you imagine the uproar that would occur if the NFL started taking points off of games because players went to strip clubs? (Actually, in that case, all games would probably end in a 0 to 0 tie.) I can see the newspaper report now:

The Tennessee Titans scored 21 points on the field today in their game against the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders scored 20, but won the game due to the actions of Pac-Man Jones which cost the Titans a penalty of 3 points. Jones got into trouble again after the game when he went to a strip club and his “entourage”…

Stewart effectively finished second in the race, if you don’t count the bonus points. I can see fining a driver for a slip of the tongue, but taking points away seems unfair.

And ESPN should have their hands slapped in this mess as well. Why not fine them a few million to get their attention? Why were they not running a delay on the main program?

Just finished watching most of the Brickyard 400. It was kind of like a lot of recent races: exciting at the beginning, fast forward through the middle, then kind of exciting near the end.

Of course, congratulations go to Tony Stewart for winning the race. It’s nice to see a race won by a driver who actually passed another car under green for the lead.

I’m a little surprised at the lack of security around the car when Stewart parked on the start/finish line. I remember a few years ago here in Nashville they almost took away a win by Jeff Purvis in the All American 400 because someone put some lead shot in the car after the race, while it was in victory lane.

I’m not sure what to think about Kevin Harvick’s “love tap” after the checkers. Stewart didn’t seem to think there was any malice in it, but it sure looked suspicious to me. I guess it looked suspicious to NASCAR too, since they called him to the trailer afterwards.

Just asking: how many cars does it take to have a “big one”? 10% of the field? 20%? Wrecks involving 10% and 20% of the field happened at Indy. Why do we only hear about the “big one” at Talladega and Daytona? I’ve seen more cars involved in wrecks at Bristol than have happened in the plate races.

The face of NASCAR continues to change, and not all for the better. I predict that within 5 or so years, there will only be 10 or 11 teams, each with 4 cars. Since NASCAR increased the number of cars it allows from 2 (which was never enforced) to 4 (which is semi-enforced; how else does Roush still have 5 teams?), then that’s given teams a target to aim at. Then once we see only 10 or 11 owners in the series, we’ll have a situation where there’ll be defacto franchising. To get into the sport as an owner, you’ll have to buy an existing team.

There’s no way this can be good for the sport. Look at what’s happened to CART. NASCAR should have started enforcing the two-car rule per owner when they had a chance. Instead, you had 5 car teams with shady ownership deals designed to get around the rule.

The Nextel Cup was off this past weekend, but a lot sure is happening in the series.

• DEI is buying Ginn Racing. In a deal that leaves Sterling Marlin, Joe Nemechek, and Regan Smith out in the cold, Mark Martin will drive the 01 car for DEI, splitting duties with their new driver Aric Almirola. Paul Menard will pick up the points from either the #13 or #14, which will guarantee him a starting spot in the Brickyard 400. Marlin and Nemechek will apparently be unable to drive for anyone else until all of this is settled, while Smith gets a ride in a truck on Friday night.
• At least 4 Nextel Cup drivers have indicated that they want to run full time in the Sprint Cup and the soon-to-be-former Busch Series next year. Great guys. All NASCAR really needs to do then is, at the beginning of the season, make you declare in which series you’re running for the championship. You want to race on Saturday? No problem, but you’re not going to earn points for it (unless you’ve declared for the championship, in which case your Sunday drive is for money only).
• Apparently Rusty Wallace’s deal with ESPN has a provision that keeps him from owning a Sprint/Nextel Cup team due to the inherent conflict of interest. OK, I can see that. But is that any worse than the conflict of interest in having him comment on Busch races in which is son drives Rusty’s car? Why the distinction?
• Thirty-five provisionals is too much. Jayski reports that NASCAR may be looking to change that. Here’s hoping they do.
• Wow. I went to my old site, RacinDeals.com to see what those folks had to say, and I see it’s “under construction”. I wonder what happened?
• Robert Yates Racing is merging with Newman-Haas Racing. Wonder how long that’ll last?
• With all the activity this year in NASCAR, what with driver changes, team mergers, etc., I daresay the highest paid person on any team is probably the lawyer. It seems these days that driver contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. How can a team release a driver who’s supposed to be under contract for another year?

So the Brickyard 400 is this weekend. This will be ESPN’s first Cup race since they lost the revamped TV deal in 2000. They’ve got some technological tricks up their sleeves, so it should be interesting. I just wish they had a better broadcast crew. Rusty Wallace is ok, but I think it’d be great to have Buddy Baker up there in the booth as well.

The yearly IndyCar race was held at “Nashville” Superspeedway Sunday. Rain caused the race to be postponed from its Saturday night start.

Scott Dixon won the race. Dario Franchitti led most of the first half of the race, but Dixon took advantage of some slow cars that were holding up Franchitti and passed him. After that, it was all Dixon.

It looked like they were going to actually have a decent finish. A late-race caution had the field restarting with less than 10 to go. Then the announcers started talking about the lapped cars in between the lead-lap cars. Huh? They then explained that IndyCar doesn’t do like NASCAR and put the lapped cars behind the last lead-lap car; they just let them continue to affect the outcome of the race.

So, with the lapped cars still trying to stay ahead of the 2nd and 3rd place cars, the final laps were the perfect cap to a boring race.

Some random thoughts:

• How can a venue be called “Nashville” Superspeedway when it’s not even in the same county as Nashville? Someone unfamiliar with the geography of Middle Tennessee would naturally assume that the track was actually in Nashville, especially with all the references to Music City and downtown.
• What’s up with HD? Last night, the race coverage was in High Def. Today’s race wasn’t. Didn’t make any sense to me.
• IndyCar needs to adopt the same 10-lap-left rule that NASCAR has. It’s a shame to let cars that aren’t in contention for the win have an affect on the outcome of the race.
• Part of the reason for the dullness of the race was the facility. They’ve never had a good IndyCar race at that track. Maybe if the banking were higher the racing might be more exciting.
• I was a big fan of the Indy Racing League when it started. The idea was for it to be an all oval track series, with American drivers. Then the CART teams started buying into the series, and it’s pretty much become what CART was back in the mid-90’s: a series dominated by foreigners run on too many road courses in too many other countries.
• I caught a little bit of a racing radio show on WLAC Sunday night and the hosts were talking about IndyCar’s drivers at the race. Apparently some of the IndyCar drivers have forgotten why they’re where they are. When asked for an autograph, one driver rolled his eyes and said “I hope this doesn’t start something”. Just 6 short years ago, they were grateful for the attention. Now they’re too good for the fans.

Not sure when the next IndyCar race will be. If I’m channel surfing and it’s on, I’ll spend a few minutes to see if it’s worth my time.

Formula One won’t be back at Indianapolis next year to run the US Grand Prix. F1 came back to America to race at the specially created road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway 8 years ago.

According to F1 head Bernie Ecclestone, F1 doesn’t need the race in the US, despite the fact that the race has one of the largest crowds on the circuit.

I’m really not a big F1 fan, but I tried to watch the Indy races. But for some reason, they didn’t seem to advertise them. In reading the story about F1 not returning next year, I discovered that this year’s US Grand Prix had already been run.

I would have at least made an attempt to watch it, but either they didn’t advertise it or it wasn’t on TV due to some stupid blackout rule. This makes at least three US Grands Prix that I’ve missed simply because they didn’t publicize it.

I complain a lot about NASCAR, having been what I call a former fan. But at least in NASCAR, winning the pole doesn’t guarantee you the race win. And in NASCAR, at the end of the race, you’re at least guaranteed points. I can’t imagine what it’s like to spend a gazillion bucks (or Euros or whatever) on a race team and then not score any points.

F1 races for the most part are like watching qualifying laps. After the first lap (and the inevitable wreck at the first turn) there’s no passing; they just put in lap after lap. These are supposed to be the best drivers in the world, but I don’t see that. They have so much technology in those cars that about all the driver does is steer it.

So, to F1 I say, So Long. Glad you don’t need a US audience. Go back overseas with the soccer players and continue to spend all that money on all that technology. Over here, we have real racing to watch.

Since I got burned out on weekly NASCAR racing a few years ago, about the only races I try to make an effort at watching are the restrictor plate races, since they usually have more excitement than the others. Saturday night’s Pepsi 400 was one of the better races Ive seen in a while. Here are some random thoughts I have about it:

• Isn’t there a “big one” supposed to happen at plate races? I think the most number of cars we saw in a wreck Saturday night was two or three. What happened?
• TNT debuted their Wide Open coverage. They touted that viewers were getting the 16×9 “letterbox” view on regular 4×3 screens. I switched back and forth from high def to regular a couple of times, and the high def picture still showed more than the regular picture. Plus, on the high def side, they wasted a LOT of space at the bottom with their info box or ad box or whatever.
• I will give kudos to TNT for at least trying something new. Putting the crawl at the bottom of the picture was interesting, but, like ESPN, the crawl doesn’t go all the way across, stopping on the left side where a regular 4×3 picture would end. Couldn’t someone have watched a Fox broadcast to see how they do it? TNT and ESPN/ABC neither make full use of the high def screen real estate; they both have a lot of wasted space. And what’s with the non-high def in-car cameras? Fox had those.
• The main goal of TNT’s Wide Open coverage was to get people to watch commercials. Didn’t work on me. I set the race to record on the Comcast DVR, and started watching it about an hour and a half after it started (the only live viewing I did was to compare the picture against the regular TNT channel). About half way through the race we decided to go see a musician friend play, so I watched the rest of it after we got back. I did see one commercial though, and it was pretty funny. It was the one where Larry MacReynolds hopped on the golf cart to go get a Subway sandwich. The rest of the time, when a commercial came on, I hit the macro buttons on my remote that skip 30 or 60 seconds at a time. I guess the most effective “commercials” were when Bill Weber announced that the segment was “brought to you by” whoever.
• Kyle Busch is definitely a man without a team. He’s a diamond in the rough, and once he matures I predict he’ll be one of the better drivers on the circuit. It’s critical for his career to get with the right team next year.
• NASCAR and Sprint officially announced the name of the Cup series for next year. As predicted, it’ll be called the Sprint Cup Series. I wonder if the Sprint car folks have any concern about that name?
• Tony Stewart once again opens his mouth and inserts his foot. Why can’t he just do what his teammate did and say “I haven’t seen the replay yet” and if they show him a replay, say something less insulting about his own teammate?
• Dale Junior is looking for a new driver. Hey Dale? Why not help someone who helped you when you were wrecking cars at Nashville Speedway USA? Casey Atwood would be a good choice. Put him in some decent equipment and he can get the job done.

I’m not sure where the Cup cars are racing next week. That’s a shame. I used to be so into this sport, my whole weekends were planned around it. If NASCAR doesn’t figure out that they’re losing long-time fans at the expense of getting new ones (who won’t stay around as long), they’re going to be in deep trouble.

A telecommunications company pays a lot of money to be a sponsor. That company is then bought out by another company. The new company wants to change the name on the sponsorship to the new name.

That sounds a lot like the Cingular/AT&T deal, except it’s not. An announcement is expected tomorrow (7/7/07) that NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series will be renamed to the Sprint Cup Series (or something like that).

So, it’s ok for NASCAR to have a sponsor that gets bought out and changes its name, but not for a car owner? NASCAR needs to stop competing with its car owners for sponsorship dollars.

Suspension update: In a post titled “That’ll Teach ’em, NASCAR” I talked about suspended crew chiefs still being at the track. NASCAR has just announced that they are no longer allowing suspended crew members at the track. As I said before, “Hello? The series sponsor is a cell phone company! They don’t have cell phones in the pits? Come on.” If NASCAR finds out that a suspended crew chief is still in contact with his team on race day via cell phone, what are they going to do? Maybe they are starting to get tough with the rules. It’s going to take a lot to convince me, but they’re on the right track.

At the Sears Point race, NASCAR suspended a couple of Hendrick Motorsports crew chiefs for 6 races. So at last weekend’s race at New Hampshire, how did Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson perform?

Gordon qualified 8th and finished 2nd.  Johnson was worse off: he qualified 10th and finished 5th.

Those penalties sure did have an effect on the teams, didn’t they? And if I heard right on the little bit of pre-race coverage I watched, at least one of the suspended crew chiefs was actually at the track. NASCAR says they are only prohibited from areas where you need a NASCAR hard card, plus they can’t talk on the team’s radio. Hello? The series sponsor is a cell phone company! They don’t have cell phones in the pits? Come on.

Suspension should be suspension. They’ve escorted other suspended individuals off track property before, so I’m not sure why it’s ok for a suspended crew chief to hang out in the team’s motor coach.

Now NASCAR is making noises that they may start suspending other team members as well if the cheating doesn’t stop.  It’s really simple for NASCAR to get a team’s attention: all they have to do is suspend the owner, the driver, and the car for the weekend of the race that they’re caught cheating in. Doesn’t need to be a multi-week suspension (unless the team is really dense about getting the message; one could argue that the #48 team meets that criteria). How many missed races would it take before the sponsor wants some of their money back? That’d beat a measly $100,000 fine anytime.