Loud Music is a $40 Fine

About nine o’clock on Sunday night, I realized I’d completely missed the Phoenix Cup race. As it turns out, I didn’t miss much. Jimmie Johnson won again and virtually clinched the title. Here are a few random thoughts I’ve had about the race and the season.

• 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.

Chase This – NASCAR couldn’t have done a better job of keeping Kyle Busch from winning the championship if they’d tried. A driver who would still be in the hunt under the old system is now pretty much out of the race. The new system came about because people complained that the driver with the most wins wasn’t winning championships. Guess that’s gonna happen again this year. Will those same people complain now? I doubt it. This chase format has so many problems it’s not funny.

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.

Was that race at Talladega something else or what?

I’ve always maintained that the restrictor plate races are some of the best races around, and today’s race was no exception.

Generally the talk of “the big one” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Carl Edwards’ bonehead move tore up a lot of cars; he was right to be sorry during his interview. They talk about the “big one” as if it’s a foregone conclusion, and therefore they drive that way. Edwards had been a back marker all day, and when he did decide to get up front, his mind wasn’t right.

While NASCAR’s yellow-line rule may or may not be a good idea, at least they enforced it (finally) today. Tony Stewart was passed on the last lap by Regan Smith when Smith went below the yellow line. NASCAR gave Smith a post-race penalty of going to the tail end of the lead lap. One has to wonder if NASCAR would have done the same if the roles had been reversed, with Stewart making the last lap pass under the yellow line…

What seems odd to me though is that NASCAR seemingly violated its policy of “whoever crosses the finish line first is the winner”. Had Smith been on the outside of Stewart and won, but then had been found to have an illegal part, he’d still be listed as the “winner” but have points taken away. Smith got a 76 point penalty for his illegal pass, and probably lost close to $100,000. So now NASCAR has established a precedent for changing the winner of the race because the apparent winner violated a rule. Whether they’ll continue to do that remains to be seen (somehow I doubt it).

One thing that NASCAR needs to change is this stupid “chase” system. No other professional sport that I know of allows the championship to be affected by teams that aren’t in the playoffs. I think it’s a crime that Kyle Busch is 11th in the points now. At least under the old system he’d be in 3rd, only 82 points out. Under this chase format, he’s in 11th, 331 points out, and pretty much out of contention to win the championship. I thought the reason behind the chase format was to reward the drivers who won races during the season. The driver with the most races won is now the one getting the shaft.

At the very least, NASCAR should award points separately for the chase drivers. That is, award 1-12th place points for those in the chase, and don’t include non-chase drivers. While that’s not a perfect solution, it would at least mitigate the effect of the non-chase drivers.

You can bet your sweet bippy that if Dale Earnhardt, Sr. were still alive, and went from 1st place in the championship one week to 12th place the next week, NASCAR would have made some changes; the fan outcry would have been huge. Actually, I think that if this had been any other driver than Kyle Busch, there might have been a fan outcry (say if it was Junior or Gordon).

The chase concept is interesting, but there are still too many problems with it that NASCAR needs to address.

I almost forgot about the race at Indy on Sunday. When I tuned into it, they were about 30 or so laps in and the commentators were talking about “competition” caution. Since I missed the pre-race show, I figured that it must’ve rained and washed all the rubber off the track, and NASCAR was throwing the caution to let the teams check tire wear.

Wow, was I wrong.

What happened Sunday was unacceptable. If I’d paid money to go see that race, I’d be demanding a refund (and by the way, who in their right mind would actually pay to go to a race track where, if you’ve got a good spot, you can only see 25% of the action?).

It was interesting to see how the commentators, drivers, owners, NASCAR and even Goodyear fell all over themselves not to blame the tire or Goodyear. So I’ll do it: Goodyear brought a lousy tire. I thought it was especially ironic when they’d talk about the tire situation, and then go to a shot from the blimp and part of the pitch was about the quality of Goodyear tires.

This is one reason I’m not as big a race fan now as I used to be. It just doesn’t matter much anymore.

Between NASCAR and Indy Racing, there are quite a few races over Memorial Day weekend. I spent most of Sunday in front of the TV.

BACK HOME AGAIN: Almost missed the start of the Indianapolis 500 race for some reason. As it turns out, I did miss most of the pre-race show. I got to see the National Anthem, Taps, and Jim Nabors sing. I have to wonder what the drivers think when they hear Taps played right before they get ready to risk their lives.

WOMEN DRIVERS: Because of the way the Indy 500 qualifying is structured, I really didn’t know who’d made the field. So I was surprised to see there were three women who did make the field. It’s a shame all three ended up not finishing the race.

THE 500: The actual race was a little on the boring side. The track turned out to be pretty much a one-groove track, so there wasn’t much passing. The first two hours were pretty frustrating. Here I am trying to watch it in High Def, and the local ABC affiliate is having trouble with their High Def signal. The audio kept dropping out, there was major pixelation, and the video would just stop. I had to watch most of the first two hours on the regular channel. They finally got it working.

THE 600: I wish Fox wouldn’t list the start time of the race so early. What they do is actually tell you the start time of their pre-race show. I don’t really watch that stuff. Just tell me when the green flag is supposed to start (thanks to Jayski, I knew when to tune in).

A TALE OF TWO RACES: The 600 is so long that it’s really more like two races. Cars that work great in the daylight seem to go away at night, and vice versa. Tony Stewart and Bobby Labonte were nowhere to be found during the daylight, but when the night fell, they started moving to the front.

FOX’S SURROUND SOUND: i don’t know who the audio engineer is on Fox’s broadcasts, but he needs to get a better setup. When I put my receiver in Dolby Surround Sound mode, all I can hear are the cars, with the announcers way in the background. I had to go to basic sterio to even hear what the announceers were saying. It’s not my setup, since I don’t have that problem with other shows.

ANTHEM CRITIQUES: The National Anthem is not a song you’re supposed to “make your own”. It should be sung the same way by everyone. Unfortunately, the folks who sung it before both races didn’t seem to know that. While the version sung by Daryl Worley before the 600 was ok, the one sung before the 500 seemed like a completely different tune. Please singers, don’t improvise the melody.

THE PETTY EFFECT: There’s a problem in NASCAR with drivers continuing to drive way past the point when they should have retired. Richard Petty did this back through the 80’s and the early 90’s. Then, my favorite driver, Darrell Waltrip did it through the late 90’s. Now Richard’s son Kyle is doing it. Kyle hasn’t really been competitive for a long time. Kyle’s flirting with a TV career; perhaps it’s time he stayed in the booth.

GANASSI: I guess it’s pretty obvious where Chip Ganassi’s major effort is going, and it’s not NASCAR. His NASCAR teams seem to be lacking speed or maybe the resources needed to get them to the front. Sterling Marlin’s substituting for Dario Franchitti should have been a good opportunity to get his career back on track. But he’s had bad runs in both outings. And after Juan Montoya’s complaints about having three different crew chiefs in almost as many races, you have to wonder what’s going on at Ganassi’s team.

SPEAK ENGLISH: NASCAR’S misguided “diversity” project took another turn during the broadcast. They acatually ran a commercail for NASCAR in Spanish! Can you believe it?

DOVER: I’ll be avoiding the Dover races next week. That’s always been a boring track, ever since they converted it to concrete. You’d think they’d have figured that out by now.