This weather is getting old....
"Racing like it used to be" or "going back to our roots" are some of the lines that we have been hearing coming out of NASCAR as we head into the 2010 season and if they are serious about that I have a suggestion for them. During Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout we once again saw a race finish abruptly when Jeff Gordon turned Greg Biffle and everybody went scrambling. The first thing that the announcers said was "that's it, the race is over and they will finish where they were running when the caution came out". Remember how it used to be? They used to race back to the start-finish line when the caution came out and so you still had some drama as to who would actually win the race. For some very good safety reasons they don't do that anymore, but as long as these guys keep wrecking each other in the final laps the fans, both the ticket-buyers and the TV viewers, are being robbed of a race to the finish seemingly more often then not. How about we try this.....
If your car is ahead of the wreck in relation to the start-finish line then you will continue to race back to the caution just like the good old days (racing like it used to be.....going back to our roots) while if you are behind the wreck you will be scored where you were at when the caution came out. Maintains the safety while improving the racing, seems pretty reasonable to me.
Watching the ARCA race at Daytona anymore is like watching a slasher movie with a boring plot. There was little if any racing during the green flag segments and it was once again peppered with some scary looking wrecks. One of those involved Iowa's own "First Lady of Late Model Racing" Jill George who wound up smacking the wall while rolling over in a frightening looking accident. Thank goodness Jill climbed out of her mangled racecar under her own power!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGEur0hEsbg
This incident has sparked a pretty active discussion as to whether or not Jill should have even been competing at Daytona given her level of experience/success in racing. My thought is this, there have been plenty of drivers, both male and female, who have had their first effort at Daytona end in spectacular fashion. If you want to go racing on a superspeedway the ARCA race is the place to do it and to get that "first time" under your belt. Where else are you going to be able to have that first superspeedway "racing" experience? You can rent track time or go to one of those "Driving Experience" programs, but neither of those provide somebody with true racing conditions. Jill George wanted to race at Daytona. She did, she crashed, she walked away. If she wants to do it again, you can bet that she learned a lot from her first experience. I don't see a lot of people debating whether or not Josh Richards should have been able to avoid that first muli-car pileup.
I am a bit surprised that Danica Patrick announced today that she will try to run in this Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Daytona. Yes, she finished the ARCA race in sixth this past weekend and made some nice moves around much slower cars to get back into contention at the end after being forced into a spin by Nelson Piquet Jr., BUT......I just never got the sense that she was comfortable as far as drafting was concerned. Not once did I see her tuck right up to the back bumper of the car in front of her almost always lagging back by a full car-length or more. Commentators Darrell Waltrip and Phil Parsons both stated that she was actually hurting the efforts of the driver in front of her by not pulling up closer. Then again part of that discomfort might have come from the fact that the car in front of her late in the race was Patrick Sheltra who on at least three occasions hung the back end out more in the corners than he likely did when running a dirt Late Model on the red clay ovals of the southeast. Danica was probably back there saying "no thanks, I don't want any part of that at 180 miles per hour". We'll see how she does this weekend running against MUCH better competition.
Speaking of Danica, while watching the Super Bowl last evening and seeing the GoDaddy ads, a couple of my non-racefan friends asked me about her sexual orientation. I said that she was married, why? And they said that they just wondered why in every one of these ads the sight of Danica seems to make some other attractive young woman start ripping her clothes off. It was a good question, especially on the strength of a few beers and two big glasses of Hurricane Punch.
Back to the dirt, the Dart Winternationals at East Bay Raceway produced a surprising opening night winner in Mike Marlar, who never finished better than 20th the rest of the week, and then saw Don O'Neal take the finale on Saturday night. While it was not necessarily a "surprise" to find O'Neal in victory lane, he probably wasn't one of the names that most dirt Late Model fans would have put on their short list when it came to predictions.
Over at Volusia the two winners of the World of Outlaw sprint events were definitely no surprise as Donny Schatz and Steve Kinser picked up checkered flags. It was a disappointing start for 20-year-old Cody Darrah who was more than ready to climb aboard a Kasey Kahne Racing car for a run at the WoO title this year. Cody and his father Joe were on their way to Daytona to watch qualifying for the 500 on Saturday when they were involved in a traffic accident. Cody suffered a broken left leg that required surgery and will likely put him on the sidelines for the next couple of months. He was replaced in the KKR ride for the weekend by Brad Sweet.
Two of our newest bloggers at http://www.positivelyracing.com/, Stacy Ervin and Danny Rosencrans, have put up their first efforts and we encourage you to check them out.
And on a note away from racing.....I get a kick out of watching how biased the media coverage is of politics these days. We all know who Fox News Channel is rooting for just as we know in which corner MSNBC is in. They no longer even attempt to give the impression that their reporting is balanced and unbiased. Today's evidence of this involves what was written on the hand of Sarah Palin during her speech at a Tea Party gathering this past weekend. Apparently those same media types who made fun of Palin's manual crib notes had no problem with President Obama's use of dual teleprompters when he was speaking to sixth graders in their classroom recently and vice versa. I think that is why I enjoy watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart so much. He readily admits that he leans to the left, but he will make fun of both sides when it is warranted. Check it out sometime.
That's it for now, time to go shovel the driveway again!
No comments:
Post a Comment