HAMPTON, Ga. -- The balancing act between safety concerns and competition that Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. faces each week was the post-race focus of several top finishers Sunday. It left both sides defensive and fans wondering what happened to the typical side-by-side racing for which Atlanta Motor Speedway is famous.
Tony Stewart, who finished second in the Kobalt Tools 500, and third-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. were outspoken in their criticism for the tire compound brought to Atlanta. There were no tire failures reported during the race, but the two agreed that the harder tire made it almost impossible for drivers to run side-by-side. Only thirteen cars were on the lead lap at the finish.
"Goodyear doesn't like to hear people bashing them tires and I don't like doing it, but I ain't going to sit here and put up with this."
DALE EARNHARDT JR.
"That was the most pathetic racing tire that I've ever been on in my professional career," Stewart said. "... Goodyear can't build a tire that is worth a crap. If I were Goodyear, I would be really embarrassed about this weekend and what they brought here. It didn't keep us from winning the race and how we got to second, I don't know
Junior was more diplomatic in his criticism.
"I'll say that Goodyear Tire Company makes good racing tires, makes a safe tire," Junior said. "There's a lot of technology that goes into making the tires and I give them a lot of credit. It's a reputation-risk, just to be in this sport for a company like that, especially ... as far as criticism goes. They do a good job. This is just a bad combination. This tire at this track, it was just a poor combination Jeff Gordon finished fifth, and echoed the comments made by Stewart and Earnhardt.
"I felt like I was going to crash every single lap," Gordon said. "I'm exhausted right now. I feel like I've run a thousand miles here. That was the hardest day I have ever had at Atlanta, especially for a top-five finish. This car, this tire, at this track was just terrible."
Justin Fantozzi, marketing manager for Goodyear motorsports, defended his company's decision to bring a harder tire to Atlanta.
"I've heard what they said, "Fantozzi said. "To get into attacks in the media is not the right place. We're tremendously proud of the wear rates that we saw here. We had a defined development process for this particular tire. We started in August, with a development test here at Atlanta. From those wear rates and those data sets, we then made a recommendation for the open house test that was a different tire than we actually raced on here in October.
"Based on those wear rates not being acceptable, in our opinion, we then went back and did another development test here in December and then we made that recommendation for here."Fantozzi said as the official tire supplier for NASCAR, Goodyear is entrusted with making decisions that are in the best interest of the sport.
"We make tire decisions so that we can provide the safest tire that we know how to build at every racetrack," Fantozzi said. "As a supplier of the series, as a partner in the series, we work together but as the tire authority, they let us do our jobs."
Totally Toyota
Tony Stewart wasn't happy with Goodyear, but he gave Kyle Busch and Toyota a thumbs up on a historic day at Atlanta.
Toyota scores first Cup win
Busch returns 18 to victory
Still, Earnhardt wondered what NASCAR's top officials thought about the competitive nature of Sunday's race.
"There's a big difference between complaining and stating the obvious," Junior said. "It is what it is. It's not a complaint. I'm sure that Mike Helton or [Brian] France will say what their opinion is. They probably wouldn't like this any more than the drivers did.
"I don't think, for one, the race was all that exciting. We couldn't run side-by-side, or we'd wreck. We had to let each other go by. Every time you got beside a guy, you were just like, 'Take it.' I couldn't go into the corner side-by-side but nobody else could, either."
Fantozzi said tire company officials will analyze the data from Sunday's race before making a decision on what tire compound to bring when the series returns to Atlanta later this season.
"We'll do the same exact thing that we do every race," Fantozzi said. "We have a post-race data analysis meeting. We now have a new set of data and we'll go back to Akron and sit down with the engineers and go through the process again and see where that leaves us for the fall race.
"Driver comments are part of the data set. It's temperature, it's wear rates, it's driver comments, it's feel, it's grip, it's overall race pace. So we'll look at the overall data set and then we'll make that decision."
Not everyone was as adamant about the tires. Kyle Busch said running up front was a matter of staying patient and taking advantage of what grip you could find.
"I'm going to say that I didn't like it," Busch said. "But I just went out there, and we all had the same tire. They're going to pay somebody to win the race. And so that's what I focused on, was just going out there and try to be the one they were going to pay to win the race. I just drove the thing to the best of my ability.
"You could go the first four or five laps and really haul the mail -- well, the first two anyway -- but from there, you were just skating, sliding all over the place. You just had to be patient with it, slow it down, keep it on the bottom and pretty much just keep that left front right on that line and keep the thing turning in order to make it through the corner."
And crew chief Chad Knaus aimed the blame for Sunday's uncompetitive effort at a different target.
"You know, I think that's where everybody's wrong. It's not the tire, it's the car," Knaus said. "It's just the car. The car asks too much out of the tire. There's only five things that hold the car on the racetrack: That's the four tires and the downforce.
"The car has no downforce and Goodyear has to build an extremely hard tire just to make the tire live because there's no downforce on the car. That makes everybody bad-mouth Goodyear and it's just not fair to them, because Goodyear actually does a very good job."
Stewart said he hoped speaking out, which he did more than once at AMS , will perhaps force changes to be made.
"The reason we're talking about it and the reason that we're bringing it to everybody's attention is that we don't want to have to race on tires like we raced on [Sunday], every week," Stewart said. "This wasn't fun [Sunday]. There wasn't anything about [Sunday's] race that was fun for anybody. I ran second and I wouldn't re-run this race for any amount of money in the world. It was just that bad.
"We're pleading with Goodyear to do something about this, make it better. Do something to make it better for us so we don't have to run on tires that make it to where you can't run side-by-side."
Earnhardt agreed.
"Hopefully it was a good lesson learned," Junior said. "Goodyear doesn't like to hear people bashing them tires and I don't like doing it, but I ain't going to sit here and put up with this. And I don't think any of those other drivers or anybody is going to do it. Hopefully, we can all get along and come up with something better than this."
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Bristol slugfests a part of NASCAR history since 1961
Bristol Motor Speedway, now a modern-day stock car coliseum, had modest beginnings, much like NASCAR itself. Through the years, the half-mile track has grown in size and stature, a development mirrored by the growth of stock car racing overall.
There have been 60 NASCAR seasons, 47 of which have included stops at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn. The relationship and benefits have been reciprocal. Undoubtedly, NASCAR's history has been enriched by BMS' short-tracks slugfests.
Perfection
Mark Aumann looks back at the 1973 Southeastern 500 from Bristol, where Cale Yarborough became the only driver to lead a Cup race at BMS wire-to-wire.
More than 160,000 fans will be stacked into the .533-mile oval on Sunday for the Food City 500, the fifth race of the Cup Series season. On Aug. 23, all of those seats again will be filled for the Sharpie 500, a Saturday night flashbulb-popping spectacle.
It was a different scene on the afternoon of July 30, 1961, as 18,000 watched Jack Smith win the first race for NASCAR's premier series at BMS, the Volunteer 500, with relief-driving help from Johnny Allen.
Fred Lorenzen was on the pole that day -- and Bristol Motor Speedway was on the map.
And so the evolution began:
• Originally a half-mile, the oval was reconfigured into its present .533, with banking made steeper.
• In August 1978 the first night race was held on the oval.
• In January 1996, Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith brought BMS from Larry Carrier. At that time, grandstand capacity had grown to 71,000. Smith of course envisioned bigger and better things to come. In time for that season's night race, 15,000 more seats were added.
• Capacity went to 118,000 in 1997, 131,000 in 1998, 147,000 in 2000, approximately 160,000 in 2003.
• In March 2007, Bristol hosted the first race for the "new car" in the Cup Series, with Kyle Busch winning.
• In August 2007, Bristol and its challenging banks (24-30 degrees in the turns) unveiled a newly repaved concrete surface.
History has been made routinely through the years. Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough, both three-time Sprint Cup champions, hold the top two all-time driver records at Bristol -- Waltrip has the most wins (12), Yarborough the most poles (9).
Junior Johnson, the man who personifies history, holds the mark for most car owner victories -- 21.
Waltrip won seven races in a row at Bristol from 1981-84. Yarborough took four consecutive and five of six between '76-78. More recently, Kurt Busch took three consecutive in 2003-04.
History is on tap again for Sunday. Another great past champion, Dale Jarrett, will make his final start in the Cup Series. Jarrett, the series titlist in 1999, has won at Bristol, taking the 1997 night race. His father, two-time series champion Ned Jarrett, will wave the green flag Sunday as the honorary starter.
"There is no better place [to finish] than Bristol because it's the most special motorsports venue in the world as far as I'm concerned," Dale Jarrett said this week. "I hopefully can go out on a good note on Sunday."
There have been 60 NASCAR seasons, 47 of which have included stops at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tenn. The relationship and benefits have been reciprocal. Undoubtedly, NASCAR's history has been enriched by BMS' short-tracks slugfests.
Perfection
Mark Aumann looks back at the 1973 Southeastern 500 from Bristol, where Cale Yarborough became the only driver to lead a Cup race at BMS wire-to-wire.
More than 160,000 fans will be stacked into the .533-mile oval on Sunday for the Food City 500, the fifth race of the Cup Series season. On Aug. 23, all of those seats again will be filled for the Sharpie 500, a Saturday night flashbulb-popping spectacle.
It was a different scene on the afternoon of July 30, 1961, as 18,000 watched Jack Smith win the first race for NASCAR's premier series at BMS, the Volunteer 500, with relief-driving help from Johnny Allen.
Fred Lorenzen was on the pole that day -- and Bristol Motor Speedway was on the map.
And so the evolution began:
• Originally a half-mile, the oval was reconfigured into its present .533, with banking made steeper.
• In August 1978 the first night race was held on the oval.
• In January 1996, Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith brought BMS from Larry Carrier. At that time, grandstand capacity had grown to 71,000. Smith of course envisioned bigger and better things to come. In time for that season's night race, 15,000 more seats were added.
• Capacity went to 118,000 in 1997, 131,000 in 1998, 147,000 in 2000, approximately 160,000 in 2003.
• In March 2007, Bristol hosted the first race for the "new car" in the Cup Series, with Kyle Busch winning.
• In August 2007, Bristol and its challenging banks (24-30 degrees in the turns) unveiled a newly repaved concrete surface.
History has been made routinely through the years. Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough, both three-time Sprint Cup champions, hold the top two all-time driver records at Bristol -- Waltrip has the most wins (12), Yarborough the most poles (9).
Junior Johnson, the man who personifies history, holds the mark for most car owner victories -- 21.
Waltrip won seven races in a row at Bristol from 1981-84. Yarborough took four consecutive and five of six between '76-78. More recently, Kurt Busch took three consecutive in 2003-04.
History is on tap again for Sunday. Another great past champion, Dale Jarrett, will make his final start in the Cup Series. Jarrett, the series titlist in 1999, has won at Bristol, taking the 1997 night race. His father, two-time series champion Ned Jarrett, will wave the green flag Sunday as the honorary starter.
"There is no better place [to finish] than Bristol because it's the most special motorsports venue in the world as far as I'm concerned," Dale Jarrett said this week. "I hopefully can go out on a good note on Sunday."
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Potential penalty may jumble drivers' standings
So, leaving Las Vegas, who is the NASCAR Sprint Cup leader?
Well, at the moment it’s Carl Edwards, red-hot and winner of two of the year’s first three races. But Edwards leads by only 21 points over Kyle Busch.
If NASCAR hits Edwards and his team with penalties similar to those handed out to five other NASCAR teams at Daytona two weeks ago for similar oil-tank cover issues - a $15,000 fine, a 25-point deduction, and a six-race suspension for his crew chief, Bob Osborne - then the man atop the standings when teams reach Hampton, Ga., this week would again be Busch. Unless Edwards and car owner Jack Roush appeal, in which case Edwards would be back on top, at least until his appeal is heard.
Confusing?
Ask NASCAR.
This might not be quite what CEO Brian France was thinking about in his back-to-basics campaign.
And those fines? Drivers are just realizing that NASCAR’s new policy of putting that money into the NASCAR Foundation fund instead of the drivers’ points fund - where the fines have traditionally gone - is costing them. It will be interesting to see if this sport’s television journalists pick up on that point.
It will also be interesting to see how the TV men handle the Hampton, Ga., crowd situation, if ticket sales don’t perk up for Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500.
And this car of tomorrow, this supposed cost-cutting, safer machine? Well, it certainly does look safer, as Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart may attest after their nasty crashes here Sunday.
But cost-cutting? Nope. The big teams have even more of an edge than they did before, because engineering is even more at a premium now.
As far as making for better competition, it looks like this machine has a way to go. Richard Childress’ teams have shown some progress. But Dodge teams were dogs again, and all those blown right-front tires and crashes have to be suspicious - is that just a remarkable run of bad luck for so many in the same camp, or are some engineers over-engineering something?
While Edwards, Osborne and Roush await NASCAR’s judgment, what to make of Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Yes he did win the Daytona Shootout, his first big win in almost two years. But he still hasn’t won a Cup tour race since May 2006, at Richmond.
He conceded he isn’t on top of his game.
“Man, it’s just a lot of work,” Earnhardt said of running the new winged car on these intermediate tracks. “Really couldn’t get the front or the back to hook up real good.
“Just had to beat it down in the corner and take whatever it would give you.”
While the Roush Fords are looking quite dominant right now, there is still considerable uncertainty about just how strong that the rest of the teams are.
Take Earnhardt, for example: Ninth in the Daytona 500, 40th at California after crashing, now a second at Vegas.
“I’ve waited and been lackadaisical,” Earnhardt said. “I’m not going to do that this year. I’m going to concentrate on every lap.
“We tested a lot at Atlanta, and it feels as good as it can, for it’s a car of tomorrow. The tire is pretty good for that track; we have pretty good grip there.
“Bristol redid the track, and everybody is still trying to pull some tricks there. Pretty crucial, both them races, to really set you up for the summer run.”
Earnhardt had Edwards right in his sights for a restart with five laps to go in Sunday’s race. But….
“I spun my tires, and Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon got around me,” Earnhardt said. “That was just my mistake.
“Then the red flag (20 minutes), and we weren’t as good on cold tires.”
Edwards then sprinted away, leaving Earnhardt battling Greg Biffle for second.
“I was outside of Earnhardt down in one and two, and he got pushed up the track a little,” Biffle said, somewhat magnanimously. “He came over and talked to me when he got out of the car, like a real gentleman, apologized.”
“Greg got on the outside of me (on the restart), and we pushed up,” Earnhardt said. “I saw him lift so we could get off the corner together. That was kind of cool of him, running me clean like that.
“But Carl wasn’t going to get beat.
“Still, it’s good just to put one in the bag after last week.
“I would have been glad if we had just run second under green flag, no crash. We were in good shape; I was running good times....
“I would have talked myself into being satisfied with a top-five finish no matter where it was. After last week, I just needed to get that kind of a finish.
“But we worked so hard to get to second, to get by Matt.
“You get so mad….
“I wanted a shot at Carl, but he was just so strong.
“You hate to see cautions, because you know guys are going to pull tricks out of their bag. Matt laid back on that restart when I spun my tires; I should have been laying back too, so I can’t complain about him.
“Shoot, I had a shot to try to beat Carl.
“We’d had some pretty good restarts during the race, and I should have been paying a little more attention to what Matt was doing. Carl slowed down real quick before he went, and when I jumped the gas, my car just spun like hell. The tire is so hard it’s hard to get hooked up on the restart.”
Well, at the moment it’s Carl Edwards, red-hot and winner of two of the year’s first three races. But Edwards leads by only 21 points over Kyle Busch.
If NASCAR hits Edwards and his team with penalties similar to those handed out to five other NASCAR teams at Daytona two weeks ago for similar oil-tank cover issues - a $15,000 fine, a 25-point deduction, and a six-race suspension for his crew chief, Bob Osborne - then the man atop the standings when teams reach Hampton, Ga., this week would again be Busch. Unless Edwards and car owner Jack Roush appeal, in which case Edwards would be back on top, at least until his appeal is heard.
Confusing?
Ask NASCAR.
This might not be quite what CEO Brian France was thinking about in his back-to-basics campaign.
And those fines? Drivers are just realizing that NASCAR’s new policy of putting that money into the NASCAR Foundation fund instead of the drivers’ points fund - where the fines have traditionally gone - is costing them. It will be interesting to see if this sport’s television journalists pick up on that point.
It will also be interesting to see how the TV men handle the Hampton, Ga., crowd situation, if ticket sales don’t perk up for Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500.
And this car of tomorrow, this supposed cost-cutting, safer machine? Well, it certainly does look safer, as Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart may attest after their nasty crashes here Sunday.
But cost-cutting? Nope. The big teams have even more of an edge than they did before, because engineering is even more at a premium now.
As far as making for better competition, it looks like this machine has a way to go. Richard Childress’ teams have shown some progress. But Dodge teams were dogs again, and all those blown right-front tires and crashes have to be suspicious - is that just a remarkable run of bad luck for so many in the same camp, or are some engineers over-engineering something?
While Edwards, Osborne and Roush await NASCAR’s judgment, what to make of Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Yes he did win the Daytona Shootout, his first big win in almost two years. But he still hasn’t won a Cup tour race since May 2006, at Richmond.
He conceded he isn’t on top of his game.
“Man, it’s just a lot of work,” Earnhardt said of running the new winged car on these intermediate tracks. “Really couldn’t get the front or the back to hook up real good.
“Just had to beat it down in the corner and take whatever it would give you.”
While the Roush Fords are looking quite dominant right now, there is still considerable uncertainty about just how strong that the rest of the teams are.
Take Earnhardt, for example: Ninth in the Daytona 500, 40th at California after crashing, now a second at Vegas.
“I’ve waited and been lackadaisical,” Earnhardt said. “I’m not going to do that this year. I’m going to concentrate on every lap.
“We tested a lot at Atlanta, and it feels as good as it can, for it’s a car of tomorrow. The tire is pretty good for that track; we have pretty good grip there.
“Bristol redid the track, and everybody is still trying to pull some tricks there. Pretty crucial, both them races, to really set you up for the summer run.”
Earnhardt had Edwards right in his sights for a restart with five laps to go in Sunday’s race. But….
“I spun my tires, and Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon got around me,” Earnhardt said. “That was just my mistake.
“Then the red flag (20 minutes), and we weren’t as good on cold tires.”
Edwards then sprinted away, leaving Earnhardt battling Greg Biffle for second.
“I was outside of Earnhardt down in one and two, and he got pushed up the track a little,” Biffle said, somewhat magnanimously. “He came over and talked to me when he got out of the car, like a real gentleman, apologized.”
“Greg got on the outside of me (on the restart), and we pushed up,” Earnhardt said. “I saw him lift so we could get off the corner together. That was kind of cool of him, running me clean like that.
“But Carl wasn’t going to get beat.
“Still, it’s good just to put one in the bag after last week.
“I would have been glad if we had just run second under green flag, no crash. We were in good shape; I was running good times....
“I would have talked myself into being satisfied with a top-five finish no matter where it was. After last week, I just needed to get that kind of a finish.
“But we worked so hard to get to second, to get by Matt.
“You get so mad….
“I wanted a shot at Carl, but he was just so strong.
“You hate to see cautions, because you know guys are going to pull tricks out of their bag. Matt laid back on that restart when I spun my tires; I should have been laying back too, so I can’t complain about him.
“Shoot, I had a shot to try to beat Carl.
“We’d had some pretty good restarts during the race, and I should have been paying a little more attention to what Matt was doing. Carl slowed down real quick before he went, and when I jumped the gas, my car just spun like hell. The tire is so hard it’s hard to get hooked up on the restart.”
Red Bull opts for Skinner to jump start No. 84 at AMS
Red Bull Racing announced Monday that Mike Skinner temporarily will replace A.J. Allmendinger as driver of the No. 84 Toyota in the Sprint Cup Series, effective this weekend at Atlanta.
"We're at a crossroads where we need to make a change that will elevate the No. 84 team to success," said Jay Frye, the team's vice president and general manager. "A.J.'s our guy and he's a talented driver, but there's a lot being asked of him. In order for him to be successful, we have to get this team pointed in the right direction. We hope we can do that with the help of a veteran driver."
SkinnerAllmendinger failed to qualify at Las Vegas, making him 0-for-3 on the season. Teammate Brian Vickers has made all three races in the No. 83 Red Bull car.
Skinner, who won the inaugural Craftsman Truck Series championship in 1995, currently drives the No. 5 Toyota for Bill Davis Racing in the NCTS. Skinner served as a test driver for Red Bull in 2006.
"Let's not kid ourselves," Allmendinger said. "I'm a racer and I want to be racing, but I get the big picture here and obviously we need to improve our program.
"Do I want to be out of the car? No. But, I know Skinner can help both me and my team. All I can say is he better be prepared for me to eat, drink, and sleep with him. ... OK, well maybe not the sleeping part, but I'm ready to attach myself to him and learn everything I can."
Skinner has 246 starts in the Cup Series, the majority coming between 1997 and 2003. His best finish was a second-place run at Talladega on April 16, 2000. Skinner has 10 top-five finishes and 39 top-10s.
Skinner also mentored Allmendinger during the rookie's part-time ride with Bill Davis Racing's NCTS team in 2006.
"[Allmendinger] took on a huge challenge jumping into stock cars last year, and I'm glad I can be the one to help him and his team figure out where the glitches are in their program," Skinner said.
"This is a positive thing for A.J. as a learning experience, for the Red Bull Racing Team to get back on track, and for me to have the opportunity to help another Toyota team that has great equipment and potential."
Allmendinger is in just his second season of NASCAR after a successful open-wheel career. The 25-year-old left the Champ Car Series to drive for Red Bull, and the team gave him a Cup ride he perhaps wasn't prepared for.
He qualified for 17 of 36 races last season, and his best finish was a 15th at Charlotte in October.
Red Bull is also working on securing seat time for Allmendinger in Nationwide Series and Truck Series races to help his adaptation to NASCAR. Options in the Nationwide Series are rides in a Joe Gibbs Racing or Chip Ganassi car, and there could be some seat time available in a truck owned by Billy Ballew.
"He needs seat time, there's no question about that," Frye said. "But it takes time to put it altogether and we're working on it. We want A.J. in as many races as we can get him into, and we want him to gain as much experience as he can."
"We're at a crossroads where we need to make a change that will elevate the No. 84 team to success," said Jay Frye, the team's vice president and general manager. "A.J.'s our guy and he's a talented driver, but there's a lot being asked of him. In order for him to be successful, we have to get this team pointed in the right direction. We hope we can do that with the help of a veteran driver."
SkinnerAllmendinger failed to qualify at Las Vegas, making him 0-for-3 on the season. Teammate Brian Vickers has made all three races in the No. 83 Red Bull car.
Skinner, who won the inaugural Craftsman Truck Series championship in 1995, currently drives the No. 5 Toyota for Bill Davis Racing in the NCTS. Skinner served as a test driver for Red Bull in 2006.
"Let's not kid ourselves," Allmendinger said. "I'm a racer and I want to be racing, but I get the big picture here and obviously we need to improve our program.
"Do I want to be out of the car? No. But, I know Skinner can help both me and my team. All I can say is he better be prepared for me to eat, drink, and sleep with him. ... OK, well maybe not the sleeping part, but I'm ready to attach myself to him and learn everything I can."
Skinner has 246 starts in the Cup Series, the majority coming between 1997 and 2003. His best finish was a second-place run at Talladega on April 16, 2000. Skinner has 10 top-five finishes and 39 top-10s.
Skinner also mentored Allmendinger during the rookie's part-time ride with Bill Davis Racing's NCTS team in 2006.
"[Allmendinger] took on a huge challenge jumping into stock cars last year, and I'm glad I can be the one to help him and his team figure out where the glitches are in their program," Skinner said.
"This is a positive thing for A.J. as a learning experience, for the Red Bull Racing Team to get back on track, and for me to have the opportunity to help another Toyota team that has great equipment and potential."
Allmendinger is in just his second season of NASCAR after a successful open-wheel career. The 25-year-old left the Champ Car Series to drive for Red Bull, and the team gave him a Cup ride he perhaps wasn't prepared for.
He qualified for 17 of 36 races last season, and his best finish was a 15th at Charlotte in October.
Red Bull is also working on securing seat time for Allmendinger in Nationwide Series and Truck Series races to help his adaptation to NASCAR. Options in the Nationwide Series are rides in a Joe Gibbs Racing or Chip Ganassi car, and there could be some seat time available in a truck owned by Billy Ballew.
"He needs seat time, there's no question about that," Frye said. "But it takes time to put it altogether and we're working on it. We want A.J. in as many races as we can get him into, and we want him to gain as much experience as he can."
NASCAR says no to Texas Motor Speedway test date
Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage wants a test session held at his facility before the Sprint Cup teams race there April 6. But NASCAR says he's not going to get one.
Concerned by a track-record 11 cautions Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and comments from some drivers who say Texas will be a bigger test for the new racecar, Gossage sent a release to the media inviting NASCAR to test at the Fort Worth facility prior to the Samsung 500. Although Clint Bowyer and Juan Montoya took part in a Goodyear tire test in January at Texas, it was not one of the six tracks chosen for an official open test like the one held in Phoenix on Monday and Tuesday.
Gossage proposed adding a test session, opening the track the Wednesday of race week for an additional practice session, or adding a Sprint Cup practice to the speedway's regular schedule of events on Thursday.
"My concern is that they did have an open test at Las Vegas and still had a record number of cautions, including three serious crashes involving former Cup champions," said Gossage, referring to wrecks involving Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. "We only have had a two-car Goodyear test so we could see a lot of crashes, and that causes me concern. I'm sure the teams would like as much data and track time as possible to reach that comfort level with the car and its performance at our speedway."
NASCAR says it will keep an eye on the car's performance at Texas before determining whether any additional track time is necessary. As for an additional test, the sanctioning body's answer is clear-cut.
"The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is testing in Phoenix [Tuesday] and will test at Pocono and Charlotte later this year," series spokesman Ramsey Poston said Tuesday. "There are no plans to add tests at this time."
Sprint Cup teams also tested at Daytona, California, and Las Vegas in addition to the session this week in Phoenix and those upcoming at Pocono and Charlotte. Texas officials lobbied NASCAR for an open test, but did not receive one. Gossage's concern was heightened after reading comments from drivers even before the 11-caution Las Vegas event took place.
"I think Texas will be the toughest track we go to with this car, [and] it's already a tough racetrack," Gordon said. "And when you look at the transitions, the vertical loads, the bumps and the speeds, it's probably going to be closer to [Las Vegas] than to any other track we go to. The biggest challenge we're going to have with the Impala going forward this year is going to tracks that we haven't tested at and been to and gotten the data and the laps with the telemetry."
Added Jeff Burton, defending champion of Texas' spring race: "I think there are a lot of challenges at Texas -- maybe more so than [Las Vegas]. Texas is a little rougher. With this car, the bumps seem to be a pretty major issue, so I think Texas is going to be quite a challenge with this car. Some teams are going to hit and some teams aren't. The success we were able to do there last year, none of that works. None of that information will be worth a hoot, so it's starting all over again."
Las Vegas was the first race for the new car on a 1.5-mile tri-oval. The information teams compiled in the January test at Las Vegas was offset somewhat by the stark difference in weather conditions on race day. NASCAR also builds its test schedule partly on input from teams, who are consulted at midseason about which venues they would most prefer to test at the next year.
But Gossage still holds out hope that NASCAR will change its mind. The track president also sent an overnight letter to NASCAR president Mike Helton outlining his concerns about racing at Texas without a test.
"I'm disappointed that NASCAR did not give it more consideration," Gossage said, "but Texas Motor Speedway's offer still stands if they reconsider."
Concerned by a track-record 11 cautions Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and comments from some drivers who say Texas will be a bigger test for the new racecar, Gossage sent a release to the media inviting NASCAR to test at the Fort Worth facility prior to the Samsung 500. Although Clint Bowyer and Juan Montoya took part in a Goodyear tire test in January at Texas, it was not one of the six tracks chosen for an official open test like the one held in Phoenix on Monday and Tuesday.
Gossage proposed adding a test session, opening the track the Wednesday of race week for an additional practice session, or adding a Sprint Cup practice to the speedway's regular schedule of events on Thursday.
"My concern is that they did have an open test at Las Vegas and still had a record number of cautions, including three serious crashes involving former Cup champions," said Gossage, referring to wrecks involving Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. "We only have had a two-car Goodyear test so we could see a lot of crashes, and that causes me concern. I'm sure the teams would like as much data and track time as possible to reach that comfort level with the car and its performance at our speedway."
NASCAR says it will keep an eye on the car's performance at Texas before determining whether any additional track time is necessary. As for an additional test, the sanctioning body's answer is clear-cut.
"The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is testing in Phoenix [Tuesday] and will test at Pocono and Charlotte later this year," series spokesman Ramsey Poston said Tuesday. "There are no plans to add tests at this time."
Sprint Cup teams also tested at Daytona, California, and Las Vegas in addition to the session this week in Phoenix and those upcoming at Pocono and Charlotte. Texas officials lobbied NASCAR for an open test, but did not receive one. Gossage's concern was heightened after reading comments from drivers even before the 11-caution Las Vegas event took place.
"I think Texas will be the toughest track we go to with this car, [and] it's already a tough racetrack," Gordon said. "And when you look at the transitions, the vertical loads, the bumps and the speeds, it's probably going to be closer to [Las Vegas] than to any other track we go to. The biggest challenge we're going to have with the Impala going forward this year is going to tracks that we haven't tested at and been to and gotten the data and the laps with the telemetry."
Added Jeff Burton, defending champion of Texas' spring race: "I think there are a lot of challenges at Texas -- maybe more so than [Las Vegas]. Texas is a little rougher. With this car, the bumps seem to be a pretty major issue, so I think Texas is going to be quite a challenge with this car. Some teams are going to hit and some teams aren't. The success we were able to do there last year, none of that works. None of that information will be worth a hoot, so it's starting all over again."
Las Vegas was the first race for the new car on a 1.5-mile tri-oval. The information teams compiled in the January test at Las Vegas was offset somewhat by the stark difference in weather conditions on race day. NASCAR also builds its test schedule partly on input from teams, who are consulted at midseason about which venues they would most prefer to test at the next year.
But Gossage still holds out hope that NASCAR will change its mind. The track president also sent an overnight letter to NASCAR president Mike Helton outlining his concerns about racing at Texas without a test.
"I'm disappointed that NASCAR did not give it more consideration," Gossage said, "but Texas Motor Speedway's offer still stands if they reconsider."
Saturday, March 1, 2008
'Allstate girl' gives the dirt on Kasey and the new spot
Everyone knows NASCAR drivers are notorious for producing some down right hilarious commercials. Kasey Kahne is no exception and is likely one of the more visible drivers, particularly with his new Bud sponsor.
The driver of the No. 9 has pulled a rabbit from his helmet for a Nextel spot and had his head shaved like Bozo the clown in a Gillette commercial. But Kahne being constantly objectified by those soccer moms in the Allstate commercials is by far my favorite.
That is why I had to talk to Judy Fleming, the red-headed actress who crashes
her Durango while drooling over Kahne throughout most of the advertising campaign. She and her gal pals are at it again this season as Allstate debuts a new spot Sunday during the Sprint Cup race in Vegas.
From her home in Los Angeles, Fleming filled me in on how she became one of the "Allstate Girls," the low down on the new commercial and some hysterical insight into the on-camera skills of Kahne.
The commercial is a 60-second spot titled Sponsorship. It features the three Allstate girls dining at a cafe, discussing how they will spend the "Safe Driving Bonus" check they just received from Allstate. One girl suggests a spa trip while the other wants to sponsor Kahne's car.
The spot slowly dissolves into a dream sequence detailing the sponsorship deal where the girls' faces adorn Kahne's No. 9 Dodge while the driver breaks out into a full-fledged dance routine reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys.
Kahne, our soft-spoken, blushing five-year Cup veteran, is gyrating to the Scorpions hit, Rock You Like a Hurricane. I nearly peed my pants and will never be able to look at Kahne again without blushing myself.
Fleming was equally hysterical, because she said while shooting the spot, Kahne would wander off alone at times and practice his moves in a corner.
OK Kasey, I've got to see some of these moves in Victory Lane.
"Practicing my dance moves for the Sponsorship spot helped me realize that I won't be leaving racing to pursue a career as a hip-hop dancer," Kahne said.
Maybe not, but Fleming said he is definitely Dancing with the Stars material.
And as for her, the spots have made Fleming a commercial actress star.
Before the Allstate campaign, she was working as a senior advertising account executive in Richmond, Va. She did some modeling and theater part-time as a hobby, but never imagined becoming a well-known commercial actress.
After her divorce, she moved from Richmond to Los Angeles and thought she'd try her hand on the small screen for a year, and fortunate for her, it has turned into a lucrative, full-time career.
Fleming landed her first commercial gig about 10 years ago and she has since done major spots for Wal-Mart, Publix, Johnsonville Bratwurst, Home Depot and Toyota.
It sounds like she needs to start swooning over Tony Stewart with sponsors like those, but Allstate has become her favorite gig.
"I enjoy the process, every bit of it ... the audition, the call back, waiting, everything," said Fleming who has really cherished the friendships she has made with her two other co-stars Dana Gilhooley and Jen Biederman.
Their careers together began three years ago when the ladies shot their first spot with Kahne in the Dodge parking lot where Fleming crashes into the pole that conveniently lands on top of another car. Fleming said she never had to actually hit the pole but driving around with cameras mounted to the Durango and directors shouting at her was intense.
She had yet to meet Kahne and had to swoon over a grip riding on a golf cart as opposed to the real Kahne.
"We saw a picture of him, we had to react to this long-haired fat guy riding in golf cart and I was like this guy is not hot. They told us to pretend he was George Clooney. And then when we finally saw Kasey we felt like pervs because he looked like he was 16."
The following year, the group reunited outside of Charlotte, N.C. to shoot the spot where the girls pose as police officers and pull Kahne over to check out his back side.
"He was such a good sport. I could really tell his acting was better. I told him the first time he was so stiff, so now we tease each other. He tells me how to act now," she said with a laugh.
And this year, the chemistry between Kahne and Fleming is even greater.
"Now we try to get personal information out of him," she said. "He's not as guarded."
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
The driver of the No. 9 has pulled a rabbit from his helmet for a Nextel spot and had his head shaved like Bozo the clown in a Gillette commercial. But Kahne being constantly objectified by those soccer moms in the Allstate commercials is by far my favorite.
That is why I had to talk to Judy Fleming, the red-headed actress who crashes
her Durango while drooling over Kahne throughout most of the advertising campaign. She and her gal pals are at it again this season as Allstate debuts a new spot Sunday during the Sprint Cup race in Vegas.From her home in Los Angeles, Fleming filled me in on how she became one of the "Allstate Girls," the low down on the new commercial and some hysterical insight into the on-camera skills of Kahne.
The commercial is a 60-second spot titled Sponsorship. It features the three Allstate girls dining at a cafe, discussing how they will spend the "Safe Driving Bonus" check they just received from Allstate. One girl suggests a spa trip while the other wants to sponsor Kahne's car.
The spot slowly dissolves into a dream sequence detailing the sponsorship deal where the girls' faces adorn Kahne's No. 9 Dodge while the driver breaks out into a full-fledged dance routine reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys.
Kahne, our soft-spoken, blushing five-year Cup veteran, is gyrating to the Scorpions hit, Rock You Like a Hurricane. I nearly peed my pants and will never be able to look at Kahne again without blushing myself.
Fleming was equally hysterical, because she said while shooting the spot, Kahne would wander off alone at times and practice his moves in a corner.
OK Kasey, I've got to see some of these moves in Victory Lane.
"Practicing my dance moves for the Sponsorship spot helped me realize that I won't be leaving racing to pursue a career as a hip-hop dancer," Kahne said.
Maybe not, but Fleming said he is definitely Dancing with the Stars material.
And as for her, the spots have made Fleming a commercial actress star.
Before the Allstate campaign, she was working as a senior advertising account executive in Richmond, Va. She did some modeling and theater part-time as a hobby, but never imagined becoming a well-known commercial actress.
After her divorce, she moved from Richmond to Los Angeles and thought she'd try her hand on the small screen for a year, and fortunate for her, it has turned into a lucrative, full-time career.
Fleming landed her first commercial gig about 10 years ago and she has since done major spots for Wal-Mart, Publix, Johnsonville Bratwurst, Home Depot and Toyota.
It sounds like she needs to start swooning over Tony Stewart with sponsors like those, but Allstate has become her favorite gig.
"I enjoy the process, every bit of it ... the audition, the call back, waiting, everything," said Fleming who has really cherished the friendships she has made with her two other co-stars Dana Gilhooley and Jen Biederman.
Their careers together began three years ago when the ladies shot their first spot with Kahne in the Dodge parking lot where Fleming crashes into the pole that conveniently lands on top of another car. Fleming said she never had to actually hit the pole but driving around with cameras mounted to the Durango and directors shouting at her was intense.
She had yet to meet Kahne and had to swoon over a grip riding on a golf cart as opposed to the real Kahne.
"We saw a picture of him, we had to react to this long-haired fat guy riding in golf cart and I was like this guy is not hot. They told us to pretend he was George Clooney. And then when we finally saw Kasey we felt like pervs because he looked like he was 16."
The following year, the group reunited outside of Charlotte, N.C. to shoot the spot where the girls pose as police officers and pull Kahne over to check out his back side.
"He was such a good sport. I could really tell his acting was better. I told him the first time he was so stiff, so now we tease each other. He tells me how to act now," she said with a laugh.
And this year, the chemistry between Kahne and Fleming is even greater.
"Now we try to get personal information out of him," she said. "He's not as guarded."
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Busch Home on the Pole
LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Kyle Busch backed up his fast practice lap by winning the pole Friday for the UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway his first at his home track.Busch turned a lap of 182.352 mph in his Joe Gibbs racing M&M's Toyota. It was Busch's third career Sprint Cup Series pole and his first since Phoenix in 2006.The pole continued Busch's hot streak to start the NASCAR seas
on.He comes into the weekend's race leading the Sprint Cup Series standings as well as the Craftsman Truck Series while sitting in second place over in the Nationwide Series."It’s cool, it’s fun and it’s great and all, but we’re two weeks in," Busch said. "We need it two weeks to go. There’s a lot of stuff, a lot of laps and a lot of corners to go through and a lot of pit stops and everything else."Hopefully we can keep it and ride this wave for however long it lasts. I’m a pretty good surfer, so it shouldn’t be too hard."Last week's Auto Club Speedway winner Carl Edwards qualified second in his Roush Fenway Racing Office Depot Ford.Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Mike Skinner, the fastest of the drivers who needed to qualify on time, rounded out the top five.
Greg Biffle, Scott Riggs, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch and Elliott Sadler completed the first ten qualifiers.Jimmie Johnson, who is shooting for his fourth straight UAW-Dodge 400 win, had a tough qualifying effort and turned in the 35th fastest lap.Despite the effort and the bad start to the season at Daytona, Johnson isn't concerned.“Man it’s only two races in," he said. "From our standpoint, we finished second and third last week and unfortunately two cars were wrecked early. Daytona is Daytona; we’ve thrown that out the window. We feel like we’re doing just fine. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about."
on.He comes into the weekend's race leading the Sprint Cup Series standings as well as the Craftsman Truck Series while sitting in second place over in the Nationwide Series."It’s cool, it’s fun and it’s great and all, but we’re two weeks in," Busch said. "We need it two weeks to go. There’s a lot of stuff, a lot of laps and a lot of corners to go through and a lot of pit stops and everything else."Hopefully we can keep it and ride this wave for however long it lasts. I’m a pretty good surfer, so it shouldn’t be too hard."Last week's Auto Club Speedway winner Carl Edwards qualified second in his Roush Fenway Racing Office Depot Ford.Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Mike Skinner, the fastest of the drivers who needed to qualify on time, rounded out the top five.Greg Biffle, Scott Riggs, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch and Elliott Sadler completed the first ten qualifiers.Jimmie Johnson, who is shooting for his fourth straight UAW-Dodge 400 win, had a tough qualifying effort and turned in the 35th fastest lap.Despite the effort and the bad start to the season at Daytona, Johnson isn't concerned.“Man it’s only two races in," he said. "From our standpoint, we finished second and third last week and unfortunately two cars were wrecked early. Daytona is Daytona; we’ve thrown that out the window. We feel like we’re doing just fine. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about."
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Vegas crucial stop if Mears is to make a run in 2008
This wasn't the way Casey Mears wanted to start his 2008 season. Running third in the closing laps of the Daytona 500, he tried to block Tony Stewart and crashed hard into the outside wall, finishing 35th. And at Fontana, Mears lost control of his car after running over water on the track, and wound up having to climb out of his overturned vehicle, saddled with a 42nd-place finish (watch video).
After two races, Mears has accumulated 95 points and is mired in 42nd place in the Sprint Cup standings. So what are his chances of rebounding to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup some 24 races from now?
Send Mark your thoughts
Mark's Community page
Taking into consideration the current championship structure, of the 120 drivers who would have qualified for the Chase in the past 10 seasons, just 26 were outside of the top 20 after the first two races of the year. And only five had fewer than 130 points -- and none had less than 118.
For the most point, drivers who had a miserable Daytona 500 were able to bounce back in the season's second race -- or vice versa. Tony Stewart's done it three times, including 2007, when he finished last at Daytona but eighth at Fontana. Jeff Burton, Terry Labonte, Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth have done it two times each.
It's rarer to see a Chase contender start out with two consecutive finishes outside of the top 20 -- and even rarer still for a driver with an average finish of 30th or worse rebound to make the Chase.
However, it has been done. In fact, at least one driver in two of the past three seasons has had less than 130 points after two races and still gone on to make the Chase. A third rallied to a top-12 position in points by Richmond, but 2006 marked the last year only 10 drivers were eligible for the Chase. In each case, however, that driver used Las Vegas as a springboard to jump-start his season.
In 2005, Kenseth finished 42nd at Daytona and 26th at Fontana, then came to Vegas and wound up eighth. In 2006, Greg Biffle started slowly -- 31st at Daytona and 42nd at Fontana -- and used an eighth-place finish at Las Vegas to regain his momentum. And last season, Martin Truex Jr. had just 118 points after poor finishes in his first two seasons, but was 12th at Las Vegas and eighth at Atlanta.
In 2003, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had 124 points after consecutive top-30 finishes to start the season. He promptly tore off finishes of second, third and sixth on his way to an eventual third-place finish in the points. Had there been a Chase that season, he would have been second in the standings behind Kenseth after 26 races.
And then there's the special case of Kevin Harvick's 2001 season. Taking over at Rockingham after Dale Earnhardt was killed in the season-opener, Harvick finished 14th. He would go on to finish eighth at Las Vegas and then beat Jeff Gordon in a thrilling finish at Atlanta, giving him enough momentum to overcome missing one race. After the race at Richmond, Harvick was eighth in the standings.
So Mears will be facing uncharted territory if he is able to turn his season around to that extent. However, there are some factors that do play in his favor.
Those two crashes were the first time Mears had suffered consecutive DNFs since his rookie season with Chip Ganassi in 2003. In four full seasons since, he was running at the finish in all but 11 races. In addition, Mears began to show the ability last season to string together good finishes.
After his surprising victory in the Coca-Cola 600, Mears finished 13th at Dover and then scored back-to-back fourth-place finishes at Pocono and Michigan. Later in the season, he went on a streak of 10 consecutive finishes of 22nd or better, culminating in four top-10 finishes in a row from New Hampshire to Talladega.
So there's still time, but Las Vegas looms as a major turning point in his season if Mears has any hopes of getting back into championship contention in 2008
After two races, Mears has accumulated 95 points and is mired in 42nd place in the Sprint Cup standings. So what are his chances of rebounding to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup some 24 races from now?
Send Mark your thoughts
Mark's Community page
Taking into consideration the current championship structure, of the 120 drivers who would have qualified for the Chase in the past 10 seasons, just 26 were outside of the top 20 after the first two races of the year. And only five had fewer than 130 points -- and none had less than 118.
For the most point, drivers who had a miserable Daytona 500 were able to bounce back in the season's second race -- or vice versa. Tony Stewart's done it three times, including 2007, when he finished last at Daytona but eighth at Fontana. Jeff Burton, Terry Labonte, Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth have done it two times each.
It's rarer to see a Chase contender start out with two consecutive finishes outside of the top 20 -- and even rarer still for a driver with an average finish of 30th or worse rebound to make the Chase.
However, it has been done. In fact, at least one driver in two of the past three seasons has had less than 130 points after two races and still gone on to make the Chase. A third rallied to a top-12 position in points by Richmond, but 2006 marked the last year only 10 drivers were eligible for the Chase. In each case, however, that driver used Las Vegas as a springboard to jump-start his season.
In 2005, Kenseth finished 42nd at Daytona and 26th at Fontana, then came to Vegas and wound up eighth. In 2006, Greg Biffle started slowly -- 31st at Daytona and 42nd at Fontana -- and used an eighth-place finish at Las Vegas to regain his momentum. And last season, Martin Truex Jr. had just 118 points after poor finishes in his first two seasons, but was 12th at Las Vegas and eighth at Atlanta.
In 2003, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had 124 points after consecutive top-30 finishes to start the season. He promptly tore off finishes of second, third and sixth on his way to an eventual third-place finish in the points. Had there been a Chase that season, he would have been second in the standings behind Kenseth after 26 races.
And then there's the special case of Kevin Harvick's 2001 season. Taking over at Rockingham after Dale Earnhardt was killed in the season-opener, Harvick finished 14th. He would go on to finish eighth at Las Vegas and then beat Jeff Gordon in a thrilling finish at Atlanta, giving him enough momentum to overcome missing one race. After the race at Richmond, Harvick was eighth in the standings.
So Mears will be facing uncharted territory if he is able to turn his season around to that extent. However, there are some factors that do play in his favor.
Those two crashes were the first time Mears had suffered consecutive DNFs since his rookie season with Chip Ganassi in 2003. In four full seasons since, he was running at the finish in all but 11 races. In addition, Mears began to show the ability last season to string together good finishes.
After his surprising victory in the Coca-Cola 600, Mears finished 13th at Dover and then scored back-to-back fourth-place finishes at Pocono and Michigan. Later in the season, he went on a streak of 10 consecutive finishes of 22nd or better, culminating in four top-10 finishes in a row from New Hampshire to Talladega.
So there's still time, but Las Vegas looms as a major turning point in his season if Mears has any hopes of getting back into championship contention in 2008
Book explains science of NASCAR in, out of garage
About halfway into The Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed, Larry McReynolds describes a race car as "a science experiment."
The former crew chief nailed what's most compelling about physicist Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky's scientific deep-dive into NASCAR. During a race weekend, teams must capture data on, make sense of, and ultimately correctly adjust thousands of complex variables on a car. The author ultimately succeeds in the unenviable task of making this unfolding science experiment interesting to the reader.
Each NASCAR team's battles in the ongoing war against continuing critical balances -- in tire pressure, myriad chassis adjustments, aerodynamics, even how much a driver ca
n safely perspire -- comes through most vividly as Leslie-Pelecky observes Elliott Sadler's No. 19 team from the pits at several races last season.
I won't give away the ending. Let's just say the driver from Virginia exhibits grace and charm amid significant challenges.
Leslie-Pelecky, a physics professor at the University of Texas, is an inquisitive scientist packing a novelist's eye -- and nose. Walking into a race shop for the first time, she notes a "characteristic aroma." She later learns it's a mixture of brake cleaner and gear oil.
Common fan experiences, like the traditional pre-race flyover, become a data-rich science lesson: "The planes are never where you expect them to be when you look up because light waves travel about a million times faster than sound waves."
An explanation of car paint schemes (which today are mostly decal wraps) gloriously detours into cow farts (the smell of a unique chemical in automotive paints), and why the Wood Brothers employ a removable decal wrap on the Little Debbie car (sponsor executives, who are Seventh Day Adventists, don't conduct business on Saturdays, which includes NASCAR practice).
Teams use lighter oil during qualifying. Right side tires are bigger than left side tires. NASCAR windshields are made from the same plastic as you iPod screen. Lug nuts are painted florescent pink because that's the most jarring color to the human eye.
Do we really need to know all this? Well, if you are a NASCAR fan, yes -- you do!
More substantively, Leslie-Pelecky brings readers inside many off-limits places: the fabrication department at Hendrick Motorsports; the No. 19 hauler at Atlanta Motor Speedway; the shop floor at Roush Fenway Racing; a crash test in Lincoln, Neb.; and the NASCAR Research & Development Center.
Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky's scientific deep-dive into NASCAR is profiled in this week's TIME magazine.
Leslie-Pelecky likes explaining things. Some are endemic to NASCAR, like how engines, brakes, shocks and springs work, and why torque is as important as horsepower in producing speed.
Her tangential points are the most fun. In explaining the sport's safety advances, she detours into the story of a spider silk handkerchief stopping a bullet in a gunfight. The author's cheery tone keeps her liberally sprinkled esoteric references away from intellectual show off-ism. The drivers start their engines, and the wide-eyed physicist inserts her ear plugs. She can't help but note that chickens and sharks can grow back the hair cells that loud noises damage, but humans cannot.
In simple language, with sometimes funny descriptions, Leslie-Pelecky explains track and sway bars, wedge, and tire camber, how a "toed-in" car looks and handles.
It may seem downright bizarre to explain oil viscosity by comparing engine oil flow to Dale Earnhardt Jr. dodging media in a crowded garage, but she makes it work.
The Physics of NASCAR is an "idiot's guide" for those of us who have watched too many races to be dummies.
Consider this book required curriculum in our sport for anyone who wants to work in NASCAR, announce a race, or simply be the smartest NASCAR fan in the room.
The former crew chief nailed what's most compelling about physicist Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky's scientific deep-dive into NASCAR. During a race weekend, teams must capture data on, make sense of, and ultimately correctly adjust thousands of complex variables on a car. The author ultimately succeeds in the unenviable task of making this unfolding science experiment interesting to the reader.
Each NASCAR team's battles in the ongoing war against continuing critical balances -- in tire pressure, myriad chassis adjustments, aerodynamics, even how much a driver ca
n safely perspire -- comes through most vividly as Leslie-Pelecky observes Elliott Sadler's No. 19 team from the pits at several races last season.I won't give away the ending. Let's just say the driver from Virginia exhibits grace and charm amid significant challenges.
Leslie-Pelecky, a physics professor at the University of Texas, is an inquisitive scientist packing a novelist's eye -- and nose. Walking into a race shop for the first time, she notes a "characteristic aroma." She later learns it's a mixture of brake cleaner and gear oil.
Common fan experiences, like the traditional pre-race flyover, become a data-rich science lesson: "The planes are never where you expect them to be when you look up because light waves travel about a million times faster than sound waves."
An explanation of car paint schemes (which today are mostly decal wraps) gloriously detours into cow farts (the smell of a unique chemical in automotive paints), and why the Wood Brothers employ a removable decal wrap on the Little Debbie car (sponsor executives, who are Seventh Day Adventists, don't conduct business on Saturdays, which includes NASCAR practice).
Teams use lighter oil during qualifying. Right side tires are bigger than left side tires. NASCAR windshields are made from the same plastic as you iPod screen. Lug nuts are painted florescent pink because that's the most jarring color to the human eye.
Do we really need to know all this? Well, if you are a NASCAR fan, yes -- you do!
More substantively, Leslie-Pelecky brings readers inside many off-limits places: the fabrication department at Hendrick Motorsports; the No. 19 hauler at Atlanta Motor Speedway; the shop floor at Roush Fenway Racing; a crash test in Lincoln, Neb.; and the NASCAR Research & Development Center.
Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky's scientific deep-dive into NASCAR is profiled in this week's TIME magazine.
Leslie-Pelecky likes explaining things. Some are endemic to NASCAR, like how engines, brakes, shocks and springs work, and why torque is as important as horsepower in producing speed.
Her tangential points are the most fun. In explaining the sport's safety advances, she detours into the story of a spider silk handkerchief stopping a bullet in a gunfight. The author's cheery tone keeps her liberally sprinkled esoteric references away from intellectual show off-ism. The drivers start their engines, and the wide-eyed physicist inserts her ear plugs. She can't help but note that chickens and sharks can grow back the hair cells that loud noises damage, but humans cannot.
In simple language, with sometimes funny descriptions, Leslie-Pelecky explains track and sway bars, wedge, and tire camber, how a "toed-in" car looks and handles.
It may seem downright bizarre to explain oil viscosity by comparing engine oil flow to Dale Earnhardt Jr. dodging media in a crowded garage, but she makes it work.
The Physics of NASCAR is an "idiot's guide" for those of us who have watched too many races to be dummies.
Consider this book required curriculum in our sport for anyone who wants to work in NASCAR, announce a race, or simply be the smartest NASCAR fan in the room.
By the Numbers: Las Vegas
One grew up 337 miles from the site of Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the other grew up on a three-eighths-mile tract of land adjacent to Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
One is 32, the other is 22.
One traveled 2,391 miles to join Hendrick Motorsports, the other traveled 2,233 miles to work for Hendrick before packing up after four years and moving to Joe Gibbs Racing.
There are miles of differences between Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch, but their roads have brought them to Busch's hometown this weekend -- one seeking to extend a streak, the other seeking to break one.
Johnson has won three consecutive races at Las Vegas heading into Sunday's UAW-Dodge 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) and aims to make it four in a row (listen to more). But it's been 33 races since Busch celebrated the first victory in the new car (Bristol, March 25, 2007). Johnson is the defending champion; Busch is the current points leader.
Although not a sure bet, seeing either of them in Victory Lane Sunday night isn't a high-stakes gamble -- the numbers line up.
4Consecutive victories by Jimmie Johnson at Lowe's Motor Speedway between 2004-2005, the last time a Cup driver won at the same track four consecutive times.
4Consecutive victories by Jeff Gordon in the fall event at Darlington Raceway between 1995-1998, the last time a Cup driver won the same event four consecutive times.
4Consecutive victories by Jimmie Johnson in 2007 between Oct. 21-Nov. 11, the last time a Cup driver won four consecutive races on the schedule.
4Finishing position of Kyle Busch in the season's first two races. Busch has three consecutive top-10 finishes at his home track of Las Vegas (second, third
One is 32, the other is 22.
One traveled 2,391 miles to join Hendrick Motorsports, the other traveled 2,233 miles to work for Hendrick before packing up after four years and moving to Joe Gibbs Racing.
There are miles of differences between Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch, but their roads have brought them to Busch's hometown this weekend -- one seeking to extend a streak, the other seeking to break one.
Johnson has won three consecutive races at Las Vegas heading into Sunday's UAW-Dodge 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) and aims to make it four in a row (listen to more). But it's been 33 races since Busch celebrated the first victory in the new car (Bristol, March 25, 2007). Johnson is the defending champion; Busch is the current points leader.
Although not a sure bet, seeing either of them in Victory Lane Sunday night isn't a high-stakes gamble -- the numbers line up.
4Consecutive victories by Jimmie Johnson at Lowe's Motor Speedway between 2004-2005, the last time a Cup driver won at the same track four consecutive times.
4Consecutive victories by Jeff Gordon in the fall event at Darlington Raceway between 1995-1998, the last time a Cup driver won the same event four consecutive times.
4Consecutive victories by Jimmie Johnson in 2007 between Oct. 21-Nov. 11, the last time a Cup driver won four consecutive races on the schedule.
4Finishing position of Kyle Busch in the season's first two races. Busch has three consecutive top-10 finishes at his home track of Las Vegas (second, third
N'wide race moved again, will run Monday at Fontana
History was almost made Sunday night at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., but Mother Nature had other ideas. Now it moves to Monday.
Extensive rain delays forced NASCAR to reschedule a doubleheader on Monday. The Stater Bros. 300 Nationwide Series race will be run immediately following the postponed Auto Club 500 Sprint Cup race, set for a 1 p.m. start.
Jeff Burton will start on the pole as the grid was set per the NASCAR rulebook after qualifying was rained out.
The doubleheader had first been scheduled for Sunday. After rain washed out the Nationwide race on Saturday night, NASCAR officials rescheduled the race for Sunday immediately following the Sprint Cup race, scheduled to start at 4 p.m. ET. It would have been the first time in NASCAR history a race was run at the same track after a Cup race on the same day.
But that didn't work.
The start of the Cup race was delayed, then endured multiple red flags and weather delays. It forced officials to move the Nationwide Series race to Monday. Hours after that, the Cup race was also rescheduled.
The weather is supposed to be much better on Monday, with sunny skies and highs in the mid-60s.
Extensive rain delays forced NASCAR to reschedule a doubleheader on Monday. The Stater Bros. 300 Nationwide Series race will be run immediately following the postponed Auto Club 500 Sprint Cup race, set for a 1 p.m. start.
Jeff Burton will start on the pole as the grid was set per the NASCAR rulebook after qualifying was rained out.
The doubleheader had first been scheduled for Sunday. After rain washed out the Nationwide race on Saturday night, NASCAR officials rescheduled the race for Sunday immediately following the Sprint Cup race, scheduled to start at 4 p.m. ET. It would have been the first time in NASCAR history a race was run at the same track after a Cup race on the same day.
But that didn't work.
The start of the Cup race was delayed, then endured multiple red flags and weather delays. It forced officials to move the Nationwide Series race to Monday. Hours after that, the Cup race was also rescheduled.
The weather is supposed to be much better on Monday, with sunny skies and highs in the mid-60s.
Much more than race day lost when rain pours down
As the rain pounded down over Auto Club Speedway of Southern California this past weekend, it might as well have been pennies hitting the ground rather than water.
The postponement from Sunday afternoon to early Monday was costly to ACS officials in terms of lost revenues for concessions, souvenirs and the like, but what really rang the cash register was paying for all the hourly employees to come back for another day's work.
"Anybody that is working your race is an hourly employee," said one former track official. "If you want them to come back and direct traffic, park cars or whatever it is they do for you, you have to pay that hourly rate."
Security guards, concession-stand staffers, ushers, program sellers, waste management personnel, you name it and there's a time clock attached. Say there's 1,000 people working the rainout, at about $8 an hour -- that's $8,000 an hour times 10 hours or $80,000. It's likely more than that, much more since it's California we're talking about, and that's just the hourly staffing requirement.
That's in addition to another day's worth of insurance for the entire track -- most tracks are covered 24/7, 365, but the rates go up a bit for a race weekend, and the coverage changes.
Lest you think that ACS went broke this past weekend, there is the fact that ticket monies were not refunded because of rain. "Fans with a ticket stub for either Saturday's NASCAR doubleheader or Sunday's Auto Club 500 will be entitled to free general admission grandstand seating for both of [Monday's] rescheduled races," was the way it was put on Auto Club Speedway's Web site.
Vendors lose money too, because if it's raining, there aren't many lines at the souvenir trailers. If it's raining like it was at California, there's a good chance that many people never left the hotel.
The cost to race fans is fairly steep, too. Another hotel room at $250 per, another meal out at $75, more gas for the car, lost hours at work ... the list goes on.
NASCAR itself has costs associated with a rainout. The same costs that fans incur -- lodging, travel, rental cars, rebooked flights -- apply to the NASCAR officials on the road, and there's another day's pay involved as well.
In short, rainouts profit no one except hotels, airlines, car rental companies and other service outlets.
Think of the drivers, who lose a day of precious "free time" with family, and crew members who have one less day to turn around the next racecar as well as one less day at home.
Reporters, TV personnel, media center staffers, radio personalities, all are forced to stay another day as well.
It's a cost of doing business when you hold events that are subject to the fickleness of Mother Nature.
Of course, there are those in the sport who attempt to make a bad situation just a little more palatable. Take Las Vegas Motor Speedway, for instance.
LVMS, owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc, is offering a special promotion for Nationwide Series fans this week. Race fans who bring a ticket stub from the rain-delayed Stater Bros. 300 can buy tickets to the Sam's Town 300 on Saturday for just $25.
"We're making this gesture to do our part to help the series grow," LVMS president Chris Powell said. "While we have sold more than 100,000 tickets to the Sam's Town 300 this Saturday, we have plenty of room to accommodate those loyal race fans who have endured the poor weather in Southern California."
Nothing like a little gamesmanship in the midst of torrents of rainwater, is there?
Ticket insurance, an idea that caught on last year, is available for races at Auto Club Speedway, but rain is not among the covered reasons for a claim, which are:
• "Illness or serious Injury; • Traffic accidents -- which could prevent you from getting to an event; • Mechanical Breakdown -- if your car breaks down within 48 hours of the event ; • Airline delay -- if your plane or other Common Carrier is delayed (includes bad weather) while going to the event; • Home or Business Issues -- if your home or business is uninhabitable due to fire, flood, vandalism, burglary or natural disasters; Care for a family member -- serious injury to a family member, requiring you to provide care; • Felonious Assault -- if you are a victim of a felonious assault within 3 days prior to an event; • Employer Termination -- providing protection against a lay-off; • Jury Duty -- if you are required to serve on jury duty after having purchased an event ticket; • Required to Work -- if your employer requires you to work during the event; • Work Relocation -- if you are relocated by your company over 100 miles from your home; • Military Duty -- if you are required to miss an event as a result of military orders."
Nowhere in the document on the site or in the policy itself is rain mentioned as a reason for an insurance claim.
So now you know at least one reason why NASCAR does its best to complete its events on the day advertised. It's a whole lot cheaper for everyone involved!
The postponement from Sunday afternoon to early Monday was costly to ACS officials in terms of lost revenues for concessions, souvenirs and the like, but what really rang the cash register was paying for all the hourly employees to come back for another day's work.
"Anybody that is working your race is an hourly employee," said one former track official. "If you want them to come back and direct traffic, park cars or whatever it is they do for you, you have to pay that hourly rate."
Security guards, concession-stand staffers, ushers, program sellers, waste management personnel, you name it and there's a time clock attached. Say there's 1,000 people working the rainout, at about $8 an hour -- that's $8,000 an hour times 10 hours or $80,000. It's likely more than that, much more since it's California we're talking about, and that's just the hourly staffing requirement.
That's in addition to another day's worth of insurance for the entire track -- most tracks are covered 24/7, 365, but the rates go up a bit for a race weekend, and the coverage changes.
Lest you think that ACS went broke this past weekend, there is the fact that ticket monies were not refunded because of rain. "Fans with a ticket stub for either Saturday's NASCAR doubleheader or Sunday's Auto Club 500 will be entitled to free general admission grandstand seating for both of [Monday's] rescheduled races," was the way it was put on Auto Club Speedway's Web site.
Vendors lose money too, because if it's raining, there aren't many lines at the souvenir trailers. If it's raining like it was at California, there's a good chance that many people never left the hotel.
The cost to race fans is fairly steep, too. Another hotel room at $250 per, another meal out at $75, more gas for the car, lost hours at work ... the list goes on.
NASCAR itself has costs associated with a rainout. The same costs that fans incur -- lodging, travel, rental cars, rebooked flights -- apply to the NASCAR officials on the road, and there's another day's pay involved as well.
In short, rainouts profit no one except hotels, airlines, car rental companies and other service outlets.
Think of the drivers, who lose a day of precious "free time" with family, and crew members who have one less day to turn around the next racecar as well as one less day at home.
Reporters, TV personnel, media center staffers, radio personalities, all are forced to stay another day as well.
It's a cost of doing business when you hold events that are subject to the fickleness of Mother Nature.
Of course, there are those in the sport who attempt to make a bad situation just a little more palatable. Take Las Vegas Motor Speedway, for instance.
LVMS, owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc, is offering a special promotion for Nationwide Series fans this week. Race fans who bring a ticket stub from the rain-delayed Stater Bros. 300 can buy tickets to the Sam's Town 300 on Saturday for just $25.
"We're making this gesture to do our part to help the series grow," LVMS president Chris Powell said. "While we have sold more than 100,000 tickets to the Sam's Town 300 this Saturday, we have plenty of room to accommodate those loyal race fans who have endured the poor weather in Southern California."
Nothing like a little gamesmanship in the midst of torrents of rainwater, is there?
Ticket insurance, an idea that caught on last year, is available for races at Auto Club Speedway, but rain is not among the covered reasons for a claim, which are:
• "Illness or serious Injury; • Traffic accidents -- which could prevent you from getting to an event; • Mechanical Breakdown -- if your car breaks down within 48 hours of the event ; • Airline delay -- if your plane or other Common Carrier is delayed (includes bad weather) while going to the event; • Home or Business Issues -- if your home or business is uninhabitable due to fire, flood, vandalism, burglary or natural disasters; Care for a family member -- serious injury to a family member, requiring you to provide care; • Felonious Assault -- if you are a victim of a felonious assault within 3 days prior to an event; • Employer Termination -- providing protection against a lay-off; • Jury Duty -- if you are required to serve on jury duty after having purchased an event ticket; • Required to Work -- if your employer requires you to work during the event; • Work Relocation -- if you are relocated by your company over 100 miles from your home; • Military Duty -- if you are required to miss an event as a result of military orders."
Nowhere in the document on the site or in the policy itself is rain mentioned as a reason for an insurance claim.
So now you know at least one reason why NASCAR does its best to complete its events on the day advertised. It's a whole lot cheaper for everyone involved!
For Las Vegas, California may offer a cautionary tale
They are two facilities bound by geography and the NASCAR schedule, separated only by the width of the Mojave Desert and 237 miles of Interstate 15. Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Auto Club Speedway of Southern California both opened in the late 1990s. They both feature snow-capped mountains in the distance. They're both intermediate tracks with sparkling infield facilities, and the occasional celebrity seen wandering through the garage area.
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There's another similarity, as well. Las Vegas wants a second annual Sprint Cup date. And California is an example of what can happen if you get one.
For years now Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith has been lobbying for a second NASCAR weekend for his 1.5-mile track in the desert, a refrain that increased in significance the instant he acquired New Hampshire Motor Speedway and the two dates that came with it. And who can blame him? Las Vegas is a complete, unqualified hit, a 142,000-seat facility that's sold out six years in a row. It's provided a needed pro sports presence to a city that otherwise hangs its hat on a golf tournament and the occasional fight. And it's received overwhelming support from local leaders in return. When Smith wanted to build a drag strip in Las Vegas, he didn't have to threaten to move the racetrack to Pahrump.
They've expanded the grandstand, they've increased the banking, they've repaved the surface, they've revamped the garage. The Las Vegas Motor Speedway that the Sprint Cup tour visits on Sunday is an absolute temple of speed, an unparalleled facility in the most visited city in America. A second date would be a sure thing, right?
Maybe. The last time something in NASCAR seemed like a sure thing, it was the awarding of a second date to another racetrack far west with a long line of sellout crowds behind it. The facility then known as California Speedway had drawn a full house for every Cup event it had ever hosted when parent company International Speedway Corp. and NASCAR took a date from North Carolina Speedway and a schedule spot from Darlington Raceway so the 2-mile facility in Fontana could have a second race weekend. With a metro area of 16 million to draw from, a car-crazy Southern California culture, and a speedway that had lived seven years without seeing an empty seat, the move seemed as sure as a Kobe Bryant dunk.
Except it wasn't. In the five years since California was awarded that second date, the speedway hasn't sold out. In some cases, it hasn't come close. ISC officials seemed to overestimate the demand. NASCAR saddled the track with a rainy spring date and a 100-degree summer one. Track officials have the thankless and unenviable job of trying to sell tickets in a fractured and fickle market with plenty of people, but also plenty of other sports teams, plenty of diversions, and plenty of other things to do.
Fast facts
What
UAW-Dodge 400
When
4:30 p.m. ET Sunday
TV
FOX, 3:30 p.m. ET
Radio
PRN, 4:30 p.m. ET
Track Page Tickets Travel
The result is the 92,000-seat gorilla in the NASCAR universe, an under-performing facility that draws more critics by the hour. In their defense, speedway officials have tried nearly everything -- bridging the 50-mile gap between Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, using Juan Montoya to market to the Hispanic population, cross-promoting with other area pro teams. And certain things are beyond their control, as this past weekend's rain-delayed Auto Club 500 will attest. Native Southern Californians will tell you that late February often brings not the blue skies and sunshine the region is known for, but wet, cold weather. In that regard, California and Rockingham have something in common.
Rain is rarely an issue across the desert and over the state line in Las Vegas, where NASCAR has been a bigger hit than Celine Dion. As the big casinos on the Strip would indicate, visitors to Sin City like large, fancy facilities with plenty of bells and whistles, and they certainly have one in a racetrack with a spa and a double-decked garage. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a gleaming facility with plenty of amenities and tremendous ticket demand. In fact, it's a lot like the California Speedway of five years ago, albeit with 62,000 more seats.
So what happens if Bruton Smith one day gets his second Sprint Cup date for his 1.5-mile desert oasis? Does it take off like Bristol or New Hampshire, and pack in another 142,000? Or do the crowds tail off as officials realize their demand was plenty enough for one annual race, but not enough for two? Yes, Las Vegas draws a staggering 39 million visitors annually. As Smith will gladly point out, it has more hotel rooms than any other city on earth. It's a beguiling place where you can drink on the sidewalk and win money and pack a month's worth of living into one long weekend.
SMI has put a lot of capital improvement dollars into the Las Vegas track, and you don't recoup that cash while a facility is sitting idle. But could general manager Chris Powell and his capable staff fill the place twice a year? The population of metro Las Vegas is 1.7 million, but California hasn't been able to do it despite a population of 4 million in the San Bernardino area, and 12 million more in greater L.A., and 50,000 fewer seats. The housing slump has taken a bite out of southern Nevada's otherwise robust economy, and all those service industry jobs don't make for the highest of median household incomes.
But what about those 39 million annual visitors, roughly a quarter of which come from Southern California? Las Vegas Motor Speedway is no different from the rest of the city -- tourist dollars make it go. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau, more than 114,000 of the 142,000 spectators attending last season's event were from outside southern Nevada. Ultimately, the success of a second race at Las Vegas would hinge on whether those people would be willing to come back. No question, Las Vegas Boulevard is a more attractive return destination than the old steel mill that is Fontana. But in a region of the country that's becoming almost as saturated with Sprint Cup races as the Southeast was 10 years ago, that's still no guarantee.
Yet if anyplace can make it work, surely it's Las Vegas, that dizzying neon empire where risk is all part of the allure. Bruton Smith has the city, has the speedway, has the fan base -- has everything, it seems, but that elusive second date. Yet all the motorsports mogul needs to do is look west, beyond the McCullough Range and the Devil's Playground and all those tall mountains and dry canyons, to find a very real cautionary tale.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
Send David your thoughts
David's Community page
There's another similarity, as well. Las Vegas wants a second annual Sprint Cup date. And California is an example of what can happen if you get one.
For years now Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith has been lobbying for a second NASCAR weekend for his 1.5-mile track in the desert, a refrain that increased in significance the instant he acquired New Hampshire Motor Speedway and the two dates that came with it. And who can blame him? Las Vegas is a complete, unqualified hit, a 142,000-seat facility that's sold out six years in a row. It's provided a needed pro sports presence to a city that otherwise hangs its hat on a golf tournament and the occasional fight. And it's received overwhelming support from local leaders in return. When Smith wanted to build a drag strip in Las Vegas, he didn't have to threaten to move the racetrack to Pahrump.
They've expanded the grandstand, they've increased the banking, they've repaved the surface, they've revamped the garage. The Las Vegas Motor Speedway that the Sprint Cup tour visits on Sunday is an absolute temple of speed, an unparalleled facility in the most visited city in America. A second date would be a sure thing, right?
Maybe. The last time something in NASCAR seemed like a sure thing, it was the awarding of a second date to another racetrack far west with a long line of sellout crowds behind it. The facility then known as California Speedway had drawn a full house for every Cup event it had ever hosted when parent company International Speedway Corp. and NASCAR took a date from North Carolina Speedway and a schedule spot from Darlington Raceway so the 2-mile facility in Fontana could have a second race weekend. With a metro area of 16 million to draw from, a car-crazy Southern California culture, and a speedway that had lived seven years without seeing an empty seat, the move seemed as sure as a Kobe Bryant dunk.
Except it wasn't. In the five years since California was awarded that second date, the speedway hasn't sold out. In some cases, it hasn't come close. ISC officials seemed to overestimate the demand. NASCAR saddled the track with a rainy spring date and a 100-degree summer one. Track officials have the thankless and unenviable job of trying to sell tickets in a fractured and fickle market with plenty of people, but also plenty of other sports teams, plenty of diversions, and plenty of other things to do.
Fast facts
What
UAW-Dodge 400
When
4:30 p.m. ET Sunday
TV
FOX, 3:30 p.m. ET
Radio
PRN, 4:30 p.m. ET
Track Page Tickets Travel
The result is the 92,000-seat gorilla in the NASCAR universe, an under-performing facility that draws more critics by the hour. In their defense, speedway officials have tried nearly everything -- bridging the 50-mile gap between Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, using Juan Montoya to market to the Hispanic population, cross-promoting with other area pro teams. And certain things are beyond their control, as this past weekend's rain-delayed Auto Club 500 will attest. Native Southern Californians will tell you that late February often brings not the blue skies and sunshine the region is known for, but wet, cold weather. In that regard, California and Rockingham have something in common.
Rain is rarely an issue across the desert and over the state line in Las Vegas, where NASCAR has been a bigger hit than Celine Dion. As the big casinos on the Strip would indicate, visitors to Sin City like large, fancy facilities with plenty of bells and whistles, and they certainly have one in a racetrack with a spa and a double-decked garage. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a gleaming facility with plenty of amenities and tremendous ticket demand. In fact, it's a lot like the California Speedway of five years ago, albeit with 62,000 more seats.
So what happens if Bruton Smith one day gets his second Sprint Cup date for his 1.5-mile desert oasis? Does it take off like Bristol or New Hampshire, and pack in another 142,000? Or do the crowds tail off as officials realize their demand was plenty enough for one annual race, but not enough for two? Yes, Las Vegas draws a staggering 39 million visitors annually. As Smith will gladly point out, it has more hotel rooms than any other city on earth. It's a beguiling place where you can drink on the sidewalk and win money and pack a month's worth of living into one long weekend.
SMI has put a lot of capital improvement dollars into the Las Vegas track, and you don't recoup that cash while a facility is sitting idle. But could general manager Chris Powell and his capable staff fill the place twice a year? The population of metro Las Vegas is 1.7 million, but California hasn't been able to do it despite a population of 4 million in the San Bernardino area, and 12 million more in greater L.A., and 50,000 fewer seats. The housing slump has taken a bite out of southern Nevada's otherwise robust economy, and all those service industry jobs don't make for the highest of median household incomes.
But what about those 39 million annual visitors, roughly a quarter of which come from Southern California? Las Vegas Motor Speedway is no different from the rest of the city -- tourist dollars make it go. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau, more than 114,000 of the 142,000 spectators attending last season's event were from outside southern Nevada. Ultimately, the success of a second race at Las Vegas would hinge on whether those people would be willing to come back. No question, Las Vegas Boulevard is a more attractive return destination than the old steel mill that is Fontana. But in a region of the country that's becoming almost as saturated with Sprint Cup races as the Southeast was 10 years ago, that's still no guarantee.
Yet if anyplace can make it work, surely it's Las Vegas, that dizzying neon empire where risk is all part of the allure. Bruton Smith has the city, has the speedway, has the fan base -- has everything, it seems, but that elusive second date. Yet all the motorsports mogul needs to do is look west, beyond the McCullough Range and the Devil's Playground and all those tall mountains and dry canyons, to find a very real cautionary tale.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
Adidas increasing its brand presence within NASCAR
Adidas is negotiating with Hendrick Motorsports and a handful of speedways to broaden its rights in NASCAR beyond its deal with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Mark Clinard, Adidas' business director of motorsports, said in Daytona that he'd like to acquire rights at select tracks to develop a fan experience that would expose consumers to its ClimaCool wear. He has had some initial discussions with Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Adidas launched its first line of Earnhardt signature wear on Feb. 15, the Friday before the Daytona 500, at The Sports Authority with GMR Marketing, Charlotte, handling the debut. Those jackets, T-shirts, jerseys and hats are available at The Sports Authority, Adidas' own retail stores and online. NASCAR gear has been extremely limited and often nonexistent in the major sporting goods retailers.
AutostockDale Earnhardt Jr. showed up for a test session last year wearing an Adidas firesuit.
"We're asking Dale Jr. fans to shop in a different place," Clinard said. "This is apparel that will be exclusive to the sporting goods channel, not department stores or lower-level retailers."
Clinard did not discount the possibility of selling the apparel trackside at some point.
The beauty of its entrée to the sport is that Adidas encounters virtually no competition in its category. Nike, which used a sponsorship at Joe Gibbs Racing to introduce its Starter brand to NASCAR, has since vacated the sport, in part because it could not secure rights to Earnhardt.
Clinard's talks with Hendrick have centered on researching in-car conditions and ways in which its ClimaCool technology could possibly be used for the seat material. Adidas already is working with Earnhardt on a ClimaCool firesuit, which is expected to debut later this season.
A deal with Hendrick also might give Adidas rights to put the Amp and National Guard marks from the car on its sports wear. Adidas' initial line of product features mostly the black and orange of Earnhardt's JR Motorsports and the fan club marks, JR Nation, as well as Junior's signature.
Adidas also has interest in putting its marks on Earnhardt's No. 88 Chevy. Adidas marks are currently on Earnhardt's firesuit and his crew's uniforms, as well. Whether Adidas comes back with any ad spots this year remains to be seen.
"I'd rather have the exposure we get through athlete wear than anything we might buy with a bunch of media," Clinard said. If Adidas does an ad, it likely will debut in August for the back-to-school sales season, he said.
Clinard also shared a story about working with Earnhardt that he has found to be a bonus.
When Earnhardt signed with Adidas, the equipment manager at the University of Nebraska, an Adidas school, sent him a bag of assorted Cornhusker apparel and a helmet because Earnhardt collects helmets. The equipment manager was surprised when the phone rang soon thereafter and it was Earnhardt on the other end, calling to say thanks.
"With Dale Jr., there's always this sense that he's going above and beyond," Clinard said.
Mark Clinard, Adidas' business director of motorsports, said in Daytona that he'd like to acquire rights at select tracks to develop a fan experience that would expose consumers to its ClimaCool wear. He has had some initial discussions with Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Adidas launched its first line of Earnhardt signature wear on Feb. 15, the Friday before the Daytona 500, at The Sports Authority with GMR Marketing, Charlotte, handling the debut. Those jackets, T-shirts, jerseys and hats are available at The Sports Authority, Adidas' own retail stores and online. NASCAR gear has been extremely limited and often nonexistent in the major sporting goods retailers.
AutostockDale Earnhardt Jr. showed up for a test session last year wearing an Adidas firesuit.
"We're asking Dale Jr. fans to shop in a different place," Clinard said. "This is apparel that will be exclusive to the sporting goods channel, not department stores or lower-level retailers."
Clinard did not discount the possibility of selling the apparel trackside at some point.
The beauty of its entrée to the sport is that Adidas encounters virtually no competition in its category. Nike, which used a sponsorship at Joe Gibbs Racing to introduce its Starter brand to NASCAR, has since vacated the sport, in part because it could not secure rights to Earnhardt.
Clinard's talks with Hendrick have centered on researching in-car conditions and ways in which its ClimaCool technology could possibly be used for the seat material. Adidas already is working with Earnhardt on a ClimaCool firesuit, which is expected to debut later this season.
A deal with Hendrick also might give Adidas rights to put the Amp and National Guard marks from the car on its sports wear. Adidas' initial line of product features mostly the black and orange of Earnhardt's JR Motorsports and the fan club marks, JR Nation, as well as Junior's signature.
Adidas also has interest in putting its marks on Earnhardt's No. 88 Chevy. Adidas marks are currently on Earnhardt's firesuit and his crew's uniforms, as well. Whether Adidas comes back with any ad spots this year remains to be seen.
"I'd rather have the exposure we get through athlete wear than anything we might buy with a bunch of media," Clinard said. If Adidas does an ad, it likely will debut in August for the back-to-school sales season, he said.
Clinard also shared a story about working with Earnhardt that he has found to be a bonus.
When Earnhardt signed with Adidas, the equipment manager at the University of Nebraska, an Adidas school, sent him a bag of assorted Cornhusker apparel and a helmet because Earnhardt collects helmets. The equipment manager was surprised when the phone rang soon thereafter and it was Earnhardt on the other end, calling to say thanks.
"With Dale Jr., there's always this sense that he's going above and beyond," Clinard said.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
If NASCAR doesn't learn, history sure to be repeated
The A
uto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California -- that's a mouthful -- is finally history.
Hallelujah.
The seemingly endless nightmare that was Sunday's eventually aborted attempted running of the event impacted even those of us not forced to sit through the ordeal live and in rainsuits.
I mean, geez, has it ever been more difficult to tape a race? Even my 8-year-old couldn't keep up with it, and usually he's my ace tape-the-race guy.
Alas, before I complain too much, I'll just stop. I wasn't assigned to cover the race live for NASCAR.COM, as we rotate the writers who attend events to keep everyone fresh.
Fresh, but not necessarily dry. Get that one, Mark Aumann and Raygan Swan?
Those pour souls and tens of thousands others sat through Sunday's never-ending nightmare on location at the track formerly known as California Speedway. Well, attendance may have dropped off to merely thousands after probably 16 to 18 hours of unsuccessfully dueling with the raindrops (as well as pre-race and post-race traffic), but you get the idea. It had to be pure misery for them.
The rest of us were trying to watch the "action" on television. Little did anyone know that aside from two spectacular and possibly unnecessary accidents that took out the likes of Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and a pair of Juniors in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr., the most exciting action to watch would result from speedway workers manning circular saws (read more).
Yes, the 2008 running of the Auto Club 500, which at least was completed Monday, was a bungled mess and cost NASCAR some of the valuable momentum it had built through Speedweeks and a competitive, exciting season-opening Daytona 500 one week earlier.
But could it have been avoided? Or should this one be chalked up to Mother Nature still being in charge -- and when she decides to mess with us, there's little or nothing any of us mere earthlings can do about it?
What went wrong
You can't blame NASCAR for trying to get the Sprint Cup Series race in on Sunday. The Nationwide Series event already had been postponed from Saturday -- first to Sunday and then, as the Cup event dragged on and continued to fight weather- and track-induced delays -- to Monday. NASCAR was trying (in vain, as it turned out) to avoid running both events on the same day.
But in the long run, NASCAR tried way too hard.
To recap, the race didn't start until roughly three hours after it was scheduled to begin -- and even then, there were legitimate questions about the wisdom of giving it a go. Just 16 laps into the event, driver Denny Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Toyota and slammed into the Turn 3 wall.
uto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California -- that's a mouthful -- is finally history.Hallelujah.
The seemingly endless nightmare that was Sunday's eventually aborted attempted running of the event impacted even those of us not forced to sit through the ordeal live and in rainsuits.
I mean, geez, has it ever been more difficult to tape a race? Even my 8-year-old couldn't keep up with it, and usually he's my ace tape-the-race guy.
Alas, before I complain too much, I'll just stop. I wasn't assigned to cover the race live for NASCAR.COM, as we rotate the writers who attend events to keep everyone fresh.
Fresh, but not necessarily dry. Get that one, Mark Aumann and Raygan Swan?
Those pour souls and tens of thousands others sat through Sunday's never-ending nightmare on location at the track formerly known as California Speedway. Well, attendance may have dropped off to merely thousands after probably 16 to 18 hours of unsuccessfully dueling with the raindrops (as well as pre-race and post-race traffic), but you get the idea. It had to be pure misery for them.
The rest of us were trying to watch the "action" on television. Little did anyone know that aside from two spectacular and possibly unnecessary accidents that took out the likes of Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and a pair of Juniors in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr., the most exciting action to watch would result from speedway workers manning circular saws (read more).
Yes, the 2008 running of the Auto Club 500, which at least was completed Monday, was a bungled mess and cost NASCAR some of the valuable momentum it had built through Speedweeks and a competitive, exciting season-opening Daytona 500 one week earlier.
But could it have been avoided? Or should this one be chalked up to Mother Nature still being in charge -- and when she decides to mess with us, there's little or nothing any of us mere earthlings can do about it?
What went wrong
You can't blame NASCAR for trying to get the Sprint Cup Series race in on Sunday. The Nationwide Series event already had been postponed from Saturday -- first to Sunday and then, as the Cup event dragged on and continued to fight weather- and track-induced delays -- to Monday. NASCAR was trying (in vain, as it turned out) to avoid running both events on the same day.
But in the long run, NASCAR tried way too hard.
To recap, the race didn't start until roughly three hours after it was scheduled to begin -- and even then, there were legitimate questions about the wisdom of giving it a go. Just 16 laps into the event, driver Denny Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Toyota and slammed into the Turn 3 wall.
At first the accident was blamed on a blown tire, but then it was determined all four of his tires were up. Hamlin said he hit a wet spot on the track that was like "black ice." Furthermore, he said there was so much debris from all the "speedy dry" that had been put down that he couldn't even see out of his windshield to try to figure out where the wet spots might be. The speedy dry was laid down not to combat the rain or water seepage, but because the No. 55 Toyota of driver Michael Waltrip had spewed oil all over the track during the parade lap before the green flag was dropped.
Michael Waltrip waited and waited.
"I think there are 42 other drivers that would agree that we should not be racing on that racetrack right now," Hamlin told reporters afterward.
If he wasn't one of them then, Casey Mears was five laps later when he hit yet another wet spot that sent him into a wild spin that ultimately collected the cars of his famous Hendrick Motorsports teammate (Earnhardt), Sorensen and Hornish. That accident ended with Mears' No. 5 Chevrolet turned on its side and Hornish's No. 77 Dodge in flames after running into it (watch video).
It also concerned NASCAR officials to the point that they finally admitted what Hamlin and others already knew: they had a water seepage problem. There were "weepers" in the house, and this was in reference not only to all those folks who paid for high-priced tickets and saw their envisioned day of fun in the sun getting washed away before their eyes.
This isn't the first track to suffer from weepers, and it won't be the last. It also has been an issue in between grooves at tracks such as Indianapolis, Texas and Martinsville. But this time it seemed particularly bad, plus continuing rain promised to make it worse, not better, as the night wore on and drastically cooler temperatures prevailed.
Water was weeping from seams in the track, particularly in the turns. So NASCAR did what only NASCAR might have done: it implored track officials to come out with the saws to cut channels in the track and help the weepers drain.
This process took one hour and seven minutes and, quite frankly, looked futile from the start no matter how many drivers or talking heads on television claimed that it seemed "the right thing to do."
America sleeps
Earnhardt was more sympathetic toward Mears than he was toward the governing body that seemed to be trying to get the event going at all costs (watch video).
"I think we were too excited. We got going a little too soon. The racetrack was a little dirty and everybody was losing grip and there were a lot of wet spots out there," Earnhardt told reporters. "Once you slip up, sometimes you don't save it enough. And Casey [Mears] got up there and into some water or dirt or something and ended up out of the groove.
"And way out of the groove is just terrible. It's like a dirt track up there. There was a lot of speedy dry and he just lost it. I didn't have anywhere I could go to miss him."
Veteran driver Mark Martin added: "This is really a tough deal. We just can't seem to get racing here."
The Mears accident brought out the dreaded red flag that froze the field for that one hour and seven minutes. But at about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, NASCAR tried to go racing again. This time the race lasted about 20 laps before rain interrupted again, bringing out the third caution of the day from Laps 41-47.
Still more heavy rain came later, bringing out another excruciatingly long red-flag delay that made the earlier one look like child's play. Yet NASCAR stubbornly refused to call it a night until it was nearly 11 p.m. local California time, or nearly 2 a.m. Eastern -- about 11 hours after the scheduled start. All the jet dryers and all the king's men could not have kept the track from continuing to weep after all that rain.
And while the track wept, most of America slept.
Even the most ardent of the sport's followers couldn't stay with it that long, once again making everyone wonder, in the end, why in the France family's name do they keep coming to Fontana not once but twice a year?
In the fall, heat will be the issue if it's not raining again. Last Labor Day weekend the heat got so intense it appeared to cause track president Gillian Zucker to hallucinate, as she apparently mistook several thousand empty seats for paying customers during her post-race analysis of the event to the media.
And to think that it was unpredictable weather and empty seats that led to NASCAR moving the second date of its season out of Rockingham, N.C., in the first place.
Weepers, jeepers. The mere thought of making another trip to the place now called Auto Club Speedway is enough to make some of us cry -- or at least hope we're not on the schedule to cover the next race there live.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
Michael Waltrip waited and waited.
"I think there are 42 other drivers that would agree that we should not be racing on that racetrack right now," Hamlin told reporters afterward.
If he wasn't one of them then, Casey Mears was five laps later when he hit yet another wet spot that sent him into a wild spin that ultimately collected the cars of his famous Hendrick Motorsports teammate (Earnhardt), Sorensen and Hornish. That accident ended with Mears' No. 5 Chevrolet turned on its side and Hornish's No. 77 Dodge in flames after running into it (watch video).
It also concerned NASCAR officials to the point that they finally admitted what Hamlin and others already knew: they had a water seepage problem. There were "weepers" in the house, and this was in reference not only to all those folks who paid for high-priced tickets and saw their envisioned day of fun in the sun getting washed away before their eyes.
This isn't the first track to suffer from weepers, and it won't be the last. It also has been an issue in between grooves at tracks such as Indianapolis, Texas and Martinsville. But this time it seemed particularly bad, plus continuing rain promised to make it worse, not better, as the night wore on and drastically cooler temperatures prevailed.
Water was weeping from seams in the track, particularly in the turns. So NASCAR did what only NASCAR might have done: it implored track officials to come out with the saws to cut channels in the track and help the weepers drain.
This process took one hour and seven minutes and, quite frankly, looked futile from the start no matter how many drivers or talking heads on television claimed that it seemed "the right thing to do."
America sleeps
Earnhardt was more sympathetic toward Mears than he was toward the governing body that seemed to be trying to get the event going at all costs (watch video).
"I think we were too excited. We got going a little too soon. The racetrack was a little dirty and everybody was losing grip and there were a lot of wet spots out there," Earnhardt told reporters. "Once you slip up, sometimes you don't save it enough. And Casey [Mears] got up there and into some water or dirt or something and ended up out of the groove.
"And way out of the groove is just terrible. It's like a dirt track up there. There was a lot of speedy dry and he just lost it. I didn't have anywhere I could go to miss him."
Veteran driver Mark Martin added: "This is really a tough deal. We just can't seem to get racing here."
The Mears accident brought out the dreaded red flag that froze the field for that one hour and seven minutes. But at about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, NASCAR tried to go racing again. This time the race lasted about 20 laps before rain interrupted again, bringing out the third caution of the day from Laps 41-47.
Still more heavy rain came later, bringing out another excruciatingly long red-flag delay that made the earlier one look like child's play. Yet NASCAR stubbornly refused to call it a night until it was nearly 11 p.m. local California time, or nearly 2 a.m. Eastern -- about 11 hours after the scheduled start. All the jet dryers and all the king's men could not have kept the track from continuing to weep after all that rain.
And while the track wept, most of America slept.
Even the most ardent of the sport's followers couldn't stay with it that long, once again making everyone wonder, in the end, why in the France family's name do they keep coming to Fontana not once but twice a year?
In the fall, heat will be the issue if it's not raining again. Last Labor Day weekend the heat got so intense it appeared to cause track president Gillian Zucker to hallucinate, as she apparently mistook several thousand empty seats for paying customers during her post-race analysis of the event to the media.
And to think that it was unpredictable weather and empty seats that led to NASCAR moving the second date of its season out of Rockingham, N.C., in the first place.
Weepers, jeepers. The mere thought of making another trip to the place now called Auto Club Speedway is enough to make some of us cry -- or at least hope we're not on the schedule to cover the next race there live.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
Delays, postponement can't ruin weekend for all
FONTANA, Calif. -- Southern California native Caryn Yokota is crazy.
Well, not clinically, but she was insane enough to endure cold rains and wind for 13 hours on Sunday in hopes of watching NASCAR's Sprint Cup race at Auto Club Speedway.
The 27-year-old finally gave up on seeing her favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson, take the green flag. She had to make her 12 a.m. shift at UPS. The race was postponed about an hour later and rescheduled for Monday morning.
And guess who was bright-eyed and all smiles, snagging autographs left and right at 9 a.m.? Crazy Caryn!
"I called my other job and told them I wasn't coming, because I had a race to see," said Yokota, also a welding instructor at El Camino College. "I had great tickets and there's a good chance I'll never have these again."
"NASCAR. How bad have you got it?" It's much more than a marketing slogan.
Evidently, some have it pretty bad. When I wandered into the infield checking on fans Monday morning I expected them to be irate with NASCAR's decision to reschedule the Auto Club 500, to finally postpone the race after several hours of weather-related delays.
I expected to hear phrases like, "Don't they know how to read a weather map," or "Does NASCAR like to waste jet fuel drying the track," etc. Those were some of the statements r
unning through my mind last night as I reached my 14th hour sitting in the media center wreaking of mildew from my rain-soaked pants.
Finally walking out to my car at 2 a.m. ET, I was floored to still see dozens of fans in the grandstands, but I was not surprised to hear disapproving boos and a couple of other discouraging words coming from those same grandstands intended for NASCAR decision-makers.
"Well ,what else are they supposed to do," asked Willie Cronn, a 45-year-old from Bullhead, Ariz., who after 54 hours finally watched the Cup race with his son Matt. "It's frustrating but I'd rather pay for a full race rather than a half a race."
Matt Cronn watches the race from the perch of his bike.
Good point.
Matt Cronn was happy to miss class Monday. The 13-year-old seventh-grader made no excuse as to why he would miss school. He merely stated, "Hey, I'm at a NASCAR race and won't be there [Monday]."
Cronn and his son have been attending NASCAR races since the Auto Club Speedway's inaugural event in 1997.
They plan a regular vacation around the February date, so when the rain came and the track began to crumble like the Coliseum, the Cronn fellas were not worried.
They threw some burgers on the grill and cracked open some beverages. Cronn rode his bike around and chatted up crew members playing football on pit road Sunday afternoon waiting for track officials to repair the asphalt damaged by weepers.
"You make due because we spend more than $1,500 to make a NASCAR weekend happen," Cronn explained.
Mark West of Scottsdale, Ariz., said delays are just part of racing.
"We don't mind the delay so much, we visit out here with friends and we saw the forecast and knew it was a possibility," he said. But his friend Floyd Bedsaul of Orange County disagreed and expected NASCAR to "come to grips with reality" about 6 p.m. and should've called the race hours before 11 p.m. on Sunday, he said.
Jeff Gordon, who finished third despite blowing an engine on the final lap, was impressed with NASCAR's efforts to keep the show going.
"They were bound and determined to run that race [Sunday] night," Gordon said. "I think they actually did fans a favor. [NASCAR] gave them every best effort but the track needs to do a little bit of work on the drainage issue."
Johnson, who finished second to Carl Edwards, said NASCAR must exhaust every option possible to run a Cup race on its intended weekend to keep the flow of the schedule going.
"NASCAR was in a tough situation," he said. "Getting cars turned around and equipment turned around, every hour counts. In their minds, we have to do this to keep the show on the road. Sometimes it's not the best for the TV audience or the fans ... this is the first time that I've ever seen that since I've been a Sprint Cup driver."
It was the first time I'd seen a delay of that nature, too. But as a Sprint Cup reporter it's my job and, like the drivers, I'm happy to do it.
The fans, on the other hand, sacrificed valuable vacation days, time and money. They suffered through Sunday and some showed up again on Monday. A crowd that started at 70,000 had dwindled to 25,000.
"I've never seen people wait that long," Gordon added. "I understand why fans are upset."
Well, not clinically, but she was insane enough to endure cold rains and wind for 13 hours on Sunday in hopes of watching NASCAR's Sprint Cup race at Auto Club Speedway.
The 27-year-old finally gave up on seeing her favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson, take the green flag. She had to make her 12 a.m. shift at UPS. The race was postponed about an hour later and rescheduled for Monday morning.
And guess who was bright-eyed and all smiles, snagging autographs left and right at 9 a.m.? Crazy Caryn!
"I called my other job and told them I wasn't coming, because I had a race to see," said Yokota, also a welding instructor at El Camino College. "I had great tickets and there's a good chance I'll never have these again."
"NASCAR. How bad have you got it?" It's much more than a marketing slogan.
Evidently, some have it pretty bad. When I wandered into the infield checking on fans Monday morning I expected them to be irate with NASCAR's decision to reschedule the Auto Club 500, to finally postpone the race after several hours of weather-related delays.
I expected to hear phrases like, "Don't they know how to read a weather map," or "Does NASCAR like to waste jet fuel drying the track," etc. Those were some of the statements r
unning through my mind last night as I reached my 14th hour sitting in the media center wreaking of mildew from my rain-soaked pants.Finally walking out to my car at 2 a.m. ET, I was floored to still see dozens of fans in the grandstands, but I was not surprised to hear disapproving boos and a couple of other discouraging words coming from those same grandstands intended for NASCAR decision-makers.
"Well ,what else are they supposed to do," asked Willie Cronn, a 45-year-old from Bullhead, Ariz., who after 54 hours finally watched the Cup race with his son Matt. "It's frustrating but I'd rather pay for a full race rather than a half a race."
Matt Cronn watches the race from the perch of his bike.
Good point.
Matt Cronn was happy to miss class Monday. The 13-year-old seventh-grader made no excuse as to why he would miss school. He merely stated, "Hey, I'm at a NASCAR race and won't be there [Monday]."
Cronn and his son have been attending NASCAR races since the Auto Club Speedway's inaugural event in 1997.
They plan a regular vacation around the February date, so when the rain came and the track began to crumble like the Coliseum, the Cronn fellas were not worried.
They threw some burgers on the grill and cracked open some beverages. Cronn rode his bike around and chatted up crew members playing football on pit road Sunday afternoon waiting for track officials to repair the asphalt damaged by weepers.
"You make due because we spend more than $1,500 to make a NASCAR weekend happen," Cronn explained.
Mark West of Scottsdale, Ariz., said delays are just part of racing.
"We don't mind the delay so much, we visit out here with friends and we saw the forecast and knew it was a possibility," he said. But his friend Floyd Bedsaul of Orange County disagreed and expected NASCAR to "come to grips with reality" about 6 p.m. and should've called the race hours before 11 p.m. on Sunday, he said.
Jeff Gordon, who finished third despite blowing an engine on the final lap, was impressed with NASCAR's efforts to keep the show going.
"They were bound and determined to run that race [Sunday] night," Gordon said. "I think they actually did fans a favor. [NASCAR] gave them every best effort but the track needs to do a little bit of work on the drainage issue."
Johnson, who finished second to Carl Edwards, said NASCAR must exhaust every option possible to run a Cup race on its intended weekend to keep the flow of the schedule going.
"NASCAR was in a tough situation," he said. "Getting cars turned around and equipment turned around, every hour counts. In their minds, we have to do this to keep the show on the road. Sometimes it's not the best for the TV audience or the fans ... this is the first time that I've ever seen that since I've been a Sprint Cup driver."
It was the first time I'd seen a delay of that nature, too. But as a Sprint Cup reporter it's my job and, like the drivers, I'm happy to do it.
The fans, on the other hand, sacrificed valuable vacation days, time and money. They suffered through Sunday and some showed up again on Monday. A crowd that started at 70,000 had dwindled to 25,000.
"I've never seen people wait that long," Gordon added. "I understand why fans are upset."
1on1: Chip Ganassi
Chip Ganassi is unquestionably one of the more notable figures in North American motorsports, based on the championships and significant races that his teams have won.
In NASCAR, Ganassi owns three Sprint Cup teams: The No. 40 Dodge for driver Dario Franchitti, the No. 41 for Reed Sorenson and the No. 42 for Juan Montoya. He owns two cars in the Nationwide Series: the Nos. 40 and 41 that are driven by a combination of Franchitti, Sorenson and development driver Bryan Clauson.
Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates has won Rolex Sports Car Series driver and team championships, and three consecutive editions of the Rolex 24 at Daytona -- North American sports-car racing's signature event.
Chip Ganassi facts
2001
Purchased majority interest in Team SABCO
5
Indianapolis 500 starts as a driver (1982-86, best finish eighth)
5
Open-wheel championships
3
Highest finish in standings (Sterling Marlin, 2001)
3
Consecutive Rolex 24 victories (2006, 07, 08)
2
Former open-wheel drivers in Cup (Juan Montoya, Dario Franchitti)
1
Indianapolis 500 win (Juan Montoya, 2000)
Ganassi Racing has five open-wheel championships -- including four consecutive in CART, the forerunner of the Champ Car World Series, from 1996-1999 -- and won the 2000 Indianapolis 500 with Montoya.
Both of those disciplines regularly contend for race wins and championships, so it's in NASCAR where Ganassi, who transitioned from a driving career that went from local Formula Ford racing in the SCCA all the way to the Indianapolis 500, has found his biggest challenge.
Ganassi came to NASCAR in 2001, when he purchased a majority interest in Team SABCO from Sabates, and he made an immediate impact. Lead driver Sterling Marlin was third in the 2001 Cup championship and, until he was injured in the fall of the next season, led the standings for more than two-thirds of the season and appeared on his way to a coveted series title.
Since then, Ganassi has expanded his Cup and Nationwide operations, as well as maintaining an active driver development program.
As 2008 opens, Ganassi has the potential to get into the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the first time as Sorenson and Montoya, who won the 2007 Cup rookie of the year award, continue to develop.
Q: What are your expectations for this year?
Ganassi: I think when you look at Dario I think we are looking for a season that would parallel Juan's season from last season. I think when you look at Reed and Juan you say 'OK, it's time for those guys to take the next step up -- get to the next rung up the ladder.' It's either close or damn close to the Chase.
I would have been in the Chase twice [with Jamie McMurray in 2004 and 2005] if they would have been in the top 12 before that, right -- or if they hadn't taken 25 points from me at Bristol.
Q: Do you think there's a misperception of how Juan Montoya is, and do you wish people could see him as just someone who loves to race and be around racetracks?
Ganassi: That's what I've been saying all along. That's what I said the day we announced him in Chicago. I still stand by that. I was just at a sponsor function and they were saying that they couldn't believe that he was the last one -- you know Felix has a boat down [at Daytona Beach marina] -- [Montoya] was literally the last one off the boat.
I mean, this wasn't late or anything. It was like 7 p.m. or something and they had a dinner to go to, but he was the last one there. So, what does that tell you about the guy? It's not a story that he enjoys NASCAR. He's enjoying the racing, enjoying the series, enjoying the busy life.
Q: You have two open-wheel guys in your Sprint Cup cars, Juan Montoya and Dario Franchitti, and another in development, Bryan Clauson. So do you feel you have an affinity for open-wheel drivers?
Ganassi: I have an affinity for being at the front. That's my affinity -- being at the front. It doesn't have anything to do with where drivers come from. I don't care if they come from Mars.
Q: What's your take on the way Reed Sorenson early this season?
Ganassi: I think we've seen a maturation process in that guy over the winter and he's stepped up. I think part of that is having Juan as a teammate last year has helped him step up. I think bringing Dario on has helped him step up.
He's stepping up. He's doing what we've asked him and what we want him to do. He's doing exactly what we want him to do. We couldn't be happier.
Q: Why do you think Reed has matured?
Ganassi: That's a good question. I don't have the answer to that. I don't know what it was, because if I knew what it was I would have done it a lot sooner I can tell you that. Or I would have given it to him a lot sooner, whatever it was.
Different people are on what I call the performance treadmill. People are just on different angles and different speeds with their treadmill. They all get there eventually, some sooner than others. I'm just happy to see that Reed had a good offseason in that regard.
Q: What shows that on the track?
Ganassi: You never know. I was talking to Reed the other day about this and a lot of times you could say that he's the same guy and our cars have gotten better. You'd be surprised; when you have a good car it's a hell of a lot easier to look good.
Good cars make people look good, but just in his driving style I've seen some moves that I haven't seen before -- or a level of, I don't want to say aggressiveness, but a level of determination that I haven't seen before."
"I think you should be able to grow $100 bills in your garden, but I don't know what that means."
CHIP GANASSI
Q: You've won championships in several forms of racing, except NASCAR. So is that a testament to how difficult it is, and is it one of your goals to be the first to succeed in North America's three main forms of racing?
Ganassi: I certainly see it as a goal. Yes, I certainly want to be the first to do it. Yeah, that's a goal."
Q: Does all the attention given to Hendrick and Gibbs eat at you a little bit?
Ganassi: No, I think it's kind of good because it takes the focus off. I'm glad that it takes the focus off of us and you can let us get some work done and not have the scrutiny of you [media] guys.
You're over there talking to those guys and you might not be looking at us that close. That's fine. I'm glad. It's fun to work when the spotlight is on you, but it's easier to work when it's on someone else. You'll focus on me at the appropriate time I'm sure.
Q: Does it matter to you when NASCAR makes the move to the new chassis in the Nationwide Series?
Ganassi: It's going to be interesting this year to see how it pans out. For the last few years it seems like the Nationwide Series was a test for the Cup Series because the cars were similar. You're going to see this year that with the cars being so different how that works.
Is the Nationwide Series going to be as interesting as it was in the past? Some drivers looked at that like they were here on Saturday already, and it was a learning experience for Sunday. Some drivers looked at it as a way to put some extra money in their pocket. Some drivers looked at it as a way to get their own little team started.
It's going to be interesting to see if the Nationwide Series is ever going to be more than a Saturday warm-up for Sunday. Can it break off on its own? Again, these are questions to ask NASCAR.
Q: Can you convert your fleet to a new chassis by next year or would you like to see it phased-in, as it was in the Cup Series?
Ganassi: We're in a period now where sponsorship is tight, so I don't think the owners are looking for any more projects that they have to swallow like a COT Nationwide. You can't swallow those kinds of things easily.
It's no coincidence that the announcement of COT in Cup and the injection of outside money into the sport [came at the same time]. That's no coincidence.
Q: Where are you on getting a full season of sponsorship for Dario Franchitti's No. 40 Dodge?
Ganassi: We're piecing it together. We are happy where we are and what we've accomplished in a difficult market. We have every intention of being there and running it, so we're probably a third to a half of the way there right now.
Q: Is NASCAR still a good buy for sponsors?
Ganassi: One of the things that my sales people are telling me is the difference is, we are not losing sponsors to other teams -- we are losing them to them not being in the sport. We're not losing them to Hendrick or Roush or anybody.
I'm not the sales guy so it's hard for me to talk about that, but I can tell you that it's a difficult sales market right now.
Q: Where are you with bringing international sponsors into the sport?
Ganassi: It's a building-block process. Any time you are talking about the kinds of numbers that we're talking about in Cup these days -- you're talking about big numbers. The bigger the numbers the longer the time it takes to put a deal together. That's just a fact of life. You know, we're not talking about $500,000 sponsorships
Q: Felix Sabates is pretty outspoken about NASCAR franchising. Where do you stand on that issue?
Ganassi: I'm sure that in due time NASCAR will do what is best for everybody or what they think is best for everybody. I used to get caught up in all that stuff and I'm happy to do what I do and take care of the team and leave the politics to everyone else. That's why I have a partner that's good at that.
Q: Do you think there should be some equity for someone that has been around for a certain number of years?
Ganassi: I think you should be able to grow $100 bills in your garden, but I don't know what that means. I don't know what everybody else thinks of that, but that's what I think.
Fast Facts
What
UAW-Dodge 400
When
3:30 p.m. ET Sunday
TV
FOX
Radio
PRN / Sirius Ch. 128
• Track Page Tickets Travel
Q: To what degree were you consulted on the re-unification of open-wheel racing?
Ganassi: There can't be five people on the planet that [didn't] want it to happen. The only consultation I had was I got a phone call one day that said if we get this thing back together we might need a car. I said, 'no problem.'
It's probably like the 1994 baseball strike. The work really begins once you get all of the problems behind you. It would be nice to get all of the issues in one place. Get all of the rules-makers in one place. Get all of the promoters in one place. Get everybody at one table instead of two. It would certainly end a lot of confusion in the marketplace.
Q: What are your thoughts on all the talk about Hendrick and Gibbs being the dominant teams?
Ganassi: You know, I was pretty happy in the [Gatorade Duel] 150s when it was Hendrick, Gibbs, Hendrick, Hendrick and us. I can't speak for other teams in where they are in their program.
I just think that we made some moves over the winter and our team has stepped it up a little bit. Whether it's our drivers, our engine program [or] our COT program -- I think everything can come up a step and I'd like to think that we've moved up a notch on the ladder. What that means for other teams I have no idea.
Every winter every team works in the offseason. Every team wants to work better. For our team, where we are in the pecking order, we need to work harder. I'm thinking that we've made a step or two up the rung. In terms of the other guys, I can't say where they're at. I wish them well and here we go.
It's just like that Super Bowl. Everybody thought that the Patriots were going to win and wanted the Giants to win, right? That's why they play the game. You just can't hand the trophy out. They have to have a race first.
You still have to execute. You still have to do pit stops. You still have to have luck on your side. Your engine still has to get to the finish. You can't get caught up in a crash. There are a lot of things that can happen. Look at all the talk about the Patriots -- they still had to play the game.
In NASCAR, Ganassi owns three Sprint Cup teams: The No. 40 Dodge for driver Dario Franchitti, the No. 41 for Reed Sorenson and the No. 42 for Juan Montoya. He owns two cars in the Nationwide Series: the Nos. 40 and 41 that are driven by a combination of Franchitti, Sorenson and development driver Bryan Clauson.
Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates has won Rolex Sports Car Series driver and team championships, and three consecutive editions of the Rolex 24 at Daytona -- North American sports-car racing's signature event.
Chip Ganassi facts
2001
Purchased majority interest in Team SABCO
5
Indianapolis 500 starts as a driver (1982-86, best finish eighth)
5
Open-wheel championships
3
Highest finish in standings (Sterling Marlin, 2001)
3
Consecutive Rolex 24 victories (2006, 07, 08)
2
Former open-wheel drivers in Cup (Juan Montoya, Dario Franchitti)
1
Indianapolis 500 win (Juan Montoya, 2000)
Ganassi Racing has five open-wheel championships -- including four consecutive in CART, the forerunner of the Champ Car World Series, from 1996-1999 -- and won the 2000 Indianapolis 500 with Montoya.
Both of those disciplines regularly contend for race wins and championships, so it's in NASCAR where Ganassi, who transitioned from a driving career that went from local Formula Ford racing in the SCCA all the way to the Indianapolis 500, has found his biggest challenge.
Ganassi came to NASCAR in 2001, when he purchased a majority interest in Team SABCO from Sabates, and he made an immediate impact. Lead driver Sterling Marlin was third in the 2001 Cup championship and, until he was injured in the fall of the next season, led the standings for more than two-thirds of the season and appeared on his way to a coveted series title.
Since then, Ganassi has expanded his Cup and Nationwide operations, as well as maintaining an active driver development program.
As 2008 opens, Ganassi has the potential to get into the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the first time as Sorenson and Montoya, who won the 2007 Cup rookie of the year award, continue to develop.
Q: What are your expectations for this year?
Ganassi: I think when you look at Dario I think we are looking for a season that would parallel Juan's season from last season. I think when you look at Reed and Juan you say 'OK, it's time for those guys to take the next step up -- get to the next rung up the ladder.' It's either close or damn close to the Chase.
I would have been in the Chase twice [with Jamie McMurray in 2004 and 2005] if they would have been in the top 12 before that, right -- or if they hadn't taken 25 points from me at Bristol.
Q: Do you think there's a misperception of how Juan Montoya is, and do you wish people could see him as just someone who loves to race and be around racetracks?
Ganassi: That's what I've been saying all along. That's what I said the day we announced him in Chicago. I still stand by that. I was just at a sponsor function and they were saying that they couldn't believe that he was the last one -- you know Felix has a boat down [at Daytona Beach marina] -- [Montoya] was literally the last one off the boat.
I mean, this wasn't late or anything. It was like 7 p.m. or something and they had a dinner to go to, but he was the last one there. So, what does that tell you about the guy? It's not a story that he enjoys NASCAR. He's enjoying the racing, enjoying the series, enjoying the busy life.
Q: You have two open-wheel guys in your Sprint Cup cars, Juan Montoya and Dario Franchitti, and another in development, Bryan Clauson. So do you feel you have an affinity for open-wheel drivers?
Ganassi: I have an affinity for being at the front. That's my affinity -- being at the front. It doesn't have anything to do with where drivers come from. I don't care if they come from Mars.
Q: What's your take on the way Reed Sorenson early this season?
Ganassi: I think we've seen a maturation process in that guy over the winter and he's stepped up. I think part of that is having Juan as a teammate last year has helped him step up. I think bringing Dario on has helped him step up.
He's stepping up. He's doing what we've asked him and what we want him to do. He's doing exactly what we want him to do. We couldn't be happier.
Q: Why do you think Reed has matured?
Ganassi: That's a good question. I don't have the answer to that. I don't know what it was, because if I knew what it was I would have done it a lot sooner I can tell you that. Or I would have given it to him a lot sooner, whatever it was.
Different people are on what I call the performance treadmill. People are just on different angles and different speeds with their treadmill. They all get there eventually, some sooner than others. I'm just happy to see that Reed had a good offseason in that regard.
Q: What shows that on the track?
Ganassi: You never know. I was talking to Reed the other day about this and a lot of times you could say that he's the same guy and our cars have gotten better. You'd be surprised; when you have a good car it's a hell of a lot easier to look good.
Good cars make people look good, but just in his driving style I've seen some moves that I haven't seen before -- or a level of, I don't want to say aggressiveness, but a level of determination that I haven't seen before."
"I think you should be able to grow $100 bills in your garden, but I don't know what that means."
CHIP GANASSI
Q: You've won championships in several forms of racing, except NASCAR. So is that a testament to how difficult it is, and is it one of your goals to be the first to succeed in North America's three main forms of racing?
Ganassi: I certainly see it as a goal. Yes, I certainly want to be the first to do it. Yeah, that's a goal."
Q: Does all the attention given to Hendrick and Gibbs eat at you a little bit?
Ganassi: No, I think it's kind of good because it takes the focus off. I'm glad that it takes the focus off of us and you can let us get some work done and not have the scrutiny of you [media] guys.
You're over there talking to those guys and you might not be looking at us that close. That's fine. I'm glad. It's fun to work when the spotlight is on you, but it's easier to work when it's on someone else. You'll focus on me at the appropriate time I'm sure.
Q: Does it matter to you when NASCAR makes the move to the new chassis in the Nationwide Series?
Ganassi: It's going to be interesting this year to see how it pans out. For the last few years it seems like the Nationwide Series was a test for the Cup Series because the cars were similar. You're going to see this year that with the cars being so different how that works.
Is the Nationwide Series going to be as interesting as it was in the past? Some drivers looked at that like they were here on Saturday already, and it was a learning experience for Sunday. Some drivers looked at it as a way to put some extra money in their pocket. Some drivers looked at it as a way to get their own little team started.
It's going to be interesting to see if the Nationwide Series is ever going to be more than a Saturday warm-up for Sunday. Can it break off on its own? Again, these are questions to ask NASCAR.
Q: Can you convert your fleet to a new chassis by next year or would you like to see it phased-in, as it was in the Cup Series?
Ganassi: We're in a period now where sponsorship is tight, so I don't think the owners are looking for any more projects that they have to swallow like a COT Nationwide. You can't swallow those kinds of things easily.
It's no coincidence that the announcement of COT in Cup and the injection of outside money into the sport [came at the same time]. That's no coincidence.
Q: Where are you on getting a full season of sponsorship for Dario Franchitti's No. 40 Dodge?
Ganassi: We're piecing it together. We are happy where we are and what we've accomplished in a difficult market. We have every intention of being there and running it, so we're probably a third to a half of the way there right now.
Q: Is NASCAR still a good buy for sponsors?
Ganassi: One of the things that my sales people are telling me is the difference is, we are not losing sponsors to other teams -- we are losing them to them not being in the sport. We're not losing them to Hendrick or Roush or anybody.
I'm not the sales guy so it's hard for me to talk about that, but I can tell you that it's a difficult sales market right now.
Q: Where are you with bringing international sponsors into the sport?
Ganassi: It's a building-block process. Any time you are talking about the kinds of numbers that we're talking about in Cup these days -- you're talking about big numbers. The bigger the numbers the longer the time it takes to put a deal together. That's just a fact of life. You know, we're not talking about $500,000 sponsorships
Q: Felix Sabates is pretty outspoken about NASCAR franchising. Where do you stand on that issue?
Ganassi: I'm sure that in due time NASCAR will do what is best for everybody or what they think is best for everybody. I used to get caught up in all that stuff and I'm happy to do what I do and take care of the team and leave the politics to everyone else. That's why I have a partner that's good at that.
Q: Do you think there should be some equity for someone that has been around for a certain number of years?
Ganassi: I think you should be able to grow $100 bills in your garden, but I don't know what that means. I don't know what everybody else thinks of that, but that's what I think.
Fast Facts
What
UAW-Dodge 400
When
3:30 p.m. ET Sunday
TV
FOX
Radio
PRN / Sirius Ch. 128
• Track Page Tickets Travel
Q: To what degree were you consulted on the re-unification of open-wheel racing?
Ganassi: There can't be five people on the planet that [didn't] want it to happen. The only consultation I had was I got a phone call one day that said if we get this thing back together we might need a car. I said, 'no problem.'
It's probably like the 1994 baseball strike. The work really begins once you get all of the problems behind you. It would be nice to get all of the issues in one place. Get all of the rules-makers in one place. Get all of the promoters in one place. Get everybody at one table instead of two. It would certainly end a lot of confusion in the marketplace.
Q: What are your thoughts on all the talk about Hendrick and Gibbs being the dominant teams?
Ganassi: You know, I was pretty happy in the [Gatorade Duel] 150s when it was Hendrick, Gibbs, Hendrick, Hendrick and us. I can't speak for other teams in where they are in their program.
I just think that we made some moves over the winter and our team has stepped it up a little bit. Whether it's our drivers, our engine program [or] our COT program -- I think everything can come up a step and I'd like to think that we've moved up a notch on the ladder. What that means for other teams I have no idea.
Every winter every team works in the offseason. Every team wants to work better. For our team, where we are in the pecking order, we need to work harder. I'm thinking that we've made a step or two up the rung. In terms of the other guys, I can't say where they're at. I wish them well and here we go.
It's just like that Super Bowl. Everybody thought that the Patriots were going to win and wanted the Giants to win, right? That's why they play the game. You just can't hand the trophy out. They have to have a race first.
You still have to execute. You still have to do pit stops. You still have to have luck on your side. Your engine still has to get to the finish. You can't get caught up in a crash. There are a lot of things that can happen. Look at all the talk about the Patriots -- they still had to play the game.
Edwards' victory small part of bigger picture for Roush
FONTANA, Calif. -- Kyle Busch, one of the most talked about drivers in the garage, left California with bragging rights for leading two of the three premier series points in NASCAR at the same time.
In his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch nearly escaped the weekend leading all three seires in what would have been a first in the history of the sport, according to Kerry Tharp, spokesperson for NASCAR.
On at least 11 other occasions, the same driver has led both the Cup and Nationwide series standings -- but one driver has never led all three series at one time, Tharp said.
Busch took over the Sprint Cup points lead with his fourth-place finish in Monday's Auto Club 500, marking the first time a Toyota driver has held the points lead in the Cup Series. Busch is six points ahead of second-place Ryan Newman and 25 points ahead of teammate Tony Stewart in the Cup standings.
He also leads the Craftsman Truck Series point standings by 20 ahead of Todd Bodine. Busch finished second at Daytona and won Saturday's Truck event in California.
Busch was second in the Nationwide Series standings entering Monday's Stater Bros. 300, trailing Tony Stewart by just 10 points. But Stewart won the race with Busch finishing second -- giving Stewart a 30-point lead in the Nationwide standings heading to Las Vegas.
"It's a good championship points day. It was pretty cool out there to run the way we did in our Toyota," Busch said after Monday's Cup race. "Unfortunately we didn't have quite the car to get up there and contend with those boys at the end, but overall a good day and that's all we can ask for."
Jimmie Johnson, Busch's former teammate last season, said the Gibbs driver is immensely talented no matter what he drives.
"It's awfully early in the year to put too much weight into it, but it doesn't surprise me -- the guy knows how to stand on the right pedal," Johnson said.
Added former teammate Jeff Gordon of Busch's two-series points lead: "If that's the case in Homestead I'll be really impressed. We know how talented he is. But if he does that for the whole year I'll be way impressed."
When Busch left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season, making room for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to join the Hendrick stable, it was a tumultuous situation, but since then fences have appeared to be mended.
"It was cool to race with the 24 [Gordon] and 48 [Johnson] like that -- we aren't teammates anymore, but still we respect each other," Busch said. "That was fun."
The Truck Series lead will be short-lived as Busch doesn't compete full time, driving a partial schedule for team owner Billy Ballew. And as for the Cup Series lead, Busch is realistic; he knows it is early in the season.
"It doesn't mean much right here in California," he said. "We've still got 33 weeks left in this deal. We'll take it now and hopefully hold on to it for a while and keep battling with the 24, 48 -- we know they'll come back strong in the points
In his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch nearly escaped the weekend leading all three seires in what would have been a first in the history of the sport, according to Kerry Tharp, spokesperson for NASCAR.
On at least 11 other occasions, the same driver has led both the Cup and Nationwide series standings -- but one driver has never led all three series at one time, Tharp said.
Busch took over the Sprint Cup points lead with his fourth-place finish in Monday's Auto Club 500, marking the first time a Toyota driver has held the points lead in the Cup Series. Busch is six points ahead of second-place Ryan Newman and 25 points ahead of teammate Tony Stewart in the Cup standings.
He also leads the Craftsman Truck Series point standings by 20 ahead of Todd Bodine. Busch finished second at Daytona and won Saturday's Truck event in California.
Busch was second in the Nationwide Series standings entering Monday's Stater Bros. 300, trailing Tony Stewart by just 10 points. But Stewart won the race with Busch finishing second -- giving Stewart a 30-point lead in the Nationwide standings heading to Las Vegas.
"It's a good championship points day. It was pretty cool out there to run the way we did in our Toyota," Busch said after Monday's Cup race. "Unfortunately we didn't have quite the car to get up there and contend with those boys at the end, but overall a good day and that's all we can ask for."
Jimmie Johnson, Busch's former teammate last season, said the Gibbs driver is immensely talented no matter what he drives.
"It's awfully early in the year to put too much weight into it, but it doesn't surprise me -- the guy knows how to stand on the right pedal," Johnson said.
Added former teammate Jeff Gordon of Busch's two-series points lead: "If that's the case in Homestead I'll be really impressed. We know how talented he is. But if he does that for the whole year I'll be way impressed."
When Busch left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season, making room for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to join the Hendrick stable, it was a tumultuous situation, but since then fences have appeared to be mended.
"It was cool to race with the 24 [Gordon] and 48 [Johnson] like that -- we aren't teammates anymore, but still we respect each other," Busch said. "That was fun."
The Truck Series lead will be short-lived as Busch doesn't compete full time, driving a partial schedule for team owner Billy Ballew. And as for the Cup Series lead, Busch is realistic; he knows it is early in the season.
"It doesn't mean much right here in California," he said. "We've still got 33 weeks left in this deal. We'll take it now and hopefully hold on to it for a while and keep battling with the 24, 48 -- we know they'll come back strong in the points
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Points leader in Cup, Truck has Busch enjoying view
FONTANA, Calif. -- Kyle Busch, one of the most talked about drivers in the garage, left California with bragging rights for leading two of the three premier series points in NASCAR at the same time.
In his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch nearly escaped the weekend leading all three seires in what would have been a first in the history of the sport, according to Kerry Tharp, spokesperson
for NASCAR.
On at least 11 other occasions, the same driver has led both the Cup and Nationwide series standings -- but one driver has never led all three series at one time, Tharp said.
Busch took over the Sprint Cup points lead with his fourth-place finish in Monday's Auto Club 500, marking the first time a Toyota driver has held the points lead in the Cup Series. Busch is six points ahead of second-place Ryan Newman and 25 points ahead of teammate Tony Stewart in the Cup standings.
Top trucker
Kyle Busch led 51 of 100 laps and won the Truck Series race at Auto Club Speedway to take the series points lead.
Complete story, click here
He also leads the Craftsman Truck Series point standings by 20 ahead of Todd Bodine. Busch finished second at Daytona and won Saturday's Truck event in California.
Busch was second in the Nationwide Series standings entering Monday's Stater Bros. 300, trailing Tony Stewart by just 10 points. But Stewart won the race with Busch finishing second -- giving Stewart a 30-point lead in the Nationwide standings heading to Las Vegas.
"It's a good championship points day. It was pretty cool out there to run the way we did in our Toyota," Busch said after Monday's Cup race. "Unfortunately we didn't have quite the car to get up there and contend with those boys at the end, but overall a good day and that's all we can ask for."
Jimmie Johnson, Busch's former teammate last season, said the Gibbs driver is immensely talented no matter what he drives.
"It's awfully early in the year to put too much weight into it, but it doesn't surprise me -- the guy knows how to stand on the right pedal," Johnson said.
Added former teammate Jeff Gordon of Busch's two-series points lead: "If that's the case in Homestead I'll be really impressed. We know how talented he is. But if he does that for the whole year I'll be way impressed."
When Busch left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season, making room for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to join the Hendrick stable, it was a tumultuous situation, but since then fences have appeared to be mended.
"It was cool to race with the 24 [Gordon] and 48 [Johnson] like that -- we aren't teammates anymore, but still we respect each other," Busch said. "That was fun."
The Truck Series lead will be short-lived as Busch doesn't compete full time, driving a partial schedule for team owner Billy Ballew. And as for the Cup Series lead, Busch is realistic; he knows it is early in the season.
"It doesn't mean much right here in California," he said. "We've still got 33 weeks left in this deal. We'll take it now and hopefully hold on to it for a while and keep battling with the 24, 48 -- we know they'll come back strong in the points."
In his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch nearly escaped the weekend leading all three seires in what would have been a first in the history of the sport, according to Kerry Tharp, spokesperson
for NASCAR.On at least 11 other occasions, the same driver has led both the Cup and Nationwide series standings -- but one driver has never led all three series at one time, Tharp said.
Busch took over the Sprint Cup points lead with his fourth-place finish in Monday's Auto Club 500, marking the first time a Toyota driver has held the points lead in the Cup Series. Busch is six points ahead of second-place Ryan Newman and 25 points ahead of teammate Tony Stewart in the Cup standings.
Top trucker
Kyle Busch led 51 of 100 laps and won the Truck Series race at Auto Club Speedway to take the series points lead.
Complete story, click here
He also leads the Craftsman Truck Series point standings by 20 ahead of Todd Bodine. Busch finished second at Daytona and won Saturday's Truck event in California.
Busch was second in the Nationwide Series standings entering Monday's Stater Bros. 300, trailing Tony Stewart by just 10 points. But Stewart won the race with Busch finishing second -- giving Stewart a 30-point lead in the Nationwide standings heading to Las Vegas.
"It's a good championship points day. It was pretty cool out there to run the way we did in our Toyota," Busch said after Monday's Cup race. "Unfortunately we didn't have quite the car to get up there and contend with those boys at the end, but overall a good day and that's all we can ask for."
Jimmie Johnson, Busch's former teammate last season, said the Gibbs driver is immensely talented no matter what he drives.
"It's awfully early in the year to put too much weight into it, but it doesn't surprise me -- the guy knows how to stand on the right pedal," Johnson said.
Added former teammate Jeff Gordon of Busch's two-series points lead: "If that's the case in Homestead I'll be really impressed. We know how talented he is. But if he does that for the whole year I'll be way impressed."
When Busch left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season, making room for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to join the Hendrick stable, it was a tumultuous situation, but since then fences have appeared to be mended.
"It was cool to race with the 24 [Gordon] and 48 [Johnson] like that -- we aren't teammates anymore, but still we respect each other," Busch said. "That was fun."
The Truck Series lead will be short-lived as Busch doesn't compete full time, driving a partial schedule for team owner Billy Ballew. And as for the Cup Series lead, Busch is realistic; he knows it is early in the season.
"It doesn't mean much right here in California," he said. "We've still got 33 weeks left in this deal. We'll take it now and hopefully hold on to it for a while and keep battling with the 24, 48 -- we know they'll come back strong in the points."
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