My Idea's about NASCAR
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
AFTER DOVER....ON TO KANSAS
Matt Kenseth had a hard time keeping up at Dover and ended up loosing all but 8 points on race winner and second place points holder Jimmie Johnson. Finishing up 7th at the end of the day. He had a hard time, if that's what you call a 7th place finish. I have picked Matt to win the championship this year because of just how well he has been running all season. Count them folks, 7 is his magic number "so far" and I am saying that because I know he has 1 or 2 more wins in him before the end of the season. As I have said before, and this weekend will probably prove what is fact so far this year, Matt rules the 1 1/2 mile tracks and this week we go to Kansas where he 1: won the last race here in April, did it from the pole, had the fastest qualifying speed of 191.864. He has raced there 15 times, won 2, 6 top 5's, 9 top 10's, 2 poles. Only snag at this track, Jimmie has slightly better stats here. But I really think Matt has something Jimmie doesn't this year, the drive to show Jack Rousch that he messed up by letting Carl be the lead driver at at a place where Matt should of been the lead driver once Mark left. Jimmie, he has nothing to prove.
On to Kansas, um what else can I say? I think Matt will sweep Kansas this year and I think he will do it easily. I wont predict he gets the pole again, but I do believe he knows that Jimmie did a little catching up and he needs to gain a few points back from what he lost last weekend and what better place to do it then the place he won at already this season. I think we will see another race where Kyle will have a good race and Dale Jr will continue his upswing in the points with another top 5 finish. The lower half of the chasers will be mixed as they have been with I think 2 exceptions, Dale Jr obviously and Carl Edwards will do ok but the rest will be mixed someplace between 15th to 25th.
On the sponsorship front, Brad K. and Roger Penske were happy to announce that MillerCoors signed on through the 2017 season with Brad and Penske, but its only for 26 races a year, so who gets put on the car for the other 12 races (36 with the all star race and the duels at the beginning of the season.)
The Points as of race #3 in the Chase:
1: Matt Kenseth(2149)
2: Jimmie Johnson(2141)
3: Kyle Busch(2137)
4: Jeff Gordon(2110)
5: Kevin Harvick(2110)
6: Greg Biffle(2108)
7: Ryan Newman(2101)
8: Clint Bowyer(2098)
9: Kurt Busch(2094)
10: Dale Earnhardt Jr(2092)
11: Carl Edwards (2084)
12: Joey Logano(2083)
13: Kasey Kahne(2071)
Until next time.......
Monday, September 23, 2013
AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE
Hey I have to give a shout out to Greg Biffle, where the hell did he come from? That last restart he had some balls to make the moves he did, that was some crazy passing. I don't think he will be a factor in the end and I really don't think he will ever be a factor for the championship, not with Matt, Kyle and Jimmie always finishing in front of him and for sure not while he drives a Ford.
The race this weekend was actually a good race, very short at only 300 laps, more like a Nationwide race then a normal Sprint Cup Series race. Passing as always was hard to do and was at a premium, but that didn't stop a lot of guys from passing a lot of cars on the way to the checkered flag. With 19 lead changes between 11 drivers with Matt leading 106 laps. The next closest lap leader at 98 was Martin Truex Jr.
Kasey Kahne had yet another hard start to the chase by ending his day early only finishing 278 of 300 laps, the only bad thing with not finishing all the laps in this race is only 5 cars were out at the end of the race, so Kasey ended up 37th and delegating him down to 13th place, the last place possible in the chase with a 71 point deficit and 8 races to go, he will need everyone in front of him to have multiple bad races for him to catch up. Better luck next year Kasey.
I do believe the Jimmie/Chad parring has finally met their match. Think about this, Matt is in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing. New team, new manufacturer, new pit crew, new engineers, new crew chief....New new new and look at them now, 7 races won, first 2 chase race wins, I think he has won all but 2 races that have been at mile and a half tracks (not sure its 2, but I believe that was it at last count.)
Folks I think Matt is on the proverbial roll and will be very hard to beat this year and maybe several years to come. I will say this, everyone from 4th on down....might at well sit back and relax and get their teams ready for next year because they do not have a chance one in hell to win this championship with Jimmie, Kyle, and Matt running like they are.
Congratulations to Ryan Blaney for his great win at Kentucky. His first Nationwide win and I am sure not his last by any chance. Austin Dillion is making a slow but steady climb back towards the front of the points. Sam Hornish Jr needs to pick it up and continue getting top 5s or Austin might catch up with him being only 15 points behind him.
Well folks that's it for today, I will have a race run down for the AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway around friday. Oh one last thing..... you ever hear the old saying "everything is always bigger in Texas? Well Eddie Gossage out did himself on this one, he has a new toy at the track and he has a big name for it, "Big Hoss" its a 218 feet wide, 12 story high, 20,666.64 square foot video board that's 1080p HD, that was buit by Panasonic for the track. It has nearly 4.8 million pixels that can display 281 trillion colors. IN FREAKING SANE!!!!!!
Until next time........
Thursday, September 19, 2013
SILLY SEASON!!!!!! HOLY CRAP EVEN
Sunday, September 15, 2013
CRAZY WEEK IN NASCAR
I am pretty sure by now you have all heard about the crazy ass rules changes/added a car to the chase/new spotter rules. I think a lot of teams will be totally confused about if they can help Thieu teammates or not? Team orders? lol that's laughable now because NASCAR quashed any such orders with one fail swoop. They made it abundantly clear... YOU HELP YOUR TEAMMATE IN ANY WAY AND WE ARE GOING TO LEVEL THE GIGANTIC HAMMER WE CONTROL!!!!!!! PERIOD! Oh and today during the drivers meeting, which I am sure will be packed with beat reporters, they will introduce yet another rule on race restarts.
Ok so here we go, I will try and give my opinion on what I understand happened last weekend and all the fallout that has happened during the week. Bare with me because I am not even sure I get it completely because it was a penalty for something that's been going on since the first race team added a second car.
Ok as you all know Michale Waltrip Racing was fined an ungodly amount of cash $300,000 to be exact, for 1 thing, for Brian Vickers being told to hit pit road so a teammate could make sure he was in the chase, the real benefit came to a driver from another team, Joey Logano, Who because of Brian and his move he gained the 1 point he needed to be ahead of Jeff Gordon to secure a wild card spot in the chase. Now the car that should of been hit the hardest, Clint Bowyer, for the bogus spin that brought out the caution that actually did change the look of the chase and the race, which Ryan Newman was running away with the lead with 10 laps to go. Because of the bogus pit and the radio communication between Brian Vickers and his spotter Ty Norris, and all that transpired after that, NASCAR in its infinite wisdom decided to deduct 50 points from all 3 MWR teams...even though they said they couldn't prove that Clint spun himself, they decided to fine him and Martin Truex and Brian Vickers 50 points. Not sure why they fined Martin Truex because he was totally innocent in all that happened, but taking the points pre chase, knocked him out of the chase and dropped him back to 17th in points and because of the wild card spot vacant , Ryan Newman secured the open spot in the chase. Taking the 50 points from Clint Bowyer and Brian Vickers did absolutely nothing, Brian isn't competing for the chase and Clint had secured his spot in the chase a couple weeks before this. Now ask Dale Earnhardt Jr what he thinks of Clints spin and he will tell you it looked totally on purpose to him and he should know, He's done this himself and hey, they see wrecks every weekend and see how they happened and you could call them experts of some sort because of what they do. On top of that every driver that has seen the video and heard the in car audio has pretty much said or thought the same thing. Some have voiced their opinion on TV, radio, twitter, face book and some I am sure have just kept to themselves. Top that off with all the reporters that have given their opinions and poured out the facts in many an article this week, and the fact that NASCAR had a huge sweep of the entire MWR team. I think with the fines and points taken away that this was their way of saying "boys we know you pulled some shit here, and we cant totally prove it, but don't do this crap again"
And the other day guess who also gets into the chase.....Jeff Gordon????? WTF? This decision to add the 13th car and driver to the chase makes NO SENSE AT ALL to anyone. It only goes to prove that NASCAR makes the rules and those rules can change at any time lending to the idea that NASCAR is getting to be more and more like the WWE. I personally am loosing all respect for Brian France and Mike Helton and the whole NASCAR front office. This week makes me wounder if Brian France isn't hitting the bottle again and ruling NASCAR through the thick glass at the bottom of the scotch bottle. This decision to add a 13th car is unprecedented and unwarranted and if they are going to allow Jeff Gordon into the chase just because he would of been there if the race would of ended like everyone thought it would, then shouldn't all 43 drivers be in the chase because, hey, if they would of had a different finish in all those 25 races before Richmond, they could of been in the chase too. At the very least, why not put Martin Truex back in because HE actually RACED his way into the chase by winning and finishing good all year long and he deserved to actually be in the chase and not kicked out because of something his 2 teammates did. This whole week has been just flat crazy with BS rules changes and hey fans, another rules change today and one we wont know about until after the drivers meeting when all the reporters start tweeting about what Helton is saying in the meeting. @Jeff_Gluck, @bobpockrass, @nateryan, @MartySmithESPN, @JennaFryer, @dusinlong and of course @ClaireBLang. Then and only then will we know the new restart rules. Because its all hush hush for some reason.
Now my opinion on all of this is this:
1: NASCAR totally screwed the pooch this week by taking Martin Truex Jr out of the chase for something his teammates did.
2: NASCAR totally screwed the pooch making up new rules at the start of the chase
3: NASCAR totally screwed the pooch putting Jeff Gordon in the chase adding a 13th driver because with 10 laps to go he was in position to make the chase and a caution came out changing that
4: NASCAR screwed the pooch not penalizing Clint Bowyer for his spin that was ON purpose not matter what he says, that was as hokie a spin as I've ever seen
5: NASCAR screwed the pooch penalizing Martin Truex at all
6: finally one not of NASCAR's doing....MWR lost a ton of respect among fans, fellow racers, and teams in the garage and I think the media shit storm that came about during the media rush they had after Richmond proves that no matter what they do they will look bad this year and for many years to come.
7: Clint Bowyer is a putz and needs to just come forward and admit what we all know (dude take some advice from AJ Allmendinger and fess up, shit gets easier if you do.) If he should happen to get the championship this year its going to have a great big * mark on the win because it will be tainted (listen to the crowd when they introduce Clint today and every week of the chase...I'm predicting a shit ton of booing going on.)
8: MWR and Michael Waltrip are both a total joke in my book. He has had issues since he started running in the Cup Series, from jet fuel in the engine, to this crap that happened last weekend in Richmond, his team is the Joke of all the teams in the garage. He has to have lost a ton of respect as a team, the person, he obviously has no control over what his team does, could you imagine this sort of thing going on at Penske, or Joe Gibbs? Um I don't think so.
After the race...probably not today by what @NASCAR_WXMAN said, the chance of getting this in is about 20%, but tomorrow I will give a run down of the race and maybe I will try and add my thoughts on this years silly season run down.
Until later.......
Monday, September 9, 2013
NASCAR HITS MWR HARD
Say it isn't so, tell me that MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing) didn't do the obvious, tell me that Clint Boywer didn't spin on purpose, tell me please that Brian Vickers didn't come in and pit for no reason, then start back far enough during a restart that he was behind Joey Logano and gave Joey enough points to keep Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman out of the chase therefore letting their teammate, Martin Truex Jr, get the position and the points enough to get a tie with Ryan in points (with the points tie and the total number of wins tied at 1 a piece, NASCAR goes to the second place finishes then if thats a tie they go to 3rd place finishes and so on and so forth until they have a tie breaker on how man times they finished in whatever spot they have to get to to declare a winner, in this instance it went to 2nd place finishes) and therefore getting the 12 and final spot in the chase. Consequently Joey Logano finished 1 point ahead of Jeff Gordon, Brian Vickers lined up behind Joey on the final restart when he should of been in front of Joey being that Joey was 1 lap down and Brian was on the lead lap. Not only did he line up behind Joey, on the last lap we slowed down so much that he was only doing 79mph (see picture below and check out the highlighted area) when the leaders were doing over 120mph, and teammate Bowyer also finished behind Joey when 10 laps before he was 2 laps ahead of Joey. From a video I seen posted on YouTube, Brian finished the race going down pit road because he never crossed the finish line on the track. The picture of the cars clearly shows (yellow circles) Joey in front of Brian Vickers on the track, Brian Clearly lined up behind Joey on the final restart when he should of lined up in front of him. Not only did Brian Vickers go into the pits on the final lap, he was told too by Ty Noris, Executive Vice President of Business Development and General Manager of Michael Waltrip Racing, "to pit, pit now" which Brian replied " are you talking to me? why do I need to pit? Do I have a tire going down?" Ty Noris replied " yeah you do" then a second later "we need that 1 point." Then Ty told Brian that he would talk to him after the race and that he "owed him a kiss." The more you hear and see of what happened Saturday night, the more you wonder what NASCAR might do. What Michael Waltrip racing did was willfully change the outcome of not only a race, but who got into and was eliminated from the Chase. If NASCAR does nothing in response to what we have now learned took place, what will the black mark on the sport be? let alone the integrity issue that will arise from all thats happened since Saturday. You can bet the WWE references will be never ending if nothing is done. If you follow Twitter you need to check @GeoffreyMiller and read his timeline, he covers the breakdown of events very clearly and is actually where I got both pictures I used here. Watch the YouTube video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=brrgyDs3CFE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Monday, September 2, 2013
AFTER ATLANTA
I Didn't get to do a preview before Atlanta, life gets too busy some times I guess and I get in a slacker mood from time to time and this happened to be one of those times.
I also did not get to watch the racing action this weeked because I was spending much needed time with my wife, it was just the 2 of us this weekend and we calls those opportunity's "date night" but thanks to Sprint and NASCAR I can still keep up with the action using NASCAR Race View Mobile 13 and NASCAR Mobile 13 to watch and listen to the race along with catch updates on whats going on. Last night we actually did catch some great short track racing at our local short track, Meridian Speedway, and I took my phone, portable battery charger, and my ear buds and listened to the race thanks to PRN and the Race View App. When I got home I checked NASCAR.com and YouTube because I heard that there was a slap I had to check out. Only comment on that is, sometimes racing is hard and doesn't always go the way you think it should and if you can't handle it then maybe you should stay home and not come watch your boyfriend race. I think Max handled it just fine by just letting it pass without a slap fest ensuing.
Looks like Kyle Busch is ready to finally make a run at a championship. He has changed quite a bit since being married, usually happens to the best of us when we find the correct woman to support what we do, same goes for women who find the right men....ie my wife finding me lol. With 4 wins this season and the momenum hitting at the right time, I can see him being a honest challenger for the cup. The only thing he needs to figure out is how to be succesful in the chase, because once he gets there his history in the chase is not so great. In the chase Kyle has a best finish of 5th and a 10th, 10th, 8th and a 12th. The trend is not a good one, but with a possible starting spot of 3rd behind Matt and Jimmie, he might finally be ready to challenge for the Holy Grail of NASCAR, the coveted NASCAR Sprint Cup championship. With a dominating performance last night, he is ready to make a statement going into the final race before the chase. He is definitely proven that he will be a force to reckon with.
I did expect a little more last night from Carl Edwards, even to the point where I added him to my NASCAR fantasy league for the first time this season. He was fast in practice, fast in qualifying, but when it came race time, he seemed to do ok at the beginning, but the dismal 18th place finish was not what one could come to expect from Carl, specially at a place like Atlanta where Ford's actually do very well, much like Texas and Michigan. He's now tied with Kevin Harvick at 795 points with only 1 win this season.
Another driver having a bad day, Clint Bowyer, he's not having very good luck just when he needed to pick up the pace and try to score a win or two to get the good vibrations rolling to maintain the good position when they reshuffle the teams going into the Chase. As it stands he'll be down there with Dale Jr fighting over 9th and 10 place trying to gain on the guys with all the extra bonus points. Of course his bad fish of 39th really wasn't his doing, going out early with a blown motor, it's not what you want to be worried about with one race left in the regular season. With him and Toyota teammate Denny Hamlin both scoring blown motors(both JGR and MWR get their motors from Toyota Racing Development) and this not being the first time Toyota has had engine problems this season, one has to wonder what they got going on over at TRD. Denny said they were testing some things, being the guinea pig for their teammates in the Chase, but when Clint blew his motor you have to wonder if they could of been related.
Speaking of bad luck.....Kasey Kahne couldn't have worse luck and the most inopportune time. He's fighting for a chase spot with a wild card fight of his life. He's got the Chase spot wrapped up with the 2 wins, but ultimately will probably start 11 with no bonus points because he's outside the top ten. Would be better to slip into tenth so he could use the bonus points to skip him from 10th to 4th in the points. But hanging onto 12th won't cut it and will give him a long climb if he has any hope of capturing the championship. 10 points behind 10th place Kurt Busch shouldn't be all that hard to overcome, but with 1 race left and Kurt doing so well, it could prove to become a handful, specially if the not so great luck continues.
Jimmie Johnson.....wow! Another bad race, yeah he can afford to try some things before the Chase that might help in the Chase, but with several bad finishes right before the Chase starts? Momentum is definitely not in his corner and one has to wonder what's got them finishing so far back in the pack so many weeks in a row. With a 40th place at Michigan, 36th at Bristol, and now a 28th at Atlanta where he has 13 top 10s in his career with 3 wins is just not how the 5 time champion wants to go into the last race before the Chase starts. Only one time in the 5 consecutive championship years he's had a finish out of the top 15 and that was a 36th place finish in 2009. In the other 4 years 13th was the worst with 2 wins mixed in with 7 top 10's. The pressure is on and he's always dealt with the pressure very well. Could his mind be on the fact that his wife is due any time now with baby number 2? Guess we will see in the next few weeks. Right now after the reshuffle he will be in second behind Matt Kenseth who has 5 wins to Jimmie's 4. That is unless he wins next week at Richmond, the finally stop before the reshuffle.
Jimmie has 3 wins at Richmond with a 12 place finish earlier this year. 5 top 5's, 8 top 10s, with an average start of 12.7 and an average finish of 16.3. It's not a bad track for Jimmie, a win is definitely not out of the question.
Want to say a congratulations to Chase Elliott on his win at the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, he is now the youngest NASCAR Camping World Truck Series winner at a ripe old age of 17.
Sam Hornish Jr continues to be the points leader in the Nationwide series with a 10 point lead over Austin Dillon. Elliott Sadler, Regan Smith, and Justin Allgaier round out the top 5, with my home town boy Brian Scott in 7th, 67 points out of first place. With yet another "Cup regular" winning the Nationwide race, Kevin Harvick pretty much owned Atlanta on Saturday. It would be fitting to see Sam take the championship, he's having a great season.
Until next time........
Saturday, August 10, 2013
TV deals and Road courses
This deal brought a GIGANTIC amount of money to NASCAR, we are talking billions of dollars, with NBC paying 4.4 billion and Fox choking up 3.8 billion dollars....just over 8 billion dollars, 8.2 billion, that's $8,200,000,000 of which 65% goes to the tracks, 25% goes to the teams through the points earnings, and 10% goes to NASCAR its self. The sad thing about this is, that means more boogity boogity crap that makes me want to mute the sound....Hopefully this all works out and my provider will pick up both channels and I can at least watch them, the problem is when money gets tight, the first thing people start dropping is cable and satellite TV because lets face it, cable/satellite isn't cheap and its not getting any cheaper and its a want not a need.
I will say this about Pocono, THANKFULLY JIMMIE DID NOT WIN!!! That was probably one of the best races in a long time at Pocono, I was totally predicting a snore fest and it actually was not a bad race. The last couple restarts made for some great racing action and I for one was unable to predict who was going to win, just when it looked like Kasey Kahne was going to get it, along comes teammate Jeff Gordon and he stole the lead on a restart, then when it looked like Jeff was going to cruise to the win, another caution came out and the restart brought us another surprise, Kasey regained the lead. It was actually a fun race to watch. Yes they did get spread out during the middle of the race, but the commentary and the TV coverage showed the whole race all race long and I think they did a great job.
ROAD COURSES
Ok who is excited for the road courses this weekend? ME! I love road courses specially when Marcus Ambrose is racing, the winner of the last 2 races at Watkins Glen. He is so good at road courses he has to be the favorite this weekend. Between him and Juan Montoya, Jeff Gordon, and new road course winner Martin Truex Jr, even Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch, and lets not forget NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski, and hey, lets also not forget AJ Allmendinger either, he will be in the 47 this weekend, and his first and only NASCAR win in the Nationwide Series came just a couple weeks ago at what kind of track? yeah that's right a road course. Watkins Glen is a fast road course with long straightaways, and some sharp corners, I personally like this road course more then the one is California.
In the first practice Martin Truex Jr paced the track with a best lap of 127.238mph with a lap time of 69.319, with Marcus Ambrose coming in second, Carl Edwards 3rd and Juan Montoya 4th and Casey Mears 5th. The second practice Carl Edwards paced the field with Michael McDowell coming in second, Clint Bowyer 3rd, Juan coming in 4th and Brad Keselowski coming in 5th. With qualifying only a few minutes away, with the new qualifying format, who do you think has the better chance to claim the pole? Starting up front here is very important because the farthest back anyone has come from to go on to win was 18th and that was Steve Park in 2000. Closer to the front is a must here. Also driving a Chevy has been a big plus here also, with 16 wins by a Chevy, 7 from Fords, 4 Pontiac's, 1 each for Buick, Mercury, and Toyota.
Until next time........
p.s. I get almost all of my NASCAR facts from a great website that is so full of information that I haven't even touched the surface of information this website has to offer and it is www.racingreference.info. Go check it out, it has everything you could want to know and more about all kinds of racing, not just NACAR.