Rainy Sunday in Bristol. Entirely too much Michael Waltrip, but then that’s always the case. Unfortunately Brad Keselowski had time to sit on the desk and yak. He’s become so fake – almost as fake as Michael Waltrip. Sigh. It was nice to see an ‘interview’ between Darrell Waltrip and Kasey Kahne. It was just too short. So NASCAR is going to try to get the race halfway through since the forecast calls for rain through Tuesday or so.
The Nationwide Race yesterday was boring. Unsurprisingly Kyle Busch won. Good for Kyle. Some ugly wrecks,. Someone, on Friday, said it was like racing in a washing machine. I agree. It reminds me that I used to love to watch clothes go around in a washer – when I was three, but by the time puberty hit that was a distant memory. I think that explains why I find Bristol and Martinsville so very boring. Watching the cars grind around in a circle is extraordinarily boring for its very ordinariness. The cars going around the super-speedways are majestic. The cars mounting the banks of the mile-and-a-halfs are enervating. The cars grinding around in a cereal bowl (another description from Friday) are as exciting as watching your cereal circle your bowl. It just doesn’t work for me.
The same holds true for the new qualifying. I was listening to it Friday on NASCAR radio and the pit reporters were selling the excitement hard. At the end of the session one of the announcers said it wasn’t as wild and wooly as they expected. In other words they were pumped up for chaos and got a really sedate couple of rounds of cars going around for a few laps. That’s just not exciting to me. Cars go out make one to three laps go in and make adjustments and come out and do it again if they have to. I’m missing the excitement. The initial description of the new qualifying indicated it would be a series of mini-races. It isn’t. It’s simply like practice with more rules where the time counts.
Kyle Larson said that format really helps him since it takes him several laps to figure out how to get speed out of the car and make a good lap. I guess that’s really why NASCAR decided to change. So many of the rookies just don’t know how to get the job done yet and in order to market them they don’t have time to learn the basics. Reminds me of figure skating. Years ago Olympic hopefuls had to demonstrate their mastery of the fundamentals of skating by skating figures as part of the competition. Gold medals were won and loss by skaters who could do the tricks, but couldn’t simply skate beautifully and with precision. So, since that wasn’t very exciting to viewers and skaters incapable of doing well in that discipline complained, it was removed from competition. The quality of the skating has suffered as a result. During the recent games one of the analysts mentioned that the winner of her Olympics was the skater who managed not to fall. That’s a sad statement. It looks like soon NASCAR Champions will become the driver with the best marketing plan and happiest sponsor. I’m old fashioned in that I want NASCAR to concentrate on racing and let the chips fall where they may.
Austin Dillon seems to be under the very mistaken impression that he is, or can be, Jimmie Johnson. He was just saying that Jimmie is calm on the radio, so that’s something he needs to work on. What he needs to work on is being Austin Dillon. I know that’s a lame job, but still, do the best with what you have. Austin has strong foundation of tools, he just needs to understand he can’t buy or talk his way into being Jimmie Johnson who worked his way to where he is.
Now DW is selling Austin Dillon. The marketing that is done by the ‘media’ involved with NASCAR is a bit sickening. While I know there are a lot of people out there who depend on media talking heads to tell them how to think about rules, situations, races and drivers. But, for those of us who think for ourselves, stop the hard-sell! I’m not buying it. I know what I see and no matter how often you say that what I see isn’t the truth, I still know what I see and until I see something else you’re wasting your breath and my time. It makes me believe marketing has become the most important thing – the only thing – in NASCAR.
I make an open plea to NASCAR – please, please, please, please, please keep marketing where it belongs – in the corporate offices, in conference rooms and in bedrooms. Tone down the marketing -speak and the marketing-speech on the broadcasts. Sell it to the sponsors, but make the sport feel like a sport. The NFL and MLB have sponsors, but they are not front and center every week, every game. Yes there are logos and commercials, but you don’t hear Tom Brady saying the sponsors wanted him to be in the NFL, so in spite of a lack of talent or experience he was made the first string quarterback and is kept in that position to make the sponsors happy. While the NFL has corporate sponsorship when the game begins the players, the coaches and the game are the focus. We keep hearing that the sponsors are responsible for various drivers being in series beyond their capabilities and for drivers saving their equipment to be around at the end of the race so the sponsors get tv time and for Sprint Cup drivers racing in the Nationwide series resulting in few Nationwide drivers ever winning races (which rather cheapens the series in my opinion). Sponsors are blamed for just about everything the fans complain about. Amazing and sad. Separate the business from the sport in the fans eyes. I hear an astounding number of truckers discussing sponsors needs, decisions and desires as though that’s a regular part of their experience due to the radio show presenters constantly using the sponsors wishes to justify the things the fans don’t like. Now with Angie Skinner actively working in the marketing side of NASCAR the marketing propaganda has increased to hysterical proportions. Sigh.
The jet dryers and Air Titan are out and working on the track. Sounds like the best that we’ll be able to say about the race is that it will be short. The track is green so I can’t imagine there will be a lot of passing, though the last time they were racing to rain (Daytona 500) there was a lot of racing – but that was a huge track with a lot of room to move around. Bristol isn’t and I think that might limit the action.
Driver intros are scheduled for about 10 minutes or so. I wish they’d show those completely instead of allowing Michael Waltrip to continue yakking. Happy Harvick is on the desk right now. Okay. One of the things I used to like about rain delays was that they would have lots of drivers on to talk about whatever. It used to be fun. Now its more time for Mikey to clown and few drivers filling the time with interesting chat.
Steve Byrnes was doing an interview with Kurt Busch and Krista Voda was somewhere nearby just yakking away. It was very difficult to keep the thread of what Kurt was saying, because of how much Krista was talking through Kurt’s long answers. Kurt was trying to be a good interview, but his answers ended up being long to me, because I was trying to understand what he was saying between Krista’s chatter, so it seemed he was taking the long way around to getting to his point.
So we’re going to see DW’s piece with Kasey again. So that’s twice for the piece on the town of Bristol and now twice on the Kasey Kahne interview. They need to be able to get the drivers to fill the time. Someone is not doing a good job. At the very least just show the driver intros if Chris Myers, Michael Waltrip and DW need a break. Or go down to the pit reporters and let them talk to drivers.
I’m missing the truck and ARCA races. It used to be nice to have three or four days or actual racing just about every week. The truck series races were boring overall last season. I think the large number of rookies along with the number of underfunded teams and the domination by the money teams resulting in little variety made for a boring season. It’s weird, because a couple years ago the Truck series races were the best every weekend, then they cut the number of races and the veterans began to disappear from the series. The money may be following the kids, but they don’t know how to put on show by racing hard and racing well.
Kasey’s song is Bottom’s Up, Carl Edward’s song is Kickstart My Heart. The songs are way more interesting than anything that comes out of the mouths of Michael Waltrip or Chris Myers. It would be more interesting if DW had someone knowledgeable to talk to (like the old Trackside days). Good Times, Bad Times for Greg Biffle. I’m going to try to find a list of the songs. No luck. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
The only thing I want to see at Bristol is driver introductions and they yap and yap and show everything but. Showing previous year’s driver intros would be fun. Dude! You have the wrong mixture of people on the desk to fill this time. Chris Myers is just not good at this stuff. I’ve not yet figured out how Michael Waltrip has become so bad at this. I used to enjoy listening to him on things, but he didn’t talk as much. He acted like someone else had something of interest to say and wasn’t just promoting his drivers and his sponsors. He’s become as much of a shill (or maybe more) as Carl Edwards these days.
Why do they insist on talking to AJ Allmendinger. I don’t get the fascination with him. Of course, until he apologizes for his druggie pas I’m going to have issues with him. He completed the road to recovery, but, like Michael Waltrip and Clint Bowyer, never really admitted wrongdoing and apologized.
Mikey said Jamie McMurray sent him a tweet or text that if he said anything else about his hair he was going to get uncomfortable. It’s sad that a driver needs to tell a purported, paid, professional broadcaster needs to be told that. But then again he’s made me uncomfortable with his obsession with Kasey Kahne, and with Ross Chastain ( the watermelon boy), and with Denny Hamlin, and a couple others. I understand Jamie Mc’s point.
Wow Kate and Ms. Nancy are both at the track with Carl. I’ve not seen that in quite a while. That’s nice.
Finally at 14:45 the command has been given to start engines. There’s more rain forecasted, so they’re probably racing to rain, but Darrel used to always mention the vortex effect at this track which keeps the rain away, so maybe it will be in effect and they’ll get it all in. There’s going to be a competition caution at lap 50.
The race has begun and the announcers are excited. By the way, anybody beside us find that tiny little picture on the top right side of the screen with tiny little cars useless? I’m guessing everyone is supposed to have a television screen the size of the wall, but since I don’t the side-by-side coverage isn’t very different from the typical replace programming with a commercial. I do the same thing, leave the room or pay more attention to something else during that time, because its a commercial break with a weird screen format – the race isn’t realistically visible.
The blue flag is the move over flag Mike Joy has just informed us. Things to keep in mind when next I visit a track. I enjoy watching the goings on at the flag stand.
Jeff Gordon ran into David Ragan on pit road. Big Daddy was coming out. Ragan was coming in and Big Daddy spun Ragan around as he tagged him in the left rear.
This race is scheduled for 500 laps. Jimmie “rolled the dice” (to quote DW) and took two tires to gain track position and won the race off pit road.
Another caution is out on lap 60 of 500 for debris in turn 2.
So during the commercial break the 30 of Parker Kligerman had an issue and went into the infield and slid back onto the track in traffic so we’re back under caution on lap 65. Parker had to start from the back, because they changed the engine after repairing the damage from Danica hitting him in practice on Friday and just as they finished the painting they realized they needed to change engines. The 40 has something trailing from it. It looks like crepe paper streamers or something. Looks like a battery pack got hit and it might have gotten hung up under Parker’s car causing him to spin out. Alex Bowman (23) has stalled at the bottom of lap one. They’re thinking that he lost his battery. Looks like he did. They’re looking under his car now.
Joey Logano says the power steering is gone on his car around lap 103 of 500.
PR is reporting rain in the area.
Jimmie lost a right front tire on lap 115 of 500 and is going in for a change, so he’s losing laps while pitting under green. They run inner-liners at Bristol.
Now the caution has come out on lap 124 for rain. Joey Logano was in the free pass position, but won’t get the free pass because he’s coming in to pit road.
So here’s something weird, Jimmie didn’t have a flat tire, the tread just came off of it. He lost control and when he took it in to pit road, the tire had air.
Jimmie is in 39th position as a result of the tire issue.
Jeff Gordon took responsibility for the accident between he and David Ragan, because he said its their responsibility coming out of the pits. Jeff Gordon is up to 16th now.
Weird race so far.
NASCAR has told radio it is saying it’s going to be an hour before they get the track cleaned up.
Jimmie says they are multiple laps down. He thinks three. I heard two earlier. He says there’s a lot of racing to go so he hopes they can make them up, but he seems dejected. He had a 50 foot piece of tread – it came apart in a long string and they don’t know why. He said it definitely wasn’t a strategy issue, but something with the tire. He doesn’t know if they ran over something that scored the tread and then it came apart or what. He seems so discouraged about this race. They said earlier that Chad Knaus said this wasn’t one of their best tracks. Why all the gloom and doom. That’s not the 48 team I’m used to.
So the toilet paper, according to DW, came from the battery of Alex Bowman’s car. He said they usually put bump rubbers in to cushion the battery, but maybe they didn’t have any, so they used a roll of toilet paper which came out when the battery fell out and that’s why there was toilet paper all over the track. Krista is talking to Rich Heinrich about the issue with the 48’s tire. He said that he wore through the tread rubber on the inside and the wear pins Jimmie was showing were from the outside of the tire. He said unfortunately the tires wear from the inside first. He said under the tread is some fabric which is really strong which is what unwound. So according to the guy from Goodyear it was a 48 strategy issue. Ruh roh!
They tweeted that it was not toilet paper, but the cloth packing that comes with that type of battery.
Danica said she was at Ricky Stinkhouse’s hauler and asked him if there was anything he wanted her to say, a sign he wanted her to thrown and Ricky told Danica to tell them he’s in 10th and they could come down and interview him if they want to. So she told Byrnesy that she thinks he should go visit him.
Alex Bowman apparently tweeted that it wasn’t toilet paper, but tweeted again saying if he’s wrong and it is tp he apologizes. So Myers said the story is unraveling. He’s is as lame as Johnny TV.
Stinkhouse said he noticed that the broadcast was wrong in that they had him in 33rd and one lap down though he’s actually in tenth.
Someone (@smokesoakjoe) tweeted Bowman and said its a fiberglass mat that is used to protect the battery from the acid (or something like that – I forget by the time he gets to the end of quoting whomever that is). He said they call him Bad Luck Bowman for a reason. Chris Myers didn’t know that there were drivers who had a monkey in his car in the old days. I’m not sure he actually believes Mikey. Sad that he knows so little about NASCAR.
Byrnsey was talking to Menard about his wife’s pregnancy and that Matt Craven has been on standby since Daytona and he asked how she was doing. Menard gave him a very clipped and grumpy ‘fine’. The he asked if she went into labor now would he leave and go home since he’d get the driver points and Menard looked away and said they were worried about getting the race in and its a short drive there and he and his team have a plan and they know what it is and what they will do and right now they have a race to finish. I walked out of the room and heard what sounded like Menard say to Byrnesy what, you tried to just slip one in, and Byrnesy exclaimed No sounding a bit taken aback. I don’t know why that seems like a no-go subject. That was weird. Menard stiffened up as soon as Byrnesy started into the first question. He’s answered questions about the impending baby without a problem until now. Strange. I don’t get it.
The radar seems to indicate, according to Chris Myers, that there will be a big rain-free opening once they get this cleared out and cleaned up.
PRN is saying Jimmie is three laps down. They also brought up the toilet paper/fiberglass issue. They’re saying at 17:35 NASCAR says it will be at least 30 minutes more. TV is showing the ‘biggest rivalries’, so we’ve seen a little Jimmy Spencer/Kurt Busch, some Carl Edwards/Brad Keselowski, some Jeff Gordon/Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon/Tony Stewart, some Kevin Harvick/Ricky Rudd, KHarv/Greg Biffle, some Dale Earnhardt/Rusty Wallace and of course it ends up with Cale Yarbrough vs the Allison brothers (Donnie and Bobby). They showed Lake Speed and Michael Waltrip. Now they’re commenting on the Joey Logano/Denny Hamlin feud. That feud was brought up during the week and it appears . KyBusch is hitting Skittles hard. He’s ended every interview I’ve heard today with Taste the Rainbow and said he has too many Skittles under his wheels right now and once the Skittles get laid back on the track they’ll get going. It’s drizzling there now. Right now KyBu is tied with Jeff Gordon and KuBu for the most active wins at Bristol.
Byrnsey asked KyBu which was his favorite of the rivalries and he said the Jeff Gordon/Tony Stewart rivalry.
So the rain delay goes on. At 18:00 FOX turned over the television time to local FOX stations and said the race, if it continues, will continue on FOX Sports 1. It’s 18:42 now and PRN will return to the air in three minutes, so we’ll see if they announce a return to racing tonight or a postponement until tomorrow. Since rain is also forecast for tomorrow I wonder if they will postpone or try to get the race in under the lights,
The writing on FOX Sports 1’s crawl is so small I can never read it, so I don’t know if they announce things like this or not. I don’t have that problem with ESPN. Interesting.
PRN is back on. The rain delay began at 15:46 today according to PRN and as a result Matt Kenseth has been the leader for hours now. Biffle was sleeping in his car and it started to get cold. He had to leave the car and go to the hauler, because it was cold. He thinks later on there will be a better chance to get the race in, because he says the rain chance will go down.
Looks like they’re close to going back racing. Tv is showing an episode of Shut up and Drive. On the PA they’ve told the drivers to return to their cars. I walked up to the television and the scroll had that coverage will continue when the race restarts. Covers are coming off the cars.
Alex Bowman says he promises it wasn’t toilet paper.
So we’ve started the K&N race after Shut Up and Drive. PRN thinks they will be getting the command to start engines soon. The jet dryers are on the back pit road now and the cars are lined up on the front pit road. Once the cars get off the front pit road they will dry that one. Seems TV doesn’t expect . One of the guys on PRN said this might be the smallest crowd to see the conclusion of a Sprint Cup race, but those are the die-hards. He said people have been trickling out all day due to the rain and the cold. The drivers are expecting to get all 500 laps in, because theoretically there’s supposed to be a clear 3 or 4 hours. They’ve just given the command to re-fire the engines at 19:03.
TV Broadcast has just returned at 19:05. There’s news of snow showers in the area now. Kelan is so cute in his little skull cap with a pom. Delana looks like she’s in big winter with a furred white coat. They’re working on Joey Logano’s car now behind the wall. The caution laps are underway.
Jason “Ratface” Ratcliff says its probably 20 degrees cooler now than it was when they started earlier.
Joey Logano is on pit road now. The wave around cars are going around, including Jimmie, so he got one of his laps back.
At 19:16 the green flag is in the air on lap 136. There will be a competition caution at lap 186.
Cole White spun into the wall. Timmy Hill rammed into the back of Matt Kenseth. Cole & Danica got together to cause him to spin. Jamie Mc ran over a piece of the back of Kenseth’s car which fell off. Kenseth (20) said he slammed into Kurt Busch (41) when he got hit.
Competition caution is out.
Somehow Kenseth has remained on the lead lap it appears. Jimmie is two laps down. The tire wear makes staying out and taking the wave around a bad idea. Ryan Newman and Clint Bowyer stayed out and they’re both being passed easily by just about everybody. The Busch boys are leading at lap 217.
Caution is out on lap 276. Ryan Truex hit the wall. Kyle Busch has just come in for a green flag tire change. He said after the tire change they still have the same problem. Ryan Truex’s car is on fire on pit road. Kyle was coming back into the pits. He could take the wave around to get one of his down laps back on this caution. Kyle Busch ran over Ryan Truex’s brake rotor which was bouncing along the track.
“World’s fastest conyevor belt” says Mike Joy – when it looks like that its the most boring race. This race has varied between the world’s fastest conveyor belt and an action-packed surprise-fest.
There seems to be a caution now. Not sure why, but when we come back from commercial pit stops are underway.Lap 331 David Ragan and Michael McDowell got into each other and David spun around. Kurt Busch got the free pass.
Dale Jr is still on pit road with the hood up with 164 to go. Apparently Jr has a vibration.
Jimmie is now only one lap down, but there are six one lap down cars ahead of him.
Kenseth the leader is being chased by Kyle Larson and Aric Almirola at lap 351 of 500.
Caution is out at lap 397 of 500 for KyBu spinning and hitting the wall. KuBu has some damage too from apparently clipping KyBu. Thankfully no one t-boned him when his car slid down the track.
With 92 to go Kenseth is bouncing off the wall (twice), but the caution didn’t come out.
With 78 to go Martin Truex spins due to a tire rub on his left rear tire that took out the tire.
Carl Edwards leads the field to the green with 71 to go. He stayed out on the caution.
Kevin Harvick pounded the wall hard on lap 455 and his car was on fire as he was trying to drive it to the garage. The firemen were chasing the car on foot carrying fire extinguishers. Finally Kevin stopped and got out of the car. Then McMurray slows up to avoid KHarv and got hit from behind by Keselowski who had just hit the wall and said he slid in Harvick’s oil. Looks like Jamie Mc is going behind the wall.
They’re taken Keselowski’s hood off and he’s still on the track. Danica (10) apparently ran into Clint Bowyer (15) on pit road and now has damage on her left front.
Carl Edwards leads them to the green flag with 40 to go.
DW just said Jimmy Fenning was Bobby Allison’s crew chief.
Caution is out with two to go. Suddenly a cloudburst over the track. No one could figure out why the caution was thrown, but suddenly we see heavy rain. David Hoots never said put the caution lights on, they just suddenly came on. The 14 and 42 radios said NASCAR wasn’t even taling about putting out the caution. They put out the caution and checkers on lap 503 so Carl Edwards wins.