2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series The Clash at Daytona

Congratulations to Alex Bowman in winning the pole for the Daytona 500 in his first year replacing Dale Earnhardt Jr in the 88 car.

Congrats to Michael Self on battling through and winning the ARCA race last night at Daytona. Congrats also to Natalie Decker on winning the pole and on her fifth place finish after overcoming adversity and avoid a couple of crashes. Same goes for Lelani Munter who kept it rolling through the grass to avoid one of the wrecks and finished eighth.

The lineup for this race was determined by random draw.

I’m seeing a number of commercials for the Atlanta race next weekend. It’s 81 degrees and sunny in Daytona right now. Nice racing weather. It is 67 and rainy in Atlanta today. The forecast for the coming weekend is not quite as nice – highs in the mid 50s, breezier, with a chance of rain. Funny thing about southerners, since we’re used to the heat, it feels colder to us before folks from colder parts of the country start complaining. The track has a guarantee – or did last year – promising the ticket holder a ticket to a different event that season if the temperature isn’t at least 50 degrees. Personally I’m not going to enjoy myself sitting in bleachers at less than 70 degrees. I know this from experience. The first race I attended was in late October and the high temperature was in the low 70s when the sun was out – and quite breezy. When the sun was in the temperature dropped 10-15 degrees and with the breeze I was shivering. Luckily, it was my first race, so I was very excited, the sun eventually came out and stayed out and the race was exciting so I did quite a bit of jumping and cheering. That said I carefully checked the forecast the following year before deciding to attend the race. When the races were on Labor Day I attended all except the final race. I was unable to get adequate lodging for the weekend and doing the drive isn’t really an option. The track is in a suburb of Atlanta, about 35 miles from the city, on the other side of Atlanta from me, making it more than an hour’s drive in good traffic. It’s a few hours in race traffic.

I hope NASCAR sees fit to schedule the race on a better weekend in the near future. Labor Day was a horrible choice. There are multiple large annual events in Atlanta that weekend. Also I hope they bring back the three day weekend with Friday night truck racing, Saturday afternoon or evening Xfinity racing and Sunday afternoon Cup racing. They removed the truck race the last couple of years and I very much missed it since it had become the best race of the weekend. Atlanta does not provide good night racing – often too much ‘logging laps’. A weekend in May, early June, or mid September would be good. It would be warm to hot during those times, but it’s Georgia. I don’t think anyone expects cool weather in Daytona or Homestead. The same should hold true for Georgia, though it is all too frequently not the case between mid-October and mid-April. When I worked downtown I would often seen people in shorts, sweatshirts/sweaters/jackets/coats who’d been caught off-guard by the cold temperatures. We’ve spent a lot of days not reaching 30 degrees for days this winter. Georgia can be hot and it can be very cold.

Competition caution is scheduled for lap 25 of 75.

Chris Myers says that Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson at 42 are the two oldest drivers in the field today.

The new rules have removed one of the over-the-wall crew members from the lineup.

NASCAR keeps making changes to save money, but none of the changes seem to improve the racing. I’m also not seeing an influx of single car, or small teams to the sport. So the savings don’t seem to make NASCAR more accessible. It feels as though it is simply NASCAR providing less and expecting to offer the same quality. That formula doesn’t actually work anywhere else so I’m not sure why NASCAR feels it will work for them. Luckily most people have learned to expect much less from providers and believe the marketing that the crumbs they’re receiving are ‘value-added’ in some manner. It would be nice to see NASCAR stop treating their fans like ‘marks’ and show some respect.

Puffy white clouds in the beautiful blue sky as the cars begin the parade laps.

25 laps, caution, then 50 laps for this race.

Austin Dillon and Denny Hamlin were drawn for the front row.

Ryan ‘Son’ Blaney has a screaming yellow car. It is really loud. I had hoped he would have a great car – great paint scheme. His car looks like he lost an argument/contest.

Everybody, just about, decided to pit before the caution. Jimmie got popped for going through too many pits.

Restarting on lap 30 of 75.

The MRN guys are commenting on the pit stops looking awkward due to the new air-guns which are slower and the missing over-the-wall crew member. The stops averaged over 16 seconds – about five seconds longer than a typical stop.

Caution on lap 34 of 75 as Jamie Mc taps the outside wall bringing out the caution.

Restarting on lap 39 of 75 with Chase Elliott in the lead.

The MRN guys are saying the new no-ride-height rule is making a difference in the racing.

Looks like ‘It’ is using Blaney as usual. Let’s see if we get something different out of this for a change.

They seem to keep needing to be single file. Rusty Wallace is talking about how the drivers keep having to get in and out of the throttle and unable to run the cars with the throttle wide-open like they need to. He believes its a handling issue.

Rusty said there was no reason to race at this point of the race when one of the guys mentioned that all of the field are nose-to-tail/single file.

Jamie Mc took his injured car to the garage and is calling it a day.

I saw a headline recently about a change in the rules regarding wrecked race cars. I need to check that out. I hope it will be an improvement to the madness of last season’s five minute rule.

Looks like Ricky Stenhouse just got lapped. Surprising.

The single file parade continues. How boring.

The Penske three are the front of the field. There’s debris on his grill, but not covering the opening.

With 3 to go still single file. Rusty predicted someone would make a move with 15 to go.

There’s finally a second line on the white flag lap. Blaney is down there. It seems like he might have gotten loose again. Looks like KuBu and Newman are making moves.

Wreck on the white flag lap includes the 48, Kahne, Elliot, Truex, Larson, Byron, KyBu. Larson bumped Jimmie and turned him KyBu kept him turning Kasey was trying to avoid Jimmie and turned down in front of Byron who had nowhere to go.

‘It’ crosses the finish line ahead of the field.

That was a totally boring race. My hopes for this season being better than last have taken a massive hit.

Blaney is blaming himself for getting hung out – again. He said he ‘needs to learn from that’. A-men to that. He keeps getting dumped by his teammates in the plate races.

Larson said “obviously I caused a wreck, but I’d like to see what happened.” He said he hates that he started the wreck and admits to hitting Jimmie a solid shot.

Jimmie wants to see video of it. He’s wondering if the pointy nose on the new Camaro contributed to the wreck and if there’s anything he can do in the future to avoid getting turned.

KyBu said the cars were so equal there was never a space to slide up into. He said the cars need to handle a little worse to allow for some moves to be made. He said the race was kind of backwards with the racy moves early in the race and the end of the race single file. He said he’d like to get some separation if they could get that somehow.

Mikey said the closing rate and that Kyle Larson was off-center and had a run and hit Jimmie pretty hard and no one could’ve withstood the force of that hit without wrecking.

NASCAR News:

2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series The Clash at Daytona

Next Race: Daytona

GO 48!!!!