Live on type delay: Dover

Wasn't that the cutest "Shentlemens, sharatart yo ehnshinens" you ever heard? It made me go awwwww! That made me forget all about Darrell Waltrip calling JD Gibbs a liar during the prerace show. "The one thing that says that (Stewart) will be making a move is that he hasn't said he will be at Gibbs next year."

Waltrip may be an expert when it comes to racing, but it should be noted that he resorted to that logic precisely because he has no more of an idea what is going on in contract negotiations than anybody else in the media. All he had to do was listen to Tony say, on the pre race show before Darlington three weeks ago, "We were never planning on leaving Gibbs."

Nor did Waltrip read the article last week in which JD Gibbs asserted that Smoke will be held to his contract through 2009, and that Gibbs Racing would be fielding a fourth team to accomodate rising star Joey Logano, when he is ready. If Waltrip did read the article, then he called Gibbs a liar, and that is the point at which I muted the TV and tuned the radio in to MRN. In Waltrip's defense, however, we must remark that perhaps he doesn't know that Stewart's current contract runs through 2009.

The first seventeen laps of the race were without incident. Then came disaster. Elliott Sadler was trying to "Diamond" the track, which means trying to make the straightest line possible by moving from the outside of the corner to the inside for the exit of the turn. That is fine, as long as there is nobody trying to run the inside. Unfortunately, for Sadler, Junior, Smoke, Bowyer, Riggs, Harvick. Kahne, Labonte, and Hamlin, David Gililand was trying to run the inside of the turn, and as Sadler came down the track, the front of Gililand's car hit the left rear of Sadler's car. Sadler's car spins and is hit by the #20 car, which results in a big pile up behind them.

When the race restarts, after the red flag period, everybody pits. Biffle restarts in the lead. Some of the cars that only received minor damage are back on the track quickly, and Labonte's car is the first one that needed repair to reenter the race, two laps down. He is joined by Earnhardt, Jr. who comes on to the track ten laps down.

There is some great racing going on with Biffle, who had taken two tires during the first pit stop in the lead, and Kyle Busch in second. It may be too early to see the dream race match between the two, but the anticipation is there.Biffle seems to be pulling away from Busch. Further back, there has been some good racing between Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards for third place, as the two battle back and forth. On lap 56, Edwards seals the deal for third place.

Of the cars that were involved in the big wreck on lap 17, Tony Stewart's is the last one out, 114 laps down. Hamlin and Sadler are out of the race.

Giving credit to Mike of Trouble in Turn 2, we will fast forward to the final twenty percent of the race, since this is the part of of the race that matters. Besides, we had to run an errand/fall asleep/check on the Indycar race, for a while, so we may have missed something, but it doesn't seem so. Nothing much has happened up to this point. There were some lead changes, but by the time we get to the final green flag pit stops, beginning on lap 317, nothing has changed in the running order of the top six. By the time the pit stops cycle through, Ryan Newman has had to take extra time in the pits to repair brakes, which takes him out of contention, and there are only seven cars on the lead lap.

With 41 laps to go, Kyle Busch has extended his lead over second place Carl Edwards by seven seconds. We are not surprised by that, nor are we surprised that Matt Kenseth is running in fourth place. Kyle Busch, who has been taking care of his car, having finally learned to look at the big picture, much to the disappointment of fans who want to see him wreck someone or be wrecked.

MRN has an interview with Tony Stewart on Kyle Busch:
"I am proud to have him as a team mate...I don't usually stay in the hauler and watch the truck races, but he is a lot of fun to watch...he gets everything he can out of the car and that is what you want in a driver."

One of the reasons folks think Smoke wants to leave JGR is that he doesn't get along with Kyle Busch. If "Jaws" Waltrip heard that interview, he probably thinks Stewart is lying again.

Fourteen laps to go, and Kyle Busch is still first, five seconds ahead of Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle is third, Matt Kenseth is fourth and Jeff Gordon is fifth. Ho hum. That's the way it finishes.

Patience and restraint is the order of the day for today's race. Even the "Wild Thing" decided he didn't have to be so wild to win the race. It didn't make the race exciting, by any means, but it was a race, and it showed that even Kyle Busch can be perfect in hitting his marks and getting around lapped traffic. If you are going to blame the win on the "extra horsepower" of the Toyota engines, you should know that the only other Toyota finishing in the top ten was Dave Blaney in ninth.

I don't know if the reason for the mediocrity of the race was the restrictions on the rear end tracking, or maybe that many of the possible contenders were taken out early in the race. Since NASCAR still allows a half an inch of rear end toe out, I don't think that was really the problem, so we have to believe it may have been a better race if it wasn't for that big crash. The race definitely went downhill from there.

Still, its racing, and we wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Safety features pass ultimate test.

At PPIR, in 1999, we were sitting just over the final turn of an AMA motorcycle racing course. Right in front of us a rider accelerating out of that final turn had his motor freeze up and the motorcycle stopped dead, from 110 mph, throwing the rider to the pavement, over the handlebars and face down. He slid like that for nearly 200 feet and lay still. My friends and I, and all those around us were silent and shocked, certain we had just seen someone get killed in front of our very eyes. For at least ten minutes--it seemed longer--we sat trying to deal with it, praying, crying, or just sitting with head in hands. Then the rider--a Japanese guy whose name escapes me--sat up, and was helped to the waiting ambulance, limping but otherwise okay, mostly under his own power. That was on a Friday, during the preliminary heats. He raced on Sunday in the feature.
During NASCAR Sprint Cup qualifying, for the Samsung 500 it seemed like Deja-Vu as rookie Michael McDowell lost the handle on his car coming out of turn four, and, while trying to get the car under control, lost the car completely entering turn one. The rear slid around to the left, shooting his car directly into the barrier outside the turn at approximately 180 mph. The car bounced off the SAFER barrier, slid a bit, then violently rolled eight times, on fire and losing pieces all over the track. It was almost certain that the driver would be seriously injured, at least. But, miraculously, McDowell climbed out of his car on his own and walked to the ambulance with only a slight limp.
These "miracles" occurred by virtue of safety features and equipment. The motorcycle racers wear lots of body armor, including a piece that reinforces the spine, and goes from the base of the skull to the tailbone. That is what saved the rider's life in 1999.
For McDowell it was a combination of many safety features that have been implemented since 2001. The SAFER barrier absorbed much of the impact, protecting the the driver from experiencing the full force of the collision. The HANS device prevented his head from snapping forward on impact, preventing serious injury to the spine and spinal cord, even to the point of preventing a fatality.
When the Sprint Cup Car was first conceived, as the "Car of Tomorrow," the main feature the designers wanted to build into it was safety. The "green house," in which the driver sits was made larger, the driver's position was moved closer to the center of the car, and the frame was reinforced in various places in order to protect the cockpit from the force of impact from various directions.
These safety features have been put to the test several times this season. Jeff Gordon hit the inner corner of the emergency vehicle access opening at Las Vegas head on without the benefit of a SAFER barrier and walked away from the wreck with a few bumps and bruises. But Friday, we saw the car put to the ultimate test. We saw a horrifying wreck that undoubtedly would have resulted in serious injury or even fatality in the older car, only to see the driver walk away relatively unharmed. If safety is the main reason in the design of the Sprint Cup car, then the new car has proven itself.

Is this really necessary?

The idea of using restricter-spacers similar to the ones used in the Truck Series in all the Nationwide Series races is one for which the jury is still out, as far as I'm concerned.It is supposed to save the teams money on building engines, allowing the same engines to last for two races rather than one.
The actual reasoning for that is controversial. Some teams have expressed concern that running the engine wide open, even at lower rpms, will do nothing to save the engines.
In these days of concerns about sponsorship, especially in the Nationwide series, it is gratifying that NASCAR is trying to find ways to cut costs, to make sponsorships less expensive, and to help the teams develop, but they changed something that would have worked well for them as far as revenue goes. That is, the quality of the racing.

It will get better as the drivers get used to it, but it was also the cause of several accidents, during both practice and the Sam's Town 300. There were nine cars taken out of the race due to accidents, and at least seven of them were due to misjudgement on the part of the driver in relation to the performance characteristics of the cars. There were also several mechanical failures involving either the engine or the transmission.

The Nationwide series had a chance to have its day in the spotlight. The cars were actually faster than the Cup cars, without the spacer plates, the drivers felt comfortable in the conventional cars, and the racing promised to be excellent this season.The spacer plate seems to have taken away that promise. There is no passing on the straightaways, as we have seen in the Cup cars, because the cars do not speed up coming off the turns, but slow down. Letting up off the throttle causes problems in the cars being able to make the turn, and, as in restricter-plate racing on the Cup level, causes problems for traffic closing from behind.
But, like many a crew chief, NASCAR itself has never heard the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
There is a need to make sponsorship cheaper, and that would benefit the teams, but it would be benificial to ensure good racing that would draw the crowds and the viewing audience, as that is what will capture the interest of the sponsors. NASCAR needs to find that fine line of balance between the two.
(photos by Mark J Rebilas/US PRESSWIRE courtesy That's Racing.com)

And so it begins....

It was only a practice session, and it wasn't even practice for a points race. Before the first competition green flag for the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup session, we saw the "Big One" at Daytona and the first Busch/Stewart altercation of the season.

It only underscores the competition level in the Cup series when, while looking for the perfect setup with which to run Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout, the 23 contestants for that event began racing each other during the final practice session.

The kind of aggressive driving that caused an eight car accident could be justified by the fact that the Formula N car has yet to be raced at Daytona, and the teams were attempting to gather data on their set ups in every possible situation. Thus the drivers were only following orders when they were practicing bump drafting and three-wide passing.

The incident was so spectacular that I first thought that maybe I was watching highlights from a previous Bud Shootout.
(Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

"But," I ask, "what kind of useful information could a crew chief possibly get from having his driver block a car that is trying to pass him?"
I'm referring to the second incident, which caused a wreck between Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch.

Busch was riding the high groove when Stewart approached from behind and attempted to pass beneath him. For some reason, Busch moved down to block him. When Stewart moved back up the track, Dirty Kurty moved back up with him, and when he did, Stewart clipped him in the rear, and Busch's #2 car turned into the wall.

In my opinion, Kurt should not have moved down to block Tony when he was trying to pass beneath him, and there is no excuse for that, because there wasn't anyone in front of Busch to cause him to move down. When Tony went back up, and Kurt moved up again, there was no reason for that either, even if he says he moved up to let Tony by.

From the on board cameras in the 11, 9, and 96 cars, it really did look like Smoke hit the wall before he hit the 2 car, and may not have been in control at the time he made contact with Dirty Kurty. Denny Hamlin handled the incident very well, even though his car was caught up in the mess, saying it was just two cars going for the same real estate. Afterwards, several teams decided to call it quits for practice for fear that things had gotten out of hand.

But the on track incident isn't what bothered NASCAR, it was what happened on pit road. Stewart had already left the track and had entered the pit lane on his way to the garage. Busch raced his smoking car onto pit road and began running his car repeatedly into the side of the #20 car. Smoke stopped his car in the middle of the road, and prepared to deliver a Jimmy Spencer treatment to the clown in the #2 car, but Greg Zippadelli, Smoke's crew chief appeared near the car to calm him down and talk him into taking the car into the garage.
(AP Photo/Terry Renna)

Kurt Busch not only has a history of using his car as a weapon of retaliation on pit row, but he also has a reputation of carrying a grudge much farther than is practical or rational. You may remember the continuing altercations between Busch and Jimmy Spencer that carried over for twelve races during the 2002 and 2003 racing seasons.

Jim Hunter is quoted as saying that the drivers' histories would not be taken into consideration in taking action for the incident, but Busch was in meeting with the NASCAR officials much longer than Stewart was, which indicates that Dirty Kurty may be in much more trouble than Smoke. If Kurt Busch gets parked, I would not be surprised.
If nothing else, all the excitement during a mere practice session should guarantee an increased viewership of tonight's Bud Shootout. I know my adreniline level is up in anticipation of one heck of a race. The season has begun, and so far, it has not been disappointing.

Experiencing near emotional trauma is good.

Ups and downs are what it's all about. All the different emotions we went through so quickly during the Daytona 500 produced the kind of rush we hungered for during the short but oh-so-long NASCAR off season. When you're full of elation because your favorite driver is leading the race with fifty laps to go and sure to win, you feel like you are on top of the world, only to have that bubble burst when your driver has to let up on the throttle because his car slides, and gets run into from behind and wrecks. Wow!
Tony Stewart was definitely the driver to beat, with the best car in the field, having proven it by moving from the tail end of the field after problems in the pit, back to the front. It took him sixty one laps, or roughly one hundred fifty one miles to get there, because the traffic was bad, but he did it. It was almost certain that he would win his first Daytona 500.
But it's racing, and anything could happen, and it did. Kurt Busch was following close behind, in Stewart's draft, and when Smoke's #20 car slid, Busch couldn't react quickly enough to avoid the wreck. Both cars were out of the race, and there really wasn't anybody we could blame for it.
Now, one could think that the race was over for Tony Stewart or Kurt Busch fans as well, but that's not the case for this race fan nor for any other fan I know. We might be disappointed, angry, frustrated, and even saddened to the point of tears, no, actually cryijng, but such is the nature of the diehard race fan that we just have to stick around to see what happens next. And we were treated to one heck of a race.
For the most part, the Daytona 500 was a clean race, and even when there were mishaps, responsibility was admitted to, and the victim of such mishaps walked away with the sportsmanlike attitude of "well, that's racin'."
When it got down to the end, with a restart and just three laps to go, we were on our feet, cheering and yelling for Mark "The Kid" Martin, who had taken the lead and seemed about to win his first Daytona 500 in his twenty-five year NASCAR Cup Career. Martin "retired" two seasons ago, but he just couldn't quit. When his choices for 2007 amounted to either a full time Cup Ride with Roush Racing (now Roush-Fenway Racing), or a full time Truck Series ride, with very limited Cup racing, he made a third choice--to quit the team with which he had spent his entire career and take a 22 race contract with Bobby Ginn Racing (formerly MB2, which will confuse me for the rest of the season). Now he was driving a Chevy, not the Ford he had driven his entire time in Cup racing, to victory.
Several things happened next, as happens in racing in such a very short time. Behind the leaders, coming out of the last turn of the final lap, one or more cars got sideways in their drivers' attempts to improver their position at the last second, and cars were spinning, flying, and spinning everywhere. Horrible thoughts of that tragic day in 2001, when the Daytona 500 ended with the loss of one of NASCAR's greatest drivers, briefly crossed our minds, and we were relieved to see all of the drivers involved walk away without injury. While all that was happening, the race was won by a mere .02 second, by a first time Daytona 500 winner, not Mark Martin, but Kevin Harvick. We were disappointed that Martin didn't win, but, knowing how much this one race means to the drivers and the fans, we were happy for "Happy" Harvick. We were happy for Mark Martin for being able to give it such a great try. We were happy for Richard Childress, the owner of the car Kevin Harvick won in, which is figuratively the same car that the late Dale Earnhardt, Childress' best friend, drove to so many victories. Mostly, we were happy that racing was back for another season, and that the season opener had been a doozey.

If Brian Vickers Raced Bicycles...

Okay, not to pick on the guy, but I just couldn't resist. This isn't how I feel about Vickers, whom I think is an underrated driver, but this does go along with the perception that many people have of the kid since Talladega:

Please click here if you can't see the video.

Off-Season Dangerous for NASCAR Champs

2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson broke his wrist last Sunday, and it was not in a racing incident. He was participating in a celebrity golf tournament, when the driver of his golf cart took a sharp turn, and Johnson fell out. This will prevent his participation in this year's Nations' Cup in Paris next weekend, a fun racing event featuring champions from all types of racing, but is not expected to prevent him from preseason testing at Daytona next month.
It should be noted that Tony Stewart, the 2005 champion, broke his wrist last year during the off season while racing in the Chili Bowl National Midget Series. At least he did it in a race car, while Johnson was the victim of a freak accident. The off season seems to have become dangerous for champions, any way you look at it.