Nascar will rock you

I am not a race fan because of crashes--I would rather see good racing and close finishes--but jrfan07, the screen name of a YouTube contributer, puts together some interesting compilations. This is his latest:


I like the soundtrack.

Those Darn Hendrick Drivers

I'm going to forego writing a comment on this, while referring the reader to an interesting and informative post on the Trackbunny Films blog.
All I can say is, isn't Kyle allowed to race for the championship as well? Geez, what an attitude Jeff and his clone have regarding their team mate.

Short Track Ecstasy

This past weekend was a short track lover's delight, with the NASCAR Toyota All-Stars Showdown, and the NASCAR CTS and Cup series races at Martinsville. There was plenty of beatin' and bangin' to satisfy every fan who is passionate about short track racing.
The NCTS (Craftsman Truck Series) has developed a habit of having close championship points competition, and this year is no different. The lead changes between Hornaday and Skinner every race. Isn't it great to see two of the original members of the series competimg so fiercely?
Talk about fierce competition, how 'bout Sunday's Cup race? Although I haven't given up on my favorite driver, yet, I am beginning to realize that this just may not be Smoke's year, but that thought did not dampen my enthusiasm for the race. There may have been a tad too many cautions for my liking, but overall, it was exciting, even with The Gordon leading. The thought never left my mind that something could happen even if it never did.
No, Jeff the Almighty didn't get taken out of the race, but he didn't win, either, which keeps my picks percentage embarrassingly low. Nonetheless, the race had everything one could expect from a short track Cup race.
Super secret insider conspiracy report: Lauren Wallace made his long awaited NASCAR Cup Series debut, Sunday, in the DEI #1 car. The driver of the Bass Pro Shops #1 car was thought to be Martin Truex, Jr, but a crew member who had returned to the hauler to get more parts for the crash cart, halfway through the found Truex bound and gagged behind the big trailer. Meanwhile, the #1 car was doing everything its driver could to put every car on the track into the wall. Young Wallace's true identity wasn't discovered until after the race was over.
When asked why he highjacked Truex's car, the young television star replied that he wanted everybody to say, "There goes Lauren Wallace, the greatest driver ever to get behind a wheel."
When asked why he didn't try to take out the points leader, Jeff Gordon, when he had the chance, Wallace implied that the time would come when Gordon least expected it.
"Poor fellow, he has no idea," said Wallace, "He'll be looking around saying, 'where's Lauren Wallace?' I'm a hundred miles away, son, ready to strike."
As of the time of this writing, no team has announced security measures to prevent Wallace from getting into another car.

A Star of the future.

Joey Lagano has been having the time of his life this year. At the young age of seventeen, he has won Rookie of the Year, in the NASCAR Busch East series, the Busch East Series Championship, and now, the NASCAR Grand National Toyota All Stars race.
The Toyota All-Star race, which takes place at the much revered Irwindale Raceway, in Irwindale, California, is to the minor leagues of NASCAR what the Knoxville Nationals is to the winged sprint car leagues. It is a celebration of those drivers who race at your local short tracks across the country, as well as a spotlight on those who would otherwise have no national recognition.
Joey Lagano was discovered by none other than Mark Martin, who mentioned his name and reputation to several NASCAR Nextel Cup teams. It was Joe Gibbs Racing who picked the youngster up for their developmental driver program and the rest is history in the making.
Winning the short track All Stars event at Irwindale doesn't automatically gain a young driver a spot on a Cup team. Lagano will still have to prove himself on the speedways, dirt tracks, and superspeedways of the ARCA/Remax Series. According to his peers, many of them seasoned drivers in the various short track venues, Lagano has enough talent that this should be no problem.
Lagano isn't the only driver from the Toyota All Stars who has caught attention. Peyton Sellers, finished second after a long, hard fought battle with Lagano, and an intensly exciting Green/white/checkered finish. No doubt his talent won't be overlooked by the manufacturers and/or major NASCAR teams and sponsors.

Photo credit: Michelle Theriault official website.

Meanwhile, my new favorite lady driver, Michelle Theriault, has garnered enough attention through her sponsorship from Glock Firearms, to make us watch. She has had some impressive finishes in the Busch East Series and in a young ARCA/Remax career. Unfortunately, though she entered the feature race by qualifying on time, she was caught up in the "pretty big one" by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and finished fourtieth. Still, I can't resist a girl with a Glock, and have joined her fan club.
Overall, the season ending event at Irwindale is an extended race for the best of the short track drivers nation-wide, and gives us all the thrill of seeing our local heros on national TV. A surprise guest commentater, Darrell Waltrip, added to the fun of watching the event on Speed TV. We should be thankful to Speed, Toyota, and NASCAR for bringing us this important annual event.

Picking on Martinsville

I am terrible at fantasy games. Even if I had been able to participate--I had no web access for several months--for the full season, my points would probably still be in the backmarker section. I have often wondered why, and that wondering has led me to believe that by picking drivers to win I have jinxed them.
Last year, I quit mentioning Matt Kenseth in my picks, because every time I picked him he ran into terrible luck. I didn't learn my lesson. At the beginning of the Chase this year, I picked him to be a possible Dark Horse winner, and look what has happened to him. I won't even mention the name of my favorite driver in this post.
I will base my picks on the assumption that I do jinx the drivers I pick, and on posts such as this one I found while surfing the forums (From Yahoo Answers, posted by "chritopher1"

Jeff Gordon is the best nascar racer of all time bar none.?
Petty no way his wins don’t matter cause they are inflated and had no competition...Dale sr. was born poor and made it to racing...that don’t make him the greatest driver. His 7 championship either...let him try and win one of the new cup championship...Dale is lucky the 24 wasn’t racing in 86 as well cause then he would never had one championship. beside Jeff Gordon has past Dale in wins in some 300 less races...the 24 would be capturing his 6th title this year if they didn’t try this stupid chase thing.. he would have a 500 pt lead over second even with his 100 pt penalty this year....I know you old heads want to kiss Dale’s feet but please let the man rip...in 3rd place all time...the 24 is the tiger woods of Nascar...and has just as big of a heart as Dale and his brat of a son ever had....24 to the front got another pole today...i know I’m right and i doubt that the uneducated non enunciating Dale SR and JR fan can read this. The 24 could win in any of years past championship the old timers are the ones who couldn’t win today

Now, you can't get any better information than that on who is going to win the race. Jeff Gordon is obviously the Best Racer Ever. Jeff Gordon is so good, that he will win even if his brakes fail and he wrecks his car. Jeff Gordon will be the only car on the track at the finish line, because everybody else will have wrecked trying to beat him. Jeff Gordon is so good, he shouldn't even have to run the race to win. There is no way that anybody is going to beat him, so they should all quit racing now, and go on from the "Drive for Five" to "Six for the Pricks" As the greatest racer ever, and forever more, nobody can come close to beating Jeff Gordon at Martinsville or any other track.
There, you heard it, I'm picking The Gordon to win everything.
Now, let's see how this jinx thing works.

Anything's possible.

It might be as cold in Hell as it is in Colorado today.
After years of disappointment, I still consider myself a Colorado Rockies fan, though watching baseball on television isn't one of my favorite passtimes.
After the first two seasons of their existance, the Rockies story seemed to be the same every year--start the season strong, then slump, then fade into nothing. I got to telling people that "I like the Rockies, so I'm not much of a baseball fan."
Somebody read that exact phrase as I wrote it in one of the forums in which I participate, and sent me a message telling me about the amazing winning streak the Rockies were experiencing. This was before the playoffs, and, dutifully amazed, I watched the Rockies easily take the National League Championship.
So, after seven years of being less than optimistic about my home town baseball team, I find that the Rockies are a very real World Series contender.
With that in mind, I have to consider that there are still five races to go in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Chase for the Championship, there is no way we can give up on Tony Stewart. Jeff Gordon has said, after the last two races, that nobody should give up on Stewart, that he can still come back and win the chase, and that he could do it without the HMS teams running into trouble. Jeff Gordon is saying this to keep himself motivated to excell, but he is also the most experienced active driver in the Cup Series when it comes to competing for the championship, so we have to assume that he knows what he is talking about.
I would rather see Gordon and Johnson take each other out at Martinsville--they are entirely capable of doing that, as competitive as they are--but to think that Stewart can come from behind without help from other peoples misfortune takes a lot of faith.

Still, knowing Tony's talent and abilities, having that faith is not, at this point, overly optimistic. A lot can happen in five races, and getting top two's in each of those five races is not that far fetched for the #20 team. Most of the journalists in the Media have given up on Smoke, but Jeff Gordon hasn't, his team hasn't, and I'm not ready to do that either.

Great for Indianapolis Motor Speedway history buffs

While surfing, recently, I came across a wonderful website called The First Superspeedway.
Here is an excerpt from the site's overview:

Auto racing historians and journalists will find this Web site a gold mine. This is the best collection of pre-World War I American oval track auto racing research in the world. This site is chock full of volumes of material about the earliest oval horse track races, and, of course, the seminal races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As a bonus, there's some great road racing content as well, such as original articles about the brutally hot first French Grand Prix in 1906. Here's a quick overview of what you'll find:

Hundreds of 90 to 100+ year-old first-hand account articles.
Entire books written by people from the era scanned in PDF format.
Compelling scanned images lifted from the articles – some examples are on this page.
Pen and ink artwork you can use as free clip art
Original articles by me, Mark Dill

The site is, indeed, a treasure for racing history buffs, and the old photographs are fantastic. The books and articles are linked to pdf format, so it is necessary to have Adobe Reader downloaded to your computer, but the time it takes to download is well worth it for this site alone.