Various racing thoughts while wondering if Drew Bledsoe is laughing his ass off at Tony Romo's recent collapses, if Faith Hill is still stewing about Carrie Underwood, if Tony Romo can dodge opposing defenses enough to cuddle with Underwood, and if Keith Olbermann will ever get his sanity back......
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Kirk Shelmerdine got rebuked for running a Bush-Cheney sticker on his racecar by the FEC, though he got a humorous defense of his action by one member. Given how venal politics can be, is it any wonder a Democratic activist would call attention to something like this? It also brings to mind this tidbit from Greg Fielden's photo history NASCAR Chronicle - Roy Tyner ran a Kennedy-Johnson sticker on his car during the 1960 Grand National season, a sticker reflecting his own views on the Presidential race rather than any kind of sponsorship deal. Given how close that fateful 1960 election proved to be, one can reasonably say Tyner's vote swung the election.
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Doug Richert is a pretty amazing crew chief. Preparing for Red Bull Racing's 2007 assault on the Winston Cup Series with Talladega winner Brian Vickers, Richert will be involved in his 28th season as a major league crew chief. Richert has run a pretty hard gamut; he was pressed into crew chief duties in June 1980 for Dale Earnhardt when J.C. Elder quit Rod Osterlund's team; Richert helped Earnhardt win the 1980 title but the collapse of Osterlund's team left him adrift; he worked at Richard Childress' team before moving over to the Neil Bonnett #12 Chevy of Junior Johnson. The late 1980s and early '90s were lean times for Richert's crew chiefing career - he reunited with Osterlund in his ill-fated two-year return to NASCAR 1989-90 - but it the formation of the Craftsman Truck Series that anded him back onto a major league stage as he was signed up by Dale Earnhardt Inc. and driver Ron Hornaday. That success eventually saw Richert come to Roush Racing and Greg Biffle, and the tandem exploded to eleven wins together.
Now Richert takes the reins of Red Bull Racing's #83, and some of their adventures can be chronicled here.
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Remember when it used to be that a driver needed five years before it could be determined if he'd be a power in the sport? A graphic illustration of how irrelevent age and experience have become -
In 1992-3, of the sport's thirteen different winning drivers, six had more than seven years Winston Cup experience while a seventh, Mark Martin, ran his rookie year in 1982, fell off the tour in mid-1983, then came back in 1988. Jump to 1999; of that season's eleven winners, only four had more than seven years experience. In 2006, only two drivers had more than seven years experience - Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Brian Vickers all had less than five years experience, and all but Kahne won races in their rookie season - in fact, one has to go back to 1998 and ill-fated Winston Cup washout Kenny Irwin to find the only other season in the last eight years a rookie failed to win.
So to say the hiring of Winston Cup quitters Ricky Rudd and Ward Burton for rides in 2007 is a mistake should be restatement of the obvious - and yet the reaction of fans that I've seen shows that this point isn't clear to a lot of people.
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Is the Erin Crocker Error - err, Era - over yet? Apparantly not, as she tested in ARCA's late-December Daytona test and appears to have been demoted to ARCA with the disbanding of her Truck team. Given how poorly she did in her 2005 race outings, can anyone profess surprise that she was a washout in the Trucks? It makes one wonder what anyone could see in her as a racer, beyond following the gender mau-mauing of "diversity."
I could say she looks like a dorky version of Amy Grant, but that would be an insult to Amy Grant.
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From the Whatever happened to.....? files - whatever happened to Bob Rahilly and Butch Mock? In the 1980s they had one of the unsung teams of NASCAR, the Rahmoc Racing Pontiac #75, a car that won with Neil Bonnett and should have won with Morgan Shepherd.
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How far back has Ken Schrader been racing? The old Car & Track TV series filmed him at a NAMARS midget race during Speedweeks 1975.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been airing episodes of Car & Track in edited form and it's the best thing SPEED Channel has besides live race coverage.
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Well, Happy New Year everyone.
Showing posts with label 2006 season. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2006 season. Show all posts
Friday, December 29, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Pocono Summer 500 Miscellenia
The Summer 500 at Pocono - aka The Pennsylvania 500 - got off to a decent start with Denny Hamlin's second straight Pocono pole, but that and other on-track stuff has been overlooked of late due to a plethora of Silly Season stories, the latest of which is the soap opera that is Robert Yates Racing. The story goes that David Gilliland, the surprise BGN winner at Kentucky earlier this year, has been offered one of two Yates Fords for 2007. The other half of this story concerns Yates development driver Stephen Leicht, supposedly slated to get the other Yates Ford for 2007.
Some will object that pairing two rookies as teammates without a veteran to guide them is a recipe for disaster. As it is, it might be. But the regular comment that a rookie needs a veteran driver to guide him is a cliche that dies hard despite some evidence to the contrary, such as the failure of Kenny Irwin under the wing of Dale Jarrett when both drove for Yates in 1998-9. There is also the comparative washout of Jamie McMurray at Ganassi/SABCO under the wing of Sterling Marlin.
The whole veteran-bringing-rookie-along approach always sounds like a good idea but it often doesn't work because the veteran sees the rookie as a rival, not a partner. So if Yates teams up two rookies, he may have as good a shot at turning his program around as he would pairing a rookie with a veteran.
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There is also the question that the sport ought to be asking - why is it not requiring young drivers to spend periods encompassing several years in the minors - BGN, Trucks - before bringing them to the Winston Cup level. With recent talk about a shortage of capable driving talent and rumors of drivers such as Ward Burton, Bill Elliott, and Mark Martin either coming out of retirement or coming back after lengthy periods away from the sport, the sport needs to reexamine how it develops young drivers.
What could be wrong with requiring young drivers to run fulltime in BGN and/or Trucks for five or six years, before ever making a start in a Winston Cup car?
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Is Tony Stewart's Lindsey Lohan act already tiresome? "He's a jerk," said Carl Edwards after the Summer 500 - a very rare expression of opprobrium by one driver toward another, and one certainly appropriate here. Stewart for his part said one thing after the race, then said another on Monday. First he criticized Bowyer and made the preposterous assertion that "If the Three car were still here" the sport would not have problems with the young guns. Come Monday, though, Stewart belatedly admitted what was too obvious to deny - he was responsible for the wreck on the frontstretch.
Fans shouldn't boo Stewart, though - they should sit on their hands and say nothing.
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Denny Hamlin's Pocono sweep has made him early favorite for the Brickyard. The Brickyard, though, has enough difference that Hamlin's Pocono setup may not work quite as well. Certainly over the years Pocono winners haven't automatically been Brickyard favorites, as to date only Jeff Gordon in 1998 and Bill Elliott in 2002 won Pocono and then won the Brickyard.
Pocono's Winston Cup season has thus ended this year, but 2007 will be here before you know it, and there is plenty of racing before then to see.
Some will object that pairing two rookies as teammates without a veteran to guide them is a recipe for disaster. As it is, it might be. But the regular comment that a rookie needs a veteran driver to guide him is a cliche that dies hard despite some evidence to the contrary, such as the failure of Kenny Irwin under the wing of Dale Jarrett when both drove for Yates in 1998-9. There is also the comparative washout of Jamie McMurray at Ganassi/SABCO under the wing of Sterling Marlin.
The whole veteran-bringing-rookie-along approach always sounds like a good idea but it often doesn't work because the veteran sees the rookie as a rival, not a partner. So if Yates teams up two rookies, he may have as good a shot at turning his program around as he would pairing a rookie with a veteran.
----------------------------------------------
There is also the question that the sport ought to be asking - why is it not requiring young drivers to spend periods encompassing several years in the minors - BGN, Trucks - before bringing them to the Winston Cup level. With recent talk about a shortage of capable driving talent and rumors of drivers such as Ward Burton, Bill Elliott, and Mark Martin either coming out of retirement or coming back after lengthy periods away from the sport, the sport needs to reexamine how it develops young drivers.
What could be wrong with requiring young drivers to run fulltime in BGN and/or Trucks for five or six years, before ever making a start in a Winston Cup car?
-----------------------------------------------------
Is Tony Stewart's Lindsey Lohan act already tiresome? "He's a jerk," said Carl Edwards after the Summer 500 - a very rare expression of opprobrium by one driver toward another, and one certainly appropriate here. Stewart for his part said one thing after the race, then said another on Monday. First he criticized Bowyer and made the preposterous assertion that "If the Three car were still here" the sport would not have problems with the young guns. Come Monday, though, Stewart belatedly admitted what was too obvious to deny - he was responsible for the wreck on the frontstretch.
Fans shouldn't boo Stewart, though - they should sit on their hands and say nothing.
------------------------------------------------------
Denny Hamlin's Pocono sweep has made him early favorite for the Brickyard. The Brickyard, though, has enough difference that Hamlin's Pocono setup may not work quite as well. Certainly over the years Pocono winners haven't automatically been Brickyard favorites, as to date only Jeff Gordon in 1998 and Bill Elliott in 2002 won Pocono and then won the Brickyard.
Pocono's Winston Cup season has thus ended this year, but 2007 will be here before you know it, and there is plenty of racing before then to see.
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