drink the Kool Aid and have had the mandatory lobotomy aren’t affected by this. For the drivers, it means losing their credentials and having to sign in to each and every track, which is something of a hassle considering how many tracks and races there are. Just ask Busch the Elder and Bob Dilner about the hassle of having to sign in to each and every race. Not to mention the always present “actions detrimental to stock car” penalty on top of it along with the accompanying fine for the drivers. Smoke knows all about that one when he compared NA$CAR to the WWE. Even though he was right, Smoke still had to pay a fine for his remarks under the actions detrimental clause.
Speaking of detrimental actions, it looks like Judge Mullen shot down Mayfield’s request for a reconsideration of the judge’s decision to dismiss his case. For some reason, Channel 14 in Charlotte seems to have gotten some things wrong in their article regarding the judge’s decision on reconsidering his earlier decision: triangle.news14.com/content/
Since the judge won’t reconsider his decision; the case now goes to the Appeals Court. This is where Channel 14 got it wrong. The decision hasn’t been before the Appeals Court yet. And I’m rather surprised that Pharaoh Ramses Posthole wasn’t out in front of the court house with a brass band beating away on a bass drum to make the announcement.
Great qualifying run by Front Row Joe at Loudon. Kasey Kahne once again on the front row. Checked out the practice times for the Busch Series. Morgan Shepherd, Joe Nemechek, and Jason Keller were faster than the Queen of Hype as was Big Bubba Danny O‘Quinn.
Interesting seeing Jennifer Jo Cobb driving 4 races for Baker-Curb. I guess since she’s qualified to drive at Daytona in the Truck Series, she got the ride for Baker-Curb for the July 2nd race. I wish her lots of luck. Especially since the car she’s driving cost about 3 times as much as the truck she normally races.
I find it somewhat perplexing that some of the Kool Aid drinkers are falling all over the Queen of Hype, how she’ll save the NA$CAR, and how NA$CAR needs more hype. They seem to have conveniently forgotten that hype is what’s gotten NA$CAR into its’ current situation. They hyped the Chase for the Chumps. It’s been an abysmal failure. They hyped the Can of Tuna. It’s been an abysmal failure as far as it‘s performance and looks go. They hyped the less than exciting racing on the cookie cutter tracks. They’ve been an abysmal failure. They’ve hyped how they’ve made “changes for the fans”. That’s been an abysmal failure. With the way everything is being hyped and in such a sickeningly sweet manner, race fans are going to need to keep insulin close by so they don’t go into a diabetic coma from the overdose of sugar being laid on by some of the Kool Aid drinkers and NA$CAR itself with the hype.
Fortunately, I was spared the “All Damnica, All the Time” coverage of BSPN. I was busy attending one of my niece’s wedding on Saturday. So I read what NA$CAR’s Official Damnica Excuse Machine had churned out then read the fan comments. Needless to say, fan comments on a number of web sites ran overwhelmingly against the Queen of Hype. It seems her lack of experience in a “Taxi” got the best of her early on when she got together with Morgan Shepherd. Maybe she should’ve been tooting on one of them vuvuzelas? But the fan opinions, to me, are what really matter since we‘re the ones paying for cable, satellite, and tickets. Dani-fraud, the Anna Kournakova of racing, and a lot more terms, some not so socially acceptable, were used to describe either her or her lack of performance at Loudon or her lack of driving skills in general. Even an article that was supposedly written about Shrubbery winning the race contained about 2/3’s Damnica and her lack of performance, a rehash of the Damnica-only article almost word for word, and 1/3 about the race winner. Even a BSPN article starts out by calling her “the celebrity of the day”. And that’s the folks broadcasting the Cup Lite shows. If they’re calling her a celebrity rather than a driver, what does that say? It’s Racer-tainment!
Strange how Ford put out so much stuff about how great the new FR-9 engine was going to be and yet only two Ford drivers, Kasey Kahne, has been performing consistently well with the new engine, and Paul Menard, to a lesser extent. I’m a Ford guy and have been since 1963, so to see what’s going on definitely makes me wonder how much of what Ford has been saying is hype and how much is substance. Roush Racing, who has been Ford’s banner team since the 90’s, is suffering and it hasn’t just been with the FR-9 engine either. They suffered with the old engine when it was combined with the mandated Codpiece of Tony. So that tells me that Ford is missing the mark somehow. Roush says it is faulty software. I seem to remember another team also having faulty software and yet they’re outperforming Roush. Whatever Kahne and RPM is doing, they seem to be on the right track. Maybe Roush need to go have a chat with The King and find out what Kahne and his crew are doing that Roush isn’t before Kahne jumps ship to Slick Rick’s operation and they lose the opportunity to improve things. Kahne was doing pretty good at Loudon til his engine went south and it was an FR-9. The Dinger was the only Ford to finish in the Top 10 and as he’s Kahne’s teammate that tells me that RPM is onto something that the other Ford teams have missed. Maybe RPM should be the flagship team for Ford? It might solve some of their financial woes with a little extra support that Roush is currently getting.
Jack Roush also wants to re-institute testing. The idea being that teams would show up on Thursday at the track they’ll be racing at and do testing. Considering the gap between Roush and Slick Rick’s and Joe Gibb’s teams, I can see why he’d want to do actual testing again. Roush seemed to do pretty good when they did actual testing. But it also means that by going back to testing on the track where they race, we will have a bigger gap than we currently have between the haves and have nots like we had before testing was banned. Considering the high cost of everything tied into racing, testing isn’t going to be any cheaper than it was before. When you’ve got to have 3 $20 million sponsors to make it through a season just for one single car, something is definitely wrong. $500,000 just to be on the door post? $1-$5
million for an associate sponsor? Ridiculous.
And what NA$CAR is charging the teams for
their oversized model car kit and certification is
ridiculous too. Wipe out a test car and you’ve
lost close to $500,000 between the car, the
engine, getting the team there, paying the team,
the cost of the hauler to get it to and from the
track, tires, fuel, and an extra night for the team’s
hotel rooms, which they get gouged on anyways
by the local hotel owners. That means having to
charge more for sponsorships and as we’ve all
seen sponsorship dollars, especially in this
economy, aren’t easy to come by. Just ask
Robby Gordon, Whitney Motorsports, FRM, or
even high dollar teams like Roush or RPM.
Maybe it’s time for the manufacturers to push to get things back to where they started back in 1948. Stock cars.
The Biff changing race teams? Well, Biker Bill sent me an interview of the Biff and he seems to be saying some things that hint at it but don’t come outright and say it. And which car is it he supposedly in talks about? You’ve got to listen to find out. This is news to me folks.
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