the start and park-mania he has going on.
"I'm just not willing to start and park. That's why I need to leave."
Scott Riggs said that when he left Tommy Baldwin Racing, a start and park team. And where did Scott go? To the biggest start and park team in the business, Prism Motorsports, this is owned by Phil Parsons.
If Blaney was dumped based on finances and cost efficiency, just imagine how long Jimmie Johnson would last if he was driving for Parsons:
Dave Blaney
2009
30 starts, 1130 of 8932 laps completed Total Winnings: $2,313,536 Winnings per Lap: $2,046
2010
17 starts, 906 of 5086 laps completed Total Winnings: $1,323,796 Winnings per Lap: $1,461
Jimmie Johnson
2009
36 starts, 10298 of 10492 laps completed Total Winnings: $7,137,363 Winnings per Lap: $693
2010
22 starts, 5977 of 6251 laps completed Total Winnings: $4,381,066 Winnings per Lap: $733
If Johnson drove for Parsons he'd been fired long ago for not being "cost efficient."
Lots of articles prior to the Michigan return of the Queen of Hype (QoH) making excuses about her learning to drive in the Busch Series. And if you take her own quote at face value, “You’re only as good as your last race”, well, she’s planning to stay a driver who consistently finishes in the Top 20 to Top 30 since her best finish of late has been a 24th at Joliet and her average finish is 31st. Her 27th place finish at Michigan, 4 laps down, in better equipment than most of the Busch regulars can afford doesn‘t exactly inspire confidence in her learning curve. And even though several of the financially struggling Busch regulars finished ahead of her, we didn’t see or here a word about them from BSPN. Why? Because they weren’t part of Faux King Brian’s storyline. But it appears that BSPN got the message from the fans about the “All Danica-All the Time” coverage and actually showed other cars on the track.
“We’ll see what we can do. Hopefully, we can get up there with the full test day that we had and me having the time to run down low, run in the middle, run up high. I didn’t see anybody else run up high, but at the end of the day yesterday the team told me to go up there and get a feel for it. Maybe that will pay off in the race.”
Test day? How did the QoH rate a test day at Michigan when no other driver or team on the circuit can test there except for tire testing? Is NA$CAR once again bending the rules to help line their pockets?
And another quote from the QoH: "I pretty much tell Tony what I'm feeling, and he changes the car. I don't have quite the technical intel yet on these cars."
Well, that’s nothing new. Since Day 1 in the IRL she’s had to have her teammates in the IRL set her car up. This year, Andretti didn’t have the time or money to waste on that because he was more interested in getting his son on the track and making sure he was able to perform well and finish decent for a young driver new to the IRL. Too bad for her that Dave Marcis retired. Dave spent several years doing the testing and setting up the cars for Iron Head in exchange for cars and parts from RCR. Maybe Dave could mount a comeback and make a small fortune setting up the Queen of Hype’s cars?
Is Tony Stewart drinking NA$CAR‘s Kool Aid or is he helping himself to Faux King Brian‘s “sodas“?
"When you finally tell someone that the racing is bad enough, long enough, you're going to convince people that it really is. The result of that is not having as many people in the grandstand because of that."
Well Tony, we had Faux King Brian tell us he knew what was best for the sport and obviously he doesn’t know what’s best by the constant changes in an attempt to please the Short Attention Span Crowd, the Yuppies, and some of the so-called casual fans and trying to beat the NFL in ratings. We’ve seen the price of tickets skyrocket to where the core fans, the average blue collar worker, can’t afford to buy them. We’ve seen races being openly manipulated and have NA$CAR admit that they are in fact manipulating them with the Ms Terry DeBris cautions which smacks of pro wrestling at its finest. We’ve been told what will and won’t be covered during the season by Faux King Brian with his storylines and see that the media and the TV coverage do exactly that and that the race results show that they follow the storylines just like a WWE storyline. We’ve seen numerous shows at the 1.5 mile and 2 mile clone tracks which if not for the wrecks in them would be total snooze-fest. The product doesn’t live up to the hype that’s laid on extra heavy week after week so the fans are let down shortly after the green flag drops. It’s the product that’s turning fans away not the media. We’re smart enough to make our own decisions which is something that the Beach Boy Bubbas don’t seem to grasp.
"The facts show that the racing is better than it's ever been; it's more competitive than it has ever been"
The facts according to whom Tony? NA$CAR? They’re about as trustworthy as a DC politician. And where’s the competition? It only seems to exist in the last 5-10 laps of 86% of the Cup races. With the exception of the Darlington, Martinsville, and the road courses, we see a single file parade week after week for the majority of the races. This is competition? Not in the fans’ eyes.
"Everybody has gotten so spoiled over the last 10-15 years that we've all lost sight of what we've really got here."
Actually Tony, we got spoiled prior to 2003 when we got to see some real racing. Since the introduction of the Chase for the Chumps, the IROC-style cars, and the increase in the number of clone tracks, we know what we’ve gotten. We’re able to make good comparisons. The last 7 years have been a let down. We’ve seen an increase in races being manipulated. We’ve seen favoritism increase. We’ve seen racing take a back seat to marketing. We’ve even had the VP of Racing Operations admit under oath that NA$CAR is not racing or a sport but sports entertainment like the WWE, which you yourself said it was like several years ago. So don’t go blaming the media for telling the fans things that they themselves can see and hear with their own eyes and ears and don’t make the same assumption that the Beach Boy Bubbas make when they assume that the fans are ignorant. You know what happens when you assume Tony.
When you have a driver who was considered to be one of the bad boys in the garage area suddenly spouting the Gospel According to Brian, you have to wonder. I know people can change but to hear this? Playing the same exact blame game with almost the same words that come out of the Ministry of Propaganda in the Ivory Towers of Daytona Beach? Has he been brainwashed or replaced with a robot? It makes me wonder.
How big of a priority is NA$CAR in the
Richmond area to their Fox AM radio affiliate?
Apparently not much. I got an e-mail from Russ
about that.
This morning (Sunday) thought I would amuse
myself, riding up I95 by listening to "Raceday
on Fox" on the local Fox affiliate AM910 in
Richmond. Surprise, surprise instead they were
carrying what has been an hour so far on a
fantasy football draft.
Raceday on Focks being pre-empted by fantasy
football? That in itself says a lot. It’s not even
real football that’s pre-empting NA$CAR. That’s worse than losing out in the TV ratings to re-runs of Sponge Bob Square Pants. When even NA$CAR’s lapdogs at Focks won’t even carry their own racing shows, that’s getting pretty bad. That should send a message to the brain-dead bunch in Daytona Beach.
Gotta comment, question or want to say hey there...email Mike here
Go visit our home page, called appropriately The Pits & check out our photos & pages. Our most popular page; Race Recon is where you get all the info you need to go to the races including local camping, hotels, bars, restaurants, tracks, golf & other important race weekend information. We also have attending a NASCAR Race tips, tailgating tips & recipes, stories, trivia, quotes & more! While you are surfing see if you are a REAL RACE FAN. Be sure to read the Fan Fables, LAIDBACK RACING’S adventures with the tailgating race fan at NASCAR tracks.
