Champs, Chumps & Sleepers Play Our Free Fantasy Game & Win Prizes!

I took Carl Belew and W.S. Stevenson’s song titled Stop the World (and let me off), and I tweaked it for Dale Earnhardt Jr.. It goes a little something like this:

[BTW, I like Waylon Jennings’s version of that song the best.]

Note: The following is a rant. As such, objectives such as grammar and being succinct have been left at the log-in page. There may even be a typo or two.

It simply amazes me the amount of anger Earnhardt Nation has been spewing on forums and blogs (and probably even a water tower or two) stemming from the incident between Dale Jr. and Kyle Busch this weekend in Richmond. The simple fact is that what happened was nothing more than a product of Saturday night short track racing and it was a racing incident, period! Furthermore, this incident was so mild by short track racing standards that those who think it was Kyle’s intent to wreck Jr. must be befuddled! I think many members of Jr. Nation (as well as the “We Just Hate Kyle Legionnaires”) are really looking for a reason to cry foul here.

I think some people need to take another good hard look at the video of the race. Larry McReynolds comment about Kyle’s tires being turned to the right ever so slightly just really got me. I couldn’t believe my ears when he said it. If you’ve been watching automobile racing for any length of time, or if you’ve ever driven a sports car in a performance environment, you’d know that when the back comes loose and tries to come around to the right you counter it with the steering to the right. Larry Mac knows this!

Some of the comments people have been posting are that Kyle didn’t give Jr. enough room or that he went in too high in the corner. Excuse me, but if you go back and watch the few laps even before the accident you’ll see Kyle is pretty darn consistent where he takes that inside line. For what it’s worth, Bowyer and Martin were following the same line which was a couple feet up front the crease or banking and apron line. It wasn’t until the turn 3 that Kyle got loose on the inside and went up higher into Jr. who had himself brought his line down the track.

Still others (many who have thought it wasn’t intentional on Kyle’s part) have said that Kyle shouldn’t have been pushing it that hard at that point in the race. Again, excuse me, but they were already at 3 to go the very first time Kyle was able to get up along side of Jr.. The incident itself was the only contact between the two cars. Kyle had not been rubbing on Jr.’s rear end! Jr. wasn’t blocking Kyle from taking a low or high line either. The two drivers were not banging each other’s doors, nor rubbing fenders, nor trading paint, or anything of the sort. Kyle didn’t rub up along Jr.’s car to move him up out of a line either. In other words, this was NOT a bump-n-run attempt, period! Both Kyle and Dale Jr. commented right after the race that if that’s what Kyle wanted to do, it could have been done already or it could have been done such that Kyle would at least be in the lead and wind up winning the race.

What really gets me the most by many fans is that there seems to be an expectation out there that if Kyle (or any other driver for that matter) is racing Jr. for position, then they need to use some extra or different level of caution in doing so. Say what?! Why the hell should Kyle, or any other driver, have to race more cautiously around Jr. than they do any other driver? Just because he is Dale Jr. and he inherited most (if not all) of Dale Sr.’s fans? I say “Malarkey!” The last thing I want to see are these drivers out there riding around and racing at 8/10ths effort or ability just because they’re around Jr.. I can’t imagine Dale Jr. wanting that either. That would be like handicapping the field when they’re around him.

Dale is a racer, and a damn good one too. Of course he’s disappointed and so are his fans. But this folks was nothing more than hard racing on a short track on a Saturday night, and the intensity of the incident itself was MILD by short track standards. It also just happens that there is an interesting dynamic between the these two drivers. They both had something to prove. Earnhardt wants to show he is the real deal in the HMS car and get back to winning races. Kyle wants to prove he is in a better situation now with his new team and show it by beating his old car/team.

I’ll pull the plug on my rant by saying that there have been many occasions where Kyle Busch has done something incredibly stupid on the track and deserved the ire of fans and drivers alike (I’m sure he’ll do something again real soon). Since he first came into the Cup series he has been one of the drivers that I have disliked the most because of some of his antics. However, I can not find fault in his performance at Richmond. I certainly can understand the disappointment that both Jr. and all of his fans felt last night. That’s not an easy pill to swallow when they were so very close. If they want to hate and boo Kyle Busch, then that’s fine too. The sport thrives on rivalries and passion for different drivers. I just hope everyone has enough common sense and nobody does anything stupid (such as all the talk about needing security, etc.). In the end everyone needs to remember that it’s racing and the world keeps on turning no matter how much you may want it to stop and let you off.

For the second time this year Denny Hamlin looked to have a short track race wrapped up and in the bag. Just five races earlier the Cup series was at Bristol and Denny was leading on a green-white-checkered finish. When Hamlin’s car suffered a fuel pickup issue, the entire Richard Childress Racing team was there to take advantage as Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick & Clint Bowyer each freight trained past Hamlin to a 1-2-3 finish for RCR.

Last nights race at Richmond International Raceway could also be referred to as a “field spanking” by the #11 FedEx car of Denny Hamlin. However, after dominating the field by leading 381 out of 400 laps, Denny’s seemingly assured drive to Victory Lane was ground to a halt on lap 383 with a flat tire. Just as it was at Bristol, a RCR car (the #07 of Clint Bowyer) was there waiting for the opportunity to take the lead.

However, that opportunity would not present itself until a battle between crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch took place resulting in Jr’s #88 Chevy spinning into the outside wall. It was, in my view, nothing more than good hard racing and Kyle did absolutely nothing wrong. It was not an intentional bump-n-run attempt by Busch. I won’t be surprised if the vast majority of Earnhardt Nation will disagree with my perception, but this is the type of racing we should all be happy to see. Busch was not content to ride there in the closing laps to finish 2nd, and Jr. wasn’t about to go down without a fight. It was hard, close racing and neither of them tried to take the other out of contention.

As Busch and Jr. tangled together the #07 of Clint Bowyer seized the opportunity and slid underneath Kyle Busch for the lead and the caution flag. This set the stage for a green-white-checkered in which Bowyer was able to hold off Kyle for the win.

Let’s now take a look at Bowyer’s post-race Loop Data Statistics.

• Starting Position = 31st
• Mid Race Position = 6th
• 40 Laps to Go = 5th
• Lowest Position = 32nd
• Average Position = 9th
• # of Fastest Laps = 7
• Laps in Top 15 = 338
• % of Laps in Top 15 = 82.4%
• Laps Led = 13
• % of Laps Led = 3.2%
• Final Driver Rating = 110.8

Video of battle between Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
 

Our buddies over at On Pit Row got dibs on spending a few moments with Dan Lowry, the Richmond weekend Crown Royal King for a day.

As badly as I’d like the race to be called the “OneBadWheel 400″, it is not meant to be.

I’ve got a year to come up with a good Crown Royal moment™ to hopefully win the coveted title for 2009 though.

Charlie has written some excerpts from his phone interview with Dan. He has also booked him for Steve & Charlie’s weekly radio show. Their show is good stuff and highly recommended. You can listen to the On Pit Row live internet radio stream on Tuesdays from 5PM to 7PM EST. Or, check out the On Pit Row Radio Archives.

I realize it’s just a garden variety team release, but when I saw the following headline pop up in my RSS reader, I couldn’t resist. For Vickers, the tracks may differ but momentum same.

It doesn’t matter to Vickers that the style of racing at Talladega differs greatly from every other Cup track except Daytona. He’s banking on taking the momentum generated in Alabama with him into Saturday night’s Crown Royal 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Maybe it’s because I prefer logic and facts to nebulous forces like momentum or mojo or hunger, but this article is just silly. Seriously, if it was strictly momentum that won stock car races, then wouldn’t Red Byron still have the momentum from winning the 1949 NASCAR championship? If it was a case of simply wanting to win, then I would have a shot at winning this Saturday (I really want to win). If that is true, then someone should also tell that slug in the #88 car that he should just “want” his way to a win.

As the article concedes, Talladega has nothing in common with Richmond. If you run well at one type of race track, there is very little connection to running well the next week at a different track. Sure teams can run well at both, but the two are unrelated. If Kyle Busch wins this week, it’s not because he’s riding a wave of momentum, is on fire right now or really wanted to win. It’s because he’s a really good driver with a really good team. It’s not like Busch gets a head start from last week because he won.

“Yes, I think you can take momentum into anywhere — momentum is momentum,” Vickers said. “No matter what track you are going to, it is the same. We had our best run of the season last weekend in Talladega, so I think that will definitely carry over to Richmond.”

According to Jayski, Vickers carries his momentum in a fanny pack. Carl Edwards uses a glass box with a cover fashioned from what looks to be an oil lid. Chip Ganassi accidentally left his momentum in the garden section at Target, which is why Reed Sorenson and Dario Franchitti can’t help but finish in the 30’s. It’s all absurd. If I came to my job, got a raise and then let momentum carry me, I’d get fired. I’m not picking on Vickers, but simply pointing out what a cliché the term is.

I looked up the definition of momentum. It pertained to physics, motion, business trends and several album titles, but not mentioned as a factor for success in sports. Vickers might have a better attitude heading to Richmond, but make no mistake, it’s up to his team’s ability to build a fast racecar and Vickers’s driving skill that will determine how he runs at Richmond. And for good measure, Vickers has 1 win, 3 top 5’s and 4 top 10’s and a 19.3 average finish in 8 starts at Talladega. He has one top ten and a 28.4 average finish in 7 Richmond starts.

My apologies for the Fire Joe Morgan style rant. I just get tired of reading articles like this on large websites and I think they can do better.

Nine days, and counting. That will bring us to May 10th and the running of the Dodge Challenger 500 at Darlington Raceway, also known as “The Lady in Black.” While I’ve not attended anywhere near the number of races that I’d like to have, I’m looking forward to this race more so than any other race that I have been able to attend.

For starters, Darlington Raceway was the very first NASCAR Cup series track I ever went to. I was already a NASCAR fan, but when my uncle took me to the track I was just a boy. I remember being so in awe of everything. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories.

Second, this year is going to be a special year for the track itself. The track now sports an infield access tunnel large enough for the team haulers and emergency vehicles to pass through it. The “Lady in Black” is also sporting a new black dress in the form of 15,000 tons of asphalt that makes up the newly repaved racing surface. It’s been reported that the construction crew used 4 million reference points around the race track to make sure that the character of the tracks corners and banking remained true to the legendary Darlington track design.

Third, after the repaving job was complete Goodyear held a couple tire tests at the facility. Drivers Jeff Gordon, Greg Biffle and this years Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman were on hand to perform the tire test. All three drivers piloted their cars to over 200 miles per hour on the new racing surface! Think about that, 200 miles per hour on a track less than one and one-half miles in length!

Fourth, I will also see a special one-time-only throwback paint scheme on the #88 Mountain Dew AMP Energy/National Guard entry driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. To kick off Mountain Dew’s “Old School New School” promotion, Earnhardt will pilot the #88 Mountain Dew AMP Energy/National Guard Chevy with a throwback paint scheme modeled after the 1981-82 entry driven by Darrell Waltrip. For me personally, this paint scheme is one of the most iconic schemes in NASCAR history and is also one of my all time favorites. I can’t wait to see it on the track in person for the first time!

Finally, above all else I’m looking forward to this race because it will be a special bonding day for me and my son. He is about the same age as I was when I first visited Darlington, and now, this will be his first visit to a stock car race and it’s at the same track as mine was. No sisters, just father and son with some friends and a tent in Camp Darlington for Saturday night. I simply can’t wait to witness my son’s reactions while attending the race!

Earn your Darlington stripe and win!

To share some of the excitement I have for this race, I’ve decided to offer up a little something for those of you playing in the Champs, Chumps & Sleepers fantasy game here on OneBadWheel.com. It doesn’t matter where you are in the overall point standings of the game, you’ve got an equal shot at winning! Here are the details:

• If you’re not already playing the game, then join now and create your team. It’s free & easy to do. Once you’re in the game, you’ll need to go to “Groups” and click the “Join a Private Group” link.
• Join my private group with the following information: Group Name = “Darlington Raceway Contest.” The password = “Lady In Black“.
• That’s it, well, other than actually filling out your team roster of course. The team with the highest race score for the Darlington race will win the prize.

The prize is a “six pack” of 1:87 scale diecast cars as shown in the image above. I got into collecting these cars this year and I have them lined up around my desk at my “real job.” I put together six cars that I had duplicates of. The winner will receive the diecast cars shown of Kevin Harvick, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, and both the Amp & National Guard cars of Dale Earnhardt Jr..

There are of course some simple rules.

• You must join the group before the deadline. The deadline for joining the group will be the same as the deadline for making your roster picks for the Darlington Race. After the deadline, you’ll no longer be able to edit your roster and the password will become inactive. This will prevent someone from sneaking in after the cutoff time or after the race with a high score and try to claim the prize. You can join anytime before the deadline, so go ahead and jump in the private group NOW to ensure your eligibility!
• Winner must be in the United States or Canada for me to ship it to them via US Postal service. Other international players are welcome to play too, but will have to pay for US Postal International Mail if they want to collect the prize.
• Winner must respond to my e-mail or contact me by the end of segment one (Dover race). That’s 3 weeks after the Darlington race to claim your prize. If no contact can be made with the winner by that time, the prize will be forfeited (and likely used for another contest!)
• Other than my team (Foothills Racing) and my wife’s team (Bread Girl), all other OneBadWheel related staff, family, volunteer writers, sponsors, and NASCAR bloggers are also eligible to win with their fantasy race teams…. so long as they make the deadline!

Good luck everyone!
 

I’m not sure which of the following is more impressive. Kyle Busch winning the Talladega race, or Juan Pablo Montoya finishing second. Perhaps it depends upon how much you love/hate Kyle, or how much you welcome/despise open wheel drivers now racing in NASCAR. Me, I fall into the former groups on both of those viewpoints. I’m really starting to love appreciate Kyle more than I dislike him, and I’ve always welcomed new blood in the series no matter what sex, race, nationality, or even what racing series they come from.

The longer I’m a fan of NASCAR the more I notice and enjoy the storybook finishes as well as the records that are made, or in Jeff Gordon’s case, the ones he breaks. I also love it when something happens that just seems too good to be true. Yet I know it’s just that, a coincidence.

The Aaron’s 499 at Talladega provided just such a situation as Kyle Busch and Juan Pablo Montoya drove their #18 Mars M&M’s and #42 Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit sponsored stock cars to a 1-2 finish. Not taking away from their performances, but at first glance it doesn’t appear like anything special or odd. Both drivers likely exceeded most fans expectations as Kyle performed much better than he normally does at Talladega, and Juan posted such a good finish in the restrictor plate race in only his sophomore year in the series. However, come Monday morning a Reuters report announced that Mars was buying Wrigley for $23 billion.

“M&M’s candy maker Mars Inc has teamed up with billionaire Warren Buffett to buy the No. 1 chewing gum manufacturer Wm Wrigley Jr Co (WWY.N) for $23 billion, creating the world’s largest confectionery company.”

So, did Busch and Montoya orchestrate a $23 billion photo opp for their sponsor’s parent companies? We all know sponsors make the sport go-round, but is a new phrase in order?

“Win on Sunday. Merge on Monday.”

Kyle (I refuse to call him “Wild Thing”) Busch collects his second win of the season in the Sprint Cup series and now trails series point leader (Jeff Burton) by only 22 points. As I pointed out in my Ranking the Chumps article for the Aarons 499 at Talladega, Kyle Busch wasn’t supposed to win this race based on his past statistics at Talladega Superspeedway. Over the previous six races at the track he had an average finish of 31.7 and an average points gain of 69 points per race. However, it’s a whole new career for Kyle and he’s re-writing his own record book after joining Joe Gibbs Racing. Despite those final two historical stats, Kyle’s season-to-date stats have been nothing short of phenomenal. After crunching the numbers Kyle had the 2nd highest Chump rating while teammate Tony Stewart had the highest rating.

If I were playing a fantasy racing game in my household based on our favorite drivers, then my nine year old son would be kicking my butt in the game. Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch are his two favorite drivers and so far the two of them have combined for 5 wins out of the 9 point races ran so far this year. Thankfully, these wins usually put him in a good mood come Monday morning when it’s time to go to school. Speaking of school, let’s examine the post-race Loop Data Statistics to see if Kyle took the field to school in Talladega, or if it was a Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole.

• Starting Position = 5th
• Mid Race Position = 31st
• 19 Laps to Go = 1st
• Lowest Position = 35th
• Average Position = 18th
  Teammate Denny Hamlin had best marks in this category with a 5th place average position.
• # of Fastest Laps = 5
• Laps in Top 15 = 79
  Teammate Denny Hamlin had best marks in the category with 180 out of 188 laps in the top 15.
• % of Laps in Top 15 = 42%
  Teammate Denny Hamlin had best marks in the category with 95.7%.
• Laps Led = 12 laps.
  Teammate Tony Stewart had best marks in the category with 61 laps led.
• % of Laps Led = 6.4%
  Teammate Tony Stewart had best marks in the category with 32.4% of laps led.
• Final Driver Rating = 90.8
  Teammate Denny Hamlin had best marks in the category with a rating of 125.0

As you can see, it was a Joe Gibbs Racing day! Here are the final laps of the Aarons 499 which includes the wreck on the final lap. Does anyone else wonder if it took NASCAR too long to throw the yellow flag? At :49 seconds you can hear DW call out the accident happening on the track. At :54 seconds there are wrecking cars blocking the entire speedway, and still no caution. At :58 Larry McReynolds calls out that the caution has been waved. Another view is shown at 3:00 in the clip. From there you can see how long cars were wrecking before the yellow was waving. At 3:03 there were four cars up along the outside wall and at 3:22 pole sitter Joe Nemecheck was completely sideways. That would be about the equivalent of the :52 second mark earlier in the clip. Watch it, and you decide.
 

Mid-January I was thick in the middle of a series of posts counting down the final 50 days to the Daytona 500.

Matching the day with the car number, I spotlighted drivers, owners, or other subjects with historical ties to the car number. With 33 days until the Great American Race my post that day would feature Harry Gant and his ride in the #33 Skoal car. A portion of that day’s post also included information about a new racing series that was set to have it’s inaugural season in the Spring of 2008. Harry Gant was scheduled to participate in the the Old School Racing Series which would have retired and semi-retired champion drivers competing in a 10 race regular season schedule followed by a “Last Chance Race” and a “Championship Race”. Drivers such as David Pearson, James Hylton, Ernie Irvan, Charlie Glotzbach, Dick Trickle, Dave Marcis, Geoff Bodine, and many more, would join Harry Gant in the series.

Here recently I read about a special exhibition event at Darlington Raceway where Carl Edwards and David Pearson took hot laps on the recently repaved surface of the “Lady in Black.” Carl piloted his #99 Claritin Ford Fusion while David Pearson drove a 1971 Wood Brothers Mercury which was restored by legendary car owner Leonard Wood (who was also present to witness the event) with the maroon and white #21 Purolator sponsored paint scheme. [Click image for larger view. Note, this image is not from the exhibition day.]

This exhibition event reminded me to check on the status of the Old School Racing series as I was planning to attend one of the races in Charlotte in hopes of seeing Pearson and James Hylton race. Well, I was disappointed to learn that the inaugural season has been postponed until 2009. It seems the series was, at least in part, bitten by a bad marketing agent.

From the OSR website, “OSR went to the PRI show in Orlando to introduce OSR and the show car to the racing world and the OSR marketing agent guaranteed us that OSR will have 2 “major” sponsorship contracts to sign at PRI.” However, OSR was in for a surprise when they got there. “Instead of working out of the OSR booth, the marketing agent was in another booth representing another racing series. We came to find out that he had recently purchased that tour. From August thru December, he was promoting his new series instead of OSR. All of the sponsorship figures he had been presenting to OSR was a lie, for his own series, or just blatantly fabricated. One of the potential title sponsors he was touting had never even received a call from the marketing agent. A big “lesson learned” here, for sure.”

I’m sure there are several other issues that have also played a role in the postponement of the series debut, such as not having enough cars built, the lack of major sponsorship, limited personal operating budget, and more. But it’s truly disappointing that this series won’t be kicked off now until next year at the earliest. They’re in a catch-22 though. They don’t have the funds without sponsorship to build the cars. And sponsors aren’t jumping on board without cars and a guarantee the series will go. Of the sponsors who are very interested in participating, their budgets for 2008 have already been set, or likely spent.

The good news is that while nothing specific has been announced yet, it does look like they’ve got something lined up for a “new plan” or layout of the series. Under the newly planned format, “The series will be about much more than just the competitive nature of these drivers. The series will become much more of an event to celebrate the pioneers that molded modern racing, rather than just a race with drivers from the past. The new partnership between OSR and the soon to be named partner has not been completed, but plans have already begun to move forward for the 2009 debut of the redesigned OSR program.”

I certainly wish them luck and hope the series does actually make it to a successful launch. I would love to see some of those legends race just so I could say “I saw _____ race at the _____ track.”