It has struck me more than once while watching Sprint Cup action at Thunder Valley, a.k.a. Bristol Motor Speedway, that a wonderful venue for race watching provides fans a limitless opportunity to watch just about everything but, well, racing.
Saturday night at the Sharpie 500, 160,000 people watched Mark Martin completely dominate the race but, basically, lose it to the track. While taking nothing away from Kyle Busch’s late push that kept him slightly ahead of Martin for the final 67 laps, it was a logjam of traffic back on Lap 317 that turned the race. That’s when Martin, with a large lead, pulled up behind backmarker Kasey Kahne, who was down two laps. Martin waited forever behind Kahne but couldn’t pass him. Eventually second-place Jimmie Johnson caught up to Martin and, providentially, chose the correct lane that resulted in a pass of the leader. Busch’s march to the front soon followed. But as I said, I’m not here to discuss Busch’s race-winning merits.
I’m here to throw down the gauntlet: chop the field at short track races. Now, I like the three-ring circus environment accompanying short-track racing like everyone else; every seat in the house takes in the whole race, not just the section of the track where you’re seated. But packing 43 sardines into a tin can doesn’t make them taste better. There’s just more of them. Speeds at Bristol only slightly surpass what you and I achieve on the interstate. But the worst part from the viewers’ standpoint is the perpetual pack of cars at the rear of the field, affectionately known in the trade as backmarkers. In my humble opinion, no backmarker should ever determine the outcome of a race, but that’s exactly what Kahne did to Martin at Bristol, albeit unintentionally. Poor Kahne. He had absolutely nowhere to go. At Bristol, the high line on the turns, though frequented by the occasional Earnhardt Jrs. of the sport, is the only out-of-the-way lane at Bristol. That line, however, feeds out onto the primary racing line on both straightaways, a formula for inevitable mayhem, not unlike Darlington. That mayhem occurred with 62 laps remaining, when a multiple-car wreck took place as a result of the pack trying to go three wide, trying for four, down the back straightaway.
Basically, the cars are all held hostage at Bristol: Too many cars crammed into too small a space. Any movement at all is rarely made without peril, stupidity, or blind luck. Seldom is racing skill employed; just survival techniques.
Sadly, a frustrated Martin, halted on track with the rest of the field by a red flag near the race’s end that would only allow for four green-flag laps to close it out, could be heard plaintively from the cockpit of the 5 car: “Why do they have to wreck?!,” Martin said wearily over his in-car radio. “I just wish we could’ve raced for it.”
On that note I would ask NASCAR: Why not cut the field for races at Bristol and Martinsville? Forty-three cars can’t maneuver on a short track, much less really race. (I don’t want to hear this who-shot-John stuff about sponsor money.) It’s rush-hour traffic on a half-mile oval with no place to go. That’s not racing. Six cautions, including the red flag, in the final 42 miles? I’m with Martin. Why can’t they just race? Thin the field for the short tracks.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. E-mail: alanross_sports@yahoo.com© Sportland 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
ROADSIDE RAVE
Vickers’s win was his second career Cup victory but the first ever for Red Bull Racing in Sprint Cup. The mega-sport conglomerate isn’t just a presence in Cup, Red Bull is the current hottest team in Formula One as well, having taken the fight to early-season front-runner Brawn GP/Mercedes, whose Jenson Button, the current standings leader, is feeling intense heat from the two RBR drivers Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber…If you haven’t seen Vickers’ video of his dash through Times Square in New York City, complete with pit stop, pull up www.redbull.com and check it out. The odd occurrence was in celebration of Vickers’ recent long-term signing with RBR…Racing enthusiasts worldwide are bummed by the news of F1 legend Michael Schumacher’s decision to pull out of this Sunday’s European Grand Prix. The previously retired Schumacher, called on to replace injured Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, aggravated his own past injuries while preparing for the GP. Longtime Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer will fill Massa’s spot.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. alanross_sports@yahoo.com
© Sportland 2009
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. alanross_sports@yahoo.com
© Sportland 2009
Out of Gas—Again?
He’s universally viewed as the top crew chief on pit lane, calling the shots from atop the pit box for Jimmie Johnson in the Lowe’s 48 car. But for both 2009 races at Michigan International Speedway, Chad Knaus has looked like anything but a race strategy genius.
For the second time this year at MIS, with the checkered flag in sight, Johnson ran out of fuel either on the last lap or the penultimate lap. Johnson dominated the Carfax 400 Sunday—the car to beat all day—until those deadly closing laps. Back in the June race, JJ had taken the white flag in second place behind race leader Greg Biffle. But Biffle coughed, out of gas on the bell lap, followed shortly by Johnson, allowing third-place Mark Martin to steal a win. Sunday, Johnson experienced the ill-planned fallout of Knaus’s strategy, the call made with 42 laps left. “Stay out!” came the command from the pits, and Johnson eschewed pit road for track position as race leader. He had last pitted with 51 laps to go, the fuel maximum, a choice also made by Brian Vickers, second to Johnson at the time, and Jeff Gordon, running third. All three figured to fly home on fumes, if they could conserve enough gas and make it to the finish. Of the three, Johnson was the only one who didn’t, gassing out with two laps remaining. Vickers and Gordon finished 1 and 2.
Dale Earnhardt’s third-place finish, though welcomed by all, had to be disappointing for the entire 88 team. Little E looked to have a shot at winning it, having pitted 10 laps later than the race-leading trio, all of whom elected to stay out to keep track position. With his foot to the floor, Earnhardt could run wide open. He began to carve his way through the field over the final 40 laps, clicking off laps a second faster than Johnson and the other fuel conservers up front. It looked like he would either run them all down or reel them all in, due to the leaders’ cautionary driving. But with the final laps clicking off, Earnhardt couldn’t significantly close the gap.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. alanross_sports@yahoo.com
© Sportland 2009
For the second time this year at MIS, with the checkered flag in sight, Johnson ran out of fuel either on the last lap or the penultimate lap. Johnson dominated the Carfax 400 Sunday—the car to beat all day—until those deadly closing laps. Back in the June race, JJ had taken the white flag in second place behind race leader Greg Biffle. But Biffle coughed, out of gas on the bell lap, followed shortly by Johnson, allowing third-place Mark Martin to steal a win. Sunday, Johnson experienced the ill-planned fallout of Knaus’s strategy, the call made with 42 laps left. “Stay out!” came the command from the pits, and Johnson eschewed pit road for track position as race leader. He had last pitted with 51 laps to go, the fuel maximum, a choice also made by Brian Vickers, second to Johnson at the time, and Jeff Gordon, running third. All three figured to fly home on fumes, if they could conserve enough gas and make it to the finish. Of the three, Johnson was the only one who didn’t, gassing out with two laps remaining. Vickers and Gordon finished 1 and 2.
Dale Earnhardt’s third-place finish, though welcomed by all, had to be disappointing for the entire 88 team. Little E looked to have a shot at winning it, having pitted 10 laps later than the race-leading trio, all of whom elected to stay out to keep track position. With his foot to the floor, Earnhardt could run wide open. He began to carve his way through the field over the final 40 laps, clicking off laps a second faster than Johnson and the other fuel conservers up front. It looked like he would either run them all down or reel them all in, due to the leaders’ cautionary driving. But with the final laps clicking off, Earnhardt couldn’t significantly close the gap.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. alanross_sports@yahoo.com
© Sportland 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Cup drivers would give it a go in the rain
For the second straight week a NASCAR Sprint Cup race succumbed to rain, forcing a 24-hour postponement. Of interest during Sunday’s coverage of the rained-out Heluva Good! at the Glen, run at the famed Watkins Glen road course in upper New York State, was a turn by reporters finally beginning to ask the obvious—something we’ve been harping on here for the past two years: When are they gonna race in the rain?
Intriguingly, several NASCAR drivers interviewed spoke of giving it a try. Patrick Carpentier, a road-course specialist and former IndyCar driver who raced at Montreal in last year’s mold-breaking Nationwide Series race in the rain, said “it was a lot of fun,” referring to the Canadian race. But Carpentier felt the heavier weight of the Cup cars would make rain racing impossible. “They’ve got way too much power,” he said, ultimately concluding that “it would be fun for the fans but not for us.”
In an insightful comparison between IndyCars and Sprint Cup cars, Sam Hornish Jr., who has raced in both series, noted the relative weight and downforce differences between the two. The Car of Today weighs 3,500 pounds and creates about 1,000 pounds of downforce from an 800-horsepower engine. The lighter IndyCars, at 1,500 pounds, generate 600 horsepower, creating about 4,000 pounds of downforce.
Drivers David Stremme and Kevin Harvick also weighed in on the idea of racing in the rain. Harvick pointed out vision as the main problem from the driver’s standpoint. “The windows fog up,” he said, eliciting a slight guffaw from race analyst Rusty Wallace, a former Cup champion. “Yeah, but that’s fixable!” Wallace rightly pointed out. Harvick then tried to duck under the protection of “rooster tails,” the rainbow-like aftermath of spray from cars ahead that virtually blind a driver, and which no doubt would be something totally foreign to NASCAR drivers in the heat of competition. But look at F1, whose drivers constantly face vision and rooster-tail dilemmas whenever there is rain at a grand prix race. As Wallace likely would have said: it’s doable, boys.
Stremme remarked that stopping the big cars “might be a problem,” before musing “but it’d be fun to try,” to which Harvick also agreed.
Trust me, there will be more on this topic as NASCAR continues to watch its Sunday afternoon audience vanish due to rainouts. Solutions? We’ve got plenty. But that’s for another time…and another rainout.
INDYCARS sped through the twisting turns of Mid-Ohio, the classic road course in Lexington, with standings leader Scott Dixon taking the lead on Lap 37 of the 85-lap Indy 200 from Justin Wilson, as both came up on backmarker Milka Duno. Duno effectively “picked” Wilson, with Dixon wedging between the two before disposing of Duno two turns later. Dixon was never headed after that, winning comfortably for his fourth victory of the season, and more importantly, his 20th overall series win, taking over the top spot all-time in IndyCar series victories. He had previously been tied with Sam Hornish Jr.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. E-mail: alanross_sports@yahoo.com© Sportland 2009
Intriguingly, several NASCAR drivers interviewed spoke of giving it a try. Patrick Carpentier, a road-course specialist and former IndyCar driver who raced at Montreal in last year’s mold-breaking Nationwide Series race in the rain, said “it was a lot of fun,” referring to the Canadian race. But Carpentier felt the heavier weight of the Cup cars would make rain racing impossible. “They’ve got way too much power,” he said, ultimately concluding that “it would be fun for the fans but not for us.”
In an insightful comparison between IndyCars and Sprint Cup cars, Sam Hornish Jr., who has raced in both series, noted the relative weight and downforce differences between the two. The Car of Today weighs 3,500 pounds and creates about 1,000 pounds of downforce from an 800-horsepower engine. The lighter IndyCars, at 1,500 pounds, generate 600 horsepower, creating about 4,000 pounds of downforce.
Drivers David Stremme and Kevin Harvick also weighed in on the idea of racing in the rain. Harvick pointed out vision as the main problem from the driver’s standpoint. “The windows fog up,” he said, eliciting a slight guffaw from race analyst Rusty Wallace, a former Cup champion. “Yeah, but that’s fixable!” Wallace rightly pointed out. Harvick then tried to duck under the protection of “rooster tails,” the rainbow-like aftermath of spray from cars ahead that virtually blind a driver, and which no doubt would be something totally foreign to NASCAR drivers in the heat of competition. But look at F1, whose drivers constantly face vision and rooster-tail dilemmas whenever there is rain at a grand prix race. As Wallace likely would have said: it’s doable, boys.
Stremme remarked that stopping the big cars “might be a problem,” before musing “but it’d be fun to try,” to which Harvick also agreed.
Trust me, there will be more on this topic as NASCAR continues to watch its Sunday afternoon audience vanish due to rainouts. Solutions? We’ve got plenty. But that’s for another time…and another rainout.
INDYCARS sped through the twisting turns of Mid-Ohio, the classic road course in Lexington, with standings leader Scott Dixon taking the lead on Lap 37 of the 85-lap Indy 200 from Justin Wilson, as both came up on backmarker Milka Duno. Duno effectively “picked” Wilson, with Dixon wedging between the two before disposing of Duno two turns later. Dixon was never headed after that, winning comfortably for his fourth victory of the season, and more importantly, his 20th overall series win, taking over the top spot all-time in IndyCar series victories. He had previously been tied with Sam Hornish Jr.
Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. E-mail: alanross_sports@yahoo.com© Sportland 2009
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