Author: Ron Thornton

[media-credit name=”Brad Keppel” align=”alignright” width=”225″][/media-credit]Martinsville might have started a wee bit boring, got real interesting in the second half, then went plain nuts at the end. Jeff Gordon, the star on this day, was leading, trying to fend off team-mate Jimmie Johnson for the win with three laps remaining, while Dale Earnhardt Jr was sitting third. Rick Hendrick was about to celebrate his 200th Cup victory as an owner when David Reutimann happened.

With his car laps down and running about as fast as one of those motorized wheelchairs, Reutimann ignored the pit entrance not once but twice before getting black flagged. That is when he parked the car on the track, brought out the caution, and forced a green-white-checker finish. Everybody pitted, except for Gordon and Johnson, the two leaders could not get going with their old tires, and they got spun out of the way to bring out a final yellow flag. This time, Ryan Newman duelled A.J. Allmendinger for the win, Junior retained third, Gordon 14th, and Johnson finished 12th.

So, what in hell was going on in the head of Reutimann? Well, when the car all but died, he tried to pad an extra lap or two to try for the points needed to keep the car in the Top 35 in points, to ensure its participation in the next race. Remember, this is the car Danica Patrick is scheduled to drive for ten events this season, and they want her in the races without having to be a go or go home entry. It was laps down and had been ailing for some time, including the development of some engine issues. When Reutimann got black flagged, the car died, refused to refire, which brought out the caution that changed everything.

The official line was that Reutimann limped around to try to gain an extra lap or two so they might stay in the Top 35. The trouble is they had no chance of making up the one point they currently trail the #83 driven by Landon Cassill, which wound up more than 70 laps up on them. The same goes for the #33 Hermie Sadler was driving, which wound up 69 laps ahead and five points better in 34th place in owner’s points. So, they not only stayed out for no reason at all, they want us to believe Reutimann did the calculation in his own head, and on his own decided to stay out there. Really?

Usually when the driver does something that appears so stupid it means one of two things. First, the guy is either a total idiot or just a jerk who wanted to screw somebody real bad. Personally, I have never heard of anyone accusing Reutimann of being such a driver or a man. Second, the one I would be betting on, is that the driver got orders to stay out from someone who simply has the math skills of a three year old. When it came time to face the music before the FOX and SPEED cameras, there by his lonesome was David Reutimann. He did not say he was ordered to do anything, he did not throw anyone under the bus, he just took the responsibility that I doubt was really his. He took it like a man, but I am wondering just where in hell owner and crew chief Tommy Baldwin was when it came time to man up?

We all know somebody did something mighty stupid last Sunday. What we don’t know for sure is exactly who that person was.  If nothing else, it will give us something to talk about before they head to Texas. Enjoy the next couple of weeks.

[media-credit name=”Simon Scoggins” align=”alignright” width=”225″][/media-credit]Daytona provided us some sit on the edge of your seat excitement. What a great way to start the season. Phoenix was nice, not great, but nice. In fact, the last four events have been just that way. Not a lot to write home about, or to write to you about. Still, I got to write something, even though there are jobs out there that require even less effort.

For example, I want to be a Cup flag man. You get one of the best vantage points in the house, you wave a green flag to start things, another to show the midway point, a caution flag, a checkers, and you get to go home. At least, that was the job description at Fontana where the only caution was the one that would end it early for rain.

Tony Stewart won it, his second of the season, which is pretty good for a guy who rarely wins before June. Jimmie Johnson was belching smoke and spilling oil after a line broke, but the caution came out at just the right time so he could finish 10th. With the return of those 25 points he had lost at Daytona, Johnson is back in a place Chase. So are Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr, who rounded out the Top Three on a nice sunny day in southern California.

Jeff Gordon was a lap down in 26th, his best highlight coming when he took the gasman and his tank for a slight trip on leaving the pits. Too bad they both rolled out of their stall, bringing the former four-time champ a penalty. Stewart fake fought broadcaster Rutledge Wood before the race, after Wood threatened to insert a Coke where Kevin Harvick’s sun don’t shine, and that pretty much sums up the action last Sunday.

Maybe Saturday provided something. Well, not if you tuned in to watch Danica Patrick in the Nationwide race. She still looked good out there, but when something went through the radiator her day was done before the midway point to finish 35th. As good as she looks, she also doesn’t have much to write home about.

At least we still got Martinsville coming up this weekend. Since 2006, and a dozen contests, the winners have been Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, and Jimmie Johnson. That is it. Each of them has at least one spring victory on the Virginia short track, with Harvick the defending champion with his lone win there a year ago. All four are sitting nicely in the Chase at the moment.

Two who are not are Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch. Both ran well at Fontana, and Edwards would have been fine for the moment except for the Bristol disaster. Busch, on the other hand, did well at Phoenix but really not worth a darn anywhere else until last week. Still, both are capable of a strong result this Sunday.

Maybe I will get to write about something rivetting that took our collective breathes away this Sunday. Maybe a close finish. Something, anything. Drop me a line as to what you think about this season thus far. Has it just been lukewarm to this point, or am I missing something? In the meantime, enjoy the week.

[media-credit id=24 align=”alignright” width=”222″][/media-credit]Bristol is a place where bashing and banging is expected, yet while there was some of that going on, it proved to be just nice to watch last Sunday. Unfortunately, it was not exactly a hang on to your seat kind of affair. I guess having Brad Keselowski well out in front ahead of Matt Kenseth in the late stages had a lot to do with it. Keselowski claimed his second straight at the track, going back to last August, while Kenseth has a runner-up finish to go with his Daytona victory. Not great racing as far as the fans go, but nice.

Nice is being able to run more than 5% of the race without being beat to a pulp. So, it was not so nice for Kasey Kahne, Marcos Ambrose, Kyle Busch, and Carl Edwards who all fell within the 32nd to 39th place spots when it was all over.

Nice is not having your team mate brush by, taking out your rear tire with his exhaust pipes. So, it was not so nice for Jeff Gordon, who immediately saw his car back end into the wall to leave him crumpled in 35th. Dale Earnhardt Jr will have to make amends, and maybe work on his pit road speed while he is at it as a late miscue left him in 15th. Not great, but nice enough.

Next stop is Fontana, where we have seen a few nice races. Too bad about all the brutally boring presentations we have witnessed there. For seven seasons the Cup boys visited the track in California twice in the campaign. That stopped last year. Nice. Kevin Harvick won there in 2011, but Kyle Busch has won five of the last six Nationwide contests on that track. Nice, but it would be even nicer if he could pull off that kind of dominance on the Cup side.

As I write this, the penalties for Jimmie Johnson’s team remain intact, though he leaves Bristol with a Top Ten and just 24 points out of a Chase place. He is 18th in the standings, which is nice for now, with 22 races left to get to where he needs to be.

History has shown us that with two races on the schedule, the attendance at Fontana plummets. Sometimes it gets too hot, sometimes too wet, and too often this race becomes an example of just a bunch of guys turning left. With the speeds generated there, it should be more exciting. Gil de Ferran set a lap record in CART at 241 mph, and an IndyCar race once averaged out at a world record 207 mph. Wouldn’t it be nice if we got that kind of excitement on Sunday? Hell, I would settle for just nice.

This week, my niece Tess turns 15 and my dad celebrates his 79th birthday. May they, and you, have a nice and enjoyable week.

[media-credit name=”David Yeazell” align=”alignright” width=”165″][/media-credit]When the dust had cleared at Las Vegas, Sunday had featured two folks in my opinion. One was Tony Stewart, who won this early in the season way back in…well, never. He drove like a demon to take his one, beating his own standard when he claimed Atlanta in 2002, the fourth race of that campaign. Stewart has finished second at the Daytona 500, but no wins have ever come his way this early.

The defending and three-time NASCAR Cup king is now in his 13th full season on the tour, but like an old bear he just doesn’t shake off his hibernation until winter is gone and spring has pretty much passed. He has now won just twice in March, once in April (2006 – Martinsville), and twice in May, back to back at Richmond in 2001 and 2002. Twenty-one of his 45 victories have come in the middle third of the year, with 19 coming down the stretch. Maybe his competitors need to sing some sweet lullabies to Tony, put him back into his slumber until June. An early rising Stewart can’t be good for any of them.

There was another fellow who made some news on Sunday. If NASCAR had their way, their kangaroo court might just fine this boy (secretly, of course) $100,000 for telling it like it is. Kyle Petty had a few choice words to say in regards to the appeal system Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson are presently involved in. To tell you the truth, he made it sound a lot like the courtroom of Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos.

If you don’t know about Bean, he was a man who shot another down, dueled another to the death, survived a lynching, and operated some saloons. Obviously a prime candidate to become Justice of the Peace in west Texas in the 1880s. Many a time the fines he handed out equaled the exact amount the accused happened to have had in their pockets. He was not empowered to grant divorces, but did so anyway while concluding wedding ceremonies with “and may God have mercy on your souls”, the traditional comment when handing out a death sentence. In short, Roy Bean made up the law as he went along, with little or no expertise in how to get it right.

That brings us back to Kyle Petty’s comments about those listed in the rule book as NASCAR’s 45 member appeals board. Three of them were picked, and decided that the Johnson-Knaus penalties were hunky dory. Due process? Well, maybe not. “Some of them may have passed away since their names were put in here. That’s how old these people are”, observed Petty. Maybe only a third of them had even been to a track in the past year, he furthered, do not have the expertise, and certainly could not be considered as the peers of those current drivers, team members, or owners. Or, as Petty stated, “These people don’t go to the racetrack, they don’t understand the process. They don’t understand sometimes where this sport is.”

By the way, Kyle also stated that the 25 point penalty handed out was no where near legitimate, in his opinion. Remember, the car in question had passed the templates before and, from what I understand, was not even going through the process when tagged using the ole eyeball method. It simply was at the track, but not yet presented for competition. In short, it had the same standing at that time as a Winnebago parked in the infield or a hot dog stand in the parking lot ; it was just there.

So, after Tuesday’s ruling Hendrick Motorsports takes this to NASCAR’s chief appellate officer to continue its appeal, all the while being very respectful to the powers that be. With his runner up finish at Las Vegas, Johnson sits 36 points out of a Chase place with 23 races to go before the deadline. That is doable, but it would be tougher should his crew chief, along with car chief Ron Malec, get an enforced six week holiday.

What about Kyle Petty? If NASCAR can fine independent contractors for making statements that they deem to be detrimental to stock car racing, what about an announcer? If they did, I don’t imagine Petty would find any support on the appeals board, unless the old fossils couldn’t remember what it was all about by the time they met.

What Petty said at Las Vegas had little to do as to whether the penalties were right or wrong, though we know what he thinks on that. It was about whether the appeal process constitutes a peer review of the issue or instead that they might be perceived as being just a rubber stamp committee of glorified hacks with little expertise who are less interested in doing what is right but rather doing what they are told. It should make for an interesting week as we lead up to Bristol.

[media-credit name=”Simon Scoggins” align=”alignright” width=”225″][/media-credit]They looked similar, with the same track and cars that appeared comparable. However, where the Nationwide race at Phoenix on Saturday was brutally boring, the televised action Sunday kept one interested from start to finish. So, what was the difference?

Fans tuned in Saturday primarily to see how Danica Patrick might perform as she competed in the second race of the circuit’s season. Daytona was not kind, and while she managed to finish this one, no small feat, the fact she was three laps down to finish 21st kind of dulled any sense of anticipation. However, even with the 29-year old raven haired beauty a non-factor, you would have hoped the action would be enough to carry the day.

Sunday, same track, and we had Kevin Harvick leading the way when Kyle Busch was not. As they thundered to a conclusion, Harvick was chasing down Denny Hamlin with a couple of laps to go when the gas gauge hit empty. Hamlin won, Happy coasted to second, as Greg Biffle, Jimmie Johnson, and Brad Keselowski hit the line ahead of the aforementioned Mr. Busch. If nothing else, Johnson is now out of minus figures in the standings, and even a 14th place result for Dale Earnhardt Jr was not bad considering he was outside the Top Twenty most of the day.

Both races featured cars finding the short cut through the old dog-leg, flying down to the apron and popping back up before the corner. It looked exciting Sunday, not so much Saturday. Why? Well, it could be something as simple as the difference between watching a Major League baseball game and one from the minors. One has the A-team, the other does not. Saturday’s camera shots failed to match the broadcast on Sunday. One was visually exciting, the other was not. One featured announcers that were entertaining, informative, and knowledgeable while the other did not. I like Allan Bestwick, and he shined on that old Inside Winston Cup show, but as a race announcer he comes across like an over eager kid, while Mike Joy has the voice and a real chemistry with his two cohorts. Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree are not bad, but they pale against the likes of Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds. Chris Myers and the Waltrip brothers are worth listening to, while Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty bring nothing to the table. Nothing.

Same track, similar racing, totally different results for the television viewer. Sunday kept me watching, Saturday saw the PVR get a work out. Even if I weren’t a fan, Sunday’s action gave me a good reason to watch the action coming up in Las Vegas. Saturday gives me reason to fire up the Sirius radio or tape the race and watch in high speed instead of high def.

Now, it would be no big deal, except later this season the FOX crew gets replaced doing the Cup side by the not ready for prime time folks at ESPN/ABC. After watching Saturday, I thought the action last Sunday would be terribly dull. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not. At least I know going into this weekend that while the NASCAR action on Sunday might take up a good four hours of my time, Saturday…maybe one. Enjoy the week.

[media-credit name=”Credit: Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR” align=”alignright” width=”243″][/media-credit]Okay, just what in sam hill was that? In the end, it was Matt Kenseth being chased by Greg Biffle and Dale Earnhardt Jr coming home, with all appearing to have a shot at the win. In the end, it was Kenseth taking his second Daytona 500, and Junior beating out Biffle to be the runner up. That, my friends, proved to be one of this event’s most boring moments. Really.

Where do you start when reflecting upon the Bizarro 500? The rain that finally managed to wash out a Sunday 500? A Daytona 500 starting under the lights on Monday? Maybe you liked the 1.1 laps put in by Jimmie Johnson before Elliott Sadler tagged his inside back fender. By the time they were done beating the stuffings out of ole Jimmie his Chevy was done for a 42nd place finish and two big points in the standings. It also turned the days of Kurt Busch (39th) , Danica Patrick (38th), and Trevor Bayne (35th) into total crap. That was just the beginning.

Maybe you liked the optics of Ryan Newman’s adventure. Tire goes down, he goes sliding, then comes to the pits for help. Well, there are all kinds of help, but Newman probably wasn’t planning on leaving the pits at the same time his tire was leaving his car, causing A.J. Allmendinger to rear end him. After that, a 21st place finish probably wasn’t all that bad, but others were not so fortunate.

Sometimes you wreck, get things put back together, then pad on a few more laps even after your own race is basically done. Then there are times you just plain blow up. Jeff Gordon was riding around when all of a sudden he waved for folks to go by. Why? Well, the explosion under the hood gave us the answer. Gordon was done on the spot, logging a 40th place result. I mean, the best recovery probably was that of Clint Bowyer, who actually ran out of gas and still managed 11th.

Sometimes no fuel is better than a full tank, like a full tank of jet fuel to run a track dryer. Juan Pablo Montoya left the pits under caution, tried to catch up to the field all the while complaining about his car, which immediately broke in to a high speed sideways slide into the rear of the truck to liven things up just a bit. The FOX folks came out of a commercial break to show Montoya (36th) crawling out of a car that it looked like somebody had stomped it into the ground as a Texas style barbecue shot flames high into the air along the outside fence. The good news is that while some may have taken a bit of a lickin’ on this night they all kept on tickin’.

You would have to think that even with 30 less hours to get set for the race at Phoenix this Sunday, that event should be a much tamer affair from what we had just witnessed. That is, unless you consider events of Phoenix races past. There was that Lap 66 mess last year involving Andy Lally, Bobby Labonte, Brian Vickers, Casey Mears, Clint Bowyer, David Gilliland, David Ragan, David Reutimann, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Burton, Paul Menard, Robby Gordon, and Travis Kvapil. A few laps before that, Carl Edwards found himself heading to the garage in an incident that involved Kyle Busch and eventual race winner Jeff Gordon. Then there was the fall race that saw Vickers ambush Kenseth, never mind the carnage from the two Nationwide races. Oh, this does not bode well for tameness at all.

Back in the day, when I had hair and a higher voice, I loved watching figure eight racing. Sometimes it would feature solo cars, or two cars chained together, or maybe they even trailed a camper trailer. When they met at the intersection it would cause a joyous explosion of sheet metal and wreckage. While it has been years since I’ve seen these races, I understand the world championships still take place in Riverhead, New York, with other events featured across the United States.

Phoenix International Raceway is not amongst them, but you might be hard pressed to notice the difference as NASCAR action resumes this Sunday in the Subway 500. Enjoy the week.

[media-credit id=22 align=”alignright” width=”253″][/media-credit]NASCAR does it right, my friends. Begin the season with an exhibition game, featuring all-stars, rookies, even old timers would do. You don’t start your day with the main meal, but breakfast sure hits the spot. The same applies to fans who after the off-season just want a taste of what is to come, a little something to whet the appetite.

Granted, NASCAR’s off-season is shorter than most, but it was sure nice to hear those engines roar, to see the cars thundering around the oval in a big pack, to see the bumps and even the spills. ARCA opened things right, with Larry McReynolds’ boy Brandon leading the way coming home before the tank went dry. That left Bobby Gerhart going by for his 8th career win on that track. Then came the Budweiser Shootout, as we again saw close pack racing that replaced the two car tango, giving us a more classical sling shot victory by Kyle Busch over Tony Stewart. Cars could hook up only for so long before they over-heated, and if the drivers bumped wrong or in the wrong place bad things happened. If I wasn’t ready for the season to start before, after watching the action last weekend I sure am biting at the bit to see what will take place this Sunday at Daytona.

Maybe it is time for the NFL to learn a little something from the car jockeys for a change. Football’s all-star game is a dud, few give a damn, and even making it part of the Super Bowl festivities failed to jack up much interest. How about starting the season with all-stars, or incoming rookies, even with modified rules? Those lads who play football in soccer attire Down Under give their fans a season opening month long exhibition tournament. Teams in Australia open play with two shortened games against two opponents on the same day to commence the NAB Cup competition that features all 18 teams. The expansion Sydney Giants unsurprisingly lost both their openers, but were within a single kick of winning either of them to open a few eyes.

Hockey could do more, but their format of having the captains select their own teams like kids having a pick-up game at the local rink has been a great innovation. Not much wrong with baseball’s mid-season classic, as the fan support would indicate, but wouldn’t it be great if they featured a few old-timers getting together for a nine-inning game somewhere to kick off the season? Luke Appling has been gone more than 20 years now, but I still remember back to 1982 when the then 75-year old former White Sox star of the 1930’s and 40’s hit a 250 foot shot off Warren Spahn at old RFK Stadium. What a way that would be to open a season.

NASCAR does not really need a featured old-timers race and it already has a very popular all-star event. However, since 1979 the sport has opened the new season with a race with modified rules featuring primarily pole sitters from the past year or those who had previous success in the contest. It not only puts some cars back on the track in competition, but it also gives fans a preview of what might be expected in the upcoming Daytona 500. If what we saw last Sunday equates into what we can see this Sunday, the Great American Race will be something to behold.

By the way, just in case you don’t realize that we are indeed living in one of NASCAR’s golden eras, keep in mind that of the eight Cup champions who have claimed the title over the past 18 seasons, only Dale Jarrett will not be running in this weekend’s Daytona 500.