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October 27, 2006
Rainy Day Random Thoughts
*So a month after the CEO of 360OTC announced on the Jeremy Mayfield forum on their site that 360OTC would be sponsoring Tyler Walker full-time in a Bill Davis Racing truck ride, the news is finally reaching the mainstream media. Apparently there's likely to be some sort of more formal announcement this weekend at Atlanta during the truck race broadcast. My question is whether this will be a 4th BDR truck or whether one of the current BDR drivers is going to lose their ride, a question I'm not going to rehash in this space since I pondered it a time or two when Steve Park was in the running for a BDR truck ride. I'm also not going to bother revisiting Steve not getting a ride at BDR - fact is whatever the reasons were, BDR decided to go in a different direction from Steve.
*Everything got rained out at the track in Atlanta today so the lineup for Sunday's Cup race will be set by owner's points. That means that Michael Waltrip starts 38th. Normally I'm not all that excited to see qualifying rained out, but in this case it's wonderful news because it locks Michael into the race! Which is pretty important considering that some of his sponsors including NAPA are based in Atlanta. I hope that Michael will have a semi-decent car on Sunday because I sure would love to see him get a great finish in front of all the folks from NAPA who are sure to be in attendance! I know I shouldn't get my hopes up but I would be estatic if Michael got a top 15 at least! I'd probably pass out if he got a top ten - not because I doubt Michael's ability to race up front, but because the cars he's been given to race are so junky this season. I guess a girl can dream though!
*Qualifying being rained out means that both Red Bull Racing and A.J. Allmendinger's Cup debut will have to wait. In RBR's case this is the second time they've had to go home without racing, the first being when Bill Elliott failed to qualify for Charlotte a few weeks ago. I was looking forward to seeing how Allmendinger might do in his first Cup race, though being in a RBR car with at least the engine, and possibly more, provided by BDR doesn't fill me with confidence about how good the car will be. But Allmendinger will race in tomorrow's truck race for BDR and hopefully for his sake he fares as well as he has in his previous two truck races. RBR plans to enter Allmendinger in next week's Cup race at Texas so maybe we'll finally see this team on the track then. I'm sure there are some fans of Elliott who think it's poetic justice that Elliott was asked to step aside by RBR so Allmendinger could get in the car, and the way it's ending up Elliott is going to race the #37 thanks to his Champion's provisional and Allmendinger will be watching from the sidelines.
*HT Motorsports is doing something cool this weekend. They donated space on the #59 truck to Goodwill Industries to help them highlight their mission, which is to asisst people with finding and keeping jobs. It's not often that a team donates space that can be filled by a primary sponsor straight-up to a charity, because often there's still some sort of sponsor tie-in, where the sponsor is somehow involved in some sort of activity, event or promotion to raise money for that charity. Not that it's never happened, but that's prime real estate that a paying sponsor could use. So I think this is a really nice gesture by the #59 team.
*I don't really know what to think about the latest with David Ragan. Apparently Ragan wants to talk to Tony Stewart this weekend since Stewart had harsh words for Ragan after Martinsville. So he says that since he knew that it would be hard to get time with Stewart, he bid $5,570 at the Speedway Children's Charities auction last night to win a ride around the track with Stewart in the pre-race festivities on Sunday. On one hand, I can see how it might be hard for Ragan to get to Stewart - making time to talk to Ragan probably isn't high on his list of priorities. And I think it's great that Ragan was willing to make such a generous donation to charity. However, it seems to me that he could have at least have been able to get Stewart's cell phone number, stop by his hauler or try to find him in the motorcoach lot. In adddition, the cynical part of me also wonders whether this is a bit of a PR stunt by Ragan to try to fix the way that some fans view him. If Ragan legitamitely thinks that this is his only way of talking to Stewart and that it's something he absolutely must do, well, it smacks of desperation to me. Regardless of what's really going on with this, I'm sure the media will be paying close attention to how Ragan and Stewart interact during their ride around the track.
Posted by silverdsl at October 27, 2006 05:38 PM