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November 30, 2008

Help Save Michael Waltrip Outloud!

For the last few weeks it was sounding like the chances of Michael Waltrip Outloud returning to Sirius/XM in 2009 were pretty good but apparently things have changed. Much to my dismay last night on both Out Loud and "The After Show" the discussion made it sound like Sirius isn't too sure about making Outloud part of the lineup on the Nascar channel 128 next season which would mean that it would be canceled. What's astonishing is that apparently they may cancel Dale Jr Unrestricted as well. Just exactly what are they thinking over at Sirius if they may not bring back shows by two of the three most popular drivers in the sport as per the results in last season's Most Popular Driver voting? At a time when it's hard to keep fans interested it seems to me that Sirius would want more unique shows like this featuring some of the most loved drivers in the sport rather than less.

On the show last night they asked fans to call and email Sirius to try to help convince the powers that be that the show should return in 2009. If you are a fan of Michael's and you want to help save this show, whether you have Sirius/XM or not, please email and call Sirius and let them know you want Michael Waltrip Outloud to come back next year!

You can call Sirius at 1-888-539-SIRIUS (7474).

You can email Sirius via this link: http://www.sirius.com/customercare.

If you are a current subscriber make sure to mention Michael's show as one reason you are keeping your subscription and if you aren't a subscriber please tell them you would consider subscribing if Michael's show comes back in 2009. Money talks and especially in this economy!

Some of you might be thinking that since you don't have Sirius/XM and therefore can't listen it's not a big deal, but I would guess that it's a big deal for Michael because it helps him and MWR to not only get their message out but it's something I think is likely a big selling point to potential and current sponsors. Doing this show, as well as TWiN and his other media appearances, are extra exposure for Michael and therefore extra exposure for all his sponsors. I would think this is part of the way they try to do more for their sponsors than other teams do.

Listening to this show is a highlight of my week when it comes to Nascar programming because Michael and Tony do an outstanding job of informing the fans, not just about Michael and his teams, but also about everything that's going on in the sport. I've learned so much from the show! Also, they've had some great guests on and of course they're very funny as well! It's so much fun to listen to this show and I really hope it's back in 2009!

Posted by silverdsl at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2008

Thankful on Thanksgiving

Given the poor economy it's easy to get caught up in worry and stress because things are so difficult for everyone right now. However, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow and I'm trying to focus on the things that I'm happy and thankful for. Most of all my husband, my friends and family. My snuggle-monster, Bailey the pug, who is currently happily snoring away on my lap as I tap this on my laptop. I'm also thankful that myself and my husband still have good jobs and that our employers, while effected by the economy just like any other, are involved in areas that aren't some of the more volatile ones right now like retail, banking or the automotive industry. I'm thankful for good health and that we'll be seeing lots of our family over the next few days.

I'm thankful that even though 2008 was an off-year for the New York Yankees that I've been a fan of the team during a time when they've had so much overall success. I'm thankful for the community at NYYFans.com and our moderation team who help us so much when it comes to running the site. I'm thankful for David Cone, Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez, Robin Ventura, Mike Mussina, John Olerud and Jason Giambi, all former Yankees and all favorite players of mine who I was lucky enough to see play in person.

I've loved watching racing since I was a little girl but there was a time when I didn't watch as avidly as I do now. So I'm thankful that I got back into watching a number of years ago and that I became a fan of Steve Park which led me to becoming a fan of Michael Waltrip. I'm thankful for the friends I've made through the forum on Michael's site, for being lucky enough to meet Michael several times, for the adventures I've had at the track and for "Michael Waltrip Out Loud" which I hope returns in 2009. I'm thankful that Michael's won two Daytona 500s and has had success on the track otherwise. I'm thankful that Michael Waltrip Racing has taken some hits but has survived and especially that Michael is going to race both Cup and Nationwide next season.

I'm thankful that back in 2004 Michael and those around him decided to raise $1 million for the Victory Junction Gang Camp via Operation Marathon because it came at a time when I was looking for a way to do something in memory of my grandmother who had passed away the year prior. My grandmother was of limited means but she was very kind-hearted and tried to do whatever she could to help others. What Michael did with Operation Marathon inspired me to organize a variety of charitable efforts over the past few years in my grandmother's name because I realized that if he could do these things even with the busy schedule he had then surely there were things that I could do.

I'm thankful that I decided to do this blog because it gives me an outlet for all the many things that I question and think about. I'm sure my husband is thankful for that too because it means that he doesn't have to spend as much time listening to me ramble on about racing, something that he has no interest in! I'm thankful for all those who have taken the time to read this blog, particularly those who are repeat visitors. As one who loves news and has many, many things I'm interested in I'm thankful for the internet in general because it allows me to read and learn about things that I might not easily find information on otherwise.

Sometimes I wish I lived in the Southwest so I could photograph all the beautiful canyons and rock formations there but then I'm thankful for living in the Northeast where it's just an hour's drive to the ocean or an even shorter trip to Manhattan. I'm thankful for all the natural wonder that I get to photograph and thankful for the internet that I can see so many beautiful photographs from talented photographers of the places I can't visit. The world is a beautiful place and I'm constantly in awe of everything around me even if it's just the sunrise on the horizon on my way to work in the morning.

There are times when I get stressed out and down, and there's things that I wish were different, but I feel lucky that I also have a lot to be thankful for!

Posted by silverdsl at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2008

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/24)

*Bobby Hamilton Racing is shutting their doors at the end of the week. I can't say I'm surprised by this announcement given that the team had pre-existing sponsorship issues even before the economy went bad, were based outside of the Charlotte area which is a challenge for any team, there was a nasty family feud between Lori Hamilton and Bobby Hamilton, Jr. which led to Bobby, Jr. wanting nothing to do with his father's company, and Dodge pulled their support of the team. The organization might be able to survive one or two of those things but all of them together in combination with the poor economy makes it impossible for them to continue. Sad to see this happen to Bobby Hamilton's company that he worked so hard to build and that at one time had so much success. In some ways there's some parallels between what's happened at BHR and at DEI, but at least Teresa Earnhardt has taken steps to ensure that the company will continue via the merger with Chip Ganassi Racing.

*In other Truck Series news, Wyler Racing would like to field not only one truck next season, but two trucks - one for Jack Sprague and one for a young driver who Sprague would mentor. Unfortunately I suspect the chances of Wyler having any trucks next season probably isn't too good considering they're looking for a sponsor for Sprague and the young driver would need to bring sponsorship for him for the second truck. Maybe they'll end up fielding a truck for Sprague out of their own pocket but it's probably harder for them to do that than in the past given that the car dealerships that the Wyler family owns probably aren't doing so well right now.

*Chad McCumbee said that due to a lack of sponsorship he may not end up racing a Cup car full-time for Petty Enterprises next season as most were expecting he would. I have to wonder what's going on at PE. Right now they have two cars with minimal sponsorship, they've laid some people off and from what's been said it doesn't sound likely that either McCumbee or Kyle Petty is going to be racing all that much for them next season. So PE could end up being a one-car team next year with just Bobby Labonte, and I have to wonder if we'll even see that car on the track if they can't find sponsorship for it. Boston Ventures buying into the organization was supposed to make them so much better and give them so many more resources but that doesn't seem to be the case so far. I haven't heard of much, if anything, that Boston Ventures has done so far. There's been some speculation that what Boston Ventures really wanted when they bought PE was the Petty Racing Experience because that operation was extremely profitable and that they didn't really care about the Cup cars. Given the direction that things are going in as far as the Cup teams go, I'm starting to think there might be some truth to that. It's not just that they can't find sponsors for the cars, that's to be expected. It's also that they don't seem to have a clear plan for the future overall.

*Jayksi has an "I heard" item that Supercuts may not return to Fitz Motorsports next season. Based on recent comments by Armando Fitz it didn't sound too likely Fitz would be back in the Nationwide Series next season and losing Supercuts would likely be the final nail in the coffin for that operation. Given how many problems the organization has I really doubt they'd be able to find a replacement sponsor. It's always a shame when a Nationwide-only team closes their doors but this organization has been heading in this direction for quite some time.

*Looks like Brad Coleman may end up back with Joe Gibbs Racing, the organization he raced for in 2007. What a crazy ride for Coleman this season. He left his Nationwide ride thinking he had a Cup ride with Hall of Fame Racing, not only for this season but for next and only ended up racing one race for HoF before they went in another direction. I hope it works out for him with JGR. Even though it wouldn't be a full-time ride and it wouldn't be on the Cup level, it would be an opportunity to race competitively.

*Joe Nemechek is out of a ride after having his contract bought out by Furniture Row Racing but he will be racing next season. Based on what Joe said in an interview on XM last week he plans on reviving his Nationwide team and he's also looking at going truck racing. So he's definitely going to stay involved in Nascar. As for FRR, they hope to field a car part-time next season and are considering a variety of drivers including Michael McDowell. Apparently they're also talking with Sterling Marlin who I think is a better fit than McD. Marlin has shown a willingness to race part-time and doesn't seem to mind if the cars aren't the greatest on the track, whereas McD is still developing as a driver and would probably benefit from racing full-time.

Posted by silverdsl at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

Michael Waltrip and Others on the Economic Welfare of the Sport

A couple of months ago Michael Waltrip and a number of others in the garage area took part in a roundtable discussion in Charlotte about the economic welfare of Nascar and a number of related issues. The transcript is well worth reading in it's entity because it was a very interesting discussion that involved a lot of people on the business side of the sport.

One of Michael's first comments is very reflective of his entire attitude towards his sponsors. He said,

"That's partially why I wanted to be a car owner, because I thought I could do more for my sponsors than what I saw other owners doing, to try and deliver value on the marketing side or, more importantly, marry all these sponsors together so they can grow their businesses away from the track. I'm as much into that as I am anything in the car. I'm all-in on all aspects of this owner deal, but the thing I'm most interested in is how to deliver that value. It's there if we're smart enough to get it. There are opportunities everywhere."

I've always thought that one of Michael's greatest assets besides his ability behind the wheel is his approach towards his sponsors. He's creative, full of ideas and he has a tremendous understanding of how to deliver for his sponsors. I definitely think he recognizes opportunities that others in the garage area either don't or are afraid of pursuing because they're non-traditional. Raceworld is one of the biggest examples in my opinion of Michael looking at a way that he could offer something to his sponsors above and beyond what other teams could offer. If not for how hard Michael works for his sponsors Michael Waltrip Racing probably wouldn't be fielding cars on the Cup level right now.

I find it frustrating that fans will mock Michael for how often he mentions his sponsors or for some of the other things he does to help get them exposure because it seems that a lot of people fail to understand that all those things that he does is how his organization is able to not only strive but hopefully one day thrive. Michael does deliver value for his sponsors and they recognize that which is why sponsors like NAPA Auto Parts and Aaron's have been with him for so long. These are the things the other drivers and teams need to be doing and even more so given the challenges of the economy right now as evidenced by the issues brought up in this discussion.

What I thought was one of the most interesting topics that was discussed was the idea of various entities working together to help each other though these difficult economic times. At times it seems like there's some resistance about working together particularly from those on the Cup level when the level of competition is so great but more and more I think that's going to be necessary. Hunter Nickell from SPEED said,

"We've spent a lot more time talking to the tracks, but more now than ever we talk to people like Michael [Waltrip] about ways we can work together. While we're grateful TV ratings have been solid this year, we're totally connected with the tracks because we've got to find creative ways with these guys to keep the live attendance value going."

Of all the TV partners I think SPEED does the best job of working with the teams and giving exposure to a variety of different teams as opposed to just those that race up front. SPEED's coverage of the Truck Series is outstanding and I wish that ESPN and FOX would follow their model. A big problem to me is that these sponsors are paying $20 or $25 million a year to sponsor a Cup car but they might not ever get any exposure even when their car is racing competitively. Some drivers and teams are never mentioned unless they're involved in an incident. That leads to fans getting frustrated because they have no idea what's going on with some of their favorite drivers. I think all the media partners need to work better with the drivers and teams. Sometimes it's seems like there's a very adversarial relationship there, and I suppose that has to be expected since the media is sometimes going to report things that teams and drivers don't want them to. But there are also times when there are positive things to report or simply ways that race and team coverage can be improved in a way that will make fans happy. That benefits everyone because if the fans hear or see what they want they're more likely to pay attention and tune in.

A very intriguing idea to me is the idea that teams might work together to find ways to get their sponsors added exposure. Steve Lauletta, president of Chip Ganassi Racing said,

"I think collaboration is getting better, but it's so minimal compared to what could happen. We all go racing every week and we're not talking to Michael Waltrip Racing that much from a team perspective. And there probably are things we could do together. Not us taking NAPA or them taking Target, that's where we are right now, we're all feeding off the same mound. But there are things we could do better team-to-team or team-to-track. You get that in other sports. The White Sox and Yankees can feed off each other with ideas because they're in different markets and have different approaches. It'd be really interesting to see if NASCAR could formalize that and get people to think beyond their own team boundaries."

I think that's an area that needs to be explored and developed further. In response to Lauletta's comment Michael brought up the Gillette Young Guns promotion and it seems to me that more promotions like that which utilize a variety of drivers from different teams is a good direction to go in. The Coke Family of Drivers or the Toyota commericals that feature a variety of drivers from their teams are good too. In those promotions, not only is a sponsor like Gillette or Coke getting exposure, but so are the individual driver's sponsors. I think there's other opportunities too where promotions could be done to encourage fans to support a variety of sponsors. So Ganassi and MWR could work together on a promotion to get fans to visit NAPA for their auto parts and then stop by their local Target for the other things they need. Problem is that it's likely not only teams that need to be convinced of the wisdom of working together on things like this but also the sponsors who might be leery of working with sponsors they may view as competitors even if they aren't selling the same products or services.

One of the questions that came up was how Nascar was "returning to their roots" and how successful that's been While those on the panel spoke in glowing terms about how successful returning the focus to the traditional fans is, I think that particular effort has been a miserable failure. They seem to think that the core fans, the most passionate fans are more involved in the sport now but from this fan's point of view many of those fans seem even more unhappy than ever. The CEO of Motorsports Authentics, Mark Dyer said,

" I think the ultimate conclusion was that we're pretty good where we are with mainstream America and let's not run away from that image. You know what, there's a lot more folks from Main Street than any other street. Those are the people who go to the races and consume eight to 10 hours of media."

With ticket sales taking a major nosedive it seems to me that those from mainstreet America aren't going to races either. I don't know of any fan hardcore or otherwise who listens to 8-10 hours of Nascar related media and there seems to be far fewer people than ever who make Nascar a major part of their lives. it's troubling to me that doesn't seem to be recognized by those in the garage area. In addition, today's casual fan is tomorrow's hardcore fan since everyone has to start somewhere. Who is going to replace the traditional fans when they aren't around anymore? I also have to ask as I did in a recent entry, just exactly how is this sport supposed to continue to appeal to major sponsors if there's no growth, particularly among the demographics of who the sport appeals to? Later in the discussion one of the participants mentioned the need to understand and engage the hardcore fans. I'm not sure that those in the garage area understand those fans as well as they think they do.

Another interesting point came up in the discussion of the possibility of smaller fields next year and that's the idea that it's not as bad as some seem to think it is. Those who are involved from an ownership standpoint such as Michael or Steve Lauletta don't think it's a bad thing, partially because it prevents the value of sponsoring a car from being watered down. In thinking about it from the point of view of an owner I can understand why they feel that way. For one thing there's that many fewer teams that they're competing with whether it's for wins or for sponsors. But less cars also means greater opportunities for the cars that are there to get exposure and attention. The other point is that with less cars there's less chance that a sponsor can get a better deal in terms of paying less to sponsor a car elsewhere.

Michael said,

"It happened in '02 or '03, we were down to 39 cars, other guys were starting and parking and, really, we don't even remember it now. Just think of the 100,000 people at Talladega. Most of them want to know how Dale Jr.'s going to do, they want to know how Tony Stewart is going to work out and what's going to happen with Jeff Gordon. The rest of it is just white noise; every now and then a guy like me runs up there and takes the lead and everybody's like, "Yeah, that's Dale Jr.'s buddy there. He can still draft." To me, you can read more into the number of cars than is significant. ... Last year, I picked the worst time in the history of NASCAR to start a team. Fifty-one cars, at least 47, showed up and it almost took a wonderful sponsor in NAPA and made them say, 'We don't want to do this anymore, this isn't fun.' A better problem to have would be less cars than too many."

It's 100% correct that it's not the end of the world if there are some short fields. Thing is fans definitely do remember the days of starting and parking on the Cup level and they don't want to see it again. Fans are very much against start-n-park teams even if what those teams do is completely within Nascar's rules.

In addition, while it's true that many fans are only interested in Junior, Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon because those are some of the most popular drivers in the sport, there's a significant amount of fans who are interested in other drivers. It's a complete fallacy that fans aren't interested in drivers other than a select few and it's kind of disappointing to me that even Michael is under the impression that fans are only interested in a handful of drivers. Michael has a huge fanbase - he was third in Most Popular Driver voting last season - and his fans care about what's going on with him and his team more than just when he's up front. The same goes for all the other drivers - every single driver in the field has fans. Anyone who thinks that fans are only interested in four or five drivers needs to go take a look at the many fan forums that exist - there's one for just about every driver and all those drivers have very passionate fans. All of that said, Michael is very much correct that a smaller field is going to make a lot of sponsors, and therefore teams, happy because there are going to be less issues with the top 35 and the potential for missing races.

One thing that I've thought for a while now is having a big effect on the way the fans view the sport is that gone are the days when most drivers stayed with one team or sponsor for most of their career. Instead, drivers change teams and sponsors all the time. That creates issues for fans because sometimes drivers end up with teams that their fans don't like and it also creates an unwillingness for fans to invest a lot of money in memorabilia and merchandise because they're afraid the sponsor and car number is going to keep changing. In response to a question on the topic of drivers changing teams, Michael brought up the difficulties in marketing Junior when he goes from the red 8 he's always been associate with to a new sponsor. In Junior's case he doesn't just have one new primary sponsor, he has two, and that makes things a lot more complicated. I know for me so far I don't associate Junior with Amp Energy Drinks or the National Guard like I did with him and Budweiser. I also think things may get even more complicated since the National Guard is reportedly also going to be sponsoring Jeff Gordon next season. How are fans supposed to connect a specific sponsor with a specific driver when that sponsor may bounce from driver to driver, sometimes within the same season? Or when a driver has a bunch of different sponsors?

Something that I never gave any thought to until Michael brought it up later in the discussion is that the costs for a sponsor aren't just limited to what they spend to get on the hood of the car. Michael notes that it's not just the $26 million that a sponsor might have to spend to be the primary sponsor of a car but the cost that they have to spend in activation of the sponsorship which could be double or triple to the point where a company may need to spend $80 or a $90 million. $80 or $90 million?!?!? In this economy?! There simply aren't going to be many companies that are going to be able to do that no matter how much they want to get involved in the sport. So moving forward it's going to be just as important to find ways to keep costs down for the sponsors as it is on the competition side.

Lauletta also brings up the competition they face from other sports and specifically cites the New York Yankees and the new stadium they're building. I have to say I can't blame sponsors for looking at opportunities like that over sponsoring a race car. Yankees stadium is probably going to be sold out for every game next season and the TV ratings for the Yankees on a national level are always high. It's definitely not going to be cheap to buy advertising or sponsorship at Yankee Stadium for next season but it may offer a greater value than being on a race car right now.

Perhaps the single most important point was made by Michael Burch from Speedway Motorsports who emphasized the importance of keeping the fans engaged. He said,

"I want you [Waltrip] to have more racing fans because the more fans you have, the more likely they're going to come to one of our facilities to see you. You have fans, we have facilities, we know where they live, we send them information. How can we help tell people that Juan Pablo is going to be out in the campground on Saturday? Or NAPA will have this display, stop by? How do we get more fan-driver interaction? How do we keep that fan engaged? If that fan isn't engaged, we don't have a reason to go into the boardroom and ask for that $28 million."

He's right. It's essential for this sport to keep the fans interested and engaged, even if that becomes harder because there's less money available to make that happen. Everyone is going to have to be creative and also work together to figure out ways to get the fans to go to the track, go to appearances, watch on TV and stay enthusiastic. Recently I've gotten the sense that some teams and drivers believe that Nascar fans are so loyal that they don't have to put in much effort and those fans will always be around. False! These days a driver needs to do more than smile and say the "right" things in an interview or sign a couple of autographs on the way out to a practice. Doing appearances and autograph signings are great, but there are a lot of fans who can't go to those things so it's essential that drivers make themselves available to the media whether it's a print journalist or a satellite radio reporter and that they also find ways to engage their fans online as well. Fans need to feel respected and appreciated as well. It's impossible to make every fan happy or always give them what they want, but teams and drivers shouldn't take fans for granted and assume they'll always be around because they might find out that their fans have moved on when they need them the most.

I like that this panel was brought together to frankly and seriously look at some important issues facing the sport. Sometimes I feel like some in the garage area are afraid of addressing these topics openly or are ignoring these things all together. But it's important that these discussions take place and particularly that they happen openly so that fans and the media have some understanding of the perspective of the teams and the challenges they're facing. Maybe they'll also lead to some brain-storming and problem solving that might help those in the garage area address the problems facing the sport in relation to the poor economy.

Posted by silverdsl at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2008

Isi it Just the Economy That's Chasing Sponsors Away?

The economy has been cited as the leading reason why so many teams are struggling to find sponsorship for next season but is that the only reason? While I think the economy is one of the biggest issues facing teams looking for sponsors, difficulties finding and keeping sponsors isn't a new problem - there were teams, particularly in the Truck and Nationwide levels, that struggled to find sponsors even when the economy is good. I feel like there's a perfect storm of circumstances convening in Nascar right now precipitated by the downward spiral the economy is in. I try not to be doom and gloom all the time but some of this issues are long-standing and don't have easy solutions so I worry that things are only going to get worse before they get better. For one thing the costs of fielding a competitive car are only continuing to rise meaning that there are fewer and fewer companies that can afford to be a full-time primary sponsor on a car that races up front regularly, and especially when budgets are getting slashed. But more than that, I have to wonder whether sponsors feel that being on a race car is the same value that it once was and whether they still believe they feel they can effectively reach their target audience through a Nascar sponsorship.

Consider that Nascar has struggled to establish a presence in two of the largest markets - New York and Los Angeles. Although some fans want the sport to remain exclusively in the Southeast, sponsors market, advertise and sell their products to a national audience. When advertising dollars are so tight, some companies may rethink the wisdom of being involved in a sport that often seems to go unnoticed in the New York market and struggles to find a place in the Los Angeles market even though there's a race at Auto Club Speedway. It's not like there's not Nascar fans in those markets - there are and I'm one of them in the New York market, it's just that the sport seems to struggle to gain a broad appeal in those places.

Along the same lines, usually unless they sell a very specific product, most large companies market to a variety of demographics. If I were an executive who had to spend my advertising budget very carefully I might be concerned by Nascar's continuing lack of diversity. Things may be better than they were ten or twenty years ago, but there is still an obvious lack of diversity in the garage area and often among fans as well. It's not just a lack of diversity in terms of race either but also in relation to ethnic background, religion, political beliefs, opinions and attitudes. That doesn't mean that every Nascar fan is exactly the same - I'm certainly very different than many of my fellow fans - but if a company does market research about Nascar fans and finds that all the demographics they want to reach aren't represented, they may look at other opportunities where they can reach everyone they want to.

Another issue, that I've discussed in this space many times is how excessively negative many fans are. Of course everything isn't always flowers and rainbows, and I'm certainly all for being realistic. No fans has to like every driver or the decisions that are made or the opinions that those in the garage area have. However, there are a lot of fans who are negative about absolutely everything. Some fans seem to enjoy bashing and hating some drivers and teams more than they do cheering for and supporting the drivers they do like. Is that really something that a sponsor wants to be associated with?

In general, there's a tremendous amount of fan dissatisfaction with the sport that has been building for years. Contrary to the way the sport wants to spin it, ticket sales haven't gone down solely for economic reasons, though that is certainly a big factor. The fact of the matter is that there is a segment of fans, maybe a bigger segment of fans than some realize, are so unhappy with the direction the sport is going in that they have stopped attending races and even stopped watching the races on TV. I think a lot of people in Nascar figured that eventually fans would accept the Chase format or Toyota's presence in Cup, and while many have, there seem to be just as many who are close-minded and unwilling to accept any kind of change. Instead of just dealing with the things they don't like and not letting it ruin their enjoyment of the sport, they've decided that these things are so intolerable that they're gong to stop watching. If the fans aren't watching the races at home or in person then since the whole point of sponsoring the car is the exposure they get, what's the point if no one is paying attention in large enough number to justify the money they have to spend to be on the car?

If I'm with a major company and I have to be extra careful with my money in a difficult economy I'd be looking at other major sports like the MLB or the NFL where I know I'll reach a national audience that's diverse and mostly happy with the sport. The New York Yankees for one will likely have a sellout on opening day and throughout the season even in this bad economy - that would be pretty attractive to me if I were a sponsor, especially since I know that the TV audience would be huge as well. Meanwhile the Daytona 500, Nascar's most prominent race, is struggling to sell tickets. If they can't sell tickets for the Dayonta 500, that doesn't bode well for any of the other races next season.

What troubles me is that a lot of these issues aren't anything new. They've been brewing for years and I don't see any easy solutions. I think there are ways to reach out to the fans, whether they're in the major markets that Nascar has struggled to gain a foothold in or whether they're unhappy fans, but a lot of those things would take money, something that neither Nascar nor the teams have a lot of to spare right now in this economy. Maybe I'm wrong and the sole reason these sponsors are pulling out is due to the poor economy making funds scarce. But it seems to me that sponsors are going to have a hard time justifying spending millions of dollars in sponsorship money right now in a sport where there are issues like this.

Posted by silverdsl at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

Australian 60 Minutes to Feature Marcos Ambrose

Marcos Ambrose had a film crew from Australia's 60 Minutes with him all weekend at Homestead filming a piece for that show which will air next season. I sure wish it was filmed for this country's version of 60 Minutes! Not only did the film crew tape Marcos at the track, but they also spent time with him at Michael Waltrip Racing, at a film shoot for Bush's Bean, and best of all they went gold panning with Marcos at the Reed Mine near Charlotte. Turns out one of Marcos's hobbies is gold prospecting.

Can I love this guy anymore? I collect gems and minerals, and while gold prospecting isn't quite the same, it's probably the closest I'll get in the garage area! Hey, maybe Marcos could take Michael Waltrip gold panning and Michael will find a bunch of gold and he won't need to find more sponsorship for next season! Something that might be a little more realistic - maybe some of the video from this piece will end up on the MWR website once it airs so fans in the United States can see it too.

As mentioned above the film crew was there during a photo shoot Marcos did with Bush's Beans. That company announced last week that they'll be the primary sponsor on the #47 for two races next season, the first time they're going to be the primary sponsor of a Cup car. In addition they'll be an associate sponsor on the car for an additional ten races. That's pretty awesome! These days it's so hard for teams to find and keep sponsors, and not only is Bush's Beans continuing to sponsor Marcos, they're expanding their sponsorship.

I didn't give it any thought until I read it in the Bush's Beans press release but apparently Marcos will be in contention for the Cup Rookie of the Year next season. It might be tough with Joey Logano in the #20 but I sure would love to see Marcos win ROY!

Posted by silverdsl at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Michael Waltrip Out Loud and The After Show (11/20)

Michael Waltrip Outloud

Normally I'm in a good mood when I'm listening to Michael Waltrip Out Loud but I felt sad while I was listening to last night's show. I wasn't enjoying it any less than usual, it's just that it was the last show of the year and on top of that they said that the show might not be back on Sirius or XM next season because Sirius is still deciding whether it fits in for them. Make it fit Sirius! This show is so awesome and it would be not only a loss to those of us who are fans of Michael's but all fans if this show wasn't renewed.

Anyway, the show kicked off with a song by Ne-Yo and Michael said he hadn't heard of him until he sang the National Anthem on Sunday at the Cup race. Well, I can do Michael one better - I didn't know who he was until they talked about him on last night's show! I guess I didn't pay any attention to who was singing the anthem on Sunday. In fact, when they first started talking about the song I thought Michael said that it was Dio!

Michael told a story about a phone call he got from someone named Muscles - not sure who that is but I've heard Michael refer to someone as Muscles before. Everyone in the garage area it seems has a nickname, and it turns out Muscles has one for Michael too only it's not EmDub as some others call him. It's a nickname Michael said that rhymes with "truck race" and he's really disappointed that Muscles hung that one on him because it's not too nice. Yeah, not exactly a term of endearment! By this point in the story Tony was completely cracking up and once I did some rhyming and figured it out, I was laughing too. Turns out Phil Parsons and his son were there while he was talking on the phone with Muscles so that's why Michael had to resort to explaining what Muscles called him by saying it rhymed with "truck race." I know that some of Michael's more conservative fans might take issue with Michael even thinking the word that rhymes with "truck" let alone telling a story about someone calling him that but it really was pretty funny the way Michael told it! I guess you could be offended by it and wonder why someone was calling Michael that or take it in the spirit in which it was intended - as something to amuse listeners.

There was quite a bit of discussion about Friday night's truck race and no surprise since not only was Michael in the booth for that race but it was the race with the best racing all weekend. Michael said he thought of eleven things that had to go right for Johnny to win the Championship, but he only named six before forgetting the rest of the things he thought of. Besides those eleven things that Michael said had to fall into place for Johnny, he also said that Johnny's passion and heart was on display the whole race. He was racing for his life.

So many things had to go perfectly for Johnny Benson to win the Championship since he had a slower truck than Ron Hornaday at Homestead. It was hard to say that Rick Ren made a bad call when he had Ron come in for four tires. The big thing is not taking yourself out of the lead for the Championship. Ron put himself in a position to be vulnerable. The call by Rick would have been fine without all the other things that happened. Tony made note of the big smile on Bill and Gail Davis's face after Johnny won the Championship, but as we know based on some of their comments since they weren't quite smiling on the inside. Michael said that it was an inspired Championship and repeated that Johnny raced with passion. Michael seemed really impressed with the way Johnny raced and I think that's pretty neat that the way he raced this season made such an impression on Michael.

Tony and Michael continued their joke from last week about how careful Hendrick Motorsports should have been with Jimmie Johnson in getting him to Homestead, that he was "bubble boy." Michael said that there could have been a Tonya Harding-type situation - I laughed to myself when they brought up Tonya Harding because Nascar only wishes something like that would happen to generate a little controversy and therefore extra media and fan attention. When Jimmie was in the back he was freaking out on the radio about the idiots racing three-wide but Michael said that later on he saw a bunch of guys going three-wide and one of them was Jimmie. He said that if you see someone else doing something it's dumb but if you did it, it's okay and that they (the drivers) have a bit of a double-standard. I'll say! How easily some of them forget when they rip one of their fellow drivers that they've all likely done the same thing at one time or another.

Tony interviewed Carl Edwards in Victory Lane and called him "Mr. Fuel Mileage." Tony and Michael (and presumably a lot of others) are very impressed with the way that team has horsepower yet they can save gas like no one else. Usually you can't save gas when you're out front. I would guess a lot of teams are going to try to figure out what the #99 figured out that they haven't yet because that definitely seems to have gotten a lot of people's attention. Even Carl's own teammates have been wondering why he's been getting so much better fuel mileage than they have. Michael said it's fun to see what it takes to win - I'm thinking he's paying close attention in the hopes that he'll pick up something that will help him get to Victory Lane - sure hope that happens!. Tony said that usually when you talk to the person who comes in second for the championship they aren't too happy but Carl and his teams were all smiles. They dominated the end of the Chase. The big mistake that Carl made was at Talladega. Michael said that sometimes there are circumstances out of your control but Carl can zero in on what went wrong at Talladega because he made the mistake and caused the wreck.

Both Michael and David Reutimann were very loose during the race. Michael said that Michael Waltrip Racing had high hopes for the race since David was on the pole and all but it ended up being disappointing. David was able to race in the top five for most of the night even though he was so loose but he couldn't get the fuel mileage that others could. Michael was so loose he couldn't drive it. It made the most sense to just make sure he didn't get into the wall since he was racing the #22 and others in the points. So he couldn't afford to make a mistake. What popped into my mind when Michael said that was that he was driving like a granny! The finish was terrible but he just needed to survive. He also talked about Marcos Ambrose and how things didn't work out for him to finish the season in the top 35 but he may still end up in the top 35 when they go to Daytona due to the mergers and all.

Michael has fun doing the show. His Dad was famous for being a BS'er and sitting there doing the show reminds him of that. It makes him feel like his Dad. Michael's been mentioning his Dad a lot recently and it seems like his Dad is on his mind a lot. I always feel bad for Michael in relation to his Dad - it's always sad whenever anyone loses a parent but I believe Michael's father passed away before he won the Daytona 500 and had success at DEI. Not only would he have wanted his father to be around for those things, but I'm sure he wished he had his Dad for support and advice during the past couple of years when things have been difficult. Tony thanked Michael for asking him to do the show and helping him out with his career. They also thanked the fans for sticking with XM just for the show when they could have switched to Sirius - there are indeed many who kept XM just for Outloud.

Tony asked Michael about the new testing policy. Michael loves it. He talked with Jack Roush about being willing to sign off on a affidavit that they won't test anywhere. Sure Jack is willing to sign an affidavit like that because he has the money and resources to do all sorts of other testing instead! Michael was thinking something similar as he said there's no end to what people will do to circumvent the rule. If you rent Rockingham for the year you're not playing by the rules. Apparently there's going to be a lot of people not playing by the rules next year but I've heard that Rockingham as well as a number of other unsanctioned tracks are already completely booked - I hope MWR is one of the organizations who have booked time at one of those tracks. Michael said that the rule will help weaker teams gain traction against the stronger teams hopefully. I can't help but notice that Michael added in that "hopefully." Personally, I don't think it's too likely that the test ban will help the weaker teams other than that they won't be spending $1 million on testing. In fact, I think the test ban may actually hurt the weaker teams because they won't have the money or resources to do a lot of the things that the big teams can do. Tony wondered whether testing grounds and airports like some teams go to are covered by the test ban. Michael doesn't know. He said they should just tell them they can't go anywhere where they can crank an engine. They'll still have wind tunnel tests, seven-post shaker rigs and simulations.

The merger between DEI and Chip Ganassi Racing looks like a case of survival. Between them there's six cars that don't have three sponsors between them. Hopefully if they pull together it'll make one strong team. Michael loves that they came to an agreement, it took a lot of work for them to get on the same page. Tony said that he noticed that they didn't mentioned that the #15 was going to be used next season but Michael said that he's going to use the #55 next season because he wants to make it something special. I'm glad he's sticking with the #55 since I have so much #55 stuff! I don't know why Michael decided to stick with the #55 but I think it's a good decision because in this economy a lot of fans don't have the money to go out and buy a whole new #15 wardrobe.

Michael thanked all the fans and the show ended with them asking the fans to let Sirius know if they like the show. Sure hope Sirius will hear from lots of fans of Outloud and they'll put the show on channel 128 next season!!

The After Show on Tonyrizzuti.com

No Traci this week as she was still down in Florida so it was Tony, Rich and Geri (Jeri) - don't really know who Geri is but she works or worked for the same PR company that Traci is working for until she officially starts working for MWR, which is the same company Tony used to work for before he moved to MWR. So maybe Geri was filling in for Traci. At any rate, Tony figured that Rich was going to edit out Michael's "truck race" story but he said he's definitely leaving it in, and I for one am glad that he did!

That led into a discussion of how Tony was watching Joe Scarborough's Morning Joe show on MSNBC and how Scarborough dropped the f-bomb which caused quite a reaction from the guests on his show. When I googled to see what was being said about this I discovered that the irony of all ironies is that apparently Scarborough is one of the most vocal about "filth" on TV and how the FCC should go after the networks when they make a misstep like the infamous Janet Jackson halftime show a few years ago. So Scarborough freaks out about others being "filthy" and in the meantime he slips up with one of the biggest no-no words he possibly can on live TV! As a result MSNBC is going to use a seven-second delay on his show.

Tony and Rich were making the chances of Outloud coming back next season really bleak and that was pretty depressing to hear. Tony did say though that no one should underestimate Michael or the fans. If the fans say they want Michael Sirius may have to listen. Afterall, people make a conscious effort to listen since they have to pay for it. In general Tony seemed a little freaked out by the current state of things - I don't know whether it's because the future of Outloud is unknown or because of what's going on in the sport but a big portion of this two-part show was spent discussing the woes in the garage area right now.

In relation to the layoffs Tony and Geri agreed that every year at this time there are layoffs but because of the economy things that they're used to seem worse now. There were a lot of people in the garage area on Sunday that didn't want to go into work on Monday. Well, better to learn the news on Monday at the shop then in the back of the hauler like Jeff Hammond says one team did to some of their employees before the race! Tony thinks that maybe in January a bunch of teams are going to start wondering who is going to do this or that and a quarter or even a half of those laid off will be rehired by February. I'm not so sure about that - maybe a well-funded team can afford to hire back some people but the teams that have financial issues probably won't see things improve much by the start of next season.

As for Michael's idea that no one's going to test Tony said that's not going to happen and I agree. I would guess that maybe Michael is hoping that no one goes to test at non-sanctioned tracks so MWR won't have to either but they'll likely be forced to spend money on all sorts of alternative testing that all the other teams do. Rich wondered how Goodyear is going to handle their tire tests and I think that's an excellent question that hasn't really been addressed by anyone. As they said, the teams that take part in tire testing could end up with a big advantage over other teams who don't participate. Apparently some in the garage area think that Goodyear should have their own test team. Maybe Brett Bodine, some retired drivers or young drivers like Brad Coleman who don't have rides can test for them. It's actually puzzling to me why Goodyear already doesn't have their own test team regardless of what the testing policy is. Maybe if they did Goodyear might not have had some of the problems they did at Indy this season.

Tony Eury, Jr. was a guest on the pre-race show that Tony did with Pat Patterson on Sirius and he's okay with the testing policy. The only value in testing is the computer data for the engineers. Tony Jr. would like to see Nascar do the same thing that Michael suggested on TWiN a while back - give the teams systems on Friday during practice and qualifying that will allow them to collect data, then once those sessions are over Nascar takes the systems back. Then the teams have the data they need for that track. I thought it was a great idea when Michael brought it up and I still think it's an outstanding idea. That way there could still be limits on testing but there's a way for the teams to gather the same kind of useful information like they would at testing.

Rich had a few other interesting questions in relation to the test ban including something I heard a fan ask on Dave Moody's show the other day, about whether someone not associated with a team can take a car, test it and then take the information to a team, whether that would be possible or acceptable under the rules. Dave Moody thought that idea was ridiculous but Tony seemed to think it could happen and I agree. As he said if someone wants to they can find a way to cheat the system. The reality is that there are teams with a lot of money who even in this economy are going to be willing to spend whatever it takes to get around the rules.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that was discussed was about how people can't figure out why Steve Hallam is coming to Nascar or how MWR got him, but maybe it has something to do with Toyota and MWR anticipating the test ban. Hallam brings with him the simulations that F1 uses that can simulate things like seven-post shakers. So now that test money goes to IT (yay for computer geeks!). Tony wondered what's to stop Toyota from going to Europe and doing testing with a COT or Goodyear tire over there. Maybe someone will even have a whole European test team.

There was some discussion about the DEI-Ganassi merger. Both Geri and Tony knew Dale, and Geri said she had mixed emotions about it. What astonished me is that Tony said Martin Truex, Jr. was telling people over the weekend that no one was telling him anything about what was going on. Maybe part of that is that they don't have all the answers yet, but it's ridiculous to keep him in the dark. He's supposed to be DEI's top driver now and he's only signed to a one-year deal so if he's not happy he could walk at the end of 2009 which would put Earnhardt-Ganassi in even worse shape than they're in now.

During a discussion about how even Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is even having trouble getting sponsorship for his Nationwide cars Rich brought up something I've discussed a few times in this space, whether the issue is the economy or that people just don't want to sponsor Brad. Tony and Geri seemed to think the issue was the economy and with the background that they both have they would know better than I, but as I've said in the past with factors like marketability, appearance, media savvy, personality and other intangibles being as important to sponsors as talent behind the wheel I think that part of the issue is Brad himself. He's got a huge amount of talent and he might be a good guy, but there's no getting around the fact that he's not "cute" - it's hard to overlook the mouthful of braces he has. I'm just not sure he's what a lot of companies are looking for.

Tony painted a rather bleak picture of what ad sales are like for the motorsports media including PRN/MRN/Satellite radio and Speed - horrible. Maybe off by as much as half. In addition, a friend of his does the in-car camera sales and he has no idea what's going to happen with those either. When the friend contacts companies that have sponsored in-car cameras in the past they tell him they have no idea if they're still going to be in the sport next season let alone sponsoring a camera. It may have to be regional deals, where a local company picks up a one-race sponsorship of a camera at a particularly track. Geri said that they're seeing a lot more of that with the hospitality where the local people are coming in to support the tracks. The problem for Tony's friend is that he can't just cut it to four in-car cameras when the fans expect to see eight. I hate to be Debbie-downer (ha!) but I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better in terms of sponsorship and ad sales, but I'll save my thoughts on that for a separate entry.

Switching gears, they decided to talk about something happier - Jimmie's Championship win. As Tony detailed in his blog Jimmie is a friend of his and apparently they go out to eat with their wives at an Italian restaurant near where they live. I'd just like to point out that unlike Marty Smith from espn.com who seemingly mentions his friendship with Jimmie every two seconds, until I read Tony's blog I would never have guessed that he had a personal friendship with Jimmie. Rich and Tony said that Jimmie's Championship win isn't seeming to get as much attention or have that much excitement around it. They feel it's because Jimmie is too nice, normal and has a non-celeb persona. I think they have that perspective because they're around Jimmie in the garage area all the time and they know who he is as a person. Many fans think the exact opposite - that Jimmie is stuck up, craves celebrity, is too PC and is a fake. Tony said that unlike Junior, Jimmie can go anywhere in Charlotte and no one notices. Tony said if he were a driver he would like to have been like Scott Wimmer who could walk through the Cup garage and no one knew who he was but he still got Cup money. Well, that may be one reason why Wimmer is no longer in Cup (besides being arrested for DUI) - no one ever gave him and therefore his sponsors any attention ever.

That was pretty much it for the show, but that won't be the last we hear from Tony until February - he's going to do off-season radio on his website starting the Monday after Thanksgiving and the show will have a focus on motorsports which is something to look forward to. Rich may end up doing a show or two with him during the off-season as well.

Hopefully Outloud and The After Show will both be back next season!

Posted by silverdsl at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2008

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/20)

*Matt Kenseth has re-signed with Roush-Fenway Racing to a multi-year deal. No surprise there. Can it be any more obvious that Jamie McMurray is going to be the odd man out when Roush has to downsize by a team? McMurray raced extremely well in the last four races of the season, finishing 3rd three times and 7th once but the results for him were pretty unimpressive for the rest of the season. He's also losing his crew chief, Larry Carter, to Yates Racing. Most think it's a done deal that Roush is going to keep McMurray and just move his team to Yates, and maybe that's what will happen, but I think McMurray has to have results next season more often like he did at the end of this season otherwise it might just be the team that gets moved to Yates and not McMurray.

*Apparently some who listened to Tony Stewart's Sirius show last night got the impression that the show won't be returning next season. I had been under the impression that Stewart enjoys doing the show and I'm sure Sirius likes having him on as well since he likely brings in a lot of listeners. However, given that Stewart won't be just a driver but an owner as well next season I can see why he might not do the show in 2009. His schedule will likely be a lot busier for one thing but as an owner Stewart is going to have to be more careful with what he says than in the past. I think Stewart can still express his opinions but ripping other drivers, Goodyear or Nascar, like he's been known to do probably isn't going to be a very good idea. Some are also troubled by the attitude Stewart has displayed towards his girlfriends and other women which seems to indicate he might not have a lot of respect for women. I've wondered whether openly saying some of the things he does on his Sirius show or in the Rolling Stone article a few months ago may create issues for him with sponsors who might have female executives he would deal with or whether they might be concerned about alienating potential female customers. There is a lot more responsibility that goes with being an owner instead of just being a driver, and regardless of why he might not continue the Sirius show I think he's going to have to keep some of his harshest comments to himself in the future.

*Does winning Rookie of the Year mean anything anymore? Not many people seemed interested in the battle for ROY, particularly since in Cup most of the candidates were out of the series by the end of the season and the others weren't exactly racing up front every week. Was there even a ROY in the Truck Series this year? Neither of the eventual Nationwide or Cup winners, Landon Cassill and Regan Smith, have rides for next season, so winning ROY certainly doesn't seem to evaluate one's stock in the garage area among owners or sponsors. Cassill raced for JR Motorsports this season but a lack of sponsorship may sideline him for next season, and Smith is likely out at DEI/Earnhardt-Ganassi for the same reasons. It's unfortunate because both drivers are talented and could probably develop into successful drivers but neither may get the chance.

*Cameron Dodson who races for Carl Edwards' U.S. Auto Club team was critically injured in a car accident in his personal car in Indiana yesterday. What's amazing to me is that Dodson wasn't wearing his seat belt. I would think that professional drivers would be the most aware of safety and the need to wear seat belts. But maybe driving in a street car seems deceptively safe after having driven a race car.

*Much to the dismay of many fans, Kyle Busch is likely to race the entire Nationwide Series schedule next season. For a chance the reason that fans are unhappy about that isn't because of how much they dislike Kyle but instead because they don't want any Cup drivers to be allowed to race in the Nationwide Series. I'm with all the fans who would like to see more Nationwide only drivers and teams race up front and have success in the series but I think that it's essential for the Cup drivers to be allowed to race in this series. As much as fans say they're pro-Nationwide only drivers, the fact of the matter is that the Cup drivers draw far more attention and interest from fans. Both ticket sales and television ratings would likely plummet without the Cup drivers. I think that Nascar needs to do a better job of promoting their young drivers on lower levels so that fans and the media might be a little more interested in them. Maybe then fans would watch when their favorite Cup drivers weren't racing. Of course the challenge is how to promote them without over-hyping them a la Joey Logano who is now hated by a significant number of fans before he's even raced on one of Nascar's highest levels for an entire season.

*According to Rick Crawford, he'll be back in the #14 for Circle Bar Racing next season but it's still up in the air as to whether Brendan Gaughan will be back in the #10 because Brendan and his father are deciding what they want to do. This season wasn't really all that great for Brendan with just two top fives and five top tens. I can't help but wonder what might have been if Brendan had raced for Wyler Racing this season, an organization that looks like it might be in danger of folding due to a lack of sponsorship - they sure could have used the sponsorship that Brendan likely would have brought with him via his father and their casino. Terry Cook was released before the end of the season but while he was in the #60, his results were somewhat better than Brendan's. Brendan seems unable to recapture the magic of his 2003 season when he won six races and contended for the series Championship. I have a feeling he may never enjoy that kind of success again.

Posted by silverdsl at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

Mike Mussina Likely Retiring

Sad day for me. Reports are that New York Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina has decided to retire. Moose has been my favorite Yankee since 2001, his first season in pinstripes. He'll be very much missed, not only because of his talent on the mound and for how much he helped the Yankees win, but also because of his approach towards the fans. Mussina has always had a reputation for being aloof, but the reality is that when it comes to the fans he couldn't be any better. Mussina is a player who truly "gets it" and it's clear he appreciates the support from his fans. To my knowledge, Mussina is the only player who had meet and greets with his fans (twice a year, schedule permitting) during the season and had an annual fan club dinner. During the dinner, Mussina did a lengthy Q&A session, took a photo with every person in attendance, had an auction to raise money for his foundation and signed two items for every fan there as well. A Stanford graduate with a business degree, Mussina is also highly intelligent and a good sense of humor.

Although I'm sad that Mussina is retiring I'm also happy for him that he was able to go out on a high note having won 20 games for the first time in his career this past season and he's also going out on his own terms. I also know that he'll very much enjoy being able to spend more time with his family. Still, he will be very much missed by this fan. Enjoy your retirement Moose!

Posted by silverdsl at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2008

Bill Davis Unhappy With Johnny Benson

One would think that Bill Davis would be happy at the Truck Series banquet on Monday night. After all, he and his organization were celebrating and being honored because their driver, Johnny Benson, and his team won the series championship in one of the most exciting points battles that Nascar has seen in any series for years. Instead, Davis was openly critical of Benson for his decision to continue racing next season instead of retiring as he told them he might do earlier in the season. Davis said,

“There are some circumstances here that makes this a little harder, Johnny leaving and not telling us that he’s leaving.... It makes it a little hard to really enjoy like you would want to. It’s not the way you’d expect to be treated from someone that you’ve done a pretty damn good job for for four years. We never insisted on a contract; he didn’t want one. We just had a handshake. That was good enough for him, good enough for us."

First of all, Benson told them that he was leaving and it shouldn't matter whether he was leaving because he was retiring or because he wanted to go race for another team. That's his decision to make. Benson also has every right to change his mind about retiring, particularly if some teams made offers to him that were very appealing to race competitive trucks. Also, if there's no signed contract between Benson and Bill Davis Racing, then neither of them are obligated to each other. They may have had an agreement based on a handshake but if nothing's in writing on a signed contract, then Benson has every right to do whatever he wants for next season - and so does BDR.

I can't help but be reminded of Steve Park and how he reportedly talked to BDR about a truck ride in 2006. Supposedly there was a handshake or other informal agreement that they would field a truck for him but Steve never actually signed a contract. So when sponsorship either fell through or didn't materialize as expected, BDR ended up not giving Steve a ride, and instead went with other drivers. In that situation, BDR likely didn't feel too bad about walking away from Steve, afterall they hadn't signed him to a formal contract. But then they're going to get upset when Benson who also hadn't signed a contract with them walks away?

What really bothers me is that I think the banquet is the wrong time to air grievances. It's a time to celebrate and recognize the accomplishments of the team and others, not be bitter and sour. Although I don't know what might be said privately - and there are negative rumors circulating about BDR - publically Johnny has been nothing but complimentary and appreciative towards Davis and his wife. I think it shows a complete lack of class that Davis opted to rip Benson to the media in that setting.

Of course this follows numerous other instances where BDR was embroiled in controversy from the way they treated Scott Wimmer, Ward Burton and others, to the 360OTC debacle and the way Davis blamed Michael Waltrip for the poor performance of the #55 in 2006 even though BDR was responsible for the cars and they gave Michael garbage cars to race. As I noted in a previous entry, maybe if they had a different approach the organization might not be struggling so much now.

Posted by silverdsl at 03:23 PM | Comments (1)

Yates Racing to Only Field Two Teams in 2009?

Yesterday Yates Racing announced that Paul Menard will drive the #98 for them next season with Larry Carter as his crew chief. But many fans, particularly those who are fans of Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland, are more concerned with what wasn't announced yesterday but has been rumored on Jayski and elsewhere- that Yates conducted a series of layoffs this week and may only field two cars next season instead of three as they had previously announced. If those rumors are true either Kvapil or Gilliland is likely out of a ride.

I've been skeptical for quite some time that Yates was going to be able to field three cars next season so I wouldn't be surprised if there is truth to the rumors. This season Yates only had partial sponsorship for the #28 and #38 and for the rest of the races they had to field the cars out of their own pocket. I also suspect that for some of the races when they had Roush-Fenway Racing affiliated sponsors on the car, it was either at a greatly reduced price or a freebie, since sometimes teams will opt to do things like that when they know they don't have outside sponsorship for a race either to do something extra for a sponsor to make them happy or just so that a car isn't blank since that tends to send a negative message to fans, the media and potential sponsors. I've also been wondering what Yates was going to do in relation to owner's points for Menard's team as I would think that they would want to have the fully sponsored car locked in. So I would guess that they're going to eliminate one team and transfer the owner's points from that team to the #98.

Lee Spencer has reported that Todd Parrott, Kvapil's crew chief, has been released from Yates and one of the rumors making the rounds via Jayski, with some additional information surfacing via message board chatter, is that most of Kvapil's team has been let go, as well as several members of Gililland's team. So that sounds like they might be planning on combining the #28 and #38 teams together. That team may be in need of a crew chief though since there is apparently a question as to whether Gilliland's crew chief Cully Barraclough has left as well since he wasn't on the pit box for Gilliland at Homestead. If Yates intends on having only one other team in addition to the #98 the question becomes which driver do they keep?

Kvapil finished 23rd in the points so most are thinking that Yates will keep him. However, it's been said that he might not be signed past this season whereas Gilliland may have a contract through next season. Not that contracts really mean anything these days but it's possible Yates would have to buyout the last year of Gilliland's contract if they were to release him so it might be cheaper and easier to not re-sign Kvapil.

What it may come down to is which driver they think they can get sponsorship for. Unfortunately racing well and being locked into the top 35 in owner's points doesn't seem to be enough otherwise both Kvapil and Gilliland would be fully sponsored for next season. Although I think Kvapil is very talented and by all reports is a nice guy who is fan-friendly, he may not be as marketable as Gilliland. On the other hand, there was an almost universally negative reaction by the media and fans, including some of Gilliland's own fans, as well as some of Gilliland's fellow drivers, after the incident at Texas where he appeared to deliberately retaliate against Juan Pablo Montoya, sending Montoya into the wall. While controversy can attract attention and sponsors like that, it can also cause them to have second thoughts about being associated with someone if they're viewed negatively.

Part of me wonders whether Yates will end up fielding just one car next season. It occurs to me that if they were planning on having two cars next season, why would they release so many crew members since the #98 is a brand new team with no existing crew. Maybe Larry Carter wants to hire his own people or maybe the crew members Yates retained are for the #98.

Maybe there's some way that Yates will still end up fielding three cars next season but I don't think the chances of that are very good right now. What's bad is that this is all happening at a time when there aren't many open rides not just in Cup but in Nationwide and the Truck Series as well. So if Gililand and/or Kvapil are out of a ride they may have trouble finding something else for next season. Which would be extremely unfortunate since both have done a good job of making the most of racing for an organization with a limited budget.

Posted by silverdsl at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

Looks Like Ryan Pemberton is Leaving Michael Waltrip Racing

There's been no official announcement yet but Lee Spencer from Foxsports.com is reporting the same thing that Tony Rizzuti from Directv Hotpass/XM-Sirius did last week on his website - Ryan Pemberton is leaving Michael Waltrip Racing for Red Bull Racing for a not yet known position. This makes me sad. Ryan and David Reutimann worked so well together and there's no doubt that Ryan is a big reason why David was able to race up front so much this season. In addition, I think Ryan likely was also one of the reasons that MWR as a whole made so much progress as the season went along. Michael said multiple times how intelligent Ryan is and it was clear that he viewed him as a big asset to the company. How well the #44 team raced caught the attention of a lot of people and likely some of those people were owners who were looking for Ryan to do the same things at their organizations that he did at MWR. At RBR Ryan will be reuniting with Jay Frye who he worked with at Ginn Racing and MB2 Motorsports. It's possible that Ryan will have a position other than crew chief at RBR which I imagine would have helped lure him over from RBR.

It's just very disappointing to me that as soon as MWR is making progress and heading in the right direction, the people who helped get them there leave. The question now becomes who will take Ryan's place as David's crew chief. MWR had been after Brian Pattie but he opted to remain at Chip Ganassi Racing so it won't be him. Todd Parrott left Yates Racing this week so he might be available and it's possible that the other Yates crew chief, Cully Barraclough, who has worked for MWR in the past on the #99 car, might also be out at Yates. There are likely other crew chiefs who are or might become available either through layoffs or because they or their teams are looking to make a change. It's just unfortunate for David that just when he started racing so well and had gotten some momentum to take into 2009 he's going to have to deal with another crew chief change. I suppose there's also a slim chance that MWR could work something out with JTG Racing so that David can reunite with Frank Kerr, but he seems to be working well with Marcos Ambrose.

In my wildest dreams Hendrick Motorsports will decide that it's in Dale Earnhardt, Jr.'s best interest to have a new crew chief and Michael can hire Tony Eury, Jr., who I know he would love to have as his crew chief again. Then Bootie Barker can be David's crew chief. Of course all of that is highly unlikely to happen but I can dream, can't I?

Posted by silverdsl at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

Layoffs Continue in Nascar

As expected a number of teams are downsizing, laying off employees or closing all together now that the season is over. The biggest and most important thing to remember is that the crew members and other employees who are losing their jobs are people with families to support and bills to pay. Sometimes we tend to think of job losses in terms of numbers instead of remembering that there are individual people with hopes and dreams who are now suddenly unemployed at a time when jobs are very scarce. The other thing is that I think some think that it's only crew member or extra shop personnel who are being let go, but it's likely that there are members of management, PR people, administrative staff and other personnel who work hard behind the scenes for the teams who may be getting let go as well.

What occurs to me in hearing about the teams that are laying off employees or closing is that I'm not surprised by many of the teams that have been mentioned so far. A lot of these teams were likely headed in this direction anyway regardless of the poor economy. Some of them have had sponsorship issues, some of them have had performance issues and as Dave Moody and others have pointed out, some of them have made bad business decisions over the years that have caught up with them.

I'm thinking of Bill Davis Racing in particular - one only needs to do a search of this blog and there will be numerous entries about BDR's problems through the years, perhaps highlighted by how they entered into a sponsorship deal with a sham company, 360OTC. To this day I still don't understand how BDR signed a deal with them when even fans noticed some red flags almost immediately that there was something fishy about the company. BDR has said they plan on fielding a Cup car next season but it seems to me that's going to be hard to do considering they reportedly laid off most of the personnel in their Cup shop. They say they'll have four trucks next season but I would be surprised by that too. Or Fitz Motorsports, who may not be back in the Nationwide Series next season - there's been a number of lawsuits filed against Armando Fitz for non-payment and those issues date back to before the economy went bad. I've been surprised they were even able to last through this whole season let alone into next season. So it seems to me that the poor economy may only be speeding up some layoffs and closings that were almost inevitable.

The other thing is that some have pointed out that perhaps some of these teams were also employing people they didn't really need. In the past when the money was flowing freely, the teams hired specialists who might only have one small responsibility when another team member might be able to do that task in addition to other tasks. In addition, some teams may have hired friends and family just to do those people a favor. But given the difficult economy teams can't afford to pay extra people that they don't really need. In Moody's commentary he writes that a Cup owner told him that he employs 18-20 fabricators to build each car when he only really needs 6-8. Talk about a waste of money!

There's also that there are always layoffs at this time of the year as teams look to improve for next season or their plans change. Even though some have tried to spin them as being a result of financial issues, the layoffs at Hendrick Motorsports and Roush-Fenway Racing aren't because those two organizations are in financial trouble. HMS laid off some personnel, including Jimmie Johnson's spotter, for what they've said are performance reasons in an effort to make their teams better. Roush has said that they laid off 35 people because they're going to have two less truck teams and no ARCA team next season. The decision to have two less truck teams can likely be attributed to the lack of sponsorship due to the poor economy but Roush as a whole certainly isn't hurting for money. There's also been a round of layoffs at Haas Racing which also had to be expected since Tony Stewart and those who will be working with him at Stewart-Haas Racing likely want to bring their own personnel in.

Unfortunately there likely will be more layoffs. The usual turnover in personnel is going to happen as teams look to make changes in an effort to improve performance - and there will certainly be no shortage of replacements available. There will also be teams who may need to layoff additional crew members who were solely involved with test teams when the January 1 ban on testing takes effect. And then there are will be teams that simply aren't able to compete anymore due a lack of sponsorship and funds. Maybe some of this is necessary because it will be a wake-up call that will force Nascar and it's teams to take a long hard look at how they do business, at their costs, and just exactly where and how they spend their money.

Posted by silverdsl at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2008

Photo of the Day - Driftwood Beach

Posted by silverdsl at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

Steve Park Video Q&A

Steve Park did something pretty cool on his website last week - in addition to posting some text answers to some fans submitted questions, Steve answered some fan questions in a video. Apparently he plans on doing more of these video Q&As and I think it's a great idea! Over the past few years there have been complaints that Steve's website isn't updated as frequently as it should be, even when he's racing, and that in general there really isn't much new content very often. So as a result a lot of fans of Steve have stopped visited his site. But new and unique content like that video that fans can't get anywhere else other than if they happen to stumble across it while doing a youtube search is a great way to get people back into the habit of visiting his site if the videos are posted on a regular basis. Fans love having their questions answered by their favorite drivers and they also love videos, so the combination of the two is sure to be a big hit! I don't know who came up with the idea of doing these videos but they deserve a big round of applause!

Posted by silverdsl at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Ryan Pemberton Leaving Michael Waltrip Racing for Red Bull Racing?

Because of how busy I was I only got around to listening to the most recent edition of "The After Show" on Tony Rizzuti's website and holy carp do I wish I listened to it sooner because Tony dropped a rumor that would potentially be big news if it were to happen! So this week "The After Show" gets it's own entry because that rumor is worthy of a stand-alone entry.

Once before Tony had mentioned that he hoped that Michael Waltrip Racing would be able to keep Ryan Pemberton because how much he's helped the #44 team improve has been noticed in the garage area so other teams might be interested in him. But I didn't realize that Tony was saying that based on having heard something of substance about Ryan actually leaving MWR. According to Tony on last week's "After Show" his sources have told him that MWR may lose Ryan to Red Bull Racing next season. Apparently the reason that Ryan might leave is because he's not convinced that the #44 will be fully funded next season so the "endless stack of cash" as Tony put it at RBR is attractive to him since presumably he would have no worries about finances effecting his ability to make his team competitive. However, Tony's sources are telling him that David would be happy with his replacement crew chief because it would be Brian Pattie, who is currently at Chip Ganassi Racing, who is a long-time friend of David's and has been his crew chief on lower levels.

As happy as David would be with Brian, Ryan leaving would be a major loss not only for the #44 team but also for MWR as a whole because he's been cited as a big reason why they've improved as much as they have. In fact, another thing that was said on "The After Show" is one reason Dr. Eric Warren left as MWR's technical director is because he had different ideas than Ryan and the improvements came when they started doing the things that Ryan wanted. I'm not sure exactly what that means but I have to wonder whether Dr. Warren was leading MWR in the wrong direction, much like some have said he led Gillett-Evernham Motorsports in the wrong direction in 2007. I also have to wonder whether he left by choice or whether MWR hastened his exit if they decided that they needed to using more of Ryan's ideas rather than Dr. Warren's. Regardless it sounds like there was some sort of conflict there and Ryan came out on top - which is probably a good thing for MWR if he was instrumental in helping them get more competitive.

Unfortunately Tony didn't give any specifics as to who his sources are for this information other than it that it doesn't come from Michael or anyone at MWR because no one from MWR will talk to him about anything that's going on, I guess because he's a member of the media. So it's hard to know how much truth there is to this rumor. If Ryan has been talking to RBR it seems like the kind of thing that would be hard to keep quiet so if it's true it would be surprising that nothing has ended up on Jayski this far. Tony gave so many details regarding why Ryan would be leaving and who his replacement would be that unfortunately I have to think that there's at least some grain of truth there. But maybe Ryan will change his mind about leaving. Supposedly David said in an interview I didn't get to hear on Sirius that MWR is close to finalizing sponsorship for the remaining Cup races that Aaron's won't be sponsoring next season. If that happens it would mean that the #00 would have full sponsorship next season and Ryan wouldn't have to worry about how much funding his team might or might not have. Problem is, will this sponsor get signed before Ryan accepts an offer with RBR or another team? Sure hope MWR can get him to stay!

Tony sounded like he was somewhat hesitant to talk about what his sources had told him, maybe because he's afraid of getting into trouble with Michael. Aside from the fact that he and Michael seem to be pretty good friends, I've heard - and I don't know how true it is - that Michael doesn't like it when those around him spread rumors or say things that he doesn't want them to so I can understand why he might want to be cautious. It's always seemed like MWR has tried to keep the lid on a lot of things, though they haven't always been successful. Thing is, Tony's not doing PR anymore where he has to be worried about saying the exact right thing and getting a particular message across. He's a media member now and part of what goes along with that is reporting or giving commentary on things that are newsworthy, even if it's about Michael or MWR and isn't good news. It's a delicate balance with rumors in that it's not good to report rumors that are potentially damaging that might be false but on the other hand if Tony has sources he trusts who he thinks are giving him good information, I don't think he's doing anything wrong by talking about it, especially since it would be a fairly big news story if Ryan left MWR after he helped David race so well this season.

There was plenty of other topics covered on "The After Show." Apparently Traci had to fix a wireless issue that Michael was having that was a matter of clicking one button. They joked that when it comes to electronic devices Michael doesn't know what he's doing so when he's trying to figure something out he'll hit a bunch of buttons and screw things up worse. Some are under the impression that Michael is on the computer all the time, and while there's no doubt that he goes online, based on everything I've heard, he needs help so I'm not sure he's the presence online that some believe, nor is it as easy for him as some think. Last year when I saw Michael at Pocono I was curious so I asked him if he did any photography and in talking about why he doesn't he looked at my digital camera and indicated that cameras these days were too complicated for him. Which is amazing to me. One, because Michael is extremely intelligent so it's a little surprising that he gets so confused by electronic devices so easily. But also, the man can not only drive a race car but talk about the technical details of what goes into making one competitive, but too many buttons on an electronic device and he gets confused!

Traci brought up how she feels sorry for her friend Melanie who does PR for Sam Hornish, Jr. because it seems like every post-race there's an incident that he's involved with. Sad to say but that's no exaggeration and things didn't get any better for her this weekend considering Sam failed to qualify for the race. Traci noted that no one cares about the Rookie of the Year battle and that's very true considering how poorly all the rookies raced this season for the most part. Tony wondered why Sam is coming back to Nascar next season when he can race competitively in the IRL. He thinks it's more a case of pride than money, but I would guess that money plays a role since even the worst finishing driver stands a chance of making a decent amount of money if they're with a well-funded organization which Penske Racing is. There's also a lot more exposure that a driver can get in Nascar, even a driver who isn't racing all that well as compared to the IRL. I also think one season is too soon to give up on a driver being successful, though as Traci said a lot of teams often aren't able to have the patience with a driver who is struggling. For Sam's sake I hope he's a lot better next season but it seems to me he has a long way to go.

Tony mentioned that he wanted to see a decent race at Homestead and that he hoped that someone that you'd never think in a million years would win a race would win. Well, I'm writing this entry a day after the Cup race at Homestead and neither of those things happened. In my opinion, the Homestead race stunk and not just because Michael had such a lousy day, but because the quality of the racing wasn't very good, at least what they showed us on TV. In addition, one of the usual suspects won - Carl Edwards, who picked up his ninth win of the season. I don't think anyone unexpected even sniffed at the lead. Sure would have liked yesterday's race a lot better if things had gone the way Tony was hoping they would!

There was also some discussion about how the Homestead race was going to be Bobby Kennedy's last as Michael's crew chief and how as good as it is that Bootie Barker will be coming on-board there's some concern that the momentum that the #55 has build up at the end of the season will be effected. Traci said that's because there's something that just "clicks" between Michael and Bobby. Yeah, and not always in a good way. As much as Michael and Bobby might be friends and as much as Bobby might understand Michael, from the perspective of an outsider looking in, aka a no-nothing fan, at times it's seemed like Bobby has struggled to make the changes to the car to get the handling right for Michael. There are also times when it almost seems like Bobby's not completely listening to Michael, though to be fair Michael sometimes struggles to communicate well and give good feedback. I just haven't got the feel-good, trust-him-no-matter-what vibe this season that Michael says he has with Bobby.

What was good about Bobby is that he didn't hesitate to put Michael in his place such as yesterday when Michael got to whining about something and Bobby told him to "give it a rest!" Michael has such a strong personality, and is not only the driver but the owner, so I suspect it might make it hard for some to stand up to him. But hopefully that won't be a problem with Bootie. I really hope that he and Michael are able to work well together because I really think Michael needs to be able to work with someone other than Bobby. Okay, he and Tony Eury, Jr. also work great together but the odds that Eury, Jr. will be available anytime soon probably aren't all that good. Traci said that from a PR standpoint Bootie is great because it's easy to sell him and he also likes to do media. He's also got a lot to say and he's attractive too! So I'm thinking NAPA is going to get some extra exposure with Bootie on-board!

One more Michael Waltrip Out Loud and one more After Show!

Update: Apparently there is some truth to what Tony reported regarding Brian Pattie at least - Lee Spencer reported in an article this weekend regarding the DEI-Ganassi merger that MWR had "courted" Pattie but he turned their offer down last week because of the way the #42 team has improved and because of the opportunity to with with Kevin "Bono" Manion, the crew chief of DEI's #1 car, who is one of his best friends. That really doesn't bode well because MWR probably wouldn't be offering Pattie a job unless they were going to have a crew chief opening. Jerry Baxter isn't likely to leave the Nationwide team with how long he's been at MWR, Bootie was just hired, Frankie Kerr is technically a JTG employee, so that leaves Ryan unless MWR is going to be fielding an additional Nationwide or Cup car in 2009 that we don't know about yet which seems kind of unlikely given that they don't have sponsorship completely lined up for their existing cars. So if MWR can't convince Ryan to stay and they couldn't get Brian, who is going to be David's crew chief next season? And how much will Ryan's departure from MWR - if it happens - effect both David's team and MWR as a whole?

Posted by silverdsl at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

Michael Waltrip Out Loud on XM (11/13)

I wish I had the time to get to this sooner but I've been super-busy since last week, so busy in fact that I almost wasn't able to even listen to this past week's Outloud! As it turns out I did get to listen but I was in the car and I was exhausted from a very long day at work so I might have missed a few things. Anyway...

Just prior to doing the show apparently Tony had a big thing of sweet tea so that led them into a discussion of the best places in the area to get sweet tea. Which led into Michael talking about a place near Raceworld that he loves to go to lunch at which is a Greek place in a shopping center nearby. He mispronounced all the Greek names of the food you can get there and said you can get fallopian there. Har, har, har. More seriously he said that he likes to get a plate of food and if I understood correctly sit outside and eat it there. I love Greek food so I might have missed a little of what they said next because I was dreaming of yummy Greek food and places to get good Greek food near me. Even days after listening to this show I'm craving a gyro, some spinach pie and a big greek salad!

Michael was talking to Bill Davis at some point last weekend after the truck race and Bill was incredulous that both Ron Honaday and Johnny Benson made boo-boos on Friday night in the truck race. Tony said that you have to expect that kind of thing with Ron because that's the kind of driver he is - he races the first lap just like it's a green-white-checker. Aside from saying that he wanted Johnny to win the Championship because he's a Toyota guy, Michael said that he's been racing with Johnny forever and that he likes him so it's not just because of Toyota why he's pulling for him. Michael thinks that Ron has the advantage at Homestead and that Johnny needed to go there with that points lead if he was going to have any hope of beating him. As it turned out as we saw on Friday even though Ron had a strong truck, Johnny was still able to beat him based on taking a gamble on staying out when Ron pitted. I think what Tony pointed out with Ron, how he races hard on every lap of every race, is something that has helped him be as successful as he's been but it can also be his downfall - had he not wrecked at Phoenix he might be celebrating a Championship right now.

Tony pointed out that there are quite a few Hendrick or Hendrick affiliated teams - the Hendrick primary teams, the Haas teams, James Finch's team, etc... so if Jimmie Johnson ran into any problems where it looked like he wasn't going to finish well enough to win the Championship all those cars could pull over so Jimmie could finish ahead of them. However, Michael pointed out that wouldn't work if there was a massive mechanical failure like a blown engine because those cars wouldn't be able to pull over fast enough so that Jimmie would be ahead of them. Besides Junior isn't about to pull over and stop racing. I think Tony does have a good point though that Jimmie has a lot of friends out there and it might be something to watch as to how those teams might help him if needed. Michael joked that what they really need to do is to protect Jimmie on his way down to Homestead to make sure nothing happens to him while he's traveling so they should walk him down to Florida or put him in a cocoon. Turns out Jimmie made it to Homestead without incident and he didn't need any help from either his teammates or affiliated HMS cars to win his third Championship in a row.

Lee White from Toyota Racing Development was the guest in the second segment and he came prepared with a bunch of stats about how much the Toyota teams have improved over last season. When Lee said that he was going to give them some numbers I forget which one, Tony or Michael, joked that the last time numbers came up Nascar took horsepower away from their Nationwide teams. One stat that Lee mentioned is that Joe Gibbs Racing has something like 28 wins in the Nationwide Series over the 13 years they've been in the series... and 19 of them came this season. If I'm being honest I didn't think Lee had anything too exciting to say and certainly nothing that we haven't heard before, though some of the stats were mildly interesting. On The After Show Tony said he had wanted to ask Lee about the economy but he thought it might not be a good idea and didn't. Sure wish he had because it might have made for a more interesting interview!

At some point it came up that Michael wants to do the show live next year on Monday nights. He thinks they should get some candles, turn the lights down and serve some wine to their guests. More like Michael probably just wants an excuse to have some wine while he's doing the show! I have my fingers crossed that not only will the show be back next season, but that it'll be an hour! It would be great it if were on Monday nights too since we rarely have events at work on Monday nights so I'm almost always home.

In relation to his car at Phoenix Michael said they were like 12th fastest on average on Saturday but by Sunday the car was junk. He said that's something they need to work on making sure the changes and adjustments they make from Saturday to Sunday are the right ones I agree! Seems like Michael often complains on race day that the car doesn't feel the way it did during practice and that the changes aren't for the better. So it seems like the #55 team often gets behind even when they have a fast car because they have to spend so much time adjusting on the car to get the handling right. However, Michael also said he's really proud of Bobby Kennedy and his team because they took a car that was junk and made it into one of the fastest on the track by the end of the race. That is a good thing - I just wish they were able to do it before the end of the race!

There was some discussion about Marcos Ambrose and how well he's been racing. Michael said that Marcos and Frankie are good together. The cars that Marcos are racing are the same ones that Michael McDowell and other drivers were racing and Marcos is able to get more out of those cars than those other drivers. That really says something about McD imo, because while Marcos has more Nascar experience overall than McD, he has just as little Cup experience as McD, yet he was able to take the same cars McD was racing and get top 20s with them. In retrospect I wish they had taken McD out of the car a couple of races earlier because a different driver behind the wheel for just a few more races might have made the difference in terms of the top 35. Traci mentioned on The After Show that she wasn't sure that McD had enough of a chance in Cup to show he belonged (along with a few others who have come and gone) and there's probably some truth to that. However, one thing that's always bothered me about McD is that some of his comments seem to indicate that he thinks he has nothing to learn. I'm not sure how much a young driver is going to grow and develop from where they are if they aren't open to advise or learning from others.

There must have been some discussion about Homestead but I really can't remember anything they said, and not that it really matters anyway since they raced at Homestead yesterday. The show closed with "Smuggler's Blue's" by Glen Fry.

Posted by silverdsl at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Disappointing End to the Season for Michael Waltrip Racing

The Homestead weekend started out on such a high note for Michael Waltrip Racing with David Reutimann winning the pole for the Cup race, his first pole in the Cup Series ever. Things continued to go well for MWR during the Nationwide race on Saturday with Josh Wise and David finishing 12th and 13th respectively. But things didn't go as well for the three MWR teams yesterday.

For most of the race David was able to race in the top five and top ten but due to having to use different fuel mileage strategy, he only finished 20th, which was surely a huge disappointment considering where he started and how well he had been racing. When I saw the #44 pit late in the race I figured that he had such a good car he would be able to race his way into the top fifteen at least if not back into the top ten but that didn't happen. I don't know if he had to save gas after that and thus had to slow down or it was just a matter of not having enough time to make up the lost track position. David finishes the season 22nd in points and I have no doubt that next season he'll be a lot higher in points, maybe even in the Chase, considering that towards the end of the season he was racing in the top ten just about every week. The team just needs some better luck as there have been a variety of mechanical issues and other problems that no one can really control that have kept David's results from being as good as they could have been in some races.

I wonder what UPS was thinking when David won the pole on Friday and spent most of the race up front? Sure, David Ragan has finished fairly well in the last few races of the season but how often is he ever mentioned during the race broadcasts except in passing? Meanwhile David Reutimann is getting all sorts of attention for winning the pole and racing up front because it's such a story that his team and MWR have improved as much as they have over last season. I have a feeling that trend will continue next season as well.

From the start of the weekend things didn't go well for Michael. He scrapped the wall during qualifying and had to start from the back and the car was junk from the start of the race. For the first time since the beginning of the season Michael had one of the slowest cars on the track. No matter what the #55 team did they weren't able to make it any better for him either. Based on what was said over his radio it sounds like they were experimenting with some things that they hadn't done before, maybe some things that the #44 team were doing, and those things didn't work out. I suppose the time to experiment and take a risk is in this race as opposed to next season, but it was still kind of a bummer that Michael didn't get to finish the season on a high note. Michael had said at the start of the race over his radio that he was ready to race, and he sounded so optimistic - it had to be so frustrating for him that he couldn't actually race anyone. The one positive is that even though Michael finished 38th it was still good enough for him to finish ahead of Dave Blaney and the #22 team in the points which means that Michael will race in the Bud Shootout next season. I just wanted so much for Michael to be able to race competitively at Homestead and have some momentum to take with him into next season.

The biggest disappointment to me though was that the #47 was also junk at Homestead. I would have thought that MWR would have done everything in their power to ensure that Marcos Ambrose had the best possible car to race with so that he had a good chance of finishing well and sticking in the top 35. But Marcos was slow all weekend and his already slim hope of staying in the top 35 was finished off when he and Reed Sorenson tangled midway through the race. That put Marcos behind the wall for 45 or so laps and out of the top 35 by 17 points. I think there's a good chance that Marcos will end up in the top 35 to start the season anyway since there will likely be several current top 35 teams that won't be around next season. So unless those teams find a way to sell their owner's points, Marcos will likely move up into the top 35. However, one of the goals for MWR this season was to finish the season with all three cars in the top 35 and they weren't able to achieve that. They came close but fell just short. Part of me wishes that they had taken Michael McDowell out of the car a lot sooner because that might have made the difference when it comes to those 17 points.

As much as the season didn't end the way MWR wanted it's important to not lose sight of how much progress they've made not only since last season but also since the beginning of this season. David and Michael's teams have developed into teams that are capable of racing competitively. David has been racing so well that I have to think that the chances of him winning a race next season are very good Michael has said that he wants the #55 team to be a top 20 team next season and I definitely think that's possible - you have to think that he'll contend for wins as he usually does at the restrictor plate tracks as well. And even though Marcos didn't end up finishing the season in the top 35, he's been very impressive in the Cup races he's been in. While he may struggle somewhat as he gets used to racing Cup full-time next season I expect that we'll see him race up front and contend for wins at the road course races next season. So MWR is going to have a very diverse driver line-up next season that is capable of putting them in Victory Lane at a variety of tracks. If MWR continues the progress they've made this season into next - and there's no reason to think they won't - at least one win is likely for MWR in 2009! This season just ended yesterday and I'm already excited and looking forward to next season - I'm hopeful that we'll see a lot more of all the MWR cars racing up front!

Posted by silverdsl at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

Jimmie Johnson Wins His Third Straight Cup Championship!

Carl Edwards dominated the race and won, but it still wasn't enough for him to overcome Jimmie Johnson who sealed the deal on his third straight Cup Championship with a 15th place finish. The Championship was all but Jimmie's going into Homestead since he only needed to finish 36th or better to clinch and at no time was he in any danger of finishing anywhere near that poorly. This Championship ties the 30-year record set by Cale Yarborough, and much to a lot of fan's dismay, there's no reason to think that the #48 team won't contend for another championship next season as well. Jimmie, Chad Knaus and the #48 team are the best team in the garage area right now and it's not too likely that they'll drop off anytime in the near future. In fact, they may only get stronger since a number of layoffs were announced recently not for financial reasons but because Hendrick Motorsports is already looking at ways to make the #48 (and #24) team even better.

Of course there are a lot of fans pointing out how under the old points system Carl Edwards would have won the Championship by 17 points over Jimmie. Give it up. Under any points system Jimmie and his team would have figured out how to win this Championship. One of the strengths of this team is how they're able to adjust to any situation and any challenge. In addition, the old points system is called the "old" system for a reason - it's not used anymore. Ten years from now there will probably still be fans calculating who would have won the Championship if the Chase wasn't in place, but the reality is that as much as some fans don't like it, that way of determining a champion is no longer in use.

More than a few fans have said that they think the Chase is boring. Just exactly how can it be boring to see whether a driver makes his history by winning his third straight Championship? Some fans just can't stand teams and drivers that have a lot of success. A guest on T.J. Rives morning show on XM recently noted that for some reason greatness in Nascar isn't respected like it is in other sports and I agree. What Jimmie has done by winning his third Championship in a row is Hall of Fame worthy. His performance the past few years has been exceptional and impressive and it's unfortunate that so many are unable to recognize and appreciate his talent and the strength of his team. Jimmie is a great driver and the #48 is a great team. The fans who are crying about how they must have been cheating or how Jimmie was points racing or any number of other silly reasons why this Championship is meaningless are just full of sour grapes.

I'm not a big fan of Jimmie's but I for one can appreciate the impressiveness and significance of what he and his team have done the past few years. Instead of being unhappy that the same driver has won the Championship like some others, I'm looking forward to seeing if Jimmie can make it four in a row next season or whether Carl or another driver can beat him.

Posted by silverdsl at 09:47 AM | Comments (3)

November 15, 2008

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/15)

*As expected Stewart-Haas Racing announced that they've hired Tony Gibson to be the crew chief for Ryan Newman and Bobby Hutchens to be the organization's director of competition. Both were in those positions at DEI so I can understand why they would be looking for work elsewhere considering how many layoffs there's been as a result of DEI's merger with Chip Ganassi Racing. Gibson's been at DEI for a long time and has been a crew chief for two of my favorite drivers, Steve Park and Michael Waltrip, as well as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. While Gibson seems to be very highly regarded by fans and others I can't say I was overly impressed with him. Should be interesting to see how both he and Hutchens do at SHR, particularly Gibson. I've always thought of Gibson as a lifer at DEI, someone who would go down with the ship so-to-speak, so I'm interested in seeing how he adjusts to working at another organization for the first time in years.

*There's not been much explanation given but apparently the crew chief for the #10 at Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, Mike Shiplett, has been suspended by the team for missing the flight back to North Carolina from Phoenix last week. One has to wonder what that's all about and why GEM considered it such a serious issue that they suspended him for the final race of the season. Technical director Sammy Johns will act as crew chief this weekend at Homestead.

*Bill Davis Racing released a statement yesterday expressing their commitment to fielding a car in the Cup Series next year. Supposedly they are pursuing sponsorship and will be doing wind tunnel and other testing in the off-season. But I'd be surprised if BDR had a full-time Cup car next season, and part of me wonders whether they'll even have the four trucks that they say they're going to have. I don't think it's too likely that BDR is going to find sponsorship for a Cup car, and given that word (via Jayski) is that they laid-off quite a few employees involved with the Cup program last week, they may not even have the personnel for that car. Things seem somewhat up in the air with their truck program as well with the driver lineup still a question now that Johnny Benson is either retiring or racing for another team next season.

*Although it had been rumored that the Air Force was going to move from the Wood Brothers to either Roush-Fenway Racing or Yates Racing next season, they're going to end up as the sponsor for the #10 at Gillett-Evernham Motorsports. Odds are that's the car that Reed Sorenson is going to drive but that's not yet been confirmed. I suspect that GEM would love to have enough sponsorship to field four cars next season and have A.J. Allmendinger race behind the wheel of one of them. Allmendinger has been outstanding for GEM these last few races and he's gotten the best results that the #10 team has seen all season. He's also been racing much better than Sorenson and some have speculated that GEM might be regretting signing him as opposed to Allmendinger.

*Good news for Robby Gordon - Jim Beam announced today that they will continue to sponsor him next season for most of the Cup races just as they did this season, though a formal deal hasn't been signed yet. It's hard enough for Robby to not only compete but survive in Cup, but losing his primary sponsor would be deadly to his team. I suspect he will likely have a blank car for some races like he did this season but at least he'll have most raced covered since Menard's will be back on a limited basis as well. One big issue that remains to be resolved for Robby is what manufacturer he'll be aligned with next season. He's with Dodge now and receiving technical support from Penske Racing but apparently nothing is finalized for next season. Seems to me that Robby needs to get that taken care of sooner rather than later. He was able to survive a last-minute manufacturer change last season but not without problems. Things need to be smoother for him to start the season in 2009.

*Some fans continue to be furious about the merger between DEI and Ganassi Racing. Some seem to be taking it as a personal insult to themselves or Dale Earnhardt and it's hard for me to relate to that. Saying that Teresa Earnhardt might be cursed to hell for business decisions she made in relation to DEI seems completely excessive. I just can't hate someone I don't know who has no effect on my life like these people hate Teresa. A common theme with this merger and so many other things is that some believe that if Dale was still alive this merger wouldn't be happening and so many other things would be different. That they know exactly what Dale would say or do. Thing is that everyone is judging Dale based on things that happened in 2001 and earlier - there's no telling how things would have played out or how he would have reacted to certain things in 2008. Not to mention sometimes people surprise you.

*Nascar said today that Preseason Thunder will still take place in Daytona in January even though there won't be any testing there. As Dale, Jr. pointed out without the drivers being consumed by testing perhaps there will be even more events for fans. But it seems to me that part of the allure for fans is going to see the teams test in preparation for the upcoming season. In addition, Nascar has said they suspended testing to save the teams money but now they're going to make the drivers and other personnel fly down to Florida and spend money on hotel and other expenses. Why not move the event back to North Carolina where it used to be held so few of the drivers and others with the teams/sponsors have to fly to get there? In addition, fans could also visit the race shops at the same time thus generating some revenue for those teams that charge admission to their shops.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

Johnny Benson Wins the Truck Series Championship!

Johnny Benson won the Truck Series Championship last night and I'm thrilled! It wasn't looking so good for a while but in the end Johnny and his team pulled it off with a risky decision to stay out on a late caution. Ron pitted on that same caution for four tires and that put him further back in the field. Johnny ended up finishing just one spot ahead of Ron, but that was all he needed to win the Championship by seven points. Awesome! I've liked Johnny dating back to when he was a Cup driver and still appeared on SPEED's Monday night show, and I've continued to follow him in the Truck Series. I sure do love how much success he's had racing a truck! If he does retire like he was thinking of doing, Johnny will definitely be going out on top!

Some have complained that Johnny had help from his Bill Davis Racing teammates to win because Scott Speed (in their minds) intentionally spun to bring out a caution and then Taylor Malsam blocked for Johnny as the laps wound down so Ron was prevented from being able to race his way by Johnny. So to those fans Johnny's Championship is tainted because they think he won it via cheating. Nonsense. I don't like when drivers intentionally bring out cautions, but seeing as how Nascar didn't penalize Speed to my knowledge and they have the final say maybe it's not so clear-cut that Speed spun deliberately. In addition, just exactly what do fans expect, that Johnny's teammates aren't going to help him? Kevin Harvick was there to help Ron and he was going to make it as hard as possible for Johnny in every way he could. Teammates help each other when they can, that's what they do, and especially when there's a Championship on the line. Ron's demise was really when he wrecked on the first lap at Phoenix because of how aggressively he was racing. Maybe if he had dialed it down a little and backed off when Kyle Busch raced him so hard he would have come into Homestead with a big points advantage over Johnny and with how good his truck was he might have been the one celebrating a Championship win last night.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

Nascar Suspends Testing for Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series in 2009 at Sanctioned Tracks

Yesterday Nascar announced that testing will be suspended in 2009 at all Nascar sanctioned tracks for the Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series in an effort to cut costs for teams. I'm sure this move will be widely praised as a show of how serious Nascar is about cutting costs for their teams in the face of a very poor economy but to me this seems like just a lot of smoke and mirrors. For one thing teams can still test all they want at unsanctioned tracks. I'm supposed to believe that Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing are going to stop testing - doubtful. Maybe they'll cut back a little but I'm quite sure they're going to still be doing lots of it next season, just at unsanctioned tracks. Also, am I supposed to forget that there's other kinds of testing to be done besides at tracks? Teams will still be able to go to the wind tunnel, use seven-post shaker rigs and do all the other kinds of R&D and testing they always did.

The big, well-funded teams will still pour more money into testing than the smaller, under-funded teams, and the smaller teams will still be forced to come up with the money to put into the same things the top teams are doing otherwise they risk falling further behind competitively. To me this doesn't do much to address the issue of how expensive it is to field a competitive car or truck - almost $26 million for a competitive Cup car. It's been estimated that eliminating sanctioned testing will save each organization $1 million per Cup car they field. $1 million is a lot for a small organization but if an organization is spending $20-26 million on a car is that really a major savings?

As the Nascar Scene article points out another issue is how this decision is going to effect rookie drivers. Those drivers gained valuable experience by testing not only about the cars or trucks that they'll be racing but also about the tracks they'll be racing on. Now suddenly they can't go test to help them prepare even on tracks they haven't raced on before. Just exactly how is that a good idea? It's very difficult as it is for a rookie to succeed given how competitive every level is, particularly Cup. Even talented drivers with experience on lower levels have struggled. Seems like we may see young and inexperienced drivers struggle even more.

One also has to consider the effects that eliminating testing at sanctioned tracks will have on those tracks and fans as well. Among the tests that will be eliminated will be the one that previously every team in every series had participated in at Daytona International Speedway in January. While opinions have always varied about just how useful those January tests were, there were a variety of events that took place for fans including Q&A sessions for fans. Those were extremely popular and fans would travel from other parts of the country to attend. Does Nascar plan on putting together some other events in January for the fans to take the place of the fanfest events at Daytona (which were already a replacement for fan events with the drivers that used to take place in North Carolina).

In addition, what effect will this have on the tracks that will no longer have teams coming to test with them? It's not just the teams that are suffering due to the poor economy but likely the tracks too, particularly those that are smaller. Suddenly they're going to see far less revenue from testing, whether it's a loss of concession sales at tests that fans were able to attend, or fees from teams who rented the track to test at. How are those tracks going to replace that lost revenue?

I also wonder what the effects are going to be on the quality of the racing we see next season. The teams are still struggling to get a handle on the COT and how to adjust them right for their drivers. In addition, at some tracks the racing isn't exactly captivating, which is something some blame on the COT. Team are going to continue to test but it seems to me the best way of gathering data to make the cars more competitive is by going to the track and testing. How is the racing going to get any better if the sport places a roadblock on the team's ability to gather data?

All of that said, I think it is important that Nascar finds ways to help the teams cut costs and save money. I don't think it's a bad idea to put restrictions on the way testing is done. Michael Waltrip had two ideas which I hope Nascar will consider. He proposed that the teams come to certain tracks a day early and test the day before the upcoming race weekend. That would save teams money on travel and hotel expenses because they'd all be going to the track anyway. He also suggested that Nascar allow the teams to use telemetry devices on the cars during practice and qualifying so the teams could gather data at those times. I think both of those are excellent ideas which are a compromise that would work well with a suspension on testing at sanctioned tracks but would still allow the teams to gather data they need to make their cars better.

Of course I look at everything from the perspective of being a Michael Waltrip Racing fan. That organization has made so much progress since last season as evidenced by David Reutimann winning the pole for tomorrow's Cup race at Homestead. I would hate to see their progress be stopped in it's tracks because of an inability to do the same kinds of substitute tests that HMS or JGR are going to be doing or that the data they collect at testing at sanctioned tracks is important to that progress they've made.

Posted by silverdsl at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2008

David Reutimann on the Pole at Homestead!!!

Too busy right now to say more than whoo-hooooooooo! David Reutimann's on the pole for the Cup race at Homestead! Way to go David!!!

Posted by silverdsl at 05:44 PM | Comments (1)

November 12, 2008

DEI, Chip Ganassi Racing to Merge into Earnhardt Ganassi Racing

To the horror of many fans the Associated Press is reporting that DEI and Chip Ganassi Racing have (finally!) agreed upon a deal to merge. The new organization will be called Earnhardt Ganassi Racing and feature a driver line-up of Martin Truex, Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya, Aric Almirola, as well as another unknown driver. One of the sticking points to this merger happening is that both DEI and Ganassi are with different manufacturers, but it appears that they've agreed to align themselves with Chevy next season. Given the rumors of Dodge pulling their support for their Cup teams I can't say I'm surprised that they opted to go with Chevy. Although that manufacturer has plenty serious issues of their own, they've had more recent success in Cup.

Many fans are absolutely freaking out over this news because they view it as the end of DEI. Some are going so far as to compare it to Dale Earnhardt dying again and saying that Junior and his sister must be horribly upset that DEI is being merged with another organization instead of being sold to them. I say - get a grip!! Either DEI merges or partners with another organization or there was a chance they could fold given their sponsorship issues. Would it be better if the Earnhardt name ceased to be on a Cup organization rather than make a move to keep the company going? Good thing for Junior and his sister that Teresa didn't sell the company to them otherwise they might be facing some of the same issues DEI and other organizations are right now in relation to sponsorship. Junior can't find sponsorship for his Nationwide team, just exactly where would he find sponsors willing to spend even more money on the Cup level? And there is most certainly no comparison between someone's death and two organizations trying to work together for the future.

It's been rumored that DEI has no choice but to enter into some sort of merger or partnership because there's a clause in Truex's contract that requires them to field at least three teams next season otherwise his contract becomes void. Some fans are hoping that this merger/partnership doesn't happen so Truex will become a free agent, but I'd say that both Truex and his fans should be hoping that it happens. If Truex's contract becomes nil and void just exactly what team is he going to race for next season? There are very few open rides and none of them are with top-tier competitive rides. Some will say that of course a sponsor will step up to sponsor Truex, but I don't see sponsors running to get involved in Nascar right now - even Stewart-Haas Racing seems to be having trouble nailing down all the sponsorship they need for next season. So at this point, Truex's best bet is probably to stick with DEI.

I think that this merger is a good one for both organizations. A driver line-up of Truex, Montoya and Almirola is a pretty strong one. Truex and Montoya are capable of winning races and Almirola, while still developing as a driver, has shown that he has some talent behind the wheel. It's been rumored that Scott Riggs might be talking with DEI about a ride and that he may have sponsorship from State Water Heaters to bring with him so I would guess that there's a good chance that he'll get the 4th car, though I think A.J. Allmendinger would be a better choice.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:09 PM | Comments (2)

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/12)

*The closer to the end of the season we get the more doom and gloom there is about the impact the poor economy is going to have on Nascar, whether there's going to be massive layoffs within the sport, how many teams might fold , and whether there will be dramatically shorter fields next year. None of what's happening now should be a surprise to anyone. Even if the economy was still strong, the sport has been heading in this direction for a while. Rising costs have widened the gap significantly between the have- and have-nots to the point where it's a struggle for new and small teams to compete even when they're fairly well-funded. Teams were struggling to find and keep sponsors, particularly in the Truck and Nationwide Series, for a few years now. It's almost mind-boggling to me that not too many people were apparently paying attention to these things and that when the economy started to go south there weren't more discussions about what the potential effects might be. All of these discussions, particularly those about cutting costs, should have taken place months, if not years ago, not just now when things are dire.

*An interesting item in relation to Clint Bowyer for next season. It was announced today that BB&T Corporation will be the primary sponsor on the #33 for eleven Cup races and will be an associate sponsor on the car for the remaining races. I had been under the impression that General Mills was the full-time primary sponsor for the #33 for next season but based on what was announced today they either sold some races off to BB&T or never signed on for the full season. Given the cost of sponsoring a car at Richard Childress Racing I'm not surprised that General Mills might have sold some races to BB&T.

*The one new (sort of) sponsor to come into the sport is the Automobile Club of Southern California, which will be the primary or co-primary sponsor for Sam Hornish, Jr. at a handful of races next season and an associate sponsor for the remaining races. Of course AAA is the primary sponsor for David Ragan through this weekend but I believe that's the parent company and not an individual, local division. I have to admit I can't quite understand why AAA wants to sponsor Hornish. Although he's accomplished a lot in other series he's done very little in Nascar and the only exposure he gets each week seems to be when he's wrecking or getting wrecked.

*Furniture Row Racing has decided to only run a limited schedule in 2009. I heard the general manager of FRR, Joe Garone, on XM yesterday and he indicated that as a result of scaling back they will be letting go about half of their 50 employees. It's particularly difficult for personnel from FRR since the team is based in Colorado because finding another job in Nascar would mean moving to North Carolina so I really feel for those that are being let go. Garone also said that it's still up in the air as to whether Joe Nemechek would continue to race for them next season. He said that Nemechek deserves a full-time ride so it sounds like if FRR actually enters any races next season it'll be with a different driver. Thing is, what other ride is Nemechek going to be able to get? I think he's done an excellent job in the #78, qualifying for 31 races and winning the pole at Talladega in the spring despite the fact that the team has limited resources. However, given Nemechek's age, that he's not that marketable and that the results haven't been stellar for him in Cup the past few years he is going to have a great deal of difficulty finding another ride, particularly one that's anywhere near competitive.

*The 60 Most Beautiful People in Nascar magazine came out yesterday and much to my surprise Michael Waltrip didn't make the list. Putting aside what anyone thinks of how attractive Michael is, the list is supposed to encompass those who are "...beautiful inside as well as outside, taking into account their work and impact within the NASCAR community." A number of those on the list are apparently there because of the charitable work they do. How exactly doesn't Michael qualify as one of the 60 most beautiful if all those factors are being considered? For one thing, Michael raised $1 million for the Victory Junction Gang Camp in 2005 via Operation Marathon and has supported a variety of other charitable causes throughout his career. As a team owner, media personality and driver, he's also had a huge impact on the sport. I'm supposed to believe that Denny Hamlin or Joey Logano have had more of an impact or have done more than Michael has? Why is DW on the list but not Michael? Where is Pattie Petty? Why is Nicole Biffle on the list but not Greg, who surely has done as much for their foundation as she has? What has Jeff Gordon's wife done besides looking pretty to warrant being 2nd on the list? And if one is going on pure looks how can any list of the most beautiful people in Nascar be complete without Ty Norris?

Posted by silverdsl at 03:13 PM | Comments (1)

Kyle Petty on the Election Results and the Impact on the Garage Area

I normally try to avoid discussing religion and politics at all costs in this space but Kyle Petty made an interesting comment last week that hasn't gotten much attention. He said,

“Ninety-nine percent of the people in this garage are Republicans. They were convinced that when they woke up on Wednesday morning, that if Obama was president, the world would start spinning the other way. With the economic and political uncertainty, they don’t know what to do. That does affect this sport.”

It seems to me that maybe it's not just the poor economy and the woes of Ford, GM and Dodge that is causing some anxiety in the garage area but also that a Democrat won the election. Perhaps the reason why some deals haven't gone through as expected, whether those are mergers between teams, drivers to new rides or sponsors getting signed is because of the uncertainties that some may be feeling in relation to what's going to happen to the economy and in general with Barack Obama as President.

I think that Nascar has a problem to deal with. While the traditional fanbase has been based in the South with conservative and Republican viewpoints those ideals do not reflect all of their fans - like this fan - as much as some may wish it were so. In addition, the general population outside the sport has diverse attitudes, viewpoints and beliefs. 99.9% of all people outside the sport are not Republican, and I would say that's particularly true in some of the larger markets that Nascar has struggled to get a foothold in like New York or California. Some would be perfectly fine if Nascar never does much with those markets but the reality is, particularly now when the entire sport is hurting due to the economy and other factors, they need to be able to appeal to the widest audience and most people as possible.

I have to wonder if some of the difficulty that teams are having in finding and keeping sponsors isn't just that the economy is poor but also that the narrow attitudes and close mindedness at times by a segment of fans is a problem for some sponsors. After all, many of the large sponsors are marketing their product, services or company to all people, not just those with certain attitudes or beliefs. If a company feels that they're only reaching one segment of the population by sponsoring a car, they may rethink the wisdom of being involved in the sport and whether they're getting as much value for their dollar as they could get elsewhere. That may be particularly true now when advertising and marketing budgets that pay for sponsorships are getting slashed.

Teams and the sport as a whole need to be sure they don't alienate anyone even if the result in the election wasn't to the liking of many people in the garage area. I think they also need to encourage a change in attitude about some issues. It may be that those who are able to put their concerns aside and be more open-minded are going to be the ones who move forward at a quicker pace than those that led their fears - whether it's about Obama, the economy, the manufacturers or anything else - keep them from making any moves.

Posted by silverdsl at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

New Plan for Red Bull Racing: Brian Vickers and Scott Speed to Swap Rides

After being denied the opportunity to put Mark Martin behind the wheel of the #84, the new plan for Red Bull Racing at Homestead is to have Brian Vickers and Scott Speed swap rides. Actually it'll only be a matter of switching numbers since presumably Vickers will race with his regular crew chief and team as will Speed and the teams will only slap different numbers on the cars this weekend. However, a simple number change will be a big deal for Vickers who will now have to qualify for the race on time, whereas Speed will be guaranteed a spot to race.

Vickers results at Homestead haven't been all that great in the past but he is a talented driver who has raced well this season so unless there's a mechanical issue or he gets caught in a wreck he will likely finish a lot better in the #84 than Speed would have. So I do understand why RBR is making this move. However, I think Vickers is being done wrong - he dealt with being outside the top 35 and having to qualify for races but he was able to race his way into the top 35 in owner's points. I think it's unfair to Vickers to put him back in a situation where he needs to qualify for a race again, though over the course of his career he's qualified well at Homestead. Of course he'll say all the right things publically but privately if I were in his shoes I wouldn't feel too good about this. RBR wants to do whatever they can to get the #84 the best possible finish but maybe they should have thought of that before dumping A.J. Allmendinger, the man who got them into the top 35 in the first place, out of the car.

Posted by silverdsl at 08:30 AM | Comments (2)

November 11, 2008

Photo of the Day - Cape Cod

Chatham, MA, 2008.

Posted by silverdsl at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

Mark Martin NOT in the #84 After All

Turns out after reports that Mark Martin was going to race the #84 for Red Bull Racing this weekend at Homestead, it's not going to happen after all. Scott Speed who has raced the #84 the last few races will be behind the wheel to close out the season. This is good news for Marcos Ambrose and Robby Gordon. Of course anything can happen from a mechanical failure to a wreck, but the odds are based on Speed's results in Cup thus far that both will be able to out-race him. I'm sure RBR will do everything they can to give Speed as competitive of a car as possible and he will give 110% towards finishing as well as he can but it may be a tall order to expect him to get results that he hasn't been able to so far with as little experience as he has in Cup.

I suppose there's a chance that RBR will decide last minute to put someone else in the car but it may be that they're thinking like David Poole. He brought up this morning on Sirius that with a number of teams rumored to be folding, including several in the top 35, finishing 36th may be as good as finishing in the top 35 if Nascar allows teams in lower spots to move up to take the spots of teams that no longer exist. The only wrench in that plan would be if teams merger or sell off their owner's points in which case new teams would take those team's spot in the top 35. Poole felt that it was a waste of time for RBR to replace Speed because of the possibility that the team could end up in the top 35 anyway but I think the team shouldn't be counting on other teams closing their doors. With an inexperienced rookie behind the wheel it's going to be pretty important that he be locked in next season.

The question becomes why didn't things work out for Martin to race the #84? There's been speculation that Chevy wouldn't allow it to happen which I think is a little ridiculous considering Martin is currently between rides since he's no longer contractually obligated to DEI and he doesn't start racing for Hendrick Motorsports until next season. So I don't see what the big deal is about Martin racing one race for another manufacturer. Unless the issue is that the manufacturer is Toyota. I can't help but think that after reading Tony Rizzuti's blog in which he wonders about whether personnel from Ford and Dodge were helping Ron Hornaday, Jr.'s team make repairs on Friday night during the truck race because those manufacturers want to try to make sure that Toyota doesn't win the Championship this season if they can. If there is truth to the idea that Chevy didn't want Martin to race the #84 because it's a Toyota, it would be kind of funny that they're willing to take help from other manufacturer's but not allow their own people to work with another manufacturer.

I can't say I'm disappointed that Martin won't be racing the #84. Anything that might make it easier for Marcos to stick in the top 35 and mean that Michael Waltrip Racing finishes the season with all three teams in the top 35 in owner's points is good with me.

Posted by silverdsl at 11:49 AM | Comments (2)

November 10, 2008

Mark Martin in the #84 at Homestead?

Dave Moody is reporting that Red Bull Racing will have Mark Martin race the #84 at Homestead instead of Scott Speed. This is a very smart move on the part of RBR since they are in a fight to finish the season in the top 35 in owner's points and right now they're on the outside looking in. While Scott has raced well in ARCA and the Truck Series, he's been less than impressive in Cup which is part of the reason why the #84 dropped out of the top 35 because the results haven't been very good for Scott. He's also qualified very poorly, and with the #84 not locked in next week, RBR had to have been worried that if they kept Scott in the car he might miss the race. Martin will not only almost certainly qualify for the race but he'll also likely race well if the car he's given to race is any good.

While I think this is a good move for the RBR organization, it's one that I wished they hadn't made because it's going to make things harder for Marcos Ambrose who is trying to keep the third Michael Waltrip Racing team in the top 35, and he's in by just 17 points. Some are thinking that MWR is really in trouble with Mark in the #84 because they're still thinking that MWR is fielding cars that aren't very competitive. However, as the season has gone on the MWR cars have gotten more competitive. The #00 has never been as strong as the #44 or #55 teams but that changed once Marcos got behind the wheel. It's not like they're racing in the top ten or anything but two finishes in the top 20 in a row is better than what Michael McDowell did with that team. I would expect that MWR will put everything they have towards trying to make sure Marcos has everything he needs to finish well enough to stay in the top 35.

However, I think the driver who has the most to worry about is Robby Gordon. Although Gordon is in the top 35 by a wider margin - 53 points - he hasn't raced particularly well at Homestead over the course of his career and he hasn't raced very well this season at all which is why he finds himself in the position of fighting to hang on in the top 35. Robby may also have more at stake. Marcos has full sponsorship for next season and his team has an alliance with MWR which will presumably remain in place regardless of whether Marcos is able to secure a spot in the top 35 or not, particularly since the car dropping out of the top 35 in the first place wasn't of his doing. But Robby doesn't yet have full sponsorship nailed down for next season and some of it might be dependent on whether he finishes the season in the top 35 or not.

Of course anything can happen. If any of these teams experience a mechanical failure or get caught up in a wreck it would be disastrous for them. But what this does is ensures that the top 35 battle will be as exciting as anything else happening on the track including the championship which is all but decided.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:46 PM | Comments (2)

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/10)

*Luckily for Matt Kenseth there's been a bigger controversy that's overshadowed him punting A.J. Allmendinger at the end of yesterday's race and that's ABC's decision to move the last half hour of the race from ABC to ESPN2 in the Eastern and Central Zones. That meant that those who don't have cable and those who were recording the race to watch later got to see "America's Funniest Home Videos" instead of the final laps. Because I have cable I simply switched over to ESPN2 when the time came and it wasn't a big deal for me at all, nor was I upset in the least. I figure that ABC must have some good reasons for switching the race, maybe in an effort to make sure that their primetime schedule later that night started on time. I also understand that ABC was put in a difficult situation since the race ran long due to two red flags, one for rain and one for the big wreck. That said, I can understand why other fans who didn't get to see the end of the race are upset. There is something a little ridiculous about preference being shown to "America's Funniest Home Videos" as opposed to a live sporting event. I can't imagine that happening for a post-season game in another sport and it probably says something not very good about the way Nascar is viewed by ABC that they made the decision that they did.

*Dave Moody from Sirius is reporting a few interesting items, one of which will be a separate entry in the hopes there will be an official announcement about it with details shortly, and two of which I'll discuss here. Moody's sources are telling him that the rumors about Johnny Benson racing for Red Horse Racing next season are true and that he'll also be bringing his crew chief, Trip Bruce, most members of his team and what is very bad news for Bill Davis Racing, his sponsor Toyota Certified Used Vehicles to RHR. Much like I wondered how DEI is letting almost the entire #8 team go to Stewart-Haas Racing (if that rumor is true) I have to wonder how BDR is letting Benson, his team, crew chief and sponsor go to another organization? Aren't any of these people and the sponsor under contract? BDR has said that they'll be fielding four trucks next season but it seems to me that might be difficult if they don't have a sponsor for one of the trucks.

*According to Moody the long-rumored merger or buyout between Gillett-Evernham Motorsports and Bill Davis Racing is off, one reason being that George Gillett wasn't able to find the financing to make it happen. Given that there's been some talk that Gillett and his various sports teams are hurting financially that can't be good. GEM will simply proceed as they are now with three teams and I would guess they'll likely remain with Dodge, particularly since there's been some talk that Toyota wasn't keen on supporting any more teams than they are now. But it's terrible news for BDR. Instead of getting some money by selling his Cup operation to GEM and possibly continuing on the Cup level in some form, even if it was just on paper, odds are that Bill Davis will probably have to shut his Cup operation down unless he finds last-minute sponsorship for the #22. No telling how that might effect BDR's truck teams and whether Benson's decision to leave BDR has anything to do with uncertainty about what's going to happen for BDR in 2009 and beyond.

*According to Mike Mulhern - not exactly the best source of accurate information - Nascar is considering a ban on testing for all teams for the first few months next season in an effort to cut costs. I think that's a ridiculous idea. For one thing just because the teams don't go to tracks to test doesn't mean that they're going to stop all research and development work - the top teams with the most funding are still going to spend a huge amount on trying to make the cars as competitive as possible and the other teams will still have to spend lots of money to try to catch up, they'll simply be spending money in different areas. I also don't see how the teams are going to be able to get a handle on the COT if they aren't able to test it ever.

*Brian France was at Phoenix to address the effects of the poor economy on the sport and say that Nascar is going to make an effort to cut costs for the teams. I barely paid attention to anything he said. For one thing I don't need Brian France to tell me that there's major challenges facing the teams and the sport overall due to the poor economy. I would also assume without being told that Nascar is going to look at ways to cut costs - they really don't have any choice. Since I didn't pay too much attention to what he had to say it's possible he addressed it and I missed it but in the little media coverage I did see, I didn't see any mention of him addressing the effects of the poor economy on the fans and how the sport is planning to respond to that. Seems to me that's something that's going to be just as important to address moving forward as anything.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Matt Kenseth vs. A.J. Allmendinger

Something that hasn't gotten much attention so far is Matt Kenseth putting A.J. Allmendinger into the wall seemingly deliberately at the end of yesterday's race, something which resulted in quite a few other cars getting wrecked as a result. I understand that Kenseth wasn't too happy with Allmendinger's mistake earlier in the race which caused Kenseth to go for a spin, but Allmendinger was very apologetic over his in-car radio based on the audio played during the broadcast and asked his team to pass an apology on to Matt. Whether that ever happened I don't know, but regardless Kenseth should have more understanding for the fact that sometimes mistakes are made - I'm quite sure there have been times that Kenseth has made mistakes that have led to wrecks. In fact one could say that he made a mistake at the end of the race yesterday that resulted in a big mess and torn up race cars.

Retaliation has always been a part of the sport but I don't like the recent trend of drivers thinking nothing of deliberately putting each other into the wall. First it was David Gilliland last week with Juan Pablo Montoya and this week with Kenseth and Allmendinger. I'm quite sure that neither Gilliland nor Kenseth was looking to hurt Montoya or Allmendinger - but they could have. When Nascar opted to not penalize Gilliland any further last week than parking him, I think it sent a message to the drivers that putting another competitor into the wall was acceptable. It shouldn't be. Since Kenseth waited until the last lap to go after Allmendinger unless Nascar decides they're fed up he likely won't face any consequences for it.

Maybe the drivers have been lured into a false sense of security because of the safety advances with the COT and safer barriers so they think they can do anything to each other and nothing's going to happen. But there is still an element of risk and even with the COT we've seen some drivers get shaken up and get bumped and bruised. One of these times that a driver decides that the way to respond to some perceived wrong is by putting the other driver into the wall will result in an injury.

The other issue is something that Michael Waltrip brought up over his in-car radio during the race, the concept of whether a driver "deserves" to get wrecked. After an incident in which Montoya got into Casey Mears, Michael said that while he had no opinion, some people felt that Montoya deserved what he got at Texas (when he got put in the wall by Gilliland) and that he did see Montoya get into people a lot. Michael is 100% correct - Montoya races very aggressively and he often gets into his fellow competitors. That tends to led to other drivers getting upset and retaliation may follow. But does that mean he deserves to be put into the wall and possibly injured as some believe and possibly hurt? To me, no driver deserves to get put in the wall. I would hope that's not the way Kenseth was thinking about Allmendinger. It reminds me of the irrational way some fans think about some drivers that they deserve bad things happening to them because they've wronged their favorite drivers - there are still quite a few Robby Gordon fans who wish ill on Michael on a regular basis and think he deserves to be wrecked - preferably by Robby - because of that incident three years ago at New Hampshire between Robby and Michael.

Given the level of competition and the issues related to the poor economy that are surely effecting all the teams, the pressure on the drivers must be immense. I can also understand that Kenseth was not only frustrated about how yesterday's race went for him - even though finishing 15th is certainly not horrible - but that he's also frustrated about the season as a whole since in spite of being in the Chase he's not won any races for the first time since 2001. Emotion also runs high during races and sometimes drivers do things out of emotion that they might regret later. But that all doesn't excuse what Kenseth did. He's a former Champion and he should know better.

Posted by silverdsl at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)

November 09, 2008

Marcos Ambrose Races His Way Into the Top 35

The more I see of Marcos Ambrose the more impressed I am. Although he's had to battle the usual bad luck that always seems to spoil good runs for Michael Waltrip Racing teams, he's done a solid job the last few races in the used-to-be #00, now #47. The best part is that Marcos followed up a 21st place finish last weekend at Texas by finishing 18th today at Phoenix despite having been swept up in a wreck not of his own doing - he and his team did a great job of staying on the lead lap and hanging on for the last few laps of the race. That finish puts Marcos in the top 35 in owner's points! That means he's locked in to next weekend's race at Homestead and if he finishes well enough to stay in the top 35, he'll have ensured that he'll be locked in for the first five races next season! In addition, he will have helped MWR achieve one of their goals for this season - to have all three of their teams finish the season in the top 35 in owner's points. If that happens that will be huge for the organization - it might not be a big deal to some teams but considering where they were a year ago it would be pretty big!

It wasn't as good of a day for Michael Waltrip and David Reutimann. As per usual these days David was racing up front and it appeared that he might be in line for a strong finish. But then he had to pit because a cowl cover wasn't removed and things went downhill from there. At first I thought David was going to be able to recover from that incident and race his way back up front but it never happened and David ended up finishing 25th, two laps down. Michael Waltrip finished just ahead of David in 24th. The car was okay but not great in today's race and Michael never really seemed to be able to do much with it. But I can't say I'm too upset - both David and Michael finished in the top 25. While neither finish is stellar, that's still progress from where they were a year ago and even earlier this season when finishing in the top 35, particularly for the #55 team might have been considered a good result.

The other drivers in the top 35 battle besides Marcos didn't finish very well which is one reason Marcos was able to gain ground and get back into the top 35. Sam Hornish, Jr. who doesn't have much of a chance of racing his way back in was involved in two incidents, Scott Speed was involved in the big wreck of the day and finished 40th and Robby Gordon raced in the back all day long. It's puzzling to me that Red Bull Racing has Speed in the car. While I understand that they want to get him some experience for next season, they have to expect that he's going to struggle, thus jeopardizing their chances of finishing the season in the top 35.

Based on the way A.J. Allmendinger has been racing lately it's safe to say that the results would have been much better if they had just stuck with him and then odds are Speed would be starting the season in the top 35. But it's looking like he won't be locked in next season and he'll have to worry about making races - that's a horrible situation to put a rookie in and RBR should know that considering all that they've gone through with the top 35 for the past two seasons. Maybe RBR thought that the #00 (#47) team was so bad that they didn't have to worry about them racing their way back into the top 35. However, that was a miscalculation - MWR has been fielding much more competitive cars for a few months now.

All I know is that the decision that MWR made to take Michael McDowell out of the third car and put Marcos and a few other driver in was an excellent one. I'm not sure that the #47/00 would be back in the top 35 right now if McD was behind the wheel. Marcos has really done a great job for JTG/MWR!

Posted by silverdsl at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

Joey Logano Will Race the #20 Next Season

The hot rumor in the garage area the past week has been that Joey Logano wasn't going to take over the #20 after all and that Joe Gibbs Racing had decided to go with a veteran driver instead because they had lost confidence in Logano's ability as a driver. In this sport what seems like a done deal one day can fall apart the next but this particularly rumor didn't make much sense and not surprisingly J.D. Gibbs confirmed that Logano will be in the #20 next season as planned. Home Depot did a commercial that showed Tony Stewart "passing the wheel" to Logano and there is no way that a sponsor is going to spend the money on a commercial and ad time, particularly in this economy, if they weren't moving forward with having Logano race the race.

I think it's kind of unfortunate that instead of being excited to see how he might do in Cup, there are negative rumors being started in the garage area about him and fans are downing him before he's even race more than a handful of Cup races. Maybe there's a sense of jealousy from some in the garage area that at just 18 years old he's being given an opportunity to race for one of the best teams in Cup with the support of a major sponsor without having to spend time racing in lower levels to prove himself. It's not really too surprising that fans are resentful and negative about Logano - seems like these days some fans spend quite a bit of time dismissing the success and accomplishments of teams and drivers. No one has to like Logano but I wish that more were able to recognize that he has some ability and appreciate the possibilities of what he might be able to do as he develops as a driver.

Logano has struggled in a Cup car so far but he's only made three starts, two of which were with a team that has has performance issues all season long and the last while with JGR, wasn't with the team or crew chief he'll be with next season. Those things do make a difference. I've seen more than a few fans refer to Logano as talent-less and that simply isn't reality. In 18 Nationwide starts Logano has 13 top tens, five top fives and a win. He's only finished outside the top 20 once. I think it would benefit Logano to have raced another full season in Nationwide before moving up to Cup but there's no reason to think that he won't be a successful driver on the Cup level too. After all, he's going to be racing a competitive car in Cup just like he is in Nationwide. The key is that JGR is going to have to set reasonable expectations for Logano and have patience with him. He will make mistakes, he will tear up race cars and he might look pretty bad in some races, but eventually odds are he will develop into a solid driver in Cup.

Whether Logano's a success or failure, whether next season is the first of many he spends in Cup or his last, I'm looking forward to seeing how he does in Cup.

Posted by silverdsl at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (11/9)

*Word is that Tony Gibson and the entire #8 team is moving from DEI to Stewart-Haas Racing to work with Ryan Newman next season. Is there money changing hands to make this possible? Is DEI letting them go knowing that they're downsizing their operation next season? It just seems unusual to me that one organization would let another have an entire team. Gibson has been at DEI quite some time. He worked with Michael Waltrip some in 2005 and he was okay as a crew chief but I can't say I was overwhelmed. Maybe this rumor won't come to pass but if it does I'll be a little surprised that SHR didn't hire more of a "name" crew chief for Newman, though I'm not sure who would be available to fit that bill which might be part of the problem, not to mention some crew chiefs may be leery of working with an organization that isn't exactly new but is changing so much.

*CAT, who is leaving the team to sponsor the #31 at Richard Childress Racing next season, won't be on the #22 at Bill Davis Racing for the final two races of the season. CAT says they fulfilled their obligations to BDR and that the organization decided to put Bad Boy Mowers on the car instead of CAT for these final two races. Turns out that might be due to CAT invoking a performance clause in their contract with BDR which has resulted in CAT not having to pay BDR for the last five races of the season. In this economy I can't blame a company for taking advantage of a clause like that to save themselves some money and especially when they won't be with the team next season, but it's really unfortunate for BDR, who are still looking for a replacement sponsor for CAT. Teams need money to be competitive but when they aren't competitive no one wants to give them money. Not having any outside funding coming in is likely going to mean that the #22 is going to struggle in these last couple of races. I really doubt that team will be around next season. As much as I don't care for BDR too much I don't like to see teams that have been a presence in the garage are for a long time fold. It's not good for Dave Blaney either who may have trouble finding a ride for next season.

*Fueled by his poor performance this season, rumors have abounded that Sam Hornish, Jr. is going to return to open wheel racing next season. This weekend Hornish denied those rumors saying that he's focused on racing in Nascar right now. I wouldn't be surprised to see Hornish return to open wheel racing at some point in the future if things don't work out for him in Cup but I'd think that he and Penske Racing both would like to give it at least one more year before they give up on him racing Cup. That said, Hornish has been pretty bad this season. Not only have the results been poor it seems like he's often involved in incidents. It may be that the cars that Hornish is being given to race aren't that good but it might also be that Hornish will never develop into a successful Cup driver. But I think it's too soon to know for sure - he needs at least another season and more time to show that he can get it done in Nascar like he did in an IndyCar.

*Much as I suspected it doesn't sound like Jimmie Johnson's spotter and others being let go at Hendrick Motorsports were for financial reasons as some have tried to make it seem but instead because of performance or other reasons. Jimmie said, "Stevie has done a great job for us. As any year winds down, teams are going to be looking to improve in different areas, and that's a position we're going to make a change in." Which sounds to me that even though Jimmie is complimentary of his spotter he thinks that someone else could do a better job for him. Of all the teams in the garage area it's not too likely that there are going to be financial issues with a team that's close to winning a Championship unless HMS is really doing something wrong on the business side.

*It's going to be a must-see Truck race at Homestead next weekend. Johnny Benson has just a three-point lead over Ron Hornaday in the points and it all comes down to how well each of these teams perform in this one race. I'm excited already to see how it plays out! I'm pulling for Benson but Hornaday will be hard to beat.

Posted by silverdsl at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2008

Michael Waltrip Out Loud and The After Show (10/7)

Before I get to talking about either show I have to say that I encourage all of Michael's fans and especially those who listen to OutLoud each week to be sure to listen to The After Show on Tony Rizzuti's site each week. Tony and Michael's PR rep, Traci Hultzapple, along with the producer of OutLoud, Rich York, give a behind-the-scenes review of the taping of the show each week but more than that there are always great stories and commentary on Michael that can't be found anywhere else. They also give their thoughts on what's happening in Nascar from the point-of-view of insiders who are involved in the sport. The After Show is free to listen to and well worth checking out. It's usually about 20 minutes long but it downloads very quickly so everyone should be able to listen no matter what kind of connection or computer they're using.

Michael Waltrip OutLoud

The show started off with a song by ELO. Michael said that nothing could bring him down because he was at Pebble Beach where everything is lovely. I have to say that I found everything he said about being at Pebble Beach and the way he felt very moving and meaningful. Pebble Beach is God's country, Michael said. It's like God served up a palette for some artist to work on. It's breath taking there. It makes him think of his Dad and how it would be special for his Dad to be there. It makes him look inside himself. You think about what's important, maybe your problems aren't so bad and that life is pretty good. He wanted to do the show from Pebble Beach specifically so he could have the opportunity to share with his listeners. I'm so glad that he did!

For me being immersed in nature evokes some special feelings too. For Michael it's being on these golf courses in beautiful settings, for me it's watching the waves crash to shore at the ocean, seeing amazing rock formations, or even just picking up wave-smoothed stones at the beach. I'm awed by the beauty of it all and the power of nature. As anyone who visits this site regularly knows, photography is one of my hobbies and I'm always trying to capture the wonder of what I see around me. In listening to Michael, I was reminded of sitting by my favorite rock at sunrise on Marginal Way in Ogunquit on the coast of Maine, watching the waves crash over it. I feel so good, so at peace then and at other times when I'm able to take in the beauty of natural world around me.

Anyway, If I heard what Michael said right MWR got Jim Aust and his wife a trip to Pebble Beach for his retirement. Michael is there to play golf with him along with Brian Jackson, the Tailormade golf pro who Michael seems to golf with a lot.

Tony said that the #44 and #55 were "on it" during qualifying. They sure were! Michael said that the #44 was also good on Saturday and then really good on Sunday. However, they never got the handling right on the #55, it was too loose and it made for a tough night. I think it's pretty unfortunate that the #55 team was never able to get the car adjusted right to where it felt comfortable for Michael since the speed was definitely there and he likely could have been racing up front like David Reutimann did if not for those handling issues. Michael's proud that all three cars with three different drivers, three different crew chiefs and three different groups of people all were in the 28.9 bracket (in qualifying or practice I assume). It shows the progress they're making. They dreamed of one team with three cars and they're beginning to make gains on it. It's a great feeling. It's not just a great feeling to Michael, it's a great feeling to me as a fan to watch the progression and know that they're only going to get better!

The #47 can race into the top 35, has an outside chance of getting into the top 20 (in points) and they're (the #55 team) are working towards being a top 20 team which is their goal for next year. I have a feeling some fans might be dismayed if they heard Michael say that the goal for the team for next season is to "only" be a top 20 team. But I think everyone needs to remember where they were last season when they struggled to make races let alone race competitively. Then at the start of this season the cars were pretty bad. But they've gradually made progress and that progress will continue. However, it's not realistic to think that a team is going to go from fighting to stay in the top 35 one year to contending for wins every single week the next. Given competitive cars Michael most definitely can race up front and contend for wins on a regular basis but since MWR is still a relatively new and still developing organization, it's going to take time for them to be able to field cars like that on a regular basis for all three teams.

Michael asked Tony how the Chase changed on Sunday. Tony said that Michael had been preaching that it's not over and then Jimmie Johnson wasn't on his game for the last two races. They rallied at Atlanta but were mid-pack most of the day at Texas while Carl Edwards has been winning races. Tony wondered whether the team is having doubts creeping in and if maybe they're over-analyzing things. Michael said that no, it's Tony who's over-analyzing things. The cars are temperamental, and it's easy to go from leading to laps down. At Texas he outran Jeff Gordon for 250 miles, then Jeff was able to get a free pass and ended up finishing 2nd. Jeff performed well at the right time like JJ did at Atlanta. Don't think it's because they're thinking too much, it's because it's hard to get the cars to do what you want them to. Michael gave kudos to Carl and Roush for how well the whole organization did at Texas. It's not that easy and you can get off in a hurry. While it's true that the cars are difficult to adjust, more so than I think a lot of fans realize, I think there may also be some truth to Tony's point about whether the #48 team was over-analyzing things. There is a mental aspect to racing and whether a driver or team realizes it there are subtle factors related to mindset, attitude, how they deal with pressure, etc... that I think can effect the way drivers and teams perform.

Michael was very surprised by what Carl and his team did with the fuel mileage. He never heard anything from his team about fuel mileage (presumably that teams were using fuel mileage strategy) and he likes to know about those things. He never thought anyone could make it that far and it was impressive. The #55 team pitted with just five or six to go and he thought that was a stretch. It was a strange night for the #55, they couldn't go on new tires which was the opposite of Atlanta.

Tony brought up the incident with Gilliland and JPM which he said was really bad and something that you just don't do. Michael on the other hand said that he's a race car driver, out there driving and he knows how emotional it gets. Turns out Michael hasn't seen a replay on TV yet so he doesn't know how bad it looks. He doesn't think it's fair to really comment much on it, he doesn't know what Gilliland was thinking and what led up to it. He knows Gilliland pretty good and knows that he wouldn't try to hurt someone. I wonder whether Michael would have said something different if he had seen the incident on video? But I agree with Jeannie that he probably felt he couldn't say too much that was critical of Gilliland in light of what he did at Richmond.

The third segment started with Tony playing a Sex Pistols song that Michael said he didn't understand. They got to talking about Louis Hamilton winning the F1 championship. Michael was amazed at the finish. Hamilton is the youngest F1 champion and the first man of color. Tony said that Hamilton is a role model for everyone in motorsports. I thought that was a pretty cool thing for him to say and I hope that one day Tony gets to say that about a man or woman of color in Nascar in relation to them winning a Championship.

Michael had fun dressing up as the cowardly lion on Speed. He's so thankful that he gets to be on Speed and that he gets to talk about truck racing - I'm very thankful for that too because he is awesome on Speed working the truck races! It's the best racing in Nascar and the best points battle according to Michael. Johnny Benson has been racing like a champion. It looked like he was going to finish 15th at Atlanta but he battled back to finish 7th. Then he worked and worked all night long at Texas to finish 3rd. Both he and Ron Hornaday are a threat to win every week. I got the feeling that Michael is pulling for or thinks Johnny is going to win the Championship and maybe Tony wants Hornaday to win it, which would be no surprise since he seems to be pretty friendly with Ron.

Tony brought up Kyle Busch donating $100,000 to Sam Ard. Michael said there are good people who race in Nascar. He's proud to be associated with people with such big hearts. He remembers how dominant Sam Ard was in the #00 the year he won all those races and Kyle is doing the same years later.

JJ has a performance advantage over Carl at tracks like Phoenix but at Homestead it's Carl. Tony will be working Carl's Directv Hotpass channel this weekend.

The show closed with Sun King by the Cult and Michael complained that he wanted a Toby Keith song to be played to which Tony responded that since Michael wasn't there he was in charge! I have to admit that since my taste in music is a lot more like Tony's than Michael's, I like it when Tony is in charge of the musical selections they play! A great thing about this show is that I've been exposed to some really good songs that I never would have heard if not for Tony and/or Michael having them played such as "Please Come to Boston" by Dave Loggins that they played on one show last year.

The After Show

Tony, Traci and Rich were laughing at how much Michael talked when he called in to do the show and how hard it would be for Rich to edit it down to fit the 30 minutes they have. I have to say that Rich always does a terrific job of editing in such a way that unless you know that he does it, you can't tell the show's been edited. Apparently Michael talked for something like 24 minutes just about Pebble Beach and I loved what he had to say so much that I would have been happy if they just made that the entire show!

Turns out Michael actually studied all about the cowardly lion on Thursday night to get ready for being dressed up as the lion on Friday! That's being prepared! He knew that he had to hold his tail and everything. Ray Dunlap claimed he wasn't wearing any underwear under his costume and I know it's terrible but when Traci said that all I could think was that maybe that was why he got suspended last year! Turns out as they were coming in on the golf cart after Michael got in costume they got hassled by security. First a guard said it was against the rules for Traci to be riding up front (why?) so she actually had to go sit on Michael's lap! That must have been pretty funny to see! Good thing Michael was in costume so most likely no one knew who it was otherwise photos of that would probably ended up on TGOM and other similarly slimy sites.

Next a guard hassled them and told them that those in costume needed credentials, not knowing that they were SPEED'S on-air talent. Okay, they were in costume so it's hard to tell who they are but presumably Traci and others with them did have credentials so come on, use some common sense! Traci always has these stories about them getting harassed by security over nothing or in situations where common sense should override a rule and I would guess the same thing happens to other PR reps and drivers too - Kasey Kahne certainly found himself in some hot water with a guard last season. Meanwhile, there are guards who let fans sneak into the garage area without the proper credentials, which is something that should never happen. They were blown away by the number of people at the truck race and how many of them were dressed up for Halloween.

There was some discussion about how Michael declined to be critical of David Gilliland. In general Tony feels that Michael tries to avoid being overly controversial, particularly when it comes to Nascar. I actually think that sometimes creates more controversy for Michael since being pro-Nascar isn't popular these days. They wondered whether Michael felt he couldn't be critical of David in light of his own incident he got parked for earlier in the season. Traci said that Michael might have gotten away with what he did if not for the in-car audio in which he claimed he had no brakes but he was "mashing it." I'd say that regardless of what Michael said over the radio he was going to be in some trouble since just like with Gilliland the replays of that incident made it look pretty blatant. Michael had said that he knows David wouldn't do something intentionally like that but Tony brought up how David had tangled with Michael McDowell earlier in the season and how it's the second time Gilliland has lost his temper like that.

I was surprised by Michael's comment on Outloud because of what Tony brought up - when that incident took place Michael went on TWiN and placed all the blame for it on Gilliland losing his temper. Michael was one of the few that saw the incident that way and it ignited a firestorm of controversy among fans, especially Gilliland's fans who organized an email campaign to NAPA to tell them that they should stop sponsoring Michael simply because he said things they didn't like about their driver - ridiculous. So it's a little curious that he would opt to say virtually the opposite this time, unless he didn't feel comfortable giving an opinion since he hadn't seen a replay of the incident. Or maybe he didn't want to deal with another round of nonsense from fans who are intolerant of opinions they don't agree with. I'm all for fans openly disagreeing with things that drivers say but some fans take things ridiculously far.

I was also surprised that Tony indicated that he thought that there wasn't a big deal being made of what happened and if it involved a driver like Tony Stewart there would have been much more conversation about it. Seems to me that this has been a huge topic of discussion all week not just with fans on forums and on XM/Sirius but also in the media too. There were some pretty harsh things said about Gilliland and I can't say that I feel too sorry for him - if you do something that blatant and in my opinion wrong, then there are going to be consequences you have to deal with.

Next there was discussion about how Texas went for the MWR teams. The #55 got fast midway through the race and Michael was able to outrace Jeff Gordon (but unfortunately the results don't show how fast Michael was). Because of the handling issues Michael didn't realize how good the car was from a speed standpoint. On Sunday the talk in the garage area was that David Reutimann was the driver to beat. Tony thought it would have been great if David had won and made UPS regret their decision to leave MWR (myself and every other MWR fan was wishing for the same thing). If I heard Traci right she made a comment that rumor has it that UPS may in fact already regret their decision. They should. David Ragan may race competitively next season but it's a better story for the media if the #44 team contends for wins in light of MWR's past struggles. In addition, they're joining a very PC organization where the drivers including Ragan don't show much personality. Meanwhile there's no shortage of personality at MWR and Michael always encourages his people to go above and beyond for sponsors.

Tony said that there's no way that those in the garage area can say that MWR isn't getting better and I definitely hope their progress has been recognized. Unfortunately I still see fans routinely talks about how bad MWR is in their eyes, completely oblivious to how far the organization has come and how much more competitive they've gotten. Even some in the media still down MWR. Thing is some fans are negative about top teams as well so in general there's an inability among some fans to recognize success. It must be frustrating for these teams and drivers.

The best part of the show was Tony saying that they have their fingers crossed that Michael Waltrip Out Loud will air on Sirius's Nascar channel next season and that it might expand to an hour! That would be awesome! I'm thrilled that it sounds like there's a good chance the show will be back next season and likely even longer! Tony said that there had even been some talk about the show being two hours long but that Michael wasn't too keen on that idea - too bad since I'm pretty sure he would have plenty to say to fill that time! I really hope it all works out. Listening to Michael and Tony is so much fun each week! I laugh a lot and I learn a lot too. An expanded show would give Michael more of an opportunity to talk about what's on his mind, have guests on or get the message out about what's going on with his team and MWR. I've come to think there aren't too many better venues for getting one's message out than XM/Sirius because it gives drivers, teams and sponsors the opportunity to speak at length as opposed to articles or TV interviews where there's often space and time limitations. Good thing for me there are no space limitations in this space!

Posted by silverdsl at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2008

Steve Park to Announce His 2009 Plans Soon?

Some answers to some fan submitted questions were posted on Steve Park's website yesterday including that he would be announcing his 2009 plans soon. I'm not holding my breath for anything to actually be announced in the near future since we've heard many times in the past that an announcement is forthcoming only to have nothing happen but I'm just glad that Steve does have something in mind for next season. It was implied somewhere that he might be just as happy sitting around at home as he would racing or doing something else in the sport and it seems to me that for any driver not just Steve doing nothing might not be so enjoyable. I would guess the odds are that Steve will be back in the #35 in the Camping World East Series or in another East Series ride. I suppose there's a chance that he could end up with a truck ride but unless Steve has decided that he'll consider more than just top five rides, it's unlikely that anything that will be available to him in any of Nascar's three highest series. There are less teams with open rides due to how many financial and sponsorship woes there are and complicating things for Steve is that he hasn't raced in the Truck or Nationwide series since 2006.

I'm sure somewhere there are some who are hoping or thinking that Steve might end up in the #23 truck for Bill Davis Racing in place of Johnny Benson who is leaving the team at the end of the season. I don't think that's too likely. For one thing BDR has Mike Skinner, Brian Scott and the recently signed (possibly as a replacement for Johnny), Tyler Malsam, and may also have Michael Arnett under contract for next season. In addition, if BDR's Cup program folds and it appears likely that's going to happen due to a lack of sponsorship, then if there's an open truck ride (and they could opt to drop a truck) I'd have to think they may consider Dave Blaney for it as BDR seems to think very highly of Dave. I also suspect that given how many discussions there apparently were between BDR and Steve about a ride in the past, if they were going to give him a ride they probably would have already done it a long time ago so the BDR ship may have sailed.

As I was writing my entry yesterday regarding Johnny leaving BDR, one of his comments really struck me and made me think of Steve. Johnny said that when he first came to the #23 team it was only about a 25th place team but he and the team were able to build it into what it is today, a championship contending team. As I've said in the past I think that's one of the most unfortunate thing about Steve turning down some of the opportunities that he's said have been available to him to race top 15 or maybe even better cars or trucks because he only wants to race for teams that contend for wins every week is that he's probably missed out on opportunities to help build a team from a top 15 team into a top five, winning team.

There's also what David Reutimann is doing in the #44 this season -after missing a bunch of races last season and struggling some to start this season, David races in the top ten just about every week these days. I expect David to continue that - and be even better - next season as his team continues to develop. Although most of Steve's fans are down on the Cup Series and Steve himself has said that he feels the Cup Series is just passing time, aka a waste of time to be racing in or even watching, I very much miss Steve in the Cup Series and I would love to see him racing alongside the sport's best drivers of which he has proven he is one given that he's won on the Cup level in the past.

It's great that Steve had a fairly successful season in the East Series and was able to race up front more often than not but the East Series isn't Cup, Nationwide or Trucks, and I know many of Steve's fans, while happy that he's continued to race, aren't entirely happy that he's not racing on a higher level. As noted above I do miss Steve racing in Cup but I'm just happy Steve is racing period since it didn't look like that was going to happen at one point. However, I just can't help but think of what might have been if Steve had taken one of those rides that were offered to him that he didn't think were good enough. If he returns to the #35 or another East Series team I'm sure he'll continue to race up front and maybe he'll even win a few if he continues racing in that series for a few more years - hopefully Steve and his team will take what they did this season and build on it and be even better next season. I just wonder though if Steve is really satisfied racing in this series against drivers with significantly less experience than he has in a series that few people outside of those who are his fans or attend races seem to care about?

On another note, another question posed to Steve besides what his plans are for next season is how long he's been racing in Nascar. Steve said he's been racing in Nascar for 25 years, which if my math is correct means that he started racing in Nascar in 1985. I checked the history page on his site and it doesn't specify what Steve's first race in Nascar was. I'm very curious to find out what series that was in, what track he raced on and what the result was. I'll have to do some poking around to see if I can find out but it might be difficult because I don't know that there's a site that keeps tracks of stats and information about Nascar's lower levels like there are for the Truck, Nationwide and Cup Series.

The other thing is that when I read that Steve has been in the sport for 25 years I was reminded of - no surprise here - Michael Waltrip since he's also raced in Nascar for 25 years. Longer really I would think if one considers that Michael was also racing in other series, some of which were presumably Nascar series, before he made his debut in the Cup Series in 1985. I thought about how over the course of the 25 years that Michael's been racing he's made over 1,000 starts in Nascar's three National Touring Series, and I got to wondering how many starts Steve has. I was surprised to discover that in Cup, Nationwide, and Truck combined Steve only has 298 starts if my math is correct - 181 in Cup, 56 in Nationwide, and 61 in the Truck Series. I guess I was thinking that with how many years he raced Cup and what's now the Nationwide Series that he had more starts. When I looked even closer at Steve's stats I was further surprised to discover that he hasn't raced too many full seasons in any series - in the Cup series he only raced every race in a season twice, in Nationwide once and in Trucks once. Just something that I had never noticed or given much thought to before.

Hopefully next year Steve will have a successful season racing the #35 or for whatever team he ends up with.

Posted by silverdsl at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2008

Photo of the Day - Somewhere in Nevada

Posted by silverdsl at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)

Johnny Benson Confirms He's Leaving Bill Davis Racing

Johnny Benson confirmed today on "Tradin' Paint" on Sirius that he's leaving Bill Davis Racing at the end of this season in spite of the fact that he could end up winning the Truck Series Championship this year. Benson made it clear that it was his decision to leave and while he acknowledged that he had been thinking about retiring he said that so many offers have come his way that he thinks he's going to be able to find another opportunity for next year that he likes. From the sounds of it Benson is very much open to racing Cup again, even if it's only on a part-time basis because it would allow him to spend more time with his family. Based on Benson's comments he's very proud of having taken what was a top 25 team and helped make them into a Championship contending team. He should be proud - I'm hoping he wins the Championship but even if he doesn't his time at BDR in the #23 truck is no less of a success. Since joining BDR in 2004 Benson has 14 wins, 50 top fives and 71 top tens. Since he started racing the truck full time in 2005, he's finished 10th, 2nd, 3rd, and could possibly win the Championship this season. Truly outstanding!

Benson really didn't give much insight into why he decided to leave BDR, only referring to some "little issues." One had to wonder just how little those issues are if they prompted him to leave a team he could win a Championship with. Perhaps those issues have to do with sponsorship and the uncertainty regarding BDR's future - although it's been said that even if they sell off their Cup operation they will continue to field truck teams next season, given a lot of the talk swirling around BDR, I can understand why Benson might want to leave to explore other options rather than deal with a difficult situation if things at BDR get even shakier than they are now.

Posted by silverdsl at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

Jimmie Johnson Will Need a New Spotter for 2009

Normally a driver getting a new spotter isn't really news worthy but when it comes to the driver who might win this year's Cup Championship it's news, and even more-so when the word "layoffs" is used in conjunction with the spotter leaving the team. Jimmie Johnson's spotter, Stevie Reeves will be leaving the #48 team and Hendrick Motorsports at the end of the season. From the way the article is written the choice to leave the team wasn't his, and he found out about it during "a modest round of layoffs" earlier this week.

I have to wonder about the use of the word "layoffs" and whether that was a choice by the writer of the article or someone at HMS and what, if anything, it's meant to imply. Layoffs often come when a company is in bad shape financially and as a result needs to let people go because they can't afford to pay their salaries. Am I supposed to believe that HMS is in such dire financial straits that they have to lay people off? According to Forbes HMS is the most valuable team in Nascar, worth an estimated $335 million dollars. In addition, last year they took in approximately $179 million in revenue. I have no doubt that the poor economy, rising cost of gas and other issues have effected HMS just like any other team and I'm sure they are trying to be mindful of ways that they can keep costs down. However, I highly doubt they were having any problems paying Reeves salary. In addition, it's not like his position will be eliminated - Johnson will still need a spotter next season and one of the best drivers in the sport is going to want a top spotter who surely won't come cheap.

Implying that people were let go for financial reasons makes it easier for everyone because they don't have to start talking about poor performance or other issues that might play a role. It's curious though that Reeves is being let go for any reason though since he's part of a team that has a good chance of winning a Championship with his help. One would think that HMS would want to keep the #48 team intact as much as possible heading into next season. In addition, it seems curious to me that they would inform him now that he's being let go. Maybe the thinking was that it'll give him an opportunity to work the garage area the next two weekends but it seems strange to me that they would do something that could end up being a distraction for Reeves and the team when they need to be completely focusing on trying to win the Championship.

Posted by silverdsl at 02:30 PM | Comments (8)

November 04, 2008

Car and Driver Magazine Test Drives a Michael Waltrip Racing #55 NAPA Auto Parts COT

It's been great how much positive media attention Michael Waltrip and Michael Waltrip Racing have been getting lately, and it's continuing with a interesting article in Car and Driver magazine in which a reporter takes a ride around the road course track at VIR in a MWR car - a #55 NAPA Auto Parts Toyota to be precise. That resulted in an in-depth review for Car and Driver about what it's like to drive a COT, and includes some interesting comments from some at MWR.

I know that a lot of people stop by here looking for news and information about Michael and MWR so I want to give those folks a head's up so they can check the article out online or even better go pick up a copy of the magazine at the store. It's well worth a read especially for anyone who is interested in the technical aspect of the sport and the cars but the article is written in a way that anyone can understand.

I'm not sure how this article came to be but it's really outstanding that of all the teams in the garage area that Car and Driver could have done this article with they did it with Michael,the #55 team and MWR! Since I don't believe Car and Driver

I originally posted this entry when the article came out last week but I want to update it now that I have some time. I have to admit I'm surprised by how little attention this article has gotten. I would think that a MWR car - or any Cup car and team for that matter - being featured in Car and Driver is a big deal and something that doesn't happen every day. Yet I've seen nothing about this article anywhere, including on Michael's site and the NAPA sponsorship site. If not for having stumbled upon the one fan forum where it was posted I probably wouldn't have any idea the article came out.

Maybe part of the reason it hasn't gotten a lot of attention is because it's a pretty technical article and a lot of fans don't understand or enjoy the technical side of the sport. I find it pretty interesting to read about the technical side even though some of it definitely goes over my head. One interesting thing in this article is that apparently the MWR engineers at the test openly admitted that they don't like the COT, I guess because how hard it is to get it set-up right. At the time the reporter tested the #55, Dr. Eric Warren was still with the team and he emphasized the importance of the tires and getting the tire pressures right. This quote should seem familiar to Michael's fans - “What we are seeing this year is that people will make the car better during the race, then lose a handle on it out of nowhere.” Seems like that's a regular thing for Michael - he has a great car and then suddenly out of no where the handling goes away and it ruins his entire day. This is extremely frustrating to fans who are listening on the radio during races because they don't understand why the team can't just put back the car back to the way it was but from the sounds of it, that's not always so easy.

What I was really astonished by was that even though the COT is supposed to save the team money, apparently it's actually costing the teams even more money due to the testing and R&D costs. From the article:

The CoT was supposed to save money, but the talk is that costs have gone up because teams are spending huge amounts of time in the wind tunnel chasing small gains. The amount of computer modeling has increased because, as Waltrip Racing’s senior analysis engineer Mark Catania says, “We basically threw all our notebooks away when we went to these cars.”

Despite NASCAR’s ban on data acquisition during race weekends, teams are loading up their CoTs ($100,000, less engine) with $1 million worth of instrumentation at test sessions to try to discover what is happening at the tire contact patch. In theory, teams need far fewer cars than they ran in the past because the Car of Tomorrow was designed as a one-size-fits-all machine, whereas the old cars were tailored for the event: road courses, short and intermediate ovals, and superspeedways. However, Waltrip Racing has an inventory of about 55 cars, according to Warren, with eight in build at any one time, which is not much different than what teams were running in the recent past. Warren explains: “Even though you can take the same car to a short track and an intermediate one, they get trashed more often because the slightest of damage in a race means the car may not be able to pass the NASCAR inspection process because of the tight tolerances demanded. So you save in the number of car configurations but lose more in the course of normal racing.”

So just exactly how are the smaller and underfunded teams supposed to be able to afford $1million worth of test gadgets for testing? Or fancy computer modeling? Or a bunch of cars? Or the personnel to oversee all of this? It seems to me that the COT came to the sport at the worst possible time because the poor economy and resulting sponsor woes for many of the teams makes it hard for them to be able to do the necessary tests to try to find those small gains or build as many cars as they need. Do all the fans that complain about why their favorite team is doing so poorly or laugh at drivers who are struggling each week realize what a difficult challenge many of these teams have when it comes to the COT?

Reading about the reporter's test of the car is also interesting because he calls being in the car a hostile environment. For one thing there's the heat which McD told the reporter causes him to lose ten pounds each week. But there's also the way the car drives which the reporter says seems harder to driver than the older style car he once tested. He described the way to get the most out of the COT on a road course as needing "finesse and violence in equal measure." Michael said,

“It’s a lot like wrestling in that you have to hop the curbs to get the car to turn. Yet stamping on the gas is not an option. You can’t mat it at Charlotte at 180 mph, so you can’t mat it here. You need a lot more finesse than you might think.”

Again, I ask - do fans realize how hard it is? That these drivers aren't just cruising around the track on road courses or anywhere else. It may look easy but it's not. The writer sums up by saying,

Then you think about driving a CoT at Charlotte, where the top drivers are dirt-tracking them into corners at 170 mph and more. It must be plenty challenging in a car that drives predictably. In something as compromised as the CoT, these drivers sure earn their money.

Yeah, they really do earn their money! Especially when you consider that they aren't just out on a test course like this reporter was, they're racing against 42 other competitors who are some of the most elite race car drivers in the world, often at close quarters. It's really incredible - and fascinating - what these drivers and teams are doing in an effort to try to tame the COT beast and get to Victory Lane.

Posted by silverdsl at 04:11 PM | Comments (0)

Random Nascar Thoughts on Random Thoughts (10/4)

*For the Michael McDowell fans out there, in an article for The Arizona Republic, McD said that a Nationwide ride is "his most realistic option" for 2009. Give the difficult economy and how few teams appear to have open rides for next season I'm not even sure that a Nationwide ride is going to turn up for him. There are a few truck teams that may part ways with their current drivers at season's end but some of those are in danger of closing their doors without sponsorship. So his Nascar career could be over before it gets very far. Luckily for McD, he has experience in other series which makes him a versatile driver so if not in Nascar hopefully something will become available to him in another series. If he can't find a full-time ride maybe there will be a team interested in using him as a substitute driver on one of the road course tracks next season.

*In the same article, McD's fellow Arizona native, J.J. Yeley, saids that the woes of the #96 team, the team he was released from earlier this season were because Hall of Fame Racing thought they had a technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing that would include information sharing but that wasn't the case. Although the team tried to move in that direction that never happened and apparently they never received equipment that was as good as the JGR cars themselves. Yeley said that he was told they were going to bring in a big-name crew chief and do more testing but none of that happened either. I'd guess that might be because the team didn't have the financial resources to hire a top crew chief or do a lot of testing since Yeley said that DNQ'ing for four races allowed the sponsor of the #96, DLP to take advantage of a clause that allowed them to reduce their sponsorship. Clearly the #96 team is going to have to do something different next season - a real technical alliance with another organization would help but as a single-car organization who will be starting the season outside the top 35 in owner's points I think it's going to be a real struggle for them to survive.

*After winning his 10th Nationwide race over the weekend, Kyle Busch dedicated the win to Sam Ard, a two-time Champion of the series who has Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately Ard and his wife are struggling financially due to his medical bills so a number of people in the garage area have stepped up to help them, including Busch who announced in Victory Lane that he was donating $100,000 to the Ard's, a gesture that was very much appreciated since it may allow Jo Ard to hire someone to help her with the care of her husband. Truly a wonderful gesture by Busch.

However, there are some fans who don't see it that way. Continuing the tradition of some fans letting their hatred for a driver making them see everything in the worst way possible, there's been some criticism of Busch that he only made the donation for PR reasons, to make himself look good to fans, and if the donation truly came from the heart he would have done it privately. Ridiculous. Busch has made it pretty clear this season he doesn't much care what the fans think. In addition, often donations are announced publically as a way to get exposure for the charity or cause they're benefiting and the Ards certainly need all the help they can get. I don't remember anyone questioning Kevin Harvick's motives for taking part in a press conference to announce that he was donating a van to the Ards and they shouldn't be questioning Busch's either. It's unfortunate that some fans have to see the negative in everything. One of the greatest things about this sport is how committed everyone is to charitable causes and helping other people out when they can.

*Over the weekend Jack Sprague talked about how he doesn't know whether he's going to have a ride next season or not and also how Wyler Racing needs to find sponsorship for the #60. From the sounds of it, if Wyler doesn't find a sponsor they're going to fold which is unfortunate but not unexpected. Wyler has fielded the #60 without any outside sponsorship periodically since they've come into the sport and since the Wyler family has quite a few auto dealerships that was probably fairly manageable for them while the economy was good. But now that the economy is bad and auto dealerships are hurting they probably don't have the money to field the truck without a sponsor next season. Sprague said they are looking for a young driver who can bring sponsorship with him - essentially someone who will buy the ride. A lot of fans have problems with this kind of situation because it often means that the driver is getting the ride on the basis of the money they're bringing with them as opposed to their talent as a driver. But I don't see what choice these teams have. They need to do whatever is necessary to continue operating. If a team waits for a driver with both talent and sponsorship, or just try to make a go of it with a young driver with ability but no sponsorship, they might end up folding.

*Apparently A.J. Allmendinger is going to race a car in the Nationwide race for Gillett-Evernham Motorsports this weekend. He's done an outstanding job for them on the Cup side so I'm glad they're rewarding him with at least one Nationwide start as well. Somehow I suspect GEM is wishing they signed him instead of Reed Sorenson for the #10. I guess there's a chance that GEM could find a way to field a 4th car for Allmendinger next season but that might be difficult without a sponsor. Allmendinger may tear up cars at times because he can be overly aggressive but he's also shown that he can get good results, even in cars that aren't among the best on the track. The more he races in Cup the more experience he's going to get and the better he'll be. So I hope he finds a full-time Cup ride for 2009 because I think he could end up being a successful Cup driver with the right team.

*One thing about the incident between David Gilliland and Juan Pablo Montoya that I didn't realize at first is that Gilliland was multiple laps down at the time time of the incident. Just exactly why was he racing JPM, who was in 10th place at the time, so hard? I don't think lapped cars should pull over and stop racing - if they're racing the leader in an effort to not go another lap down, racing to be the lucky dog, or racing for position then they have every right to be racing hard. But if they're multiple laps down and all they're doing is holding up a lead lap car then they need to give a little. It's not a matter of giving up or pulling off the track, it's just a matter of racing smart and showing courtesy to those on the lead lap.

*There's a rumor that DEI and Chip Ganassi Racing are reportedly in talks to merge or form some sort of alliance. Given that both DEI and Ganassi have been rumored to be merging with just about every organization in the garage area it's hard to take these rumors very seriously. I also question just how they would make a merger work considering both organizations are with separate manufacturers. There would also be questions of what the new company would be named and who would control it - I have a hard time believing that either Teresa Earnhardt or Chip Ganassi would be willing to let the name of their respective organizations disappears, particularly Ganassi since he has open wheel teams under the same umbrella. I would guess there would be many other issues that would complicate a merger. It seems to me that an alliance of some sort as opposed to an all-out merger is much more realistic, though there's still the issue of being with separate manufacturers. In fact, "merger" is the hot buzz word in the garage area but I think a close technical alliance is more likely for a lot of the organizations that are looking for help for next season.

Posted by silverdsl at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

SPEED Celebrates Halloween... in Costume!

On Friday during the pre-race for the Truck race SPEED had a little fun since it was Halloween. They had their entire broadcast team of Michael Waltrip, Rick Allen, Phil Parsons, Adam Alexander, Ray Dunlap and Krista Voda dress in costume as characters from the Wizard of Oz. It was clear that a lot of time and effort was put into the whole thing. Since I had to work I missed seeing it on TV but based on the photos Michael was a terrific lion! He even had full face make-up as did the others. Apparently they were out on pit road and conducted interviews in costume which had to have been pretty hysterical to see not only for viewers at home, but anyone who was there in person. Fans loved every minute of it! I think it was a terrific idea that SPEED had to do something for Halloween and I applaud their creativity! There's some great photos on Speed's website including some that shows them getting their face make up put on.

What astonished me is that yesterday on "The Morning Drive" on Sirius, David Poole said how awful it was that SPEED had their broadcasters dress up in costume, I guess because he thought it was ridiculous and unprofessional. He particularly didn't like that some of the men like Ray Dunlap were dressed like women. Poole has complained in the past about how much he can't stand Rutledge and some of his stunts so maybe this is just an extension of some of the long-standing issues he has with Speed and their Nascar coverage but I think Poole was completely off-base in his criticism. Just exactly what's so wrong with having some fun? There's so much about racing that is serious and even more so now with worries about the economy, sponsorship woes and teams possibly folding at the end of the season. I'd like to see more people in the garage area loosen up a little, have some fun and show some personality!

There are definitely times to be serious such as during the actual race broadcast which is exactly what the SPEED team did since they took off their costumes when the pre-race show was over. In Poole's role as a reporter for The Charlotte Observer and thatsracin.com where he usually covers hard news he needs to be more serious and mindful of being professional. But on SPEED it's a different story. People are tuning in to be informed but also to be entertained. Ticket sales are down and fan dissatisfaction with the sport seems to be at an all-time high. I think doing unexpected, fun things to engage the fans is a good thing. It makes them laugh and more importantly it keeps them watching.

SPEED does an outstanding job with their coverage of the Truck Series - their race broadcasts are far superior to those that ESPN/ABC and FOX do for the Nationwide and Cup races and SPEED is likely working with a much smaller budget, as well as less resources. Michael, Rick and Phil do an outstanding job in the booth - I think they've developed into an outstanding team and I hope they continue to work races together for years to come. I like that SPEED is willing to think out-of-the-box and take advantage of opportunities to do something different like they did with having everyone dress up for Halloween.

It occurs to me that other than the SPEED broadcast team, I haven't seen any other photos of anyone else from the garage area dressed up in costume or otherwise acknowledging that it was Halloween. Surely there were some Halloween parties and people who got dressed up - or did everything think like Poole that it was unprofessional or that it was beneath them? I hope that's not the case. In some ways it's a catch-22 because fans like the fun side of the sport but they also get offended and upset easily. This fan though would rather that there was less concern about image and doing/saying the exact "right" thing all the time. I guess that's one reason I like Michael so much - he definitely knows how to have fun and keep people entertained!

Posted by silverdsl at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2008

Not Thinking Much of David Gilliland Right Now and Other Texas Thoughts

David Gilliland just put Juan Pablo Montoya into the wall and got parked by Nascar as he should have been. While JPM had stones enough to admit that he bumped Gilliland prior to that to send a message that he didn't like the way Gilliland was racing him, Gilliland claimed in his interview that he was trying to let JPM go and just "misjudged." Yeah, he misjudged all right - misjudged if it was a wise idea or not to allow himself to lose control of his emotions to the point where he put another driver into the wall. There is no excuse for punting a driver at this kind of track at these speeds. As much as I don't like it retaliation is a part of the sport but Nascar shouldn't have any tolerance for when it goes that far. No matter what the other driver might have done, drivers can't be wrecking each other like that. It probably won't happen since they parked him but I'd like to see Nascar hand out some additional penalties to Gilliland, even if it's something relatively meaningless like a fine or putting him on probation for the last two races.

What was interesting was that I was in a chat at the time this incident took place and someone was on Jeff Burton's directv Hotpass channel - apparently Burton was livid when he saw what Gilliland did and thought he should have been parked immediately. It would be interesting to find out what some other drivers thought - while there's no doubt that they all understand retaliation and how angry one can get behind the wheel, particularly when it comes to JPM who more than a few have been annoyed by on the track, there also seems to be some unwritten rules as to how and when you send a message to another driver.

As much as I don't like what Gilliland did I don't think he should be banned from Nascar as I've seen at least one person say they think should happen. The reality is that countless other drivers have acted out, lost control of their emotions or otherwise done stupid things. Some think Nascar should sit Gilliland for the rest of the season but if they didn't sit Michael Waltrip for blatantly retaliating against Casey Mears at Richmond earlier in the season, then I don't think they're going to sit Gilliland. They probably won't even penalize him further but I'm sure they'll make it clear to him that they don't want to see anything like that again no matter what another driver does to him.

Maybe though the worst penalty for Gilliland will be the one he receives in the court of public opinion. He's currently getting ripped on virtually every fan forum and I would guess the same will be true on XM and Sirius tomorrow, and possibly in the media. That's not good for a driver who is currently in need of sponsorship for his Cup car - although it's been reported that Gilliland has a contract with Yates Racing that goes through next season Yates only has one of their three cars fully sponsored and I wouldn't be surprised if they downsized by one car due to a lack of sponsorship. So it's probably a good idea for Gilliland to not be getting himself into any trouble on the track and attracting negative attention to himself and his team.

Otherwise, Michael and his team struggled to get the handling on the #55 right and he ended up finishing 27th, three laps down. That had to be a disappointment to him since he had qualified so well and the car had been so good last week, so I think the expectations were that he would be able to race up front again. Still, I can't be too upset since it appeared the car had decent speed - after he had been lapped and they had worked on the car they were among the fastest on the track and there have been times when the car has started out slow and stayed slow. In addition, as Michael said over the radio at the end of the race his team did a good job in the pits. I continue to be happy about all the progress Michael and his team have made - as Dale Jarrett pointed out during the broadcast, MWR is still a new organization and they are still growing. There is still work to be done but the pieces are starting to fall into place for them.

The result was much better for the other MWR teams. David Reutimann was among the fastest cars on the track as he had been all weekend and spent most of the race in the top ten, including quite a few laps in 2nd. Although he lost some spots at the end of the race he still finished 10th and it was awesome to see David race so well! If David and his team carry the momentum they've got now into next season he's going to be racing up front and contending for wins on a regular basis! Marcos Ambrose finished 21st, one of the better finishes for that team this season, and that was in spite of receiving some damage in an incident in which he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the points I saw is correct the #47/#00 team is just 44 points out of 35th on owner's points which means that strong finishes in the last two races could put that team back in the top 35 which would be good for Marcos for next season.

Overall, I didn't think this race was very exciting. Maybe the TV broadcast just didn't do a very good job of showing all the action on the track but it didn't seem like a very interesting race. I was happy that MWR continues to get some positive attention - they talked about how well David was racing and showed Michael a few times including a pit stop even though he wasn't racing up from. Usually drivers who aren't Chase drivers or are racing up front are mostly ignored unless they're involved in an incident so I was actually a little surprised by the coverage he got today. Don't get me wrong, I was happy to see it but I found myself wondering if ESPN was trying to make good with NAPA and Michael for playing Clint Bowyer's negative comment about Michael earlier in the season.

Carl Edwards won the race with a gamble on fuel mileage and closed the gap on Jimmie Johnson for the Championship. I still think that Jimmie and the #48 team are going to pull it out but I guess it creates some drama for the last two races.

Posted by silverdsl at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)