On Any Given Sunday....

It is nice to see that someone than the little guy can still win. I felt bad for David Ragan when he drove for RFR it just wasn't a good fit for either Ragan or RFR. It is very heartening to see that he has found a home that works for him. Ditto David Gilland.

Congratulations to the Davids and the whole Front Row Motorsports organizations on hopefully what will be only the FIRST of MANY wins to come!!!   Thank you also for giving hope to all of those other small teams in NASCAR and everywhere who work with less trying to make more possible. Thank You!!

This Season So Far....

I am back. I took some time to finish college and am now an official college grad! Yea ME!!

Back to NASCAR.....

It most certainly has been a very, very, very INTERESTING season so far.

JGR and Penske  hit with MAJOR penalties.  I believe that the appeals board will up hold the penalties as they are against the #2 and #22, Penske's argument that those parts had been approved on the Gen. 5 car doesn't mean that they were necessarily grandfathered in for use in the Gen. 6 car.  I think that the appeal is really a stall tactic so the Penske organization can put a plan in place to keep the two teams functioning while the affected parties serve out their suspensions.  I could be wrong, we will see when the appeal gets heard tomorrow on the first.

I do feel bad for Matt Kenseth.  What has been a stellar start for him and the #20 team has taken a nightmarish turn.  I mean I thought it was weird that not only did a guy who is known for coming from the back  to win, get a pole, he  won from the pole!!  I didn't and still do not think that the #20 team cheated to win. It does though make one wonder what it was really like for Kenseth with Rousch. I digress though. The penalties against the are extremely harsh, I get the message that NASCAR is trying to get across, DON'T MESS  with the engines.  I get that this is NASCARs show and they make the rules. I think though the penalty is not equal to the penalty given to the Carl Long team.  Carl, I think that the penalties assessed against JGR are much harsher.  I think that those should be reduced, but who knows. The appeal for JGR  is set for May 8.

As for the rest of the season,  it's certainly been filled with action packed races, vengeance being sworn, mostly by Tony Stewart. I don't think the Bush brothers are his favorite people. And Denny tell us, what do you really think of Joey Logano? 

NASCAR Fans actually liked the Fontana race, I thought that Hell had frozen over.

With all that has happened so far and the ramifications of of the penalties that and all of that vengeance being  sworn this is most certainly a NASCAR  season worth watching this year.

Poor ESPN

They must be facing severe budgetary concerns right now. How else could anyone explain their continuing lack of camera angles and shots of anything other than two cars at the front of the pack or the in car camera shots ? Poor, poor ESPN...the cost of the blimp/heliocopter must of really, really gone up  since I can count the number of arial shots during this Atlanta race on a single hand.  And someone should really take up some donations to pay for more camera people because the lack of views from pit road were sad. Maybe they should get interns to volunteer to help out with that, you know, because they can't afford the regular personel that would do that job.  And someone at ESPN should see about getting some classes on how to properly produce a NASCAR broadcast, maybe at a community college, again to keep costs down.  That way they would be able to properly do "through the fields" and catch action when it happens on track, not talk about it as an after thought. Maybe they could snitch a little money from the football and baseball budgets, maybe like NBC, they could ask someone(pick anyone from sports center, or any of the NFL shows) to take a small cut in their pay to help pay for improving the production values of the NASCAR broadcasts? Maybe they should put out collection buckets at tracks or hold a bake sale to raise money to help out.

Maybe they could ask Mike Helton or Brian France for some help!

Take that Rep McCollum!!

                                                                  

                                                 

 I guess the National Guard doesn't scare as easily as the Army did......
  National Guard Extends It's Sponsorship of the 88

Silence is Golden...

I wish that people would stop talking about AJ Allmendinger.  Let the man do what he has to do to get back to a healthier place in his life. Going on about what he took, how much he took and for how long doesn't do much except throw more gasoline on a situation that doesn't really need it. No one wins, well maybe, the people who write about it, but that's about it. Isn't there something more interesting to write about, how about the oil on the track at Watkins Glenn?  How about the Chase? Jr, for $50?

Of course this story was written by someone at ESPN.  ESPN sometimes is kinda like the National Enquirer of sporting news. They always seem to need some kind of tabloid like sensationalism  in their news cycle. Like the sporting world isn't exciting enough with out some sort of SCANDAL. Today it's AJ did he lie or didn't he lie?

I don't know if AJ took Adderall  once, twice or multiple times before the drug test. In the end it should only matter to AJ, his friends, family,and employers(including NASCAR).  I don't see any positive benefit from this speculation. It's none of my business. As a fan I can only hope that AJ is getting the help he needs and gets better.  As a fan he does not owe me an explanation or confession. ESPN seems to think otherwise, probably though, just to provoke a response from AJ or a representative.  I hope AJ is too busy to respond.

AJ you don't owe the media any explanation. I hope you are just focused on wellness. Let this all die an fade away. 

ESPN

So today was the first Cup race of ESPN's  part of the season. I can say that I liked it better than TNT's coverage but ESPN just continues to be ESPN.  They never show much of the rest of the field and always seem to have a pre-determined script of how they will present the race. Today it was the Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards show.  I felt bad for Carl during the race broadcast. ESPN kept showing that commercial about what Carl "fears less than losing" alot. Carl of course was having a really bad day, it's a good thing that drivers can't watch the broadcast, I would have been more than a little annoyed, if I had been him. 

The whole broadcast was really boring and it was very hard for me to keep it on the channel for the entire broadcast.  Like I said in the beginning  ESPN doesn't show much of the race so if the battle wasn't up front you didn't see it.  I also think Tony Stewart was a total waste of time as an in race reporter, you hardly ever heard from him, they might as well have picked Scott Speed or Mike Bliss as the in race reporter. I really don't get why ESPN with all of it's money can't present a better product. Sometimes I think it's arrogance on their part. They figure that the production style they use for their other sports is good enough for NASCAR.  The only improvement they have made is to have some sort of post race wrap up on Sports Center, that was after major complaining about how quickly ESPN cut out after the race is over.  The post race is o.k., I still jump over to Speed afterwards, Victory Lane is much more interesting.

I miss Fox.

Dear AJ.....

Nobody is perfect, certainly not I....