“back to basics” program? Ignore the man behind the curtain?
On the pre-race show, Jeff Hambone was talking about debris because you knew this was going to be one of the excuses used for the poor performance of the Uni-Car. One thing Jeff said really made me wonder though. “It’s like blocking the front nose off”. Front nose? You mean the Uni-Car has a back nose? Wow, will wonders never cease.
Old Jabber Jaws was also starting in with the excuses before the Uni-Cars were even rolling off pit road by saying the cars will have debris in the grills because of the winds that were blowing. Maybe if the Booth Buffoons hadn’t talked so much there wouldn’t have been so much wind.
Apparently, when they added the banking to the track, the included an unintended hazard. Turn 4. For some reason that turn was very slick and lead to 26 cars being wrecked through practice, qualifying, and the Busch Series race.
Aside from the gasping at some odd places, Carol Johnson did a decent job on the National Anthem. They had a great shot of Kenny Schrader with his hand over his heart. Too bad the rest of the drivers and crews they showed don’t take Kenny’s lead in respecting the flag. Great flyover by the Thunderbirds.
Once the green flag dropped, we didn’t have long to wait for the first bit of action. On Lap 2, The Beak tagged the wall with the right rear and damaged his car. Two laps later, he was black flagged. Even blowing a tire on the way back to pit road didn’t bring out a caution. Normally, that amount of damage should’ve brought out a caution. But as the Chosen Ones were running good at this point, there was no need for it.
When they got going again, the cars were running single file down the straights and fanning out through the turns. Depending on how the cars were handling determined which groove they took through the turns. But we wouldn’t be under green for very long. Turn 4 and it’s slick condition bit Jamie McMurray. Jamie shot down into the grass, went airborne during part of his ride, and managed a great save. There was no apparent damage to the car at this point. And since this happened in Turn 4, you could see Rows 1-10 were empty over between Turns 3 & 4 and there were a lot of empty seats higher up in Grandstand Section 4. That must’ve been done by the magician they had on during the pre-race show. He made the fans disappear. What a great trick. Almost as good as them shopping under the grandstands at Fontana.
Kyle Busch had been leading the race since the drop of the green flag and had Cousin Carl hot on his heels. On Lap 21, Cousin Carl got by him to make him the second leader of the race. As Kasey Kahne was under the weather, this was one of the “storylines” the Booth Buffoons kept mentioning. Jason Keller was standing by to take over for Kasey just in case Kasey started feeling worse. This was one time when DW was right about something. How getting in the car makes a driver forget that he‘s sick.
On Lap 49, we had the start of the first round of green flag pit stops. On Lap 50, Sam Hornish Jr. smacked the wall pretty hard doing some pretty good damage to the steering and alignment and he went behind the wall. But no caution was thrown. I guess the Chosen Ones were running too good for one of those. During the course of the pit stops, most drivers were complaining about being loose, while Newman was complaining about being tight. Greg Biffle got nailed for entering the pits too fast and Kurt Busch got nailed for exiting the pits too fast. Cousin Carl got shuffled back by a tire problem.
About this time Larry Mac gave a “Gospel According to the Track PR people” by stating that there were 140,000 fans there. I checked ESPN to see what they showed as the seating capacity for the track. They say it holds 137,000 in the grandstands. Take out 10,000 for the temporary grandstands they didn’t put up this weekend. Then subtract out all the empty seats over in Grandstand Section 4 and you might be lucky if there were 125,000 in the grandstands. And I have my doubts that there were 15,000 fans in the infield. Especially at the prices they were charging for infield admission and the Freon Garage.
Of course, during the normal course of green flag stops, various people got the lead during the shuffling around. You could hear DW getting ready to do his normal cheerleading when Dale Jr. got the lead. DW sounded like he had achieved the ultimate in sexual ecstasy when he said Jr. got the lead. But it rapidly diminished when Jr. had to pit.
Shortly after the green flag pit stops were made, we got to see a part of Faux King Brian’s “back to basics” program with the appearance of Ms. Terry DeBris in Turn #2 for the second caution of the day. Since this was Vegas, you have to wonder if she was dressed up as a showgirl. But as they didn’t bother showing her, we’ll never know for sure. They had to extend the caution when either a hose or a piece of the exhaust system fell off of McMurray’s car. Considering the wild ride he had in the infield, who knows what it was.
They restarted on Lap 75 and by Lap 81, Kyle Busch was back in the lead again. 18 laps later, The Beak bounced his car off the wall yet again according to the Network Nitwits. Since they didn’t bother showing it, you had to wonder if he did it by himself or if he was pinched into the wall by another car. But as with his earlier incident, no caution was brought out. Of course, the Chosen Ones were all having a somewhat decent run, so no need for an unnecessary caution even though Fox would‘ve liked to squeeze in some more commercials.
On Lap 109, Tony Stewart blew a right front tire and slammed into the wall hard. Tony had done something similar the day before in the Busch race and hurt his ankle. Tony had to be assisted from the car and into a track vehicle for the ride to the infield care center. After he was released, he was interviewed and Tony said he hit so hard, his legs were tingling from the hard impact. This leads me to ask, why aren’t the straight-away walls done up with the SAFER barrier material to protect the drivers? We’d get our answer later on.
Things got rolling again and were going pretty smoothly from the 1-4 car coverage that was being shown until Lap 144 when Robby Gordon had a right front tire blow out and he hit the wall. This seems to be a continuance of what happened in the Busch race with tires blowing out on a regular basis.
Caution #5 came out when Newman squeezed Carpentier into the all. Up until that point, Carpentier had been running a decent race, keeping himself out of trouble, and gaining experience. On the restart after that, Kenseth and Biffle made a great move splitting around Elliott Sadler. However, the excitement of that pass didn’t last for long as Biffle became a victim of an aero problem just like in the old template racer. He lost the air off his car and had a very anxious moment or two while he recovered. And who said the Uni-Car was going to eliminate aero problems? HRH.
Jeremy Mayfield, who had been having a decent run, got spun around by Regan Smith. Luckily for Jeremy, he didn’t hit the wall, so he was able to keep going. Of course, no caution for the spin since most of the Chosen Ones were doing OK. While at commercial, Jeremy’s teammate Scott Riggs lost his aero and got sucked around by Bobby Labonte. In the process, Scott’s car hit Reid Sorensen’s car in the side. This brought out Caution #6.
About this time I had decided that they’d worn out that “let’s go racin’ boys” song. It’s nothing more than a shameless plug for Fox and Jabber Jaws.
We got Caution #7, when back by popular demand of the fans in Turn #2, Ms Terry DeBris made yet another appearance while Fox was at yet another commercial. You’ve got to love the timing of it and it definitely shows how well Faux King Brian’s “back to basics” program is really working.
During the pit stops, Cousin Carl’s crew had a tire get away from them. But it wasn’t for what would be a normal reason. It seems a cameraman from NA$CAR Images got in the way of the crew causing them to miss the tire. After reviewing a replay of the pit stop, a NA$CAR official used some common sense and determined that the missed tire was caused by the cameraman and not by actions of the crew. The Booth Buffoons would stress then and several more times during the rest of the race that it was not a Fox cameraman who caused the problem. Of course, they wouldn’t say it was a NA$CAR cameraman either. That came out on Wind Tunnel later on.
They got restarted with 47 to go and carried on with one of the stories that HRH said would be covered this season. Hendrick Motorsports. Jimmie Johnson was stuck back in 33rd place with a poor handling car. Bobby Labonte and Ken Schrader, both of whom have been back in that position before at many a track and over many a year and rarely got a mention, were running in the Top 15 and had been in and out of the Top10 during the race and are lucky to have been mentioned as many times as they were. I think that’s more mentions for them in one race than they got all of last year. Fox must be slipping up. On Lap 232, DJ spun, barely missing David Gilliland, and put the rear end of his car into the wall and brought Caution #9.
We got restarted on Lap 236 with Matt Kenseth in the lead. On the next lap, Cousin Carl got by Kenseth and started pulling away. One thing that had happened before at Fontana and was repeating itself at Vegas was whoever had the lead on the restart usually could pull away from the pack. Clean air is just as important with the Uni-Car was it was with the template racer.
Things were going pretty good for a while. We heard the usual comments about there being great side by side racing, but they weren’t showing much of it because it didn’t really involve the Chosen Ones. With 15 to go, Dale Jr. got around Kenseth for 2nd place and DW went into full blown cheerleader mode.
4 laps later, they tied the previous track record for cautions when Kurt Busch had a right front tire blow out and he hit the wall. Are we seeing a pattern here folks? Because the clean-up took them down to under 10 laps, it meant a single file restart which the Booth Buffoons went into great detail to explain.
On Lap 263, a new record for cautions at Vegas was set when Jeff Gordon got into Matt Kenseth. Kenseth spun but recovered and lost a lot of positions. Jeff Gordon on the other hand spun and hit the inside retaining wall. His car’s front end was pretty much gone. Luckily Jeff walked away from it. The race was red flagged at this point to clean up the remnants of Jeff’s car and to give the co-owner of Motormouth Motorsports a chance to raise a legitimate question about why the straights and inside retaining walls weren’t covered with the SAFER wall material. Jeff Hambone said the one magic word why it hadn’t been done. Money. Once again, money takes precedence over driver safety.
Here it is, the third race of the season and out of the Hollyweird Motel comes a graphic and comments about “if the race ended now”. If they keep this up it’s going to be a very long season. Between that, the damned song, the Hollyweird Motel, and the Gophercam. Dale Jr. had some problems with the restart prior to the wreck by Gordon and this upset Jabber Jaws. He was sure Jr. had spun his tires and they had to replay it a couple of times and you could hear the engine was going full tilt but the car wasn’t moving. Sure enough, he had spun the tires. Jabber Jaws almost sounded sad when they found out what had caused the problem.
When they parked for the red flag, several cars had parked down on the apron because the fuel pick-up wasn’t giving the cars the fuel they needed. They were getting close to running on fumes. Once they got going again on Lap 2, Cousin Carl managed to slip away again and got the win. Of course, Fox once again took a page out of ESPN’s playbook with not really showing the cars finishing and had to do it on a replay.
This makes the 5th win for Roush Racing at Vegas. That’s 50% of the races there. During a post race interview, Dale Jr. said he spun the tires and complained about the hard tires that Badyear had brought. That complaint had been made by drivers in both the Busch and Cup garages. He felt that they needed a softer tire compound for more grip. I have to agree with him on that. A little more grip might have prevented one or two of the cars getting into the walls and each other. It might have also helped some with Turn 4. But it won’t solve the aero problem that the Uni-Car has.
The trophy at Vegas is a belt instead of the usual trophies we’re all familiar with. It looks a lot like a championship belt like the WWE uses. Maybe Tony was right after all in his comparison last year.
On Wind Tunnel, a retired tire employee said that NA$CAR needs to strengthen the tire walls on the right side and make the “caps” on the tire thicker since the load on the right side is much heavier. During the race, Jabber Jaws had said that the car turns off the right rear tire rather than with the right front tire which makes you wonder why the right fronts were blowing out and not the right rears. Fox was very careful not to show the worn tires during the race.
Robby has his appeal hearing before the
NA$CAR Kangaroo Court this week and it’ll be
interesting to see Robby run both the Indy 500
and the World 600 on Memorial Day weekend.
They’re heading off to Hotlanta next weekend
and you have to hope and pray that they don’t
have problems with the tires at the speeds they
usually drive at there. It will also be a true test of
the Truck Series as to whether or not the
restrictor plate is going to hurt their performance
for the rest of the season.
There are three retired Army officers on a march
to Washington DC to help remind folks that our
troops still need support from the folks back home. The Gathering of Eagles North Carolina Chapter is helping to support them in their march. The Patriot Guard Riders are also lending a hand in the effort of these former warriors. You can keep up with their progress on their blog at www.gatheringofeaglesnc.org/rtw.html
Motherhood, Apple Pie, and John Wayne
Mad Mikie
Curmudgeon at Large
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