by what appeared to be bodyguards. Could he be having some difficulties with the Emperor of All Things NA$CAR? Or maybe the ghost of a certain driver who built Charlotte Motor Speedway (who's name I won't mention but his initials are Curtis Turner) is haunting him and his revisionism on the origins of the track are catching up to him in his nightmares?
You can bet James Finch is doing some major celebrating after getting both a Cup and Cup Lite win this season. I can’t blame him either. No matter what happens Mike Bliss’ win is still a win even if it was rain shortened.
You make the call. Dark clouds and lots of rain hit the speedway during a TV interview with Ryan Newman. It rained for at least 45 minutes in one form or another. It takes two hours for the track to dry with the help of the jet dryers. The Laidback crew stayed in camp waiting for the next wave of rain to come through and stayed dry while the folks at the track or in route to the track got soaked. The race was postponed till the next day. Did the Laidback crew make the right call?
You make the call, Part 2. Kasey Kahne is chasing down Shrub as the much rain delayed race is approaching the half-way point. Kahne’s about to pass Shrub when suddenly a caution comes out for rain in Turn #2. Race Mama, Laidback, my better half, myself, and several hundred other fans are all in Turn #2 looking at each other because there’s no rain and none showed up for another 15 minutes. Was NA$CAR trying to give the win to Shrub? You make the call.
You make the call, Part 3. After finishing 3rd in the same car he ran in California which passed inspection there, the rear end for Robby Gordon’s car was confiscated by NA$CAR at Charlotte and taken to the super secret R&D lab for further analysis. First Jeremy Mayfield, then Carl Long, and now Robby Gordon (who is the only single car team in the Top 35). Is NA$CAR trying to force out all the single car teams so that there’s only 11 Super Teams? You make the call.
One of the great things about this weekend, besides the great military air displays, was the appearances of racing greats Bobby and Donnie Allison and Marvin Panch. Marvin was having a great time with the fans while he signed autographs. Needless to say, it was great seeing him again as the last time I saw him was in 1964. I passed on a message from one of Marvin’s former competitors which brought a smile to his face. Marvin, like the rest of the drivers from his era, is a class act.
The way things are looking right now with all the rain that’s hit Florida, the Firecracker 400 may have to either be postponed or run at another track. It seems that the tunnels going into the infield are flooded, the water is half-way up the retaining walls, and bass, catfish, and sewer trout from Lake Lloyd are doing the Australian Crawl down the back straight. Apparently Faux King Brian’s Royal Barge had to be moved from the Royal Castle to the Ivory Towers so he could get back and forth to the Royal Vault and the Chart House. My suggestion would be to run the Firecracker on the 4th at either Darlington or The Rock. I’m sure neither track would mind.
The get together at Benny Parsons Rendezvous Ridge was a big hit with a lot of Cup drivers turning out for it. Something to remember when Rendezvous Ridge has some of their get together.
Bad Jimmy. Baaaad Jimmy.
Congrats to Helio Castroneves for winning the Indy 500 and to The King for his first venture into Indy cars and John Andretti for finishing the Indy 500. John finished much higher than Mario’s grandson did. I, along with a lot of other fans, think that the IRL and NA$CAR need to work something out for next year so that the drivers who want to do the double can do it. Of course, with the rain delay at Charlotte, it could’ve been done. But you can’t always depend on Mother Nature. So Tony G and Faux King Brian sit down and discuss this because it makes good print and good sense for both racing series.
Something hit me while I’m sitting here in the tent waiting for the rain to stop. The IRL and NA$CAR are a lot alike. Both series run cars which have identical bodies. Both series have a lot of mandated parts. In the case of the IRL, they’re actually closer to being like IROC than NA$CAR is because all the cars are the same, including the engines. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be too long before NA$CAR runs the same engine in all 3 series.
If you remember the original timeline on the Constipated Old Tushy, 2010 is supposed to be the year when the engines are supposed to be downsized to the 5 liter (300 cubic inch approximately). However, nothing else has been said about this. And with the recent talk of NA$CAR making some changes to the Crusty Old Toilet, you have to wonder just what all they’re going to change. Since we know somebody in the Ivory Towers is capable of reading and has been reading my ramblings, hopefully they will take some of the suggestions that have been put forth by some of our readers who are in the business or have been around the block a time or two to heart when it comes to making some improvements to the Box on Wheels/Wing on Wheels (BOW WOW).
You also have to wonder just what all is going to be discussed at this meeting with the team owners and drivers at the NA$CAR (lack of) Testicle Institute. Supposedly drivers and owners are going to be able to address issues and make suggestions to improve things. Hopefully, some of these drivers and owners will go “armed for bear” and address a lot of the issues that affect and/or impact us fans or are of concern to us as far as the racing series goes. Somehow, I get the feeling this is going to be a one sided discussion. There will be NA$CAR’s side and the side they won’t listen to. As usual. Because Faux King Brian knows what’s best for the sport.
With Faux King Brian and NA$CAR’s dislike for all thing redneck, I’d like to see this one become a team sponsor:
http://www.redneckbank.com/
It’s a real, live, honest-to-goodness bank. What a quandary for His Highness. “Money good, redneck bad“says His Highness sounding like a falsetto version of Peter Boyle as Young Frankenstein's monster.
Before NA$CAR starts their own TV channel, they better check with some of the major league sports and see how successful their networks are. He might also want to check with Professional Rasslin’ to see how their pay-per-views fair. After all, racer-tainment is a lot closer to pro wrestling than it is to a major league sport with all the manipulations going on behind the scenes. I seem to recall the NFL, who Faux King Brian keeps trying to force NA$CAR to emulate, had some major problems with their network, low ratings, and lack of viewership/subscriptions. Of course, you know that since I’m offering some good advice, he’ll jump head first into the “network pool” without bothering to see if the fans would support it. With the economy being what it is and the current open air waves broadcasts dropping like a rock, fans won’t subscribe to it, but maybe Mafia Mike, the rest of the henchmen, and the Focks Booth Bozos would. Of course, if it meant no Focks Booth Bozos, especially no Jabber Jaws….
In keeping with their tradition of squashing the little guys, NA$CAR came down hard and heavy on Carl Long for a supposedly illegal engine. According to info from Carl’s website message board:
Yes!! This has absolutely been the worse day for us as well!! We purchased a motor at the beginning of the season. After the motor blew in practice for the showdown, NASCAR took it and tore it down. There are NO illegal parts in our engine but the combination of the parts do not meet NASCAR’s specs. We would like to go in detail about everything that has happened over the past few days but we are planning to appeal and the less that is said the better off we will be. We need your support now more than ever!!
Strange how NA$CAR suddenly decided to check Long’s engine. Normally, they tear down the race winner’s engine. But then, we never hear about any illegal parts in them, despite in at least one instance illegal parts were found in an engine being driven by a big name driver several years ago. Carl stands to lose his house and construction business just to pay the fine. As the engine was purchased from a legitimate engine builder and all the parts were NA$CAR approved, what’s the problem? Oh wait. I forgot. NA$CAR was then wasn’t going to check on why the independents and “start and parks” weren’t running the full race. I guess this is NA$CAR’s way of recouping some of the money they’ve had to pay the “start and parks” and independents to show up in order to have a full field. What doesn’t make sense is that if Carl used all the NA$CAR approved parts for that size engine, how did he managed to exceed the 358 cubic inches mandated by NA$CAR? The parts alone should’ve prevented that.
However, I got an update from Richard, one of our readers. The engine was produced by Ernie Elliott, famed engine builder and brother of Awesome Bill. According to Ernie, “it just slipped through”. With as much experience as Ernie has, how does it just slip through? Hopefully Long can make Ernie pay the fines plus refund him some money on the engines. It was the first blown engine that NA$CAR looked at, not the second one. And just how did NA$CAR know to look at the first engine and not the second or both? Something stinks here and it’s not my breath.
Another update is that Long will appeal the penalty. Even if he wins, he’ll probably get a fine where he’s not guilty but has to pay a $200,000 fine none the less, thus eliminating him from NA$CAR and ruining whatever life he has.
And speaking of little guys being messed with, it seems that Jeremy Mayfield has “lawyered up” and hired the guy who handled Elliott Sadler’s deal earlier this year. The lawyer has gotten a written copy of the test results. And in case you wonder why the drug that was found hasn’t been released by NA$CAR, it’s because of the HIPPA Act, which protects a patient’s medical records. The only person who can release the information is the patient themselves. I go through this every time I have any type of medical testing done so that my family physician as well as the doctor who ordered it can review the results. One other interesting thing with this whole testing deal is something I found in an article by the ACLU (Yeah, I know, I don’t like them either) which says that there’s a 5% error rate in drug testing, which means 5 of every 100 people tested for drugs will come up positive even if they don’t use drugs. The list of foods, beverages, seasonings, etc that can give a false positive is much longer than I originally thought. Even tonic, for a gin and tonic can give a false positive. Check out what’s on this list as to what can give a false positive:wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_testing
This is sort of scary. Just having diabetes or a liver problem could give a false positive. Luckily I do not have to worry about drug testing but still, when you look at this list and look in your medicine cabinet, you have to wonder if Mayfield is telling the truth and the testing lab screwed up. On one of the sites which tell you how to beat drug test has a list of what these normal things will show up as in a false positive indication. Quinine water shows up as an opiate. OTC cold medications show up as meth. I took a look at my own medications
and I’d show up false positive for just about
everything under the sun. In this he said, they
said battle between Mayfield, NA$CAR, AND Dr.
Black, just the surface stuff looks like it’s in
Mayfield’s favor. Plus he seems to be winning
the PR battle. But winning a battle doesn’t mean
you’ve won the war.
It seems that Dr. Black is nothing new when it
comes to controversy. His company was the one
who tests the WWE wrestlers. Rather fitting
since that’s the direction NA$CAR is going with
its brand of racer-tainment. Any folks remember
WWE wrestler Chris Benoit going nuts from
“roid rage” and killing himself and his family? He
had been tested by Dr. Black’s company. Here’s an article that goes into things a little bit further and his wife who is a state senator: Click Here
So you have to wonder if this guy and his company are really that “on the ball”.
To all my fallen comrades-in-arms, we remembered you this day for making the ultimate sacrifice to help keep the rest of us free.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, and John Wayne
Mad Mikie, Curmudgeon at Large
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