Full Throttle

You are browsing the archives of 2005 August.

I’ve been tinkering again.
Under pages in the sidebar your will find two new links. One, “Latest Poll,” is a weekly question that you can cast your vote on. This week is related to the NASCAR points system. The poll registers your IP and sets a cookie so you ballot stuffers out there will be disappointed. [...]

The verdict is in, but NASCAR’s sentence is light.
Busch Series driver Reed Sorenson’s crew chief was suspended for six races Tuesday for soaking tires at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Brian Pattie was fined $35,000, suspended until Oct. 26 and placed on probation until the end of the year. Crew member Brandon Stafford also was suspended for six [...]

Erin Crocker confirmed Tuesday she will make her Busch Series debut at Richmond International Raceway in the FUNAI 250 on Sept. 9. Evernham Motorsports is expected to announce a full-time Busch sponsor for Crocker in 2006.
“[Ray Evernham's] given me an awesome opportunity with good equipment and good people around me,” she said. “Now I feel [...]

Well now, as predicted, this weeks NASCAR Cesspool is overflowing with odoriferous goodness. It just had to be. When you combine a Saturday night with a legendary half mile oval, 43 cars and a “Race to the Chase,” the result was all too predicable.
Lets start with the most egregious event of the weekend. Friday night’s [...]

OSCHERSLEBEN, Germany - Alex Zanardi won his first race Sunday since losing both legs in an accident in Germany in 2001. Zanardi captured the seventh race of the world touring cars championships in his BMW 320i.
The former Formula One driver and two-time CART champion lost both legs in a collision during a CART race on [...]

Here are a few stories that are making the rounds of NASCAR’s garages and boardrooms.
Petty offers hint at retirement.
“One day I’m going to wake up and decide to get on my motorcycle and go riding around the country. It’s getting close. Maybe next year. Who knows?”
Petty, 45, has not won since the summer of 1995, [...]

Montreal - Oriol Servia of Spain passed Timo Glock of Germany on the next-to-last lap to win the Montreal Molson Indy on Sunday at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve. Race control ordered Glock to let the Spaniard pass after the German took a short cut across the grass two laps earlier to preserve his lead.
Servia, driving for the [...]

SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — Tony Kanaan took advantage of teammate Dan Wheldon’s misfortune to move into the lead, then ran away from the rest of the field Sunday to win the Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix at Infineon Raceway.
Kanaan beat Buddy Rice by 1.182 seconds — about eight car-lengths — for his second IRL IndyCar [...]

Because I connected these dots two weeks ago.
Scott Riggs was hired Saturday to drive a third car for Evernham Motorsports, the highest-profile job of his racing career.
Riggs is in his second season of Nextel Cup racing, and his contract is up at the end of the year with MBV Motorsports, for which he has six [...]

Bristol Motor Speedway is a place of dreams, both past and present. It can also be the site of NASCAR nightmares, the Food City 500 provided both for those chasing the Chase. Saturday night Matt Kenseth wrote his own script for his by winning from the pole and leading 415 of 500 laps in winning [...]

Lets call this partial qualy results, you can see the entire lineup here. I’ll only cover starting positions of those in the top fifteen in points.
1 Tony Stewart 17
2 Jimmie Johnson 29
3 Greg Biffle 4
4 Rusty Wallace 20
5 Mark Martin 25
6 Jeremy Mayfield 6
7 Kurt Busch 7
8 Ryan Newman 8
9 Carl Edwards 37
10 Jamie McMurray [...]

Roush Racing announced Friday driver Ricky Craven would not return to the organization in 2006. Craven has been driving Roush’s No. 99 Ford in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series this season.
Out with the old.
In with the new: Everyone’s pick to win a CTS seat through the Roush “Gong Show,” David Ragan, now has an opening.
Craftsman [...]

NASCAR history has many pages of its history filed will tales of cheating. Smokey Yunick called it “creative use of the rulebook.” As an owner, Junior Johnson was known for cars that teetered on the legal edge. Richard Petty’s philosophy was “cheat neat.” Darrell Waltrip was nabbed during qualifying for the 1976 Daytona 500 for [...]

The sound of 16 A1 Grand Prix cars in full race livery jostling for position over the start-finish line was the highlight of day two of the series’ latest group test at Paul Ricard, but it was Team USA who once again came out on top of the timesheets.
The day was a huge success for [...]

BRISTOL, Tenn. - Mike Skinner led all but 10 laps and won in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for the first time since 1996 by turning back a late challenge from Todd Bodine on Wednesday night.
Former champion Skinner, who left in 1997 to race in the Nextel Cup Series and returned last year to compete [...]

Is the speculation true, are the much denied rumors more fact than fiction? A German newspaper believes it has the scoop of the current F1 silly season.
Hamburg, Germany

A1 Team USA recorded the fastest lap time at the Paul Ricard High Tech Test Track Wednesday during A1 Grand Prix’s second team test session. Making its debut appearance following its official unveiling in the morning, the USA car emblazoned with the American flag and the slogan “We the People” crept above A1 Team Brazil [...]

I’m all for promotion, as you can tell by my “accolades” section in the sidebar and the recent addition of an occasional Goggle ad.
And I have no problem with NASCAR drivers promoting their sponsors that spend hundreds of million of bucks on race teams and advertising schemes. But do we really need to see NASCAR [...]

Lets walk back into history for a moment.
Ronnie Bucknum had a flurishing sports car racing career, winning Sports Car Club of America titles in 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1964, scoring 44 wins in 48 races. Like a bolt from the blue he was spotted by Honda engineers racing a Porsche 904 at Sebring and he [...]

In fact none of the current F1 million/billionaires would do it. Which probably explains why Eddie decided not to be a part of that exclusive club any longer. Via Update F1.
In one swift stroke this week, Eddie Jordan will no longer be thought of as formula one’s former rock’n’roll team owner - now, he’s [...]