Full Throttle

As if NASCAR’s Chase isn’t confusing enough. The Charlotte Observer’s David Poole is crunching numbers. And perusing the NASCAR rulebook, always a head spinning endeavor, and asks: “Matt Kenseth is fifth in the Nextel Cup standings going into Sunday’s MBNA 400 at Dover International Speedway.” “But should he be?”

He cites page 34 of Rule 17-4-C and Rule 17-3-B. If you want more, don’t ask. Read it yourself I’m attempting to slow a revolving cranium at the moment.

BTW there is also a citation of Rule 17-3, Rule 17-4 and Rule 17-4-C. And this quote from Jim Hunter: “I know we will clean up the language (in the rule book) at the end of this Chase,” Hunter said. “We will learn from any confusion there might be.”

NASCAR learns! Isn’t that an oxymoron?

In case your wondering, Greg Biffle will win today’s MBNA 400. Ryan Newman? Sorry guy your #5 piston takes a sightseeing trip as it exits the block.

MBNA 400, NASCAR, Auto Racing, Sports

Brazil’s Nelson Piquet Jr. won the pole position for today’s inaugural A1 Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, finishing fastest in two of four qualifying sessions.

Piquet Jr., son of three-time Formula One champion Nelson Piquet, was almost half a second ahead of his nearest rival in a format in which times are calculated as a total of drivers’ two best laps.

Pole set, now all Piquet has to do is translate the P1 start to a race win. “I have been racing in Europe for a couple of years representing my country, Brazil but now it is great to be able to do it officially,” he said. “This is not Piquet driving, it is Brazil.”

New Zealand’s Matt Halliday was second fastest of the 25 drivers, who are in identical Lola-Zytek single-seat cars.

France went third fastest with Alex Premat at the wheel, whilst Team USA with Scott Speed had a bad time of qualifying, and will start the race way down in seventeenth place - quite some contrast from topping the timesheets earlier in the weekend.

The qualifying times are an aggregate from the best two flying laps from four runs to determine the starting order for the first, sprint race for the A1GP. Starting positions for second race of the day will be determined by finishing order of the sprint event.

1. Brazil 2min 30.789secs
2. New Zealand 2min 31.117secs
3. France 2min 31.206secs
4. Australia 2min 31.388secs
5. Great Britain 2min 31.714secs
6. Switzerland 2min 31.729secs
7. Mexico 2min 32.307secs
8. Pakistan 2min 32.596secs
9. Malaysia 2min 32.632secs
10. Japan 2min 32.689secs
11. Portugal 2min 32.705secs
12. Ireland 2min 32.811secs
13. Germany 2min 981secs
14. Netherlands 2min 33.075secs
15. South Africa 2min 33.086secs
16. Italy 2min 33.234secs
17. USA 2min 33.317secs
18. Indonesia 2min 33.424secs
19. India 2min 34.126secs
20. Czech Republic 2min 34.786secs
21. Canada 2min 36.656secs
22. Austria 2min 36.878secs
23. Lebanon 2min 37.104secs
24. China 2min 38.750secs
25. Russia 2min 41.303secs

LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Darrell Waltrip Motorsports announced that ARCA RE/MAX Series driver Joey Miller will drive the No. 12 Toyota Tundra in the Las Vegas 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday evening, September 24. Miller, a 20-year-old from Lakeville (Minn.), makes his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut fresh off his fourth ARCA RE/MAX Series win this season with second-place locked up in the points standings.

“It really is a dream come true to be able to make my very first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start with a top team,” said Miller. “I’m excited that Darrell Waltrip Motorsports and Toyota is allowing me to be part of their program. Toyota had a successful first year and they’ve picked up steam during the second half of this season.”

“I’ve been watching Joey Miller in the ARCA Series and he’s done a great job,” said Darrell Waltrip. “If he can come close to what he’s done in ARCA in the Craftsman Truck Series that would definitely be big for us. Right next to Frank Kimmel, Mr. ARCA and six-time champion, Joey’s had the car to beat every week. Hopefully, we’ll give him a truck as good as his car. Let me say this too, Mike Wallace has done a great job at performing up to our expectations and turning things around for us. He’ll be back with us at Atlanta after I run the No. 12 Toyota Tundra at Martinsville.”

Miller’s had a strong season registering four wins (Berlin Raceway, Gateway International Raceway, Nashville Superspeedway and Salem Speedway), 12 top-fives and 17 top-10s in 22 ARCA starts. With no track experience at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Miller will rely on input from David Reutimann and both Darrell Waltrip Motorsports teams.

The second round of NASCAR’s now annual Chase is here and will be contested at the “The Monster” in Dover Delaware.

Ryan Newman continued where he left of in New Hampshire by winning both the Busch and NEXTEL Cup pole positions Friday. It is Rocket Man’s series-leading sixth Cup pole and is 33rd time he will start from the point in his career. Newman will also be shooting for his fourth straight Busch series win.

As defending race champion Newman will be trying to win for the fourth time in his last five starts on the high-banked concrete oval.

If the June event can be used as a precurser expect the top ten Sunday to contain most of the Chase eligible drivers. Greg Biffle dominated the last 150 laps in winning and led 6 other Chase drivers that finished at the top of the leader board.
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Image and story via Autoblog:

Talk about getting them young! Ferrari

A testing session for the NASCAR [avatar:http://cranialcavity.net/files/cup.jpg]NEXTEL Cup[/avatar] stars had barely gotten the green flag Tuesday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway when sheet metal met SAFER, repeatedly.

Series points leader Tony Stewart started the Tuesday crashfest 3 laps into his run and left the track with a headache in addition to bent sheetmetal. He was joined by Greg Biffle and Mark Martin among others. With the exception of Ricky Rudd who in so many words said, “What slippery track,” the racing surface that produced a record 22 cautions during the May race was universally criticized. The predominate theme Tuesday was the levigating procedure done in certain areas may have been the cause.

Wednesday was a brand new day, with the same results.

Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle crashed Wednesday night during a test session at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, the second round of wrecks for the championship contenders.

Stewart, who wrecked three laps into his test on Tuesday, crashed moments after posting his fastest lap of the night. The Nextel Cup points leader blamed the crash on a cut right-front tire.

“I had just run a 28.88,” Stewart said. “I’m thinking ‘This is pretty good,’ and then I get to turn three and I’m thinking ‘This isn’t good.’ ”

Biffle, who is second in the points, crashed one hour into Wednesday’s session. His Roush Racing team then called it a day.

Do I have to paint you a picture?

Never mind… I won’t “paint,” I’ll use my trusty 64 box of Crayolas. Starting last year there were some complaints about a uneven surface at Lowes. Humpy brought in the levigating machines and attempted to smooth out the areas in question. May’s event, the first after the levigating, produced an evening of 22 caution flags. Again the “levigators” (sounds like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie title doesn’t it?) moved in and produced the aforementioned testing crashes this week.

But wait… there’s another chapter to this tale. The U.S. Grand Prix was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in June. That “race” produced an FIAsco that saw only 6 cars out of 20 take the green flag in protest over failing Michelin tyres and a practice crash. Indianapolis Motor Speedway was also levigated prior to that unmitigated disaster and many Nomex covered fingers were pointed at both Michelin and the newly “smoothed” track surface.

It would seem that levigating, truly is a “bad habit hard to break!”

And if your thinking what I’m thinking and thought this weeks crash-a-rama in New Hampshire was “fun.” Just wait til the road ragers get to Humpy’s place on October 15^th!

NASCAR, Auto Racing, Sports

But no thanks! This sounds like a sequel to a Hollywood movie.

Dumb:

The helmet that Robby Gordon threw at Michael Waltrip was pulled off the online auction site eBay on Wednesday after bidding exceeded $10 million. The site ended the auction because it was unable to verify the legitimacy of the bids…

Nothing unusual there, phony bids on eBay are common. And 10 large is just a bit excessive.

And Dumber:

… and because Gordon didn’t have the proper documentation showing that he planned to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity, said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

Gee thanks Robbie, but no thanks. Far be it from me to imply Gordon is attempting to pay off his recent fines and I won’t. I’ll let someone else perform that dirty deed and just chuckle quietly to myself. I do have a word of advice though.

Come back when you get your shit - oops, there’s that word again - together Robbie!

NASCAR, Robby Gordon, Auto Racing

“… because they

It’s been my contention that the recent events in New Hampshire have been a God-send to the suit wearing, brogan shod denizens that reside in Daytona Beach Florida. NASCAR couldn’t have had a better opening event in the Chase for the [avatar:http://cranialcavity.net/files/cup.jpg]NEXTEL Cup[/avatar]. All the major newspapers are playing up the on track incidents and diligently followed up with the penalty phase. The news wires have been jam packed on the subject and the blogs and forums have been En el fuego.

Along those lines I thought I’d post a few of the comments made by those most involved, the drivers and crew chiefs.

Greg Biffle:

“In order to get it to stop, what they have to do is they have to say, ‘If you retaliate on purpose, and we can tell that it was done blatantly to somebody, or spin somebody out on purpose, you will sit out the next week,’ ” Biffle said. “Then you have to answer to your car owner, you have to answer to the sponsor, you have to answer to all these folks why you’re not racing.”

Hey Biffle has been reading my mind, I said the same thing while walking through The Infield.

Chad Knaus:

“What makes you think it’s going to stop, why would it stop,” said Chad Knaus, crew chief for title contender Jimmie Johnson. “It’s been like this forever. Do you guys not remember the [1979] Daytona 500? Bobby Allison and Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough [and their post-race fight]? Remember that? This has always been here. It will not go away. It will not stop.”

Hard to argue with Chad but it can be made damn expensive by sitting an offender down for a week.

Here is the most telling quote of them all. It also goes a ways to confirming my TV ratings bonanza theory.

Mark Martin:

“I don’t like it, but to be honest with you, I watched the news when I got home to see what everybody said and to see what everybody did,” he said. “My wife is a great indicator, she’s not the biggest fan in the world, but she said that was the greatest race she’d seen all year because of all that stuff.”

Ah Huh!

Here’s a piece of advice, if you go anywhere near the “TV ratings bank” expect a long line filled with NASCAR suits. They will all be getting an advances on their royalty checks coming due after the Chase.

Can you spell BIG BUCKS? Yea, I thought you could!

As an aside, this is the best related headline on the subject: “No clam chowder, just crabs in New England,” courtesy of Kevin Carver writing for Stockcar Review. It’s a classic headline, I’m jealous!

UPDATE:Speaking of big bucks. Check the Nielson ratings for the TNT coverage of Loudon. The Nextel Post Race Show on TNT gained 600,000 more viewers than the race broadcast. Gee, I wonder why that is?

UPDATE II: One thing his been rattling around my brain in the last few days that may effect NASCAR’s TV ratings. With the arrival and destruction of Katrina the price of gas [avatar:http://cranialcavity.net/files/wtfgas.jpg]reached this level[/avatar] and resulted in a slight drop in discretionary travel as reported by the AAA.

As hurricane Rita approaches the Texas coastline and a large percentage of the U.S. refining capacity gas may hit [avatar:http://cranialcavity.net/files/born.jpg]this level[/avatar]. If so, the number of butts in NEXTEL Cup seats may take a hit in the next few weeks. Keep a eye on the stands… I will be.

NASCAR, Chase, Auto Racing, Sports

Only good news is coming out of the UK and Brands Hatch, site of the opening round of the A1 Grand Prix Championship.

The first ever A1 Grand Prix race will be the biggest event in recent years for UK circuit Brands Hatch after ticket sales exceeded that of regular crowd puller, the World Superbike Championship.

The A1 GP stages its debut race at the circuit just outside London, on Sunday.

Interest in the series has now sent sales soaring well in excess of the 60,000 mark