by richard teague tinynascars@yahoo.com
Well, how many of y’all watched the race at Lowe’s Saturday night? How many of y’all realized you were watching the end of an era? No, it wasn’t the last NA$CAR race under the lights. No, Bruton Smith ain’t moving the races to another location (or at least he hasn’t said so yet). To coin FDR’s words, “A date that will live in infamy.” Well at least to some NA$CAR fans. Saturday, October 13, 2007 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway was the last night race to feature a ‘Stock Car’ in a NA$CAR Cup Series. From now on the night races will have the Car of Tomorrow – the SS Impala, not the Monte Carlo SS. I was sitting there at the start watching the cars get warmed up and saw the #8 Bud Monte Carlo weaving around when it hit me: no more real racecars. Thinking about that kinda’ brought a tear to my eye, but there isn’t a thing that anybody can do is there?
I’ll just have to enjoy the last 3 of the last 5 races this season with the old cars more than I usually do and try not to think of the next era of racing with these dumb look-alike vehicles running around the track. With their stupid-looking front splitter, the rear spoiler where they serve hamburgers after the race, and the wider, higher, shorter bodies with my favorite drivers at the helm. Seems like I mention it in every column, and I’m sorry about that, but the COTs suck and there ain’t no way I’ll ever like them. There, I have said that for the last time. If you believe that then maybe you need to get some shots like that congressman told his aids to do. Ya’ ever wonder why they call people that work for politicians “aids.” Could be their bosses are a**holes.
What do you think of the distinguished representative from the Great State of Mississippi by the name of Bennie Thompson? A committee chairman in Washington recommended that his “aids” have their shots before they go to a NA$CAR race. Seems like you people at races are carriers of all kinds of diseases like Hep A and B, just to mention a couple, and these fine public servants need to be safe from y’all. Does he tell his people to get shots before any other spectator sport, or is it just the NA$CAR races? It was told that Republican staffers have declined the shots, but two Democrats were immunized before attending the race at Talladega last weekend.
Could it be that the Democrats are afeared of you race fans and don’t want to get what you have? The racing religion. What will happen if the Democrats get back into power? Will Hillary Clinton ban our sport if she is elected president? I’ll save my thoughts on politics for next season, as the elections get closer, but for now just remember how this one guy feels about NA$CAR fans and wonder if he is alone up there on Capitol Hill. Does Mr. France have friends in Washington? Can he stave off major political rules against his money maker? You better know he can as long as the fix is in and the money is out. Bill, you better make those ticket prices higher and the sponsors pay more, as I’m sure you do with every new Official Sponsor of NA$CAR.
Why so many? Can someone please tell me why there are so many caution laps in some races? Take Saturday night at Lowe’s. With ten laps to go in the race and oil on the track, the field was parked while crews cleaned up the mess. It seemed like they made a bigger mess than the oil. Instead of waiting to get that all off the track, NA$CAR started the cars following the pace truck. I figured the race was going to start, but no sir. They burned 5 laps up before the restart. Now it might just be me, but I think the real race is in the last 20 to 40 laps. When ya’ get down to ten, Katie bar the door – we’re racin. Couldn’t the track have been cleaned and ready before the cars moved out? Maybe one caution lap, but not five! Just who decides how many before the green drops?
I see it all the time. Cautions are lasting longer and longer for no apparent reason and I don’t understand why. I can’t think of another sport that keeps the players moving while they clean up or fix something on the playing field, can you? Let me see here, if an NBA game has a player get hurt or a piece of equipment breaks, they don’t keep running around the court and neither does the MLB or NFL. The game stops and so does the clock. But not in NA$CAR, oh no. Keep ’em moving and burn laps. Heaven forbid we stop and wait for things to get fixed. Could it be that NA$CAR thinks “just get this thing over with; we got the money now let’s get the heck home?”
If one of you mathematicians out there could figure the cost per lap/per race that a fan pays to see real racing and not just a bunch of cars going around at 40 to 50 miles per hour, I’d like to hear all about it. You would have to calculate the price of a ticket, divide that by the number of laps in a race and then compute the caution laps that were really necessary against the ones where the guys are just sightseeing. Cipher the equations for an entire season, break it down to a track-by-track amount and total the value that is lost by a fan when they go to a race. Yeah, I know I’m reaching here, but I am sick of the useless, uncalled for, no-need, bogus yellow flag caution laps that seem to be more prominent these days in NA$CAR.
There are times that a caution lap is needed, but only on a restart, not while the crews are working on the track. It looks dangerous when the cars are going by those guys, even if they are going slow. Park the damn cars, fix what’s wrong, get the field up to speed in one or (if they have to) two laps, but quit wasting all of our time. Wait a minute, I just had a thought. Aren’t there commercials on when the caution is out most of the time? Isn’t someone making more money when that happens? Gee, was I a dummy to ask for less yellow laps and more green ones, or what?
I can’t tell you what to do about how to end a race differently, because I don’t like ending under a caution, but there should be another way. NA$CAR has only used two ways in the past. Didn’t somebody say once to add laps to a race so that there would an exciting ending? But then ya’ gotta’ figure out just how many to add. Is 5 enough? Maybe 10. Who knows for sure? What if: unless there is a major problem, just let the cars race to the end. Even if there are 10 or so laps to go. Not if cars are all over the raceway, but if someone tags the wall and there’s no harm in the way, let ’em race. There should be a better way and hopefully an idea will be devised to help with this situation, because a race ending under caution just doesn’t make it for me.
Well that’s it for this one and if you need to contact me, you can at tinynascars@yahoo.com and remember, If it ain’t NA$CAR, It ain’t s**t!!
|
EU Critic’s Choice Awards
