CALIFORNIA RACINDEALS

180º: The folks that thought
Talladega was boring last week must have been on the edge of their seats this
week. Virtually no side-by-side racing occurred at California, and I think
NASCAR threw a couple of questionable caution flags just to bunch up the field
and keep Rusty Wallace from winning by 10 or 15 seconds.

What we saw at Talladega last week was
racing. What we saw Saturday during the Busch race and Sunday during the Winston
Cup race was follow the leader. Those stats about how many lead changes don’t
mean squat if most of the changes came because of green-flag pit stops.

And to think, I could have been outside
mowing my yard.

GETTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE:
I normally limit my commentary to stuff that I at least know a little about (but
some readers may not be convinced of even that <grin>), but this section
is about Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART. 

To keep from going to sleep during the
Winston Cup race today, I was channel surfing some during the boring parts
(which means I did a lot of channel surfing). I happened to flip to ESPN and saw
the tail end of a press conference that CART had today. They were supposed to
race at Texas Motor Speedway today, but they "postponed" it.

Turns out that those cars were going about
10 or 15 mph faster than computer projections (233 mph was the number I saw).
That in itself isn’t that big a deal; those cars have gone about that fast at
other tracks. But the kicker is that because of the banking, the G force was
about 4 or 5 G’s for 2/3’s of a lap. That’s not lateral, left to right G’s;
that’s top to bottom G’s. The drivers couldn’t take it for any length of time.

So CART did the right thing and postponed
the race. They say "postponed" but I think they’ll probably not even
bother with this race or the next two years on their contract.

Someone goofed up big time. Needless to
say, the management of Texas Motor Speedway was not too happy. They (and I)
wonder why this problem couldn’t have been foreseen last year when they signed
the contract. And can you imagine what the fans are thinking? As Eddie Gossage
said, most of them will be blaming the track, when it should be CART who is held
responsible. They should have brought several teams to the track last summer and
tested to see if there were any problems. But they didn’t, and now this.

I’d sure hate to be the CART leader about
now…

PHANTOM YELLOWS: Until that last
unnecessary caution, it looked like it was going to be another gas mileage race
at California in the Winston Cup race. The Busch race did turn out to be a gas
mileage race. I suspect that NASCAR threw that last flag to bunch up the field
so that there was at least some semblance of entertainment.

At least the ASA has the right idea here.
They have competition cautions, where after so many laps of uninterrupted
green-flag racing, they throw a caution flag. They don’t throw the flag and
pretend there’s debris on the track, they admit up front that if there’s a long
green flag run, they’re going to interrupt it with a caution flag. 

THREE STRIKES FOR CASEY: I
think I’ve mentioned here before that I got to see Casey Atwood come up through
Nashville Speedway. I was excited for him when it was announced that he was
signing with Ray Evernham this year.

But at this point in the season, I’m not
so sure that was a wise move on Atwood’s part.

He ran around the top 15 all day at
California, but some type of mechanical failure (again) relegated him to a tail
end finish. I think he’s showed that if his equipment is fine, he can run with
the big guys.

They might as well call off the rookie of
the year race. When Kevin Harvick was put in a top tier team, that pretty much
sealed the fate of the others. Atwood had a triple whammy coming into this
season: rookie driver; new team; and new car make. A run for rookie of the year
was pretty much doomed from the start. And it’s making him look bad.

Harvick is really the only rookie in a
decent ride. Kurt Busch is in a Roush car; enough said. Ron Hornaday is in a
second year team, and they didn’t exactly set the world on fire last year. Jason
Leffler inherited the ride that Kenny Irvin had, which never did much to begin
with. Combine that with their make change and he’s in a big hole. Andy Houston
signs on with a brand new team whose primary team last year wasn’t up to the job
at hand.

I guess I just wonder why drivers think
that getting any ride in Winston Cup is better than staying where you are.
Atwood said repeatedly that he was going to wait for the right opportunity to
come along before leaving the Busch Series. Other than his reputation, what did
Evernham have to offer?

NASCAR LICENSING: You know, if I
paid NASCAR their megabucks to be able to use the NASCAR trademark, I’d expect a
little help in return. I wrote a few days ago about NASCAR Silicon Motor
Speedway closing up not only here in Nashville but nationwide. In January, the
NASCAR Cafe here in Nashville abruptly closed as well.

We get inundated during the races by
announcements from the official this or the official that of NASCAR. Why doesn’t
NASCAR support its other licensees better?

NASCAR BRANDING: Speaking of NASCAR
branding, I’m getting pretty tired of those stupid commercials during the races
where the guy changes the tire in his kid’s tire swing, or where they tape
driving through traffic and play it back at high speed, or whatever (the
"How Bad Have You Got It?" campaign I guess you’d call it).

First off, if you’re watching the race
instead watching or doing something else, you’re already at least mildly
interested in what’s going on. Secondly, why air them during the race? If you’re
going to run a series to build up a brand, why not air it during other shows? I
don’t think NASCAR is getting their money’s worth with this deal… unless
they’re getting the time for free. Hmm, if they’re running those spots during
races, does that mean that Fox had commercial time that they couldn’t sell?

JOURNALISM VS. OPINION: There’s no
news on this site, in case you haven’t noticed. This is an opinion site. The
columns posted here are written by people who have an opinion about something. I
post stuff here that I don’t necessarily agree with, but I’m happy to hear all
sides of an issue.

But what burns me up is when a column is
posted as news, on a legitimate newspaper web site, that is really nothing but
opinion. Last Friday, the Tennessean published an article by Larry Woody
that purported to be a news item about a local racer who did a stupid thing on
the track and was suspended by NASCAR for two races.  (Joe Buford, going
for his fourth consecutive track championship, was caught up in a wreck that
blocked the track just at the exit of turn two. The field came to a stop in the
middle of turn two. Buford went clockwise after getting free of the other
wrecked cars so he could get back to his pits. The only problem was,  the
cars were stopped in the turn under the red flag. Buford, who admitted he
couldn’t see where he was going, ran right into the leader head on, and also the
second place car. It completely knocked out the leader, and the second place car
was able to make repairs and go on to win the race. NASCAR fined Buford and
suspended him for two weeks.)

From the first time that Woody heard what
the penalty was, he said it was too harsh, and he’s said to me personally that
in his 32 years of covering racing, it’s the harshest penalty he’s ever seen
handed down, in relation to the infraction.

Woody’s certainly entitled to his opinion.
But that’s just what it was, his opinion. But the Tennessean ran it as a
news piece, which I think was completely wrong. I cancelled my print
subscription to the Tennessean several years ago because they did the
same thing on their political news stories, presenting them as news when they
were in fact thinly disguised opinion pieces. Since they actually started
putting real stuff on their web site, I’ve been reading Woody’s stuff online for
the last year or so. No more.