Retroactive RacinDeals

RETROACTIVE SPONSORSHIP: Did you ever notice that when a new sponsor comes along for a race, suddenly every race in the past was sponsored by that company? For example, when DieHard and Winston swapped race weekends at Talladega a few years ago, suddenly every prior race corresponded with the switch. Where the Winston 500 was the first race at Talladega, after the switch the DieHard 500 became the first race… on back through 1969.

FUTURE SPONSORSHIP: I didn’t keep count, but it sure seemed to me like Cracker Barrel got more sponsor mentions from Fox than MBNA in Sunday’s broadcast. I wonder if Cracker Barrel’s lawsuit (where they claimed they didn’t get the sponsor exposure they were supposed to last year) had anything to do with that?

ENGINE RULE: Despite how much the announcers harped on the one-engine rule and how drivers were “victims” of it, with fewer engine failures this year than at last year’s race, maybe we can put this media-contrived controversy to rest.

ENGINE CHANGES: If you’re one of the last 10 or 12 on the starting grid, why not go ahead and change engines? It sure worked for Matt Kenseth Sunday.

TONY’S TACT: Tony Stewart, which track has the most obnoxious fans? “Talladega, no brainer.” Why is that? “It’s in Alabama. Enough said.” (April Issue of FHM).

ANTHEM RATING: John Berry’s rendition of the anthem was pretty good. I’d give him a 7.5 out of 10.

Watching the Mexican national anthem before the CART race, it struck me that men down there don’t remove their hats during the singing of their anthem. Wonder why that is?

STARTING YOUR ENGINES: OK. I took some flack for my comments last week about the little girl who gave the command to start engines at Las Vegas. Some people, who apparently aren’t educated enough to know how to communicate without name calling, called me to task for my “nasty” remarks about the little girl. All I said was that I didn’t know what to say.

Perhaps I should have made another paragraph out of the comment about writing down what’s supposed to be said; I certainly didn’t intend for that to be critical of her. But don’t you think, “Drivers, start your engines” sounds better than “Lady and Gentlemen, start your engines”?

CART AND ENTERTAINMENT: In a move that finally recognizes that racing has to be entertaining, CART has made some interesting rule changes to do just that, make the events more entertaining.

They’ve gotten rid of their mandatory gas mileage rule, which had teams running at less than 100% to conserve fuel, and replaced it with mandatory pit stops.

Interestingly, they’ve also legalized traction control on the cars. Not sure what the purpose of that rule is.

LEAD CHANGES: There were 34 or so lead changes during the Atlanta race. When they first mentioned that there were over 20, it caught me off guard. I didn’t keep track this week, but the number of competitive lead changes (i.e. lead changes not caused by a yellow or the cycling of pit stops under green), certainly didn’t seem that high. Sure, there were a few times that the lead was changed by side-by-side racing, but the race just didn’t seem to be that competitive to me. I guess part of that is because one car led over half the laps.

BASS GUITAR: It was a tradition at the Fairgrounds Speedway at Nashville that major race winners received a guitar as the trophy. They’ve continued that tradition at the new superspeedway in Gladeville. Sam Bass has designed a special paint scheme for the Gibson guitars that the track will give away in its races this year. Got a chance to see a “rendering” of it Thursday and it’s pretty slick.

RIDING IN CARS: While I was at Nashville Superspeedway Thursday, I got a chance to take a ride-along in one of the Monster Racing cars. These cars are Winston Cup-type cars, but they’re rev-limited so the students don’t go too fast. Anyway, in my pre-lunch 4-lap ride along, we probably got up to 120 or so. I got another chance to ride again after lunch, and this time we went what seemed to be a LOT faster, probably in the 135-140 range.

I’ve done the ride-along thing a couple of other times, but at the Fairgrounds track. At the 1.33 mile Superspeedway, the speed sensation wasn’t as apparent as it was on the .596 mile short track, even though the speed on the short track was only in the 100-mph range. Plus the feeling of acceleration is a lot more pronounced on the short track, since I guess you have to let off the gas more, and because it’s shorter, you’re gassing, breaking, gassing, breaking.

Anyway, I had a blast Thursday. I’d highly recommend it to anyone. It certainly gives you a better perspective of what the drivers go through during a race.