Anger Management RacinDeals
IT’S A SELLOUT: Technically, the Busch race at Nashville Superspeedway was a
sellout. In other words, they sold all the tickets they had for the race.
The reason I qualify the sellout with "technically" is that they
reduced the number of temporary grandstands enough so that they could make sure
they sold all the tickets and not have any empty seats. Last year, they had
25,000 seats in temporary grandstands in addition to the permanent 25,000
grandstand seats. Last year the attendance was unofficially counted at 45,000
(Dover Motorsports has a policy of not reporting attendance for some reason).
This year they said that they were only going to have 40,000 seats, which means
that 15,000 of those come from temporary grandstands.
I’m sitting in the press box as I write this, and the temporary grandstands
to my left might hold 1,000 people. Now there are a lot of campers on the
backstretch, but I don’t think there are 14,000 people back there. Making a
liberal guess would put the campers with 500 people.
So if this is a sellout, there are a lot fewer than 40,000 people here. The
question is, why does Dover Motorsports play these attendance number games?
It’s a shame that an area that has produced so much racing talent can’t
seem to sell too many more tickets to a Busch race at a new facility than were sold at the
Fairgrounds. But I think the fact that so much racing talent has come from this
area makes the racing fans here are more sophisticated; they want to see
Winston Cup racing, not Busch Series racing. If they buy tickets to a race,
they’re to a Winston Cup race to one of the tracks that are within a 6 hour
drive from here.
THE ANTHEM RATING: It pains me to say this, but the National Anthem that was
played before the Martinsville Cup race was… just awful. It didn’t resemble
any rendition of the anthem I’ve ever heard. Surely a military band could play
the anthem as it was written, not as some arranger "interprets" it.
I’d give the anthem a 1 out of 10.
Now the anthem that was performed before the ARCA race Friday was probably
one of the best renditions I’ve ever heard.
THE HARVICK SITUATION: What to say, what to say. There are a few different
angles from which this whole situation can be looked at.
One would be Kevin Harvick’s view. After last year when Tony Stewart was
placed on "probation" but continued to get away with the actions that
caused the probation, one could expect that they’d treat Harvick the same. In
other words, last year they set a precedent when they didn’t suspend Stewart,
but instead extended his probation.
Another angle (and the one that counts) is NASCAR’s. They’ve pulled out an
obscure rule that lets them "park" a driver without really suspending
him. Huh? This prevents him from appealing and driving anyway until the appeal
is heard. So when Harvick let his emotions get the better of him during
Saturday’s truck race and wrecked another truck, what was NASCAR to do? Do they
do another deal where they extend his probation like they did last year? Or is
this even more serious than what Stewart did? Apparently they thought it was
more serious.
Still another angle would be the one from Richard Childress. As he said, his
whole team is getting punished in this deal. But what Childress needs to realize
(and he probably does) is that Harvick is the one who brought this on the team,
not NASCAR. NASCAR is punishing Harvick, not a team.
So, who’s right? Well, NASCAR. Harvick is clearly a danger to others, and
until he learns to control himself, he should be kept off the track. Not only
this weekend, but next weekend as well. Can you imagine what would happen at
Talladega if Harvick retaliated against someone?
Oh, there’s another angle that’s involved… Harvick’s fans. Harvick showed
extreme disrespect for his fans with his answers to Amy East’s questions after
he was parked in the truck race. Either he lied to her, or he lied to his crew
on the radio. If you’re a Harvick fan, you have to be
wondering if it’s not time to find another driver to root for.
GORDON’S SLUMP: They tell us that Jeff Gordon is in his longest non-winning
slump of his career. He hasn’t won in 15 races (now 16). That’s a slump? Also, I don’t
remember Gordon winning in his rookie year. Don’t those 30 some races count as a
losing streak?
FOX TRAX: I’d been wondering why didn’t put the Fox Trax on cars when
they were entering and
leaving pit road, but at Martinsville they did. But don’t you think it would
have been interesting to see how fast the cars were really going?
FX: So, what did Fox have on the broadcast network that was so
important that they had to show the race on cable? A CART race. You read that
right. CART, which might be averaging 250,000 households a race, ran their race
at Long Beach today, and the start time was a couple of hours after the
Martinsville start time. I’ll be interesting to see the ratings numbers for each
race.
SIMPER FI: Last season I gave Team Rensi a hard time because they were
apparently putting their Busch drivers in junk. That seems to have changed this year.
Bobby Hamilton, Jr. had the car to beat in the Busch race Saturday, but made a
mental mistake that put him back in the field. He certainly passed more cars
than anyone else.
The Team Marines car has qualified pretty well all year. I think it’s only a
matter of time before they get a win. I know the Marines who were in the media
center after the race were excited with the third-place finish, so it should be
interesting to see them when Hamilton, Jr. gets his first win.
APR: I’m not quite sure I understand this. Andy Petree Racing has to
shut down one of its teams because of lack of sponsorship. But then he gets some
sponsorship money, and instead of entering a car in the Martinsville race, he
enters a truck with him as the driver. What could he possibly have gained from
that?
Oh, and when they showed his picture during the starting lineup, I thought it
was Michael Andretti at first.
HOW ABOUT A DATE: People keep talking about how Texas needs another
Winston Cup date because they can sell out 200,000 seats. In this day of massive
TV coverage, how many tickets a track can sell should be irrelevant as to
whether or not it gets a date. If the track lends itself to exciting racing,
give it a date. If it doesn’t, then don’t give it a date or take it away and
give it to one that does.