Totally RacinDeals

DAYS OF WONDER: What happened to the good old days when only country
stars were interested in stock car racing? First Fox gives us their awful CD,
now Britney Spears wants to play a stock car driver in a movie, and her
inspiration is Days of Thunder?

RACE-ISM: Some "performer" who goes by the name of Ice Cube
is going to produce a movie about NASCAR racing. It’s a "fish out of
water" about a cab driver who’s the only black in a stock car race.

How insulting.

THE SAGA CONTINUES: When will it ever end? Can’t NASCAR just award
Jeff Gordon a "win" so the agony will stop?

Of course, I’m not talking about the agony of Gordon going without a win. I’m
talking about the agony of the media making such a big deal out of it. Mark
Martin just broke a winless streak three times longer than Gordon’s, and we only
start to hear about it when he was dominating Charlotte.

And Dale Jarrett apparently broke a 30-race winless streak at Pocono. First
I’d heard of his streak too.

MEDIA SPONSORSHIPS: Is it really proper for a media outlet (e.g. a
magazine, TV show, web site, etc) to sponsor a racing team? Isn’t that a major
conflict of interest if the media outlet reports or writes about the sport?

How much credibility would I have if I announced that RacinDeals.com was a
brand new associate sponsor on the #29 car? Would you then not question
everything I wrote about Kevin Harvick? Of course you would (or should),
especially if I stopped writing anything critical of that team.

But that doesn’t stop some entities. Is it right for AOL to sponsor a car
when they’ll be broadcasting races?

DRIVING THE TRUCK: If UPS was really smart, they’d have Robert Yates
enter Dale Jarrett in a Craftsman Truck Series race. The Series needs a booster
shot, and a PR gimmick like that just might do the trick.

COMPETING FOR SPONSORSHIP: Is NASCAR really trying to woo M&M/Mars
away from a race team? Who in the world is running things there in Daytona?

SPENCER’S RIGHT: Jimmy Spencer said that the Pocono race should be
shortened. He’s right; the race is way too long and takes almost four hours to
complete. They could make the race a 300 mile race and cut it down to a
reasonable time.

My contention is that 500-mile races should be special, not run of the mill.
If you only had 3 or 4 500-mile and the one 600-mile race in a season, that
would make them special events.

NO PLACE TO GO: Nashville Superspeedway held its third Busch Series
race over the weekend. I wasn’t able to watch the race on TV, but did listen to
some of it on the radio. Sounded like another snoozer.

But the funny thing is, the track lost water pressure part way through the
race, shutting down the bathroom facilities. They had to put "Out of
Order" signs on the toilets. Not a good thing for a "first class"
facility to have happen to it.

Plus, for the 25,000 plus fans, getting out of the parking lot took hours.
They need to get some professional traffic help, since apparently the local
Wilson county police and the troopers they use don’t seem to know what they’re
doing.

SAFER SANITY: Looks like NASCAR isn’t being so quick to give the OK
for tracks to install those new "soft" walls they put up at Indy. Good
for NASCAR. The first two or three wrecks against those walls at Indy in May
resulted in drivers getting injured and I believe one or two had to miss the
500. That should be enough indication that the walls need more study.

Now all NASCAR needs to do is go back and study the head restraints that
they’ve made mandatory. How many more drivers will be injured before they do
this?

THE EARNHARDT FACTOR: It’s amazing how much momentum the teams in
which Dale Earnhardt was involved had. I say had, since it’s painfully obvious
that DEI and RCR have lost that momentum in the year and a half since he died. I
think that shows just how much he contributed to both teams.

BEER AND COOKIES: Why in the world would Oreo’s have as a spokesman a
driver whose main sponsor is a beer company? But that’s not really the strange
part. Oreo’s is a Nabisco brand. Nabisco used to be owned by RJReynolds, but now
is owned by Kraft Foods. Kraft Foods is part of the Phillip Morris conglomerate,
which also owns Miller Beer (at least until that sale goes through to the South
African Breweries). Talk about strange bedfellows.

NON-COUNTING PROVISIONALS: Hmm, 44 cars show up at Michigan for the
race, but one withdraws. If the 44th car had taken a qualifying lap, then the
provisionals used would have counted against the teams that got them. Now, I’m
not one for conspiracy theories, but if I were a team owner it’d be worth it to
give that 44th team a few grand to "withdraw." That way I don’t get
charged for a provisional if I need it.

TOTALLY WINSTON CUP, PARTIALLY BUSCH, HARDLY TRUCKS: "Totally
NASCAR" has to be the most un-descriptive name for a TV show I’ve ever
heard. The large majority of the show is dedicated to Winston Cup, with a
smaller percentage dedicated to the Busch Series. And for all the coverage they
give the Craftsman Truck Series, if that’s the only racing show you watched,
you’d be hard pressed to even know there was such a thing. And the other touring
series? Forget about it. If it’s not Cup or Busch, they ignore it.