$5,000 RacinDeals

THE STREAK: Jeff Gordon hasn’t won a race since Saturday. Is he over the hill? How long can this streak last?

PRICING GIMMICKS: Bruton’s at it again. His Atlanta track is offering a discount (on future tickets) for anything under 30 lead changes. In other words, if there are 29 lead changes, you get a whole $1 off next year’s ticket price.

I’d challenge the folks at Atlanta to count only competitive lead changes. If the leader pits during a normal green flag pit cycle, and the second place car inherits the lead, that’s not a competitive lead change. Or if everyone pits under caution except the last car on the lead lap (so he can get five bonus points), that wouldn’t count either.

But they’ll go with whatever number NASCAR comes up with, and I’m sure it’ll be over 30, so SMI won’t have to give anyone a discount, no matter how miniscule.

GET THE ENGRAVER READY: When you have one of those seasons when nothing goes wrong, or when something does go wrong, your closest competitors also have problems, you’re on the way to a championship.

Note to the trophy engraver, it’s spelled S-T-E-R-L-I-N-G, with a G.

GETTING A JUMP: I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the black flag on the #8 at the start of the Bristol race, but it never came out. I know they had one in the flagstand, because they used it later. Perhaps the black flag got to the flag stand after the start of the race. I watched the replay on TNT on Monday night, and didn’t see any reason to rethink this issue. It seemed pretty plain to me that Earnhardt was ahead of Gordon at the start/finish line. If that’s not jumping the start, I don’t know what is.

GETTING A BUMP: If you didn’t think that Gordon wasn’t going to bump Wallace to move him out of the way, you must be a new fan. Bristol is one of the few tracks left on the circuit where that move works. And with Bristol being a one-groove track (with the concrete), a driver just about has no other way to pass if the car he’s trying to pass doesn’t make a mistake. Now, if Gordon had wrecked Wallace, that’d have been a different situation.

THE NAP 500: If it weren’t for the last 100 or so laps of the race at Bristol the other night, that would have been a very boring race. It doesn’t bode well for a race when the announcers bet on whether there would be more lead changes or cautions.

REAL SATURDAY NIGHT RACING: I’ve seen the Bristol race called “old fashioned Saturday night racing.” To paraphrase a former politician, I’ve seen old fashioned Saturday night racing, and what we saw at Bristol was not old fashioned Saturday night racing.

If you want to see real Saturday night racing, go to your local short track.

GETTING BACK A LAP: Some people think that a race leader shouldn’t slow to let lapped cars get back a lap. I think it’s up to the leader. If a lapped car is in your way on a restart, then on the next caution, you should think about letting him by, so as to be out of your way when the race goes back to green. But it’s the leader’s decision.

VOICE PROBLEMS: Bill Weber should have stayed at home Saturday night. He had no business
hosting the pre-race show, much less trying to be a pit reporter. It was painful to hear him talk, and I daresay that it didn’t help his healing process any.

PR BOILERPLATE: If your PR boilerplate includes “[driver name] drove the car at [track name] to a [finish number] place finish,” then you need to make sure the [finish number] is high enough to not make you look stupid.

SECRET CODE: It’s a good thing that Chip Ganassi’s #41 Target car has that number and not #88. Seems that someone told Target that “88” is a secret sign that neo-Nazi’s use that’s supposedly short for “Heil Hitler.” Target is removing from sale ALL clothing bearing that number and is offering refunds to anyone who bought any clothing from them with the number on it. So you Dale Jarrett fans will have to buy your driver’s merchandise somewhere else.

UNITED WE FALL: Looks like those multi-million dollar earning baseball players are not going ahead with their strike. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Bill France, Sr. for what he did to prevent the drivers from unionizing 30 or so years ago. Can you imagine Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett, Tony Stewart and the others threatening to strike because they don’t get paid enough? And can you imagine what would happen to the sport if those drivers did strike?

SPENDING HABITS: I’m not sure if this is a rhetorical question or not… What makes a winning driver (or crew chief), a driver who’s won races and championships, suddenly become a miser when he owns his own team with other drivers? The first people I’d like to see answer this question are AJ Foyt, Richard Petty, Ray Evernham, and Andy Petree.

THE RODNEY DANGERFIELD OF SPORTS: I just saw an article referring to stock cars as “tin-top taxis”. That kind of disrespect is still commonplace in the news media. Here in Nashville for example, racing is treated as filler. If a Titan football player picks his nose, they’ll have a report on it on the local TV stations before reporting on racing news. They just fawn all over those football jocks, but rarely pay any attention to motorsports.

With another Middle Tennessean in the title hunt in the Winston Cup Series, it’s becoming harder for them to keep ignoring motorsports. But they do give it plenty of attention any time there’s a hint of a scandle; they’re all over it, blowing things out of proportion, mis-reporting facts, and perpetuating something that would never last beyond two or three days otherwise.

A somewhat surprising example of disrespecting the sport is the same media company that’s done such a great job over the last two seasons helping its popularity grow. I have no idea why Fox thinks that putting racing horoscopes online adds anything to the sport or the coverage of the sport. If anything, it perpetuates stereotypes that stock car racing fans are uneducated dupes (of course, a lot of marketing by NASCAR and its sponsors assumes that’s not a stereotype, e.g. “How Bad Have You Got It”).

DIVERSITY: I see another team has been formed to hire minorities as drivers. You’ve seen how well that philosophy works in the truck series: in two years, no wins, no top fives, and no top tens. What does it say about this society when the color of your skin is the main factor in getting and keeping your job?

THAT’LL TEACH HIM: Ward Burton was fined $5,000 for throwing his heel protectors at Bristol. I bet he’ll think twice before doing that again.