{"id":305,"date":"2002-01-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-01-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-300-pre-season-testing-racindeals\/"},"modified":"2002-01-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-01-09T00:00:00","slug":"archive-300-pre-season-testing-racindeals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-300-pre-season-testing-racindeals\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Season Testing RacinDeals"},"content":{"rendered":"

FANATICS II<\/strong>: Some people
\nare so rabidly fanatic about their driver that they remind me of
\na scene from "A Few Good Men." Jack Nicholson is being
\npressured on the witness stand by Tom Cruise to tell the truth.
\nNicholson’s characters shouts "You want the truth? You can’t
\nhandle the truth!"<\/p>\n

Some race fans can’t handle the truth. And
\nsome fans can’t distinguish the difference between criticism of a
\ndriver and criticism of a pseudo-award. I’m still getting hate
\nmail and veiled threats because of what I wrote about the NMPA’s
\nMost Popular Driver "award." <\/p>\n

At least Jeff Gordon’s fans aren’t as vile
\nas Bill Elliott’s (at least the ones I’ve heard from). While I’m
\nnot called any names, it’s made pretty clear that I don’t know
\nwhat I’m talking about when it comes to him snubbing the IROC
\nSeries.<\/p>\n

I was a big Darrell Waltrip fan. Unfortunately, I only got to see him win a handful of times. But
\nwhen someone was critical of him, I didn’t just automatically go
\nin defense mode and say that person didn’t know what they were
\ntalking about. <\/p>\n

It’s called being an adult.<\/p>\n

MAKING NOISE AT INDY<\/strong>: In
\nmy hypothetical role as a car owner, if you’re my driver, you’re my<\/em>
\ndriver. If you want to run the Indy 500, then resign your ride
\nwith me and let me find someone who is committed to running for
\nthe Winston Cup Championship. That means every month, not every month except
\nMay… and especially not with a rival car owner in the Winston
\nCup circuit.<\/p>\n

DAMAGED GOODS<\/b>: It’s hard to tell what will happen
\nthis year with the #14 team. AJ Foyt just hired Stacy Compton to drive his
\nPontiacs, and Compton apparently plans on driving full time in the Busch Series
\nas well.<\/p>\n

After Ron Hornaday’s season last year, you have to wonder
\nif Foyt is putting all the resources in the team that it needs. Compton’s record
\nin the Truck Series doesn’t come close to Hornaday’s, although he does have more
\nexperience in the Cup cars than Hornaday did.<\/p>\n

For all practical purposes, the #14 is a startup team this
\nyear. Yes, I know they’ve turned in some fast times at Daytona. See below.<\/p>\n

STORY OF THE YEAR<\/b>: In racing, it was Dale
\nEarnhardt’s death. In real life, it was the terrorist attacks on September 11.
\nWhat else needs to be said? How many more "story of the year" columns
\ndo we need to see?<\/p>\n

AGE BEFORE EXPERIENCE<\/b>: I see that ARCA has mimicked
\nsome of NASCAR’s newer "safety" regulations, including the minimum age
\nrequirement. At least they’ve effectively grandfathered in anyone who’s 16 this
\nyear if they’ve already had superspeedway experience. NASCAR should have done
\nthat, but they had to give in to the racing media’s demands for
\n"safety".<\/p>\n

NOT ANOTHER SIRIUS PUN, SERIOUSLY<\/b>: Casey Atwood’s new sponsor is a
\nsatellite radio broadcasting outfit. I sure hope they got all the money up
\nfront. The company hasn’t even launched their service yet, and their stock has
\ndropped from a high in the mid $30’s to around $10 a share. They’ve just issued
\nmore stock to raise a $150 million or so. Sirius is betting the farm that people
\nare not only willing to shell out the bucks for the special radios, but $12.95 a
\nmonth to receive programming.<\/p>\n

Sirius’ biggest competitor is XM Satellite Radio, which
\nalready has 30,000 subscribers. Their subscription is $9.99 a month. <\/p>\n

I really think this product is a solution looking for a
\nquestion.<\/p>\n

DAYTONA TESTING "SPEEDS"<\/b>:
\nAh, the cars are back on the track at Daytona for the first testing sessions of
\nthe year.  And wouldn’t you know it, Jimmie Johnson is at the top of the
\n"speed" charts.<\/p>\n

I put "speed" in quotes because
\nthe speeds coming out of Daytona are less than meaningless. They’re numbers with
\nno context. Did Johnson get a sniff of a draft while the more experienced
\ndrivers knew when to take their laps? Plus, there are reports that drivers of a
\ncertain make of car are sandbagging in order to get some aero concessions from
\nNASCAR. <\/p>\n

So while the speeds are of more value for
\ncuriosity’s sake, they’re not really useful in telling us how good anyone in
\nparticular is going to do.<\/p>\n

INSIDE INFO<\/b>: If you haven’t gone to
\nNormPartin.com<\/a> yet, do
\nyourself a favor and check it out, especially the breaking news area. Just
\nignore the spelling and grammar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FANATICS II: Some people are so rabidly fanatic about their driver that they remind me of a scene from "A Few Good Men." Jack Nicholson is being pressured on the witness stand by Tom Cruise to tell the truth. Nicholson’s characters shouts "You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!" Some race fans can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}