{"id":313,"date":"2002-01-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-01-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-308-late-january-racindeals\/"},"modified":"2002-01-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-01-25T00:00:00","slug":"archive-308-late-january-racindeals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-308-late-january-racindeals\/","title":{"rendered":"Late January RacinDeals"},"content":{"rendered":"

USAGE<\/strong>: Wow. I just looked
\nat the usage reports for RacinDeals.com for the first time in
\nabout 4 or 5 months. Imagine my surprise when I saw that December
\n2001 had the highest number of visits to the site ever. Usually
\nin an off season, the visits go down, but to have a record month
\nis impressive. I’d like to thank everyone who reads the columns posted here, and all the sites who link to those columns. Never
\nin my wildest dreams did I ever think we’d get close to 17,000
\nvisits in one month. <\/p>\n

Which brings me to my next point…<\/p>\n

CENSORSHIP<\/strong>: It’s a shame
\nthat some people are trying to, in effect, shut this site down,
\nsimply because they disagree with me or one of the other
\ncolumnists. There seems to be a loosely organized effort to
\ncensor one of the authors I publish. Every now and then, I get a
\nmessage or two that’s nicely informing me that one of my
\ncolumnists is rude and mean to people, and of course if I want
\nRacinDeals to be taken seriously, I’ll get rid of that person,
\nright?<\/p>\n

So far, all I’ve gotten is accusations. No
\none has given me any proof that anyone who has submitted a column
\nhere has been abusive to anyone else. I’ve seen postings on
\nmessage boards (which are a waste of time if you ask me) where
\npeople intentionally provoke others and when they get put in
\ntheir place, they cry about it.<\/p>\n

Now the question is, what should happen if
\nI do get proof that someone who is published here is abusive?
\nThat is, a person who initiates the abusive behavior and is not
\nbeing abusive because they were abused first. Good question. Of
\ncourse, as the owner of RacinDeals.com, I have the ultimate
\nauthority as to what gets posted here on the site. I could just
\nstart refusing to post anything from anyone else, and that’d
\ncertainly take care of the situation. But then how long would it
\nbe before I get accused of abusive behavior? Actually, that’s
\nalready happened. <\/p>\n

Some idiot (and I don’t mean the term to be
\nanything other than descriptive) who claims to be a Bill Elliott
\nfan has accused me of harassing him in email. I’ve got the emails
\nI’ve sent him, in response to his email to me cussing me out. No,
\nI didn’t stoop to his level. I actually tried to ignore him. But
\nafter a while, I decided to just report him to AOL. Hopefully his
\naccount has been cancelled, since it’s been a few weeks since
\nI’ve received anything from him.<\/p>\n

And that reminds me of a saying: You can
\ncatch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. If you
\ndisagree with something I or anyone else here writes, you’ll get
\na better response if you refrain from name calling and cussing in
\nyour emails to us. But if that’s the way you want to be responded
\nto, then cuss away.<\/p>\n

NASCAR’S WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM<\/strong>:
\nNASCAR has chosen "The Witness" as their crash data
\nrecorder for this year. The device will record a bunch of data
\nduring crashes. I wonder how this thing works? Does it store it
\nin memory in the device or does it broadcast a signal that’s
\npicked up by NASCAR? If it does send out a signal, I hope it’s
\nencrypted; I daresay that a creative crew chief could find ways
\nto use the g-force data those things record in order to make his
\ncar go faster.<\/p>\n

HEY JOE<\/strong>: I sure hope the
\ntruck Joe Ruttman tested at Daytona materializes into a full-time
\nride. With his showing at Daytona testing, surely someone will
\ntake notice and put up some sponsorship money. I saw Joe at the
\nFairgrounds Speedway at Nashville drivers’ meeting a couple of
\nweeks ago, and figured that he might be looking to race in a few
\nLate Model races this year. But it looks like the #79 deal came
\ntogether after that, so while I’d like to see him race at
\nNashville, I’d much rather see him run full time in the Truck
\nSeries.<\/p>\n

RIDE FOR SALE<\/strong>: When did
\nNASCAR become CART? I mean, when did it become the driver’s
\nresponsibility to secure sponsorship for the team? Ruttman got
\nfired because Dana left, and (presumably) Robert Pressley has
\nsome sponsorship money for the Bobby Hamilton #18 truck. Hut
\nStricklin, with Sara Lee in tow (or was it the other way around?),
\nwas able to secure a Winston Cup ride as a teammate to Ward
\nBurton because he had the sponsorship money behind him.<\/p>\n

Maybe I missed this encroachment over the
\nlast few years. But I don’t like it. <\/p>\n

THE HALO DEVICE<\/strong>: The first
\n(but certainly not the last) case of a driver getting a broken vertebra while wearing a head and neck restraint device occured
\nthe other day. David Pook now has to wear another device, a halo,
\nuntil his vertebra heals. If you’ve ever seen someone in a halo,
\nyou know how bad it looks. It’s worse for the person wearing it,
\nbecause the thing is literally screwed into their skull to keep
\ntheir head from moving.<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, the head and neck
\nrestraint device is not being given much credit for saving Pook’s
\nlife. A "special seat" that he was using seems to be
\nthe major factor in Pook surviving the wreck.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid that we’ll be seeing more of
\nthis during the year, now that drivers in all of NASCAR’s touring
\ndivisions are required to wear one of these gizmos. But hey, at
\nleast the company that makes them isn’t at fault. As I’ve
\nmentioned before, everyone who buys a HANS device has to waive
\ntheir rights to any claims against Hubbard\/Downing, Inc. From
\ntheir disclaimer page: <\/a>"No
\nwarranty or representation of any kind is made as to the
\nmerchantability or fitness for any purpose as to any HANS\u00ae
\ndevice. You agree and acknowledge that no safety device can
\nprotect its user from all risk of injury or death. You assume all
\nrisk from any activity involving the use of the HANS\u00ae device."<\/p>\n

That’s certainly not very comforting, is
\nit?<\/p>\n

SPOILED DRIVERS<\/strong>: Well, if
\nBF Skinner was right, and variable reinforcement works best, then
\nthe Ford teams’ sandbagging just got rewarded. NASCAR gave in to
\nthe demands of the Ford drivers after the first two rounds of
\nDaytona tests and shortened their spoiler by a quarter inch. The
\nupshot is that this will only increase the whining by teams (of
\nwhatever makes) when they perceive an "unfair"
\nadvantage. <\/p>\n

RED LIGHT SPECIAL<\/strong>: If I
\nwas a shareholder in K-mart, I’d be a trifle upset that the
\ncompany is apparently going to continue to spend the ton of cash
\nit takes to sponsor not one but two Winston Cup teams. But that’s
\njust me.<\/p>\n

Now, where are all those NASCAR fans that
\nare so "loyal" to the sponsors? You know the ones we
\nkeep hearing about who go out of their way to buy a product
\nsimply because of a team sponsorship… If this loyalty is a fact
\nand not just a marketing gimmick to draw sponsors to the sport,
\nthen those loyal fans need to get up off their couch and go to K-mart
\nand buy something. If this loyalty is true, then K-mart will be
\nout of bankruptcy by the time the Daytona 500 rolls around.<\/p>\n

Or, maybe K-mart should’ve gotten rid of
\nRosie O’Donnell when they had a chance.<\/p>\n

MORE IS LESS<\/strong>: I’m not sure
\nI like the new layout for Thatsracin.com. Seems like with the old
\nlayout, you could go to the site, see the important stuff right
\nthere, and not spend any time figuring out what was news and what
\nwasn’t. With their new layout, you have to go all over the page
\nto find stuff.<\/p>\n

My usage of NASCAR.com dropped from once or
\ntwice a day last year to maybe once a week because of their
\nredesign. Already my usage of Thatsracin.com has dropped, and
\nwill probably continue to drop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USAGE: Wow. I just looked at the usage reports for RacinDeals.com for the first time in about 4 or 5 months. Imagine my surprise when I saw that December 2001 had the highest number of visits to the site ever. Usually in an off season, the visits go down, but to have a record month […]<\/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-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","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=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}