Did You Notice? During a garage walkthrough on Friday, the newest edition to Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 cloak of secrecy? It was a dark-blue drape placed over his stall inside the garage area, meaning no one walking by could see what they were doing to set up the car. In the team’s defense, the forecast …
Did You Notice? Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s been getting rather “lucky” these days? Just 19th in points after five races, so much talk has centered around the No. 88 team struggling to get it together. Some feel like they’ve turned the corner towards respectability in recent weeks, but I’m not so sure. Just check out this …
Did You Notice? The only thing Lowe’s Motor Speedway President Marcus Smith would commit to last week – alluding to changes for this year’s All-Star Race – is that the distance would stay exactly the same (100 laps). To me, that’s already a bad “change” to make, no matter how you break that distance down. …
Did You Notice? The complaints over the amount of engine failures to start the 2009 Sprint Cup season? To be honest, I like the unpredictability that’s been added back into the outcome of a race. For a while there, it looked like parts and pieces had become so invincible there was no doubt as to …
Did You Notice? The difference in the atmosphere at Vegas compared to Fontana the week before? If you could notice it that much on TV, just imagine what it was like in person. The last two Sundays, I walked through the Cup garage at the exact same time prior to the drivers’ meeting. At Fontana, …
Did You Notice? The latest way in which NASCAR’s locked-in qualifying rule has spiraled out of control? For the past year plus, MSRP Motorsports has existed in the Nationwide Series for seemingly one goal – to make money. Each week, the team owned by Phil Parsons’s wife, Marcia, and Randy Humphrey trots out two unsponsored …
Did You Notice? The firestorm surrounding cutting the Daytona 500 48 laps short? Personally, I think the anger should be focused on the starting time of the race more than anything else. The 3:45 ET start makes it near impossible to avoid the type of weather issues that we experienced in Sunday’s event. If anything …
Did You Notice? The giant black wrecking ball on the track Saturday night? NASCAR was looking for a new wrinkle to make the races more exciting, and… Hold on a second. That was David Stremme? Ohhhh, now it all makes sense. Seriously, it’s hard to think of a worse debut for a driver with a top-level …
Did You Notice? How this year’s offseason went extensive periods without any sort of NASCAR in the news? Yeah, it was merger central all the time with Richard Petty, Chip Ganassi, George Gillett and Teresa Earnhardt, but beyond that, there really wasn’t all that much to write about. And you know what – that was …
Did You Notice? A ray of hope in the midst of NASCAR’s testing ban? The logical assumption when the policy was announced was that every one of the sport’s big-time owners would pull out the bulldozers and start building racetracks themselves. But to everyone’s surprise, one of the power players of the “Big Four” – …
Did You Notice? That in the midst of a championship performance, the sport’s most powerful team – Hendrick Motorsports – is laying off a dozen employees? Just think about that for a second. This is a team with hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship coming from brands like Lowe’s, Pepsi-Cola, DuPont, Kellogg’s, the National …
Did You Notice? Juan Pablo Montoya’s sophomore season has officially become a nightmare? Of drivers who’ve started all 34 races in 2008, Montoya has the most DNFs with nine. Eight of those have been caused by crashes, including four in the last five races that have wrecked – literally – any supposed on-track improvements for …
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