When one thinks of NASCAR racers making stupid comments in press conferences, there’s no shortage of names that come to mind: Harvick, the Busches, Stewart, these names easily roll off the tongue. Then there’s the heat of the moment stupids such as Kevin Lepage insisting he did nothing wrong by merging into traffic at Talladega or Todd Bodine abdicating all responsibility for his actions at Daytona.
Hello, race fans. Welcome back to Couch Potato Tuesday, where race telecast critiques are the name of the game. This past weekend, the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series each raced at Charlotte Motor Speedway. A nice home game for most.
However, there is TV rights news that must be mentioned before we start. “The Sports Business Journal is reporting”:http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2012/10/15/Media/NASCAR-TV.aspx that FOX has officially re-upped with NASCAR. The extension is eight additional years, beginning in 2015 at a cost of slightly over $2.4 billion. This allows FOX to keep rights to the first 13 point races of the Sprint Cup season, the Budweiser Shootout, Budweiser Duels, Sprint All-Star Race and the Camping World Truck Series. It’s currently unclear whether the current amount of programming will remain, or if the potential re-branding of SPEED would affect it in any way.
Besides the fact that the race on Saturday night was yet another yawn-inducing fuel-mileage parade, was there anything at all happening in NASCAR this week? …
by Garrett Horton 2 In its first five years of operation, Michael Waltrip Racing earned a total of two Sprint Cup victories, both with David …
Brad Keselowski ran out of gas, down the backstretch with 58 laps left, allowing Clint Bowyer to breeze by. That left the No. 15 team virtually unencumbered as they turned on the fuel mileage jets, put a Rip Van Winkle spell over the stands, and advanced to a shocking intermediate oval victory at Charlotte.
Brad Keselowski and Paul Wolfe have been doing it to perfection all year and they’re sitting in first place in points because of it. Jimmie Johnson has almost never done it successfully, but on Saturday night he did. Denny Hamlin has had mixed results but, like Johnson, it paid off for him on Saturday night.
What is it?
The fuel mileage game.
Keselowski has been schooling the entire garage on stretching fuel all year. They’ve won races because of it and they’ve had better results because of it. That weapon, probably more than any other in their arsenal, has been the difference this season. On Saturday night, it failed them. Yes, the damage was only half a lap, leaving the car able to finish on the lead lap, but it cost this driver half of his lead on Johnson and almost half of it on Hamlin. That misstep by the No. 2 team very well be what costs them the championship when all is said and done in November.
*Sprint Cup: As The Concussion Turns* — The biggest story by far this weekend was the news Dale Earnhardt, Jr., NASCAR’s perennial Most Popular Driver, was out of the car for the Bank of America 500 and will remain sidelined at least through Kansas this weekend after suffering a concussion in a last-lap wreck at Talladega. Earnhardt had suffered a similar head injury five weeks ago, after crashing during a tire test at Kansas Speedway, but it initially went undiagnosed. However, the second hit last week left him suffering from headaches, consistent enough in their severity that the driver took action. After seeing Dr. Jerry Petty, a Charlotte neurosurgeon who has worked with numerous NASCAR personnel as well as the Carolina Panthers NFL team, Earnhardt was declared unfit to race. Regan Smith jumped in the No. 88 Saturday night, putting the car well inside the top 10 before suffering engine failure before the 200-mile mark.
It wasn’t the win he has been searching for for more than a year and a half, but for Carl Edwards, a seventh-place finish was a welcome ending. For Edwards, who has just three top-five performances in 2012, this week’s result was only the second to fall inside the top 10 in the last eight weeks, just his 13th top-10 finish in 31 races. That’s half the number he had a year ago, when Edwards lost the Sprint Cup title to Tony Stewart in a tiebreaker. The top-five stat is even more dismal. Edwards finished in that group 19 times in 2011, more than six times as often as 2012. No matter where his points finish is, it will be the worst of his career because he didn’t make the Chase cut and can finish no better than 13th.
There’s a mystery driver these days putting up big time numbers – just without the big time accolades to go with it. He has six victories in the last three years, more than Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, or Kurt Busch on the Cup Series level. During that span, his 53 top-10 finishes collected are greater than all but three drivers: Edwards, Jimmie Johnson, and Kevin Harvick. It’s a collection of stats made more impressive by the fact that A) he’s switched teams the last two years and B) he’s never been the number one driver in any organization he’s been a part of.
When are we going to give Clint Bowyer the credit he’s due?
By JEFF WOLFE Clint Bowyer doesn’t care how he gets to Victory Lane, even if it means going by foot rather than car. Bowyer won …