*In a Nutshell:* Brian Scott took the checkered flag 0.666 seconds ahead of Kyle Larson to win the Lucas Oil 150 Friday night at Phoenix International Raceway. Scott took advantage of a green-white-checkered finish, pulling ahead on the restart to become the 15th different winner this season. Joey Coulter, Timothy Peters, and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top-5 finishers.
By JEFF WOLFE The climax to a good book or movie doesn’t always come at the end. While Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race was the …
Eight weeks into the 2012 Chase for the Sprint Cup and amidst flip-flops in points and favorites, one thing has remained constant: TV ratings. And the numbers aren’t pretty. In seven of the last eight races, ratings have been down over 2011 by a significant margin.
To be fair, ratings fell in several races this year, but early on, the differences were by 100,000 viewers or so if they were lower. Now, the split is much wider, up to a million fewer people watching, and despite signing a fat contract with FOX, NASCAR should be worried-they haven’t re-upped with either TNT or ESPN for an extension, nor have they signed anything with a different network…and the more the numbers freefall, the more the value of a contract stagnates.
Phoenix International Raceway is the site of the penultimate round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, and with only two races left before we crown a champion, the battle for 1st place in the final standings is white hot. Brad Keslelowski and Jimmie Johnson went toe to toe for 334 laps last week in Texas, culminating in an epic late race battle that saw Johnson emerge victorious. With time running out and tensions rising to an all-time high, can one of the two title contenders strike a final blow to the other’s championship hopes? We answer that and much more in this week’s edition of Four Burning Questions.
There are very few drivers that have taken to the track in 2012 more deserving of a full-time ride in anything than Brian Vickers. A stellar part-time performance with Michael Waltrip Racing after finding himself out of a job following the closure of Red Bull Racing has kept Vickers in Toyota’s good graces, as he will drive a Nationwide car full-time for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2013. It will mark Vickers’ first full Nationwide campaign since 2003, where he won the championship driving for Rick Hendrick.
For those who wonder, Danica and I haven’t talked really. We’ve just kind of moved on. Now looking back two or three weeks ago, my side of the story is just that we were racing hard and it was a pure product of stock car racing where we both disagreed on how the other person was racing. That’s part of the sport. At the end of the day, there were torn up racecars, and that’s not good because we weren’t racing for the win or top 10s. We don’t need to be doing that. I think she knows that and I know that. I don’t’ think there’s any issue with us. I mean, we haven’t talked. It’s just a matter of racing. I think we’ll race each other clean and competitively from here on out.
It has been nearly 150 years since the American Civil War came to an end. While most people have come to accept that outcome, there …
I can’t believe it’s time for our last diary already. After this one, we’re done until Daytona.
Looking back at Texas, it was a bit of a frustrating race. I don’t want to be crying all the time about our performance, but every race is almost like a movie. We ran well at Texas in practice — ninth in the first one and second in the last one — and we qualified fourth. The Diabetes paint scheme we ran means a lot to me. It means a lot to me to run well and to represent something that’s so important. But as soon as the race started, we were tight. You can ask anybody — if you have a snug truck in qualifying, as soon as the night falls, you’re going to have to free it up. We were super tight all race long. It didn’t matter what we did and we still kept going backwards.
I’m not a very good friend. It’s too easy for me to get all wrapped up in the details of everyday life and work; my schedule usually sits front-and-center ahead of most else in my mind. That’s probably why I totally ignored the bulletins reporting the death of Wanda Lund-Early this past January. As I said previously, I’m not a very good friend.
If I was a better friend, I would have been all over the news that Wanda died on January 5th of this year. If I was a better friend, I would have been stunned by the tragic news. If I was a better friend, I would have been even more stunned by the idea that her death was self-inflicted. If I was a better friend, I would have known that she was hurting on the inside while trying to make things right on the outside.
