Atlanta

I like the new car too.

I keep hearing people compare Kyle Busch to Dale Earnhardt. I just don't get it, do any of you? If you do, can you fill me in?

Good to see Jr. have another quality race, now if he can just find his way to victory lane.

 

The thread was already started, so here we go with the Atlanta review.

1:07 PM
I'm a big, big fan of the 1:15pm start time. Mostly because there's less time for Fox's bull and we get to see the end of the race before we have to leave for Sunday night church.

1:09 PM
Will they ever take a win away? Nope, never gonna happen. At Charlotte in the fall of '83, Richard Petty won with an oversized engine and he didn't lose the win. The precedent was set there and it's not going to change.

On the subject of which drivers are cool, I think it's a select few, limited to Dale Jr, Tony and Kyle Petty. Jimmie Johnson seems too strait-laced to be cool. Carl Edwards would have fit right in with the Tri-Lambs. And Jeff Gordon? Puh-leaze.

1:18 PM
That's it, Junior. Drive that car deep into the corner.

1:19 PM
Mike Joy took the bait and is now calling him "Rowdy" Busch. I think Mike's hat is in the ring for President of the Kyle Busch Fan Club.

1:22 PM
Ha! You know you have a problem with your cars being loose when even your Pinewood Derby car is loose.

1:23 PM
Junior likes running the outside line at Atlanta anyway. I have to say, I'm enjoying immensely the novelty of my driver consistently running up front this season.

1:34 PM
Diet Mountain Dew = Nectar of the Gods

1:39 PM
First debris caution. I don't think it's the first one of the year, but we never see the debris. Nascar doesn't seem to get it about the phantom cautions. We don't like sporting events to feel like they're being manipulated. Of all the things that Nascar fans complain about, the Phantom Debris Caution is one of the legitimate complaints.

DW just said that it will be a whole new restart. Isn't every restart a new restart?

1:48 PM
Wow, Jimmie's reaaaalllyyy loose.

1:53 PM
DW, continuing his campain for President of the Kyle Busch Fan Club, by marveling at how Kyle saved his loose race car and implying that nobody else could save a car that loose. Kyle getting loose off Turn 4 didn't look any worse than anybody else we've seen get loose at Atlanta. How come Kyle getting loose and saving it is so much better than what Jimmie Johnson did just 5 minutes ago?

1:55 PM
Yeah, Juan Montoya is having a great run. He's gotten all the way up 13th after he started 19th and it's only taken 60 laps or so to get there.

1:57 PM
Ooooohhh.... ahhhhh... .that Nascar Day pin would be so cool. Well, Garth Brooks said so, didn't he? I mean, everybody knows that Garth Brooks is cool. Well, he was cool, before he tried to tell me how cool a Nascar Day pin would be.

1:59 PM
I won't go into a big story about it, but one of my boys was pretending to cook food and told me he was making tacos. It reminded me of this, a SNL skit about the new pizza crepe taco pancake chili bag at Taco Town. Enjoy!

2:01 PM
DW says you have to drive this racecar. How is this different than any other week? I wish somebody would remind DW of what that wise veteran Ken Schrader once said.

"These cars don't drive themselves."

If the taters don't have anything to say, why don't they just shut up?

My wife: "Silence is golden. Why don't you invest in it?"

2:08 PM
They didn't show us the debris from the 1st caution and I'm betting they won't show us any this time, either.

2:10 PM
Dick Berggren just said that Junior didn't have anybody in front of him when he was trying to leave his pit stall. He's right, except for the nobody driving the #43 car.

2:19 PM
Memo
To: Larry Mac
Re: Your time as Earnhardt's crew chief

Dear Larry,
Other than one race, we would like to pretend that you weren't the crew chief for Dale Earnhardt. Please don't mention it again.

Sincerely,
Earnhardt fans

2:21 PM
Amazingly, I find myself agreeing with DW and Larry that the crew chief can't really do anything during the race to help a driver with his restarts.

2:22 PM
I think I've said it every week so far, but that DirecTV commercial from Misery is so chilling. It makes my ankles hurt just watching.

2:56 PM
That texting commercial just played and it reminds me that my wife said that 2 6th grade girls at church now have cell phones and they amused themselves at church today by taking pictures all morning. I don't have girls, so maybe it's different, but can somebody tell me why 6th grade girls need cell phones of their own? I genuinely don't understand this.

2:58 PM
Jimmie Johnson feels like Jackie Chan and I'm lost. Granted, I just woke up from a little nap a few minutes ago, so maybe that's why I have no clue as to what he's talking about.

3:04 PM
Why is Toyota running the not funny "Elevated RV" commercial, when they have the much funnier "Remote Control Race Car" commercial at their disposal?

3:05 PM
Walkman Slider phone looks a little like the cool phones from The Matrix.

3:08 PM
Jimmie Johnson continues to look pathetic. Has he ever had back-to-back weeks of looking this bad on the track?

3:11 PM
Yep, the Fords are rising to the front. Well, that is, if you think 4th, 10th and 13th is the same as "the front".

3:19 PM
Hey! There's real, actual debris on the track! Wow.

3:21 PM
Now, they're cranking it up on the pit stop. Because there's nothing more exciting than hearing the fuel go into the car and the tires being rolled back to the pit wall. Exciting stuff to be sure. Has anybody reading this ever actually cranked it up during the time they say they're going to crank it up? Is there a difference? Is it cool? I don't have the kind of surround sound system that would make a difference, so I'm curious about the difference, if any.

3:26 PM
I was sim-racing yesterday morning and got spun, but didn't the wall or another car. My son gave me the Allstate Good Hands Award for it, so I've got that going for me.

3:28 PM
Oh goody. Kyle Busch is out front, giving the Fox guys more time to fawn over him. This is where we need a voice of reason in the booth, and that voice would be supplied by either Dale Jarrett or Wally Dallenbach. Seriously, is there any chance that Wally Dallenbach would be fawning over a driver, any driver, like these guys are?

3:32 PM
I've been watching it closely today, and I think they made the green on Junior's car darker. It's easier to see the car, and, for the sponsor's sake, easier to see who the sponsor is. I like that green car better today than any other race I've seen it this year.

3:33 PM
Since when did DW become on aerodynamics engineer? I simply don't believe him when he says that you can't add almost 200 lbs of downforce to the car. As I said in the Las Vegas thread, I think the #99 team cheated and I think they totally deserve the penalties they received.

I think the lessons to take away from this is that DW fancies himself as an aerodynamics engineer and that Larry's Ok with cheating. Pathetic.

3:39 PM
How come when the guy who's in the first pit stall gets out first, Larry always says it's because of their pit position? He never says that it's because the pit crew did a great job.

3:43 PM 3/9/2008
Larry Mac just called Jeff Gordon "Big Daddy." When did he get that nickname? In order to be called "Big Daddy", don't you have to be a big guy? The only other athlete I know of who was called "Big Daddy" was Dan Wilkinson, and he was a big dude. Shaq has been called "Big Aristotle", but he's a big guy. Jeff Gordon is 5'7". Nothing big about that.

3:47 PM
DW: "Let me be your lucky dog, or not be a dog at all."

What?

My head hurts.

DW, silence is golden. Invest.

3:52 PM
Larry: "You know who I want out there with 7 more laps on the tires? Kyle Busch"

:BangHead:

Enough already! You guys love Kyle Busch. We get it. I really don't see what's so great about him, but what do I know?

For those of you who don't like Dale Jr because of all the media attention he gets, I get it now. I completely get it now. I never understood until now. Some of you reading probably think I'm a hater, but I'm not. I don't particularly care if he runs well or not. But, when you are told time and time again about how great a driver is, and you don't see what's so great about him, I can see how you would come to dislike said driver.

4:04 PM
In the fantasy racing league I was in last year, I stayed with Kasey Kahne too long and it killed me. This year, it's Jimmie Johnson.

4:14 PM
DW just said that the smoke off of Carl's car is from the tires and it went up into the wheel well. *insert eyeroll here* (I've already used my allotment of smilies).

4:17 PM
The smoke that went up into the wheelwell was actually from a transmission. Another great call by DW. I think I'm getting to the point where I'm intensely disliking the Fox team. They're not wrong on everything, but they're wrong more than they're right.

4:20 PM
As much as I like the Cobalt commercial, they're eventually going to run it into the ground and I won't like it anymore.

4:23 PM
The final culprit that put Carl out?

My wife: Smoke in the wheel wells.

4:24 PM
My wife is wondering when there's going to be an injection of studliness in Nascar. She doesn't like any of them, including Kasey Kahne. She used to like Tony Stewart until he showed up at Daytona with long hair. She thinks he looks like the owner of a pizzeria.

4:36 PM
This is so tiring. I've decided to call Kyle Busch the GRDAT, the Greatest Racecar Driver of All Time. If you have something better than that, I'm open to suggestions.

4:48 PM
"Rowdy" Busch. I just threw up in my mouth.

4:51 PM
It's finally over and the GRDAT just won. What an awesome, amazing, incredible win by the GRDAT. Give him the championship now, boys, cause everybody else is running for 2nd.

 

I can't objectively answer this question. I do think it's foolish to make the comparison. Can we just let Kyle Busch do what Kyle Busch is capable of doing without the comparisons to a legend?

A couple of years ago during the NFL season, the BooYah network was praising Michael Vick as one of the greatest of all-time. In response, Bill Parcells said something about letting him hang some banners in the gym before we annoint him as greatest ever. So it should be with Kyle Busch.

Where's Anton Ego when we need him to provide the perspective?

 

I have surround sound, and I have cranked it up at those times and I must say it is pretty impressive. Its a great way to watch a race.

 

I still think the GRDAT is a B-RAT.

 

Thanks, I can see some of those things, but as you said it will be a long, long way off before he is even close to the same class as Earnhardt. I wish people would just let him be Kyle Busch. He has no doubt been impressive so far this year, but there is a lot of racing left to do.