Nascar Road Racing

12:00 PM
Fox is showing the French GP. I might do a review of this race for you.

1:37 PM
Note the time between this post and the last one.

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that all you really have to watch in an F1 race is the first lap and sometimes just the first turn? Felipe Massa beat Kimi Raikkonen into turn 1 and went on to win the race. I think the only pass happened during pit stops. I want to like F1 racing, but when there isn't any real racing, it's hard to get excited about it.

A few laps into the race, I found that I didn't care enough about the F1 race and so I thought I'd do a review of the IRL race at Iowa. I found, once again, that I didn't care enough about the race, though I suspect there were some passes for the lead.

So, I wait until 4pm for the Nascar race to start.

2:49 PM
Does Kyle Petty bring a great story about the early days of Nascar every week? If so, I might have to start watching the pre-race, because this is excellent.

2:52 PM
The food segment with that goofy guy from those Friday's commercials reminds me of Mario Batali bringing the Fox guys some food last year, food described by my wife as "chicken with some crap on it." The Fox guys were all very polite about it, but they clearly didn't like it very much. Then, Greg Biffle shows up with Subway and they went nuts over it. If you watch The Food Network some, like I do, then you know how funny this is because Batali's rather pretentious.

4:06 PM
In case you don't know, Guy Fieri, the goofy Friday's guy, does a show we watch sometimes called "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives". It's kind of a neat show. The best part of the show is when he eats something he doesn't like and has to pretend that it's really good.

4:22 PM
Strategery? What's wrong with just saying "strategy"? Kyle, please don't succumb to the temptation that befell DW, thinking that people are watching the race to listen to you.

4:23 PM
Anybody remember why Kyle driving at Sears Point last year didn't work out? It's because Kyle forgot where he was and wound up cussing on TV after an on-track incident.

4:27 PM
Terrific analysis by Kyle. Kurt Busch hits the tires, Bobby thinks somebody's going to get a run on him and he nails the gas too quickly, causing him to lose traction and spin.

4:33 PM
Every once in a while, I'll go to McDonald's and say, "Wow. I haven't had a Big Mac in a long time. Maybe I should have one." Then, I'll have one and remember why I don't eat them very much. I love Big Macs, but they don't really like me.

4:37 PM
Pop quiz, hotshot. Who's Marcus Ambrose?

He's a champion of the Australian V8 Supercars. He's living proof that if you give a racecar driver enough seat time, he'll be able to succeed in whatever car he's driving. He ran some Busch races over the last couple of years or so and was terrible at first, but was getting better with each race. But, he's a real racer, and he's getting better as he gets more seat time.

4:43 PM
Maybe Kasey just isn't as good of a road racer and that's why he's being passed. Just a thought.

4:44 PM
BTW, if you're not familiar with the V8 Supercars, they run on road courses. The big race in their season is at Mount Panorama.

4:45 PM
I still call this place Sears Point. When I started following Cup racing closely, they raced here at Sears Point, so that's what I still call it. Old habits die hard. Sorry, Infineon. Whoever you guys are.

5:04 PM
What they should talk about is the fact that it's actually a good thing to pit before the yellow and before everybody who didn't pit. And they did.

5:14 PM
I've gotten to the point where I hate the "Kasey's Groupies Dreaming about Kahne Dancing for Them" commercial.

5:17 PM
I was cringing there while they were talking about Kyle Busch. Thankfully, Wally and Kyle didn't annoint him as the GRDAT.

5:27 PM
Great stuff on tire camber from Larry, Kyle and Wally. I continue to believe that TNT is doing more for Larry McReynolds in 3 races than Fox did for him in all the races they did combined.

5:39 PM
One thing that the conspiracy theorists can't do is complain about the driver that TNT is covering. They haven't mentioned Dale Earnhardt Jr so much as once. You know why? Because Junior's currently running in 18th. IOW, he's not up front, so they're not talking about him. And, until Kyle Busch got up front, they hadn't mentioned him either. This is what good race coverage is all about, not covering the big names just because they're a big name. It's about covering whoever's up front.

5:45 PM
Continuing with the discussion of the blind turns here, when I do road course simracing, I hate blind turns like that. The hardest tracks for me to drive is those where there are blind turns and you can't find your mark. Without your mark, you don't hit the brakes until it's too late and you go off the road for some agricultural racing. There's nothing fast about agricultural racing.

5:52 PM
Another commercial I can do without is the Sprint commercial where they've superimposed teeth and stuff on the cars so it looks like they're fighting on the track.

5:57 PM
That's what I thought too, that putting new tires on the car adds grip to it. Again, Kyle's great with the analysis of how it's hard to adjust a car to give it more grip.

5:58 PM
Not only should they be pleased with the car, but they should be pleased with the driver too. Marcus Ambrose has done a great job.

6:11 PM
Guy Fieri, Friday's commercial, says that girls like consistency. {insert joke here}

6:13 PM
And Wally just took a step to undo all the good that's been done for Larry by asking him how many of his wins at Infineon as a crew chief he cheated to get.

On the 1991 win by Davey Allison, here's a link to video on Youtube of the last lap. You be the judge. Should Ricky Rudd have gotten the win? Or, was Nascar right to black flag him as he came around to take the checkers, which gave the win to Davey?

6:14 PM
Why are they throwing a caution? JPM got going, so what's the caution for?

6:24 PM
That's Ok, Kyle. Nobody thinks of Elliot Sadler as a road racer.

6:29 PM
Yeah, like I said last week.. nothing creepy about the 6 minute abs commercial. Not creepy at all.

6:31 PM
Yeah, Marcus had a good day, but a bad finish doesn't really make up for it I don't think. Are there moral victories in Cup racing? I'm not so sure.

6:34 PM
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Casey Mears was out at the end of the season. If you can't win at Hendrick, you can't win. Let the speculation begin on who will take his place.

6:47 PM
"Tell Juan to go. He's a pro!"

Ha! :laugh:

6:49 PM
Great point from Larry about Kyle returning to focusing on Cup racing only. Cup racing is just too competitive to be able to run well by having your attention divided among other racing series.

6:59 PM
BTW, I agree with Wally that Kyle's just going to take off.

7:00 PM
There's no way Tony catches Kyle.

Especially now that Harvick just took out McMurray and Tony.

That's terrible driving by Harvick.

7:05 PM
Saying "Keep it on the black" only sounds stupid to people who know less about racing than they think they do. I can tell you from my simracing that road course racing isn't easy. Multiply the difficulty factor by 100x because it's real life, and I can see how difficult it is to do that job called "race car driver".

7:09 PM
They did jam up. That one wasn't Tony's fault.

7:23 PM
Again, Kyle analyzes and explains things so well. You know, I haven't heard Kyle say one stupid thing, and many smart things, today. I think he might be the best individual analyst in Nascar right now.

7:27 PM
See my comment of an hour ago about Elliott Sadler as a road racer.

7:30 PM
I love how they're talking about Kyle Busch's run without saying he's the GRDAT or comparing him to Tiger Woods.

This is the kind of race coverage we're supposed to have, without the hyperbole and the nonsense. I only hope that ESPN is taking notes about how to do a proper race broadcast.