It’s a bit of a weekend off for teams, as even though we will be at the track this week for the All Star and Truck races, at least we get to sleep in our own beds. If you are in Charlotte for the races, don’t forget that the Pit Crew Challenge is tonight at Time Warner Cable Arena in Uptown Charlotte! Before it kicks off though, here is the 75th edition of ATIW to help you get through your hump day. If you don’t know what this post is, we answer any and all reader questions every Wednesday, right here. So if you’ve got one, click on the ”Ask the Insiders” tab at the top of the page and send one to us. On to the questions…
1. From Ron:
Excellent site. Withthe new spoiler package they are controlled and dispensed at each event by NASCAR. How is it that some cars have their’s color matched if they are distributed randomly? I would think the teams wouldn’t know what spoiler[s] they would get each race.
Unlike the now extinct wing, NASCAR does not issue the spoilers to the teams. They are put on at the shop and then teched when they get to the track, just like they used to be. That’s why some teams have color matched pieces. - T.C.
2. From Jerry:
Guys what happens if Brian Vickers car owners points make the chase but his own drivers points don’t. Are Chase births given to the car or the driver.
Great question! There are actually two Chases. One for the driver championship and one for the owner championship. It’s no different then when Carl Edwards won the Nationwide Series driver championship in 2007, while RCR took home the owner championship. We don’t often see another driver run a car that is so high in points, so to this point, it hasn’t been an issue. - T.C.
3. From Kim:
This may be the silliest question you’ve gotten, but when a driver like Casey Mears subs for different drivers, what firesuit do they wear? Do they quickly doctor up a suit with the appropriate sponsor logos?
There are no silly questions here. Casey actually wore a generic firesuit at Dover. I would imagine if he continues to drive the #83 that he would have a Red Bull firesuit going forward. It really depends on how much time the team has. If they have some advance warning, they can get a firesuit ready. If not, the sub driver either has to wear one of their own, or hope they fit into one of the current driver’s suits. – T.C.
4. From Christopher:
At Darlington, Jeff Burton was penalized for running over the air hose. I’m curious- what is the rationale behind this type of penalty? I understand speeding on pit road- it’s a safety issue with other drivers, and it gives you an unfair advantage. But driving over a hose doesn’t give you any advantage, and can only really hurt yourself.
Running over an air hose is a definitely a safety concern. The combination of an impact and the hose getting kicked up by the tires can be very dangerous. If an impact were to hit someone, it could do some serious damage, and the air hose is connected to a Nitrogen bottle that has 2,500 lbs of pressure in it. – T.C.
5. From Kyle:
What do you know about the ownership situation at Red Bull Racing? There are rumors the company wants to move into a sponsorship only role. Any idea what team the sponsorship would go to if this were to happen?
The team is wholly owned by Red Bull owner (or perhaps more accurate, majority stakeholder) Deitrich Mateschitz (just like the Red Bull F1 team). So short of Red Bull deciding, without Mateschitz, that they no longer want to be in the NASCAR sponsorship business, it’s not too likely. Though I suppose if you looked at it from it’s purest form Red Bull really is just a sponsor now (albeit a very large one). – Journo
6. From Christopher:
When people talk about start-and-parkers, they often complain that they’re keeping better (serious) drivers off the track. If money and sponsorship were no issue, which drivers could be competing well in the Sprint Cup?
That’s a good question (it’s not something I necessarily buy into). Start-and-parkers are filling a void. Certainly there are exceptions every now and then but in the absence of the start and park teams we would likely have less than full fields. If money and sponsorship were no issue? That’s tough and I’m no driver development expert – this is something even the best driver development people have failed at (ex. Reed Sorenson, Casey Mears). Sorry. – Journo
7. From Allen:
Who makes the call to hand down penalties or park a car in the middle of a race? Brian France? Mike Helton?
Those calls generally come from the series director – Wayne Auton in the Truck Series, Joe Balash in the Nationwide Series and John Darby in the Cup Series. When drivers get to the trailer though, they sometimes get to meet with both the Series Director and Mr. Helton. – Journo
8. From yankeegranny:
Ok, what’s the story; was there a steering problem with the 88 at Dover, or not? If there was, what was it, and if there wasn’t has my fav driver become delusional? Seriously, what could be wrong with the car to make a driver say he had to turn the wheel 90 degrees to the left to get it go straight on a straightaway? Did he hit something/someone early in the race to knock something loose?
It is my understanding that there was, in fact, no problem at all. The marbles at Dover can be pretty bad, and if a driver picks them up on his tires, he can think all manner of things are wrong. It is not uncommon for drivers to think they have a flat tire or some mechanical issue. That’s why you see drivers swerving back and forth under caution to clean their tires. Dale Jr. isn’t crazy, and he wasn’t the only victim of the marbles this weekend. It’s just another example of the horrible luck and circumstances that continue to keep this team down. – T.C.
9. From Sann:
With all the drivers that get right front flats and smack the wall, would it be possible to run a liner in just that tire to prevent hitting the wall?
At Dover, Goodyear runs inner liners in all of the tires. When a tire blows out though, there isn’t much that is going to stop a car from heading straight for the wall, inner liner or not. The inner liner may make the hit not hurt so bad, but it’s inevitable. – T.C.
10. From yankeegranny:
In this age of mega teams with mega bucks, simulators, windtunnels, and 7-post whatever they ares, how can a team unload a car that misses the needed race setup completely. Some cars seem to be pure garbage from the time they come off the truck and nothing seems to improve them. On whose shoulders do we lay the blame..somehow it seems that this is one that we can’t blame on the driver?
Well it depends what team/s you’re talking about. Lesser funded teams don’t have the resources to spend a lot of time at the wind tunnel or at the 7-post – many of those teams are also running sub-par and used engines. When you see these teams run like garbage it’s often because their using sub-par equipment (having Chad Knaus on the box and Jimmie Johnson in the car wouldn’t do them any good). In the case of well funded teams you can blame the driver and/or the crew chief for missing the mark. Something to consider too is changing conditions. If a team practices in sunny/hot conditions and they race in cold/cloudy conditions their setup is going to get messed up. – Journo
11. From Walt:
When a driver says that they are tight or pushing in one corner and then tight or pushing in the next corner how can you adjust for both corners?
Usually, just adjusting for the overall tight condition will help in both corners. At a place like Darlington, where 1 and 2 are different then 3 and 4, a happy medium has to be found. It’s very difficult to make the car run well through both sets of corners. – T.C.
And that brings yet another “Ask The Insiders Wednesday” to a close. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. And remember, if you’d like to be a part of next week, click on the ”Ask the Insiders” tab at the top of the page and send your question in!
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Filed under: Chase for the Sprint Cup
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Following another run-in with Brad Keselowski during Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Phoenix, Dave Burns of ESPN asked Denny Hamlin if NASCAR needed to get involved. Hamlin responded: “No, no, I’ll take care of him. It’s no biggy. I got him.”
Anybody else looking forward to this situation heading to Homestead?
In his ascension to the Cup Series this year, Keselowski has often used his bumper and some aggressive driving to get the job done. And it seems as though he’s done it more often lately. He has been called out by a few drivers including Hamlin and the brothers Busch. But strong words and threats from competitors haven’t slowed him down. Maybe a little retaliation will.
Hamlin and Keselowski have had on track incidents before, but fuel was added to the fire on Saturday. Following a restart, Hamlin’s Toyota got into Keselowski’s Chevy into turn one, sending the #88 car up the track. On the same lap, Keselowski attempted payback into turn three, but missed. Then in the center of three and four, Brad K. caught Hamlin and laid the bumper to him, sending Hamlin’s GameStop Camry around in front of the field.
After the warning from Hamlin during a post race interview, and the comments from other drivers, Keselowski was called into a meeting this morning with Cup Series directory John Darby and NASCAR’s CEO, Brian France. Keselowski told reporters the meeting “went real well.”
I certainly can’t fault Brad for being aggressive, as he is out there to win. And a little bumping and banging, along with some flared tempers always makes for some good racing action. But Keselowski needs to be a little more careful about who he roughs up. If he continues to cause problems with some of the sport’s top drivers, they can make life very difficult for him. He will be entering his first full season of Cup competition in 2010, and in order to be successful, he’s going to need at least a few friends. A driver that doesn’t respect him won’t give him room on the race track and they won’t help him out when he needs it.
Hopefully though, he is able to find a balance between being aggressive and also respectful. Mending a few fences along the way probably wouldn’t hurt either.
But no matter what happens, it sounds like things could get interesting this weekend at Homestead.
Following Talladega and comments by NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston on his blog, there has been a lot of discussion of the coverage of NASCAR races; more importantly how that coverage is shaping the audience’s perception of what they’re seeing.
All I can say is, it’s about time. Earlier this year I took up the topic of NASCAR and perception. No matter your feelings on the state of the sport, it’s undeniable that the color of coverage shapes what people feel.
Dustin Long interviewed Brian France on the issue of TV coverage. He touched on this issue. He said:
“We fully expect a lot of criticism for any number of reasons, judgment calls that are made, officiating calls that are made and some strategy or policy decisions that are made. We’ve always had that. That’s OK. What I’m saying is in opinions that are under the guise of criticism or being critical that just go on and on and on without much thought that’s different from some policy or rule violation that we didn’t handle correctly, somebody is more than fair to criticize us. It’s just there’s an unprecedented level that occurs when you espouse your opinion about how to do one thing or another.”
If you’re truly being honest with yourself, unless you’re out gathering news, where you get your news or in this case your racing coverage, is going to shape how you feel about it. For instance if you watch the local TV station that is big into covering local crime, chances are you’re going to believe crime is higher in your city. Likewise watching Fox News over MSNBC is likely going to shape how you see issues.
How many times in the last two seasons have you heard about ratings declines, or sagging attendance? The fact is attendance is down in the NFL and ratings are down 6% for MLB on ESPN (we’re no worse off than any other sporting event). If you hear something enough (like this race is boring) though you’ll start to believe it, it’s human nature. The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
I personally found the coverage a little much. I doubt the brass at ESPN was thrilled with it. They’re only driving away the audience for programming ESPN’s already paid for.
The NASCAR writer for the Oakland Press wrote a blog post giving kudos to ESPN for standing up to NASCAR. What are they standing up to NASCAR about? At the end of the day they’re only hurting themselves. ESPN is spending $270 million a year or $2.16 billion (from Sports Business Resource Guide) over the life of their contract for the rights to broadcast NASCAR races. Now you tell me, is it in ESPN’s best interest to say, “hey this product we’re broadcasting is really boring?” I don’t think so.
A couple of weeks ago Dustin Long did a wide-ranging interview about the state of the sport with Larry McReynolds, Kyle Petty and Jimmy Spencer. One of their big criticisms was the negativity that comes out of the sport’s media. While I think this was a pot calling the kettle black moment (they went on to criticize the sport pretty heavily) they made a good point.
Larry McReynolds said:
Darrell has put a great analogy. He goes, if you go to a restaurant and you’ve been going to that restaurant for years and you love that restaurant but you constantly read in the paper, it’s a bad restaurant, it’s a bad restaurant. Eventually, you’re going to say, I’m not going to that restaurant. Even if they rehire a complete new chef, staff, you’re still going to be hesitant about going back to that restaurant.
From time to time I like to watch old races and I’ll be honest with you, it really doesn’t look all that different. There aren’t constant battles for the lead, races do sometimes get spread out, and sometimes one car just dominates. The one big difference is you don’t hear Eli Gold or Ken Squier or Bob Jenkins criticizing the product. If you don’t believe me, track down a race from 10 or 15 years ago.
I don’t mean to suggest that NASCAR fans are more susceptible to this. But I do believe that this negativity runs rampant around here; more so than in other sports. When was the last time you were watching an NFL game and heard Joe Buck say how boring it was?
I think just like in every other sport, announcers need to walk a fine line. Criticize the league or sanctioning body for controversial decisions, fine; don’t drive fans off though by criticizing the product.
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On Tuesday the National Stock Car Racing Commission, NASCAR’s version of an appellate court, upheld most of the penalties against driver Carl Long.
In their ruling the Commission upheld the 12-race suspension, but only to the Cup Series garage, the $200,000 fine of crew chief Charles Swing and loss of owner and driver points. The Commission said if Swing is unable to pay the fine it may not fall to Long.
From the start of this thing, I can honestly say I have had very little pity for Carl Long. The minute he entered his car into the race a few weeks ago he agreed to abide by NASCAR’s rules. These rules are spelled out very clearly, in a very detailed rule book that Carl Long has.
He knew the expectations and he knew the consequences and he did not follow them either by accident or on purpose (I’m not going to try to determine intent and NASCAR shouldn’t have to either). He is now paying the price.
What was Carl Long’s response to this? It wasn’t the maturity you would expect of a 41-year-old. No, we got name calling, off the wall accusations, an inability to take responsibility and conspiracy theories. I never much thought about Carl Long before this, but I now have very little respect for the man.
He has tried to place blame on respected engine builder Ernie Elliott. Let me remind you this was a motor Elliott bought used from Chip Ganassi Racing, and then sold to Long not last month, but in January. The last time I checked if I buy a used car and something goes wrong five months later I don’t blame the car dealer that sold me the car. Ernie Elliott has no responsibility for that motor once it is sold, much like that car dealer. Who knows who has been working on that motor, or what has been done with that motor since it was sold to Long FIVE MONTHS ago.
Ernie Elliott has zero responsibility in this situation. And I am disgusted that Carl Long would trash this man the way he has. Ernie Elliott has built engines for years and has never had an issue like this. We certainly never saw this problem arise when he was building motors for Ganassi; and I assure you plenty of Ganassi’s motors were inspected.
Elliott was not the only person he trashed though. He referred to John Capels, Jack Housby and George Silbermann, all very respected businessmen in their own right, as “big bullies.”
He then went to on to attack both Brian France and Mike Helton. I know these are controversial men among many ardent fans, but they don’t deserve to have their integrity questioned.
And then he went on to attack the business as a whole, one which as far as I can tell has earned him a very good living. I saw in one article he estimated he was making about $100,000 a year. Now this isn’t to say he hasn’t earned that, but that is good money that not too many people in this country make. Especially to go racing every weekend.
Long and many others have argued that he can now no longer make a living doing what he knows. This is a farce. He works for a team that not only sometimes has two Cup Series teams but also a Nationwide team (remember he is not suspended from the Nationwide garage). He also doesn’t have to travel to the track for those weeks he is on suspension. Does this mean his present role with Front Row Motorsports is going to have to change for a little while? Definitely. But does it mean he can’t earn a living? Absolutely not.
At the end of the day the only reason this has become the issue that it has become is because Long can’t afford to pay the penalty. In instances where other teams have been issued large or aggressive penalties for things like jet-fuel additives in the fuel system (Micheal Waltrip Racing), or magnets behind the gas pedal (Joe Gibbs Racing) (among other incidents) we saw a lot people, a lot of fans calling these teams cheaters.
This happens to a small team and it is just the evil empire trying to stick it to the small guy. I think the release from the commission said it best:
“While it is tempting to consider penalties that this driver and team can more-readily bear, the sport would not be well served by having a sliding scale of penalties calibrated to a given team or member’s resources. Penalties of this magnitude for this type of infraction are warranted in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
And guess what? Drivers get this. Other than to sympathize with his lack of funding, I haven’t heard a single driver disagree with NASCAR issuing a penalty (Martin Truex and Jeff Burton here). They know if this were their team, they would face just as stiff a penalty. I know this is something many people don’t believe, but it’s true, NASCAR has proved many times before they are willing to fine the big teams (Chad Knaus was ejected from Speedweeks and then suspended for six races in 2006; also refer to earlier mentioned penalties).
This was a big deal, whether Carl meant to do it or not. Every team and driver knows fuel, tires and engines are things you don’t mess with and he apparently inadvertently broke that golden rule.
He wanted to run with the big dogs on Sunday, but clearly could not handle the responsibility and consequences that can go along with that (i.e. $200,000 fines). In my opinion if Carl didn’t have the resources, for whatever reason, to make sure every part of that car was in spec he didn’t deserve to be out on that race track.
He now needs to bite the bullet and serve his penalty with integrity.