An uninformed view on NASCAR from a casual fan who has spent the past two years trying to figure out what a "lucky dog" is.
I know the Daytona 500 is NASCAR’s Super Bowl but did the
pre-race festivities have to go on as long as the run up to the XLII? When Michael McDonald sang the line in ‘Takin’
It To The Streets’ “I was raised here in this living hell.” I thought he was
talking about the pre-game entertainment.
For entertainers there are three stages. Life, death, and the career near death
experience of performing at sporting events.
Message to Chubby Checker, McDonald, and Brooks & Dunn. It’s over.
I’m cursed. Every
year I do FOX NASCAR Fantasy Racing and every year stuff like this
happens. Today I had Jeff Gordon, Kyle
Busch, Jeff Burton, and Clint Bowyer. I
ask you, what are the odds of Jeff Gordon finishing 39th?
Kyle Busch had the best ride of anyone in the field but
couldn’t get there at the end. Bowyer
had good moments and bad luck, and Burton
pulled the biggest vanishing act since Harry Houdini after taking the lead near
the end.
I have a degree in economics (I thought women were into
economists. Who knew?) and they taught
us about spurious correlation. That’s
where you tie an outcome to an unrelated event.
Here is mine. As soon as Jeff
Burton took the lead FOX started showing his wife and then he disappeared.
Now this happens with husbands and wives at times, but it
shouldn’t be allowed to happen down the stretch at Daytona. Hereafter Mrs. Burton should be sent to the
concession stand until he closes the deal.
My favorite driver is Tony Stewart. Compared to the other drivers he’s a Jack
Daniels in a shot glass on a bar lined with skim milk in paper cups. One more reason? He finds a way to compete when things aren’t
clicking. Today his ride wasn’t there,
but he still was in third and looking for ways to win at the end. That’s the definition of a winner.
Why do bad things always happen within 15 feet of Pablo
Montoya? Even when he’s not at fault he’s
close enough for everyone to think he must have been involved.
It’s just the opposite with Sam Harnisch Jr. He came over from the Indy circuit and had a
good, clean ride that kept him competitive without becoming a menace to
navigation. He’s one to watch this
year.
Casey Mears may be about to have a big season. Ran up around five late in the race before
being set back by an accident. If he
keeps riding that close to the front good things will happen.
Good start for the FOX announcers. They manage to stay out of the way of the
race but step in with concise insights that add to your understanding of the
action. How many times do you hear that
about sportscasters? And Darrell Waltrip’s
comments about passing the point where #3 crashed were well said without being
overly sentimental.
NASCAR isn’t perfect, and it’s sure not what the executives
running the show hoped it would become.
But on a Sunday in February it was sure a welcome sight.
I thought Stewart moved down to block kyle busch and got what he had coming. he could have stayed where he was and either won the race or let his teammate win it. instead he totally screwed himself and teammate. he should be ashamed.
A lucky dog is a dog that ran across the track and lived to tell about it. Seroiusly. We don't need lucky dogs in a race.
Over all this was a safer race than in the past. Plenty of lead changes and quite a bit of who is going to win in the last few laps as well as bone head calls by a certain crew chief of Dale Jr.s.
The middle of the race was a bit of a sleeper so NASCAR has to shorten up the super speeway 500 milers to keep people awake the whole race though.
I think this race was exciting the first 50 laps and the last 50 laps.
LaMonte....TRUTH. Tony just had to block Kyle. If he had stayed where he was---outside line---it would have been him and Kyle side by side for the lead. Nice move Tony.
Tony thought he'd get his team mates support. How silly...
Lucky Dog is the one that is the first driver that is a lap down during a wreck or caution. He gets back in the lead lap at the back of pack. ....I think!
I agree on the fox team is very good. When the 4 letter network takes over i'll have to tvo the races so I don't have to listen to the broadcast.I'll just fast forward through the races. We'll be rides our harleys on a regular basis by that time.
Jag, Fish, LaMonte-I wondered about Stewart's move too, but when they had the in-car audio Stewart kept talking about how he would have to stay low. Of course, that was a long time before the finish.
Klvaus-Gordon 39th is just hard to imagine, especially at a track he has run well at. That team usually has all the mechanical stuff under control. Wonder if it is a bad sign.
IowaGirl-I think I have it now. But they didn't talk about it yesterday, or maybe I just didn't hear it. I'll keep watching. Fortunately, you can watch NASCAR without really understanding it and it still makes sense.
OneSouthernLion-What happened to Burton anyway? My theory, from listening to his interviews, is he's too nice. He needs to stick his nose in a bit more and get it done.
I resisted the last-minute urge to throw Bowyer into my lineup. THat's the good news. The bad news is that I was going to put him in the lineup in place of Jimmie (27th place) Johnson. Oh, well.
I don't watch the telecasts as much as I listen to them since my TV is behind me when I'm sitting at my computer. The FOX announcers are very easy on the ears . . . good mix of analysis, laid-back talk and (when the conditions call for up) some gold-ol' boy whoopin' it up.
photogr - I prefer the Lucky Dog rule to the old and much more dangerous practice of racing back to the caution but think it could be tweaked a little.
Here are some interesting stats on the Lucky Dog since it was introduced in September of 2003 at Dover. Kyle Petty has the most by a large margin (48). Only 7 races have been won by someone who received the Lucky Dog. That's out of somewhere around 150 races. Ryan Newman has done it twice. Others who have received the Lucky Dog and won once are Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Kyle and Kurt, and Kasey Kahne. By the way, Kyle has the record for most Lucky Dogs in one race with 5.
