Here we are at the end of the 2007 NASCAR season after ten months of stock car racing. I can’t imagine how the drivers or the traveling teams feel at this point, but I for one can say that I am worn out. I feel like I have been in a 700 mile race and I have only 2 laps remaining. However, as worn out as I say I am, I’ll be missing the races within 2 weeks eagerly anticipating Daytona’s early January test times.
Perhaps my feeling of being worn out by the long season is just a matter of this week’s race in Miami not bringing any flavor to the table. The season championship is on the line and separated by a small enough amount of points that two drivers have a shot at winning the title. I should be awaiting this Miami race with the anticipation of how we all do for the Super Bowl, Game 7 of the World Series, at least when baseball used to get that far, or the World Cup Final, Men’s of course. But I don’t.
So what does that say about the Chase format, Miami, Chevy domination, and teammates battling for the title when someone like me, who I believe it’s fair to say is an above average follower of the sport, isn’t getting psyched for Sunday’s season finale?
Well, it’s funny that I pose the question because I have a few answers to why I’m not as pumped as I think I should be.
The Chase: It’s a great idea on paper and I believe the media who don’t regularly follow NASCAR, like the idea; but I think for the everyday regular fan that has followed it for some time has had enough.
The media like it because they can relate to NASCAR now in terms to what they’re used to. These are the reporters who wonder every year why NASCAR’s biggest race of the season starts the year off. The Chase makes sense to them.
For the fan, they’re not drawn by the fact the team who worked the hardest all season can have their title taken away because someone was better over the last ten races. True, that’s how they do it in all the other sports, but NASCAR isn’t every other sport; remember, they run their best race at the beginning of the season and plenty of people liked it just the way it’s always been. Go back to the way it’s always been and put it on the ledgers as a tried event with simpler just being better.
Homestead-Miami: There’s nothing against Homestead or Miami, but this is the race NASCAR caps it’s season off with? Yeah, it makes sense because there is so much NASCAR history intertwined throughout with Miami. My greatest auto-racing memory from Miami was a Crockett and Tubbs car chase in a Miami Vice episode. When I think of Miami, it’s all about South Beach, Girls in small bikini’s, Cuban sandwiches, and Mojito’s. NASCAR comes last on the list of non-supported events by Miami fans of which includes the Dolphins, Hurricanes, Heat, Marlins, and Jai Lai. Can you blame them? You have sun everyday, a beach, and again, girls in bikini’s.
Attendance figures have lagged at the speedway since it opened. Even the new faster banked configuration can’t help the sales nor can it attract any of the fans. Many NASCAR fans that travel to races all over the South treat Highway 4 as some sort of a border to another country. Daytona is about as south as their willing to go.
The solution? Make the final race of the season at place that will have some energy. Daytona would definitely have some ####e; beginning and ending the year at the birth place of stock car racing? Yes, that definitely has some appeal. How about Las Vegas? A Saturday night race on national TV with a celebrity invite list that would beat courtside at a Lakers game? Yes, that has the glitz and flair I’d be looking for in a meaningful Championship event. I can guarantee that both venues would be sold out weeks before the event dropped the Green flag.
Chevy Domination & Teammates battling: The battle down the stretch isn’t exactly reminding anyone of Richard Petty and David Pearson or Plymouth vs Ford. The chase down the stretch is vanilla and G-rated. It should have been expected to evolve into what it has since the competitive balance has shifted to being basically like baseball’s Yankee’s and Red Sox where the deepest pockets win. Unfortunately, just like baseball, there are only couple owners who can compete.
Watching Gordon and Johnson battle it down the stretch is like watching Batman and Robin battle it out at ping pong with the loser going aaahhh-shux, and buying the winner a soda. They don’t dislike each other and are more polite than the Walton brothers. If it were Kyle and Kurt Busch down the stretch, now that would be fun. A chevy vs a dodge and a history between brothers that say they would run over momma for a win.
I don’t know how NASCAR let Chevy or Hendrick get this far ahead of everyone else in the league, but if Bill France Sr. or Jr. were around they wouldn’t have stood for it.
Along the same lines, some of things that have happened in the last few years regarding penalties and suspensions for drivers and crews just doing what NASCAR drivers and crews have always done has soured some. It has also vanillafied the sport taking away some of it’s soul that made it stand out from other sports. NASCAR has gone big time in America and is appealing to a new larger audience. Along the way they have made concessions under media scrutiny to be harsher. The appeal of NASCAR is the personalities of the drivers and how they express it on the track. It is walking a thin line between interpreting rules a certain way and being tricky enough to get away with it. The next thing you know, they’ll be trying to get away from the bootlegger history because it suggests criminal activity helped evolve NASCAR into what it is today.
…..and Now to stuff that actually matters Enough of the Opinions, lets get to some data that may actually assist in your final week of picking winners. The Homestead-Miami Speedway can be classed into the 1.5 mile high banked category with Las Vegas, Charlotte, Texas, and Atlanta. You can also group the Miami track with those simply because they’ll be using the ‘Car of Yesterday” which they have on all of those tracks. Unlike the Speedway MotorSports tracks that are tri-ovaled, Miami is more like a paper clip shape with two long equal drag racing straights that run right into 20 degrees of banking in the turns.
Since 3 of the last 5 races have come at Texas, Charlotte, and Atlanta, there will be plenty of data to go with. Or if you don’t want to go through anything, all you basically have to do is bet Jimmie Johnson, that’s all! Johnson won two of those three races and has won the last 4 races in a row, two of them in the “Car of Tomorrow” and two of them in the “Old Car”. Apparently it doesn’t matter which car Johnson goes with, he’s just better. His “Old Car” may actually have more of an edge on the competition than the COT. If you would have blindly bet $100 on Jimmie Johnson for each race at an average price of 5 to 1 all season long you would be up $3,100 with one race to go. Who needs to handicap and decipher through practice times and past history? If you just bet the 48, you get paid!
Johnson has won 11 races and has a comfortable 86 point lead over Gordon. All Johnson has to do is finish 18th or better and regardless of what Gordon does, Johnson will win his 2nd consecutive Nextel Cup title. Meanwhile on the flip side, Jeff Gordon has now been beat 2 of the last 4 seasons out of a championship that would have been his under the old system. If NASCAR had left things alone and not try to conform to what other sports do, Gordon would be getting his 6th Cup title this year.
If looking to play a few drivers that could beat Johnson this week, Greg Biffle might be the first driver to look at. Biffle has won the last 3 Miami races in a row and done so in impressive fashion. The parallels between Biffle’s 2006 and 2007 season into Miami are very similar. In both years Biffle had a disappointing season with only one win and struggled on 1.5 mile high banked tracks after dominating in the past. Just like this year, he isn’t considered one of the favorites to win and just like last year the probable best car, Jimmie Johnson, may just lay back and try to finish well to win a Championship.
I'll go with a safe pick in Martin Truex Jr not because he finished 2nd in the Miami race last season, but because of how well he ran at Texas three weeks ago. He’s likely to bring the same chassis and why not, because it’ll be the last time they can use it as we say farewell to the “Car of Unsafe Yesterday”.
Last weeks race at Indy almost mirrored what happened at Pocono in June. Of the top 16 finishers at Pocono in June, 15 of those started at Indy last week (Nemechek DNQ). Of the 15 drivers, 10 finished in the top 13 at Indy. Stewart and Gordon were of course two of those drivers. The big surprise of consistency was the entire Childress team making each list from both races. Clint Bowyer may be the best candidate of the non-winners at Pocono, and in NASCAR, to win this week. He comes in with a chance at joining the 3 other first time winners this year that include Casey Mears, Martin Truex Jr, and Juan Pablo Montoya.
The one driver who is missing on the list that may have had the best car in the first pocono race is Jimmie Johnson. I think he comes up big this week.
I have always found Chicago to be a bizarre place for a NASCAR race. From the marketing end, you always want to have your product in every big market. Chicago is huge, it’s undeniable; if NASCAR had a chance to get a race there they were going to make it happen.
The only problem I have with it is that each time I visit Chicago, I never meet anyone who likes NASCAR. I don’t venture too much outside of the city, but the people I talk to at the many sports bars I frequent don’t care for it. They like baseball, football, hockey, and sometimes basketball if they get free tickets. This is in no way a perfect scientific survey, it’s just an observation from my time in Chicago with sports fans. They just don’t care about auto racing.
So then I ask, “Why is the track sold out for every event then?”
They reply with, “It’s not us selling it out, it’s all the red-necks from Carbondale and the back woods people from Indiana and Kentucky driving Northward.”
Later I look at a map and see just how close all these places are to each other. Living in Las Vegas, it’s hard to relate because the only thing close to us within a three hour drive is lovely Baker, California. In Joliet, Chicago, a three hour drive radius spans access to several million people. Race fans in Davenport, Iowa make the trip in 2 hours. Indianapolis is about 3 hours away. Milwaukee is only 2 hours away.
So while the actual Chicagoan may not like NASCAR, the Chicagoland area is flocked to by many from the surrounding cities and states. The Midwesterners love NASCAR. Because it’s a once a year thing they can make a trip out of it and see their beloved Cubs as well. Most in that area are either Cubs or Cardinals fans but have also found a fond spot for NASCAR.
After a long discussion with this Southsider he finally says, “If I want to watch it, I’ll just check it out on TV, it’s not like it’s a ball game and you have to be there to get the experience.”
We took a sip from our draft of Pabst and agreed to disagree. There was going to be no talking this guy into seeing something that maybe he was missing. The northern city folk are a tough sell. New York city is pretty much the same thing. Los Angeles has sprinkles of fans throughout but they still don’t go to the races there because they say there is just too much else to do outside in So Cal.
Maybe NASCAR is still a Southern thing in spirit and in hospitality. The folks from the big cities don’t have time for BBQ’s after races. They’re too busy to go to the track early and make some breakfast on the grill. How about spending an entire day with your family and friends?
The culture that is represented at a NASCAR Cup race is what the race is all about. Most of what makes a NASCAR race great has nothing to with the race itself. If it was just about the race, you could watch it on TV. It’s about the people, the people that come from all over the country to gather with each other. While I love many things about big cities, the grass roots approach can’t be duplicated and can’t be beat. That something that combines friendliness and a small town feel is something that NASCAR brings to each race.
Other than that, the only thing I could sell the inner city Chicago sports fan on going to the race besides the beers and brauts is that Bears Head Coach Lovie Smith is going to be the Grand Marshall for the race. Da-Bears!
As for the race action itself on the track, this will be the seventh race run at the Joliet track. The race also kicks off the 2nd half of the season where there will be an 8 race dash to make the Chase for the Championship. The top 12 drivers will make the chase making it a mad scramble over the course of that stretch for drivers sitting 13th through 19th. The diversity of the final 8 race tracks is what really makes it exciting. We have a road course, a bull ring, a funky whatever you want call Pocono track, a couple cookie cutters, and then of course the Brickyard.
Weeks Rank Season In Last Driver Driver Pts Wins Top 12 Week Rating
1. Jeff Gordon 2,773 4 18 1 110.3 2. Denny Hamlin 2,496 1 16 2 99.2 3. Matt Kenseth 2,390 1 16 3 93.8 4. Jimmie Johnson 2,366 4 17 4 109.3 5. Jeff Burton 2,345 1 18 5 91.7 6. Carl Edwards 2,308 1 15 7 93.8 7. Tony Stewart 2,234 0 15 6 99.5 8. Kyle Busch 2,190 1 16 10 96.0 9. Kevin Harvick 2,172 1 17 8 85.2 10. Martin Truex Jr. 2,157 1 6 9 87.6 11. Clint Bowyer 2,142 0 16 11 83.2 12. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2,040 0 6 12 94.5 __________________________________________________ ______
Top drivers OUTSIDE looking IN to the CHASE
13. Jamie McMurray 1,991 14. Ryan Newman 1,979 15. Kurt Busch 1,919 16. Greg Biffle 1,836 17. J.J. Yeley 1,804 18. Mark Martin 1,774 19. Casey Mears 1,761
“Just Shoot Me” is no longer just a TV sitcom, it’s how I feel after watching a TNT NASCAR telecast. I can’t really pick on one specific area of how awful it is, it’s just bad! This stretches more than just to the announcers; this hits the technical director, the camera guys, the producer, the graphic person, the information geeks, and even the blimp driver.
I can even chuckle at the irony of TNT broadcasting a Petty prayer only to have him land an emphatic “F-Bomb” less than 2 minutes later in the coverage. Not a big deal, the Petty portion of their coverage might be the most informative and entertaining thing they broadcast. How they have Larry McReynolds on the bench in the studio, while Wally Dallenbach flaps about the obvious amazes me. NASCAR fans are smarter than ever, and most of it in part, is because of the education process FOX has given us over the years with their great crew.
The worst part of the entire race was how quickly they got off the air when the race was over. They never showed the running order at the finish line. I waited, and I waited, then they showed me the season points up to date; Gee, thanks!
Then, they showed the credits of all the fine staff members, and went off the air. No ticker with results, no Top 20, Nothing! I guess that’s too much to ask as a viewer to expect the final results to come across somewhere?
One thing is for sure, their priorities are straight because they sure got their commercials on without error. I don’t think it would be as bad if they didn’t repeat the same ones over and over. The Kasey Kahne commercials non-stop, is he that dreamy?
Maybe it’s a Time-Warner ploy for us all to buy the NASCAR.com Track-Pass for final results. I believe Time-Warner has a division that created the NASCAR web-site (that’s another poor performer) and of course, Time-Warner also owns TNT. So, maybe there is an absolute reason for not giving information because they want us to buy it. I can live with that, but I don’t buy it.
