The 2021 Running NASCAR/IMSA/other racing things thread

Misleading ad above. It only runs through the end of 2021, not for 365 days.

(Merci. I signed up.)

 

Gordon and Bowyer and great TV ...

 

Those numbers will get moved. It's one thing to say you wish to work with sponsors. "Work" is being kind to how NASCAR treats sponsors.

 

The cars didn’t look that bad at the all-star race. I thought it’d look worse. I don’t know how running under the lights/varying paint schemes played a role in that.

Also I know it’s been a while now, but I still can’t get used to the 2 not being the Miller car.

 

Messing with the numbers will make it hard to pick our who you want to watch. It's not like you can search for a sponsor or paint scheme anymore. They changes weekly for even the top drivers.

 

NASCAR has never "worked" with anyone, ever, since 1948. Bill Sr. was a "my way or the highway" guy and every single exec there, from Mike Helton to David Hoots to Ramsey Poston demanded complete and total control of the product and the tone of the content. They are Daytona Beach's version of a racing mafia.

AT&T was thrown out of the sport just to coddle Nextel. GEICO got the same treatment to coddle Nationwide. Those teams got the shaft while the Frances got the cash. And where are Nextel and Nationwide now?

NASCAR steps on its dick a lot but there's nobody willing to point it out for fear of getting their hard card pulled. It had a lucky horseshoe up its ass before Dale's death, but Brian Z. and his posse did nothing but make bad decision after bad decision -- COT, Chase, stage racing, you name it -- that came from Madison Avenue marketing geniuses in an effort to make "Game 7" moments instead of letting those happen organically.

NASCAR was Donald Trump before we knew what that meant.

 

Who knew Clint Bowyer was the six-fingered man? Yeah, that dive bomb at Martinsville was particularly head shaking, but I never realized Wonder Boy had an avenger's list stored away underneath that unibrow.

 

Excellent analysis of what’s wrong with the 4 car this season:

From 2014-19, they produced the fastest car in five out of six seasons. They ranked second in the outlier year, 2017, a season of transition from Chevrolet to Ford in which they also produced the fastest car in the playoffs.

In 2020, Stewart-Haas Racing’s bellwether program ranked fourth in speed for the entire season and fourth in the playoffs specifically. Through five races this year, they rank 12th in average median lap time. While Harvick managed to secure finishes beyond his speed’s expectation, carrying an 8.2-place average result into this weekend’s race in Atlanta, the dip in his speed ranking, the metric with a near-perfect correlation with finishing position, is a problem with which Childers is reckoning.

“We had some rules changes and some new templates and stuff like that that really changed the shape of the rear wheel openings,” Childers explained this week on SiriusXM Radio’s NASCAR channel. “Just to be frank, it knocked 70 counts of downforce off the cars, and when you knock that amount of downforce off, especially when it mainly comes off the rear, it just completely messes up your aero balance.

“And when it messes up your aero balance and you have limited wind-tunnel time, it’s hard to get that figured out before the season starts.”

Some of NASCAR’s recent changes, such as the 2019 parts freeze, reduced research and development efforts, including limiting aerodynamic study from wind-tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamic simulations, coupled with the new wheel-opening templates are believed to have bolstered the early-season parity. They also incrementally knocked a juggernaut program off of its perch, a demise by a thousand cuts.​

Parity isn’t a bad thing, though. NASCAR has needed more different winners for a while now.

Helping Harvick: In need of speed, onus falls on Childers to secure track position — NBC Sports

 

The above post is great stuff.
How much, in NASCAR today or the last decade or so, is performance and success at the top due to the Driver vs. the Equipment? Or maybe it's Driver vs. Team?
Who would you all say is the best DRIVER in NASCAR today?

 

Larson. Guys who come up through non-asphalt racing seem to have a much better ability to handle the car. No surprise that he’s already back in the championship fight. More skittish handling this year (which is a good and long overdue change) is only going to favor guys like that.

Before anybody says “Jimmie Johnson” as a counter to that, remember that he used to race this Chevy:

 

I just saw that the NBC deal is up in 2024. For some reason 2022 was on my mind.

I’m also wondering how much NASCAR programming gets cut when NBCSN folds. There goes the nightly NASCAR show.