The 2022 running NASCAR, IMSA & other racing things thread

So Brian France had too much Pepsi and Coke, then cleansed himself with lots of Musco lighting. Then experienced global warming before going on a bender and driving up and down International Speedway Boulevard under the influence? Or did he hit too many beachgoers driving up and down the beaches? Or did the global warming come after the bender? Or did he fall off the boat in the infield lake?

 

The IRL — an ovals-only series.

 

NASCAR jumped the shark when it started mentioning the Brickyard in the same breath as Daytona and Darlington before the first green flag even dropped.
I'm sorry, but you can't be a crown jewel before you happen.

 

But those Gargoyles wraparound sunglasses were pretty f'king cool and if they brought them back I'd buy some.


OH, MY! — Classic

 

The true NASCAR triple crown is the Daytona 500, Southern 500 and World 600. No other answers are acceptable. It says a lot about the Frances that they were stupid enough to mess around with one of those races for about 15 years. Take a date from Darlington, sure, but not the Southern 500. I’m still baffled by that.

 

There were orders for over a million tickets, as I recall, so that would have sold out the seats four times over (and there was no general admission for the Brickyard then). I remember picking up my credentials for the 1993 Indianapolis 500 in the old HQ building, and against the back wall of the credentials-ticket office were bins of Brickyard ticket orders stacked to the ceiling. That was before IMS took credit-card orders, so that meant some $25-$30 million in checks waiting to be cashed. Their office started to deal with those after the 500, doing it all my hand, with 500 ticket holders getting preferred status, 14 months ahead of the first 400.

The first Brickyard practice on the morning of the first qualifying day was surreal. Stock cars at Indianapolis!

 

Lee Montgomery and I drove 12 hours from Raleigh to meet my best friend Gary at the inaugural. Gary and I had great seats, right at the start-finish line. The excitement was amazing ... until the race started.

When you're used to seeing Indy cars flashing by at 225 mph, a string of stock cars barely breaking 180 mph gets really old really quickly. By the halfway point of that first race, we couldn't believe how BORING it was, even with Jeff Gordon winning. On our way back to the car, we agreed that the Brickyard 400 wasn't ever going to be a second 500. We decided not to renew our tickets and save our money.

Still, the 400 still had enough momentum to keep people coming until that awful Goodyear tire fiasco. That was finally the last straw for all but the most stubborn NASCAR fans.

In 2012, the last one I covered for NASCAR.com, I was not only able to get a relatively cheap Hilton property near the track, but had no traffic on the way to the media center on race morning. In fact, I doubt there were 10,000 people in the main frontstretch grandstand by the National Anthem. I loved being at the Speedway, but the race itself was rarely worth the effort. I actually went out and walked around Georgetown Road for about an hour that day, just to make sure I wasn't miscalculating the size of the crowd.

Amazing how something that anticipated can do from a million to barely nothing in 30 years.

 

Until Ernie Irvin's tire went down and Gordon made the pass in the short chute, the highlights of the race were seeing how far back Dick Mast fell from the pole on the first lap and how well the narrow corners would handle a pass. Of course, with so little passing, that jury never came in.

The last few years, I shot photos of the front stretch grandstand during the pace lap and compared to the year before. Amazing how many people wore the same green shirt every year, more of them each time. Then I missed a Brickyard for a golf tournament and didn't feel like I missed much. The road course version last year was frankly more interesting.

 

The only other crown jewels are the night race at Bristol and Talladega.