Running 2023 Motorsports thread

They do it at Watkins Glen, New Hampshire and Michigan.

 

Go Bowling at the Glen just doesn't have the same oomph.

 

So was Tim Richmond.

 

Amazing stat: The Cup Series has run back-to-back road course races for a total of 166 laps. There have been seven laps run under caution. Two yellow flags in two weeks, one in each race.
I know they've had some caution free races, but that seems crazy to me to have that two weeks in a row.

 

Yesterday's race was completed in under two hours, the quickest non-rain shortened Cup race since the Modern Era (1972). Maybe someone in Daytona Beach or Charlotte should take note and think about trying to schedule more races that fit neatly into a three-hour window, including pre-race and post-race.

 

Its worked for baseball.

 

That would require eliminating stage (and staged) cautions. In a perfect world I’d say no stage cautions anywhere and no playoffs, but the horse is far from the barn.

The Reddit crowd was whining about yesterday’s race and last week’s race being boring. Last week had plenty of action throughout the field. This week was a bit more tedious, but it also took up two hours of my time vs. the normal three and a half. I’ll take the tradeoff.

Also, what a snafu by Alan Gustafson. I’m surprised he still has a job as of noon Monday.

 

It kind of blows my mind that they would advertise one sport in the name of the event of another sport, though I suppose Super Bowl does qualify in a roundabout way.

Also, it doesn't get more awkward than the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at the Glen.

Maybe maumann knows why the Watkins Glen Cup race has never had a number in the title. It's not even a Talladega doing weird numbers for sponsor attention or a Phoenix where all our race lengths are actually in kilometers. And the Xbuschionwide race was IIRC, the Zippo 200.

 

I don't actually have a definitive answer, but a 90-lap race lasting 221 miles (or 355.6 kilometers) doesn't have the panche or uniqueness of just "at The Glen," I guess.

The first three NASCAR races at Watkins Glen are just referred to by race distance over the then 2.3 mile circuit. In 1957, Buck Baker led all 44 laps, or 101.2 miles. They came back in 1964 and 1965 with 66-lap events that were around 150 miles in length. They only started 20 cars in 1965 -- and three didn't make it back to the start/finish line to complete one lap -- so it fell off the schedule.

It took NASCAR 21 more years to find the Finger Lakes again, this time running 90 laps (why not 100?) on the 2.428 mile circuit. From what I can tell on racing-reference, none of the Cup races there have taken longer than 2:58 to run, so I'm guessing it just works better for TV. It's gone two extra laps twice.

That 1986 race was a more formal The Budweiser at The Glen. It wasn't shortened to The Bud at The Glen until 1994.

 

Kurt Busch officially retired today.

 

Good Lord. Ryan Preece just flipped his car about 20 times and at least was able to climb out of the car. The last flip splatted the car down flat on the roof.
Even the Russian judge was amazed how he stuck the landing.