Running 2023 Motorsports thread

Ohhh, for my more intemperate days of shaking my fist and shouting during driver introductions: "Go hoooooome, yankeeeeeeee."

Bodine does make a good point of the old days where you had to finish to get paid. I've told it before that my dad helped build Herman Beam's cars. Herman "the turtle" never won, but he finished in the money every week.

 

It'd never happen, but limiting each driver-car number to X amount of chassis -- since NASCAR has serial numbers for all of them -- for the entire season might cut down on the needless framming and bamming. Or, as you said, only giving points/money to cars that complete the required distance. Or taking a certain amount of money away from a driver for an avoidable or deliberate accident (like NASCAR doesn't toss phantom yellows just to bunch the field).

The bolt-on spoilers and fenders are cheap, as are the plastic sponsor wraps. And the sanctioning body loves the demo derby aspect, given the countless replays of flips, flops and bops. Too bad actually showing "racing" is much harder for the networks to get on camera when aero push and tire deg kill any chances to pass.

 

Think back to the old days when short track cars (Bristol, Martinsville, Wilkesboro, Richmond) were essentially throw away cars from prior season. I've seen many a car on those tracks end the race looking like a modified because they were beat all to crap.

 

Well, crap. I was just a nobody from nowhere, but he treated me no differently than if I was ESPN. I was given the run of the Schumacher hospitality area and had more than a couple of meals with him just shooting the breeze.
The whole Schumacher empire, so to speak, came about because Don wanted to put Tony in the best rides. It was built on the old Wonder Wagon and Schumacher Electric.

 

Read up on Ralph Mulford and the 1912 Indy 500 to find out how that might go.

 

I’ve always believed that taking away points would make more sense than fining drivers and owners financial penalties.

Money isn’t a big deal to them. Points, though, that’s where it matters. But the sanctioning body would have to make the penalty (the amount of points) really hurt to make a difference.

Targeting in college is out of the game and however much time into the next one. It still continues. The penalty isn’t harsh enough. Two games, maybe. Second offense, five games. Make it hurt. Same thing in NASCAR. First penalty, xx-points. Second time, hammer them. Otherwise, they just shrug.

 

Interviewing Connie was a challenge. You had to scream into his ear.
Interviewing Johnson about the car was difficult, too, because he was technical minded, his answers just flew over my head. Get him talking about Blaine, and it was a different story. He opened up a lot.

 

1. Just about everybody in NASCAR who worked on race cars before decent hearing protection is that way: Robert Yates and Ron Hornaday are two prime examples of guys who have learned to lip read because their hearing is shot. Ed Hinton has been around long enough to where he either can't hear well or is just ignoring you (I kid, Ed).

I walked around with two sets of earplugs in my pants pocket from the time I left the house on race weekends to the time I got home, and that included using them on the plane flight and the media center, just to drown out annoying conversations.

2. One of the points not discussed here about NASCAR's driver inaccessability, more for the fans than the media. Unlike the NHRA, where everybody seems to go out of their way to give you their time, the average Joe who buys a ticket for a Cup race has a near-zero chance of getting an autograph or even a close-up photo of anybody in a team uniform, let alone their favorite driver. Between corporate commitments, team meetings and hanging out in the motorhome lot, drivers have little time for fan (or media) interaction.

That wasn't the case even up into the 1980s. Richard Petty is famous for sitting on his car post-race, signing autographs for every fan wanting a souvenir from The King. Or fans met the Alabama Gang at the Saturday night bullrings in Montgomery or Huntsville, or places like Bowman-Gray, Cheasapeake, Greenville Pickens and the like before they became big stars.

These kids go straight from karts to Legends to ARCA, and already have handlers well before they reach the national level. So there's more than just a chain link fence between people who follow the sport and people inside the sport. They're on TV or in commercials, but good luck actually chatting with one in person without being invited to a meet-and-greet.

 

Drivers apparently have been spending even less time at the track since COVID. I read that most of them don’t even bring the buses anymore, they just fly in and rent hotel rooms.

Joey Logano’s comments a couple weeks back about fan access were amazingly stupid.

 

Honestly, I sometimes wonder how it is anyone in motorsports has any hearing at all. I didn't take any physics in high school but I've seen some clips of just how loud an F1 start is. I don't know if helmets help or the driver's position relative to the engine directs the sound away from them but it just seems illogical.