2009 NASCAR running thread

No conspiracy theory.

Nothing is more boring than Jimmie Johnson winning ... again.

I know Indy is historic and everything, but damn does the racing suck.

Glad to see ESPN back. Not glad to see pit reporter Jamie Little back. Once again, she proved how utterly useless she is in a postrace interview with Carl Edwards.

She set up her brainless question by saying Edwards had to start in the back because they qualified based on points.

Edwards paused, took a swig of Vitamin Water, and said, "We didn't qualify on points. I actually qualified this bad." Or something like that.

She's horrible.

 

It's a shame I had to miss such an exciting race to handle news on my beat. How will I ever live with myself?

Indy has never been suited to NASCAR and never will be. I can't recall a single "great" Brickyard since its been there.

It's never going away though, as NASCAR likes being linked to the track and IMS needs the revenue (though there were a buttload of empty seats in areas where there's usually not any).

 

Indy will always have dull stock-car racing ... narrow, flat & basically 1.5 grooves through the corners, and the aerodynamics of the new car seem to make passing very, very difficult (you can catch up to the guy in front of you, but can't get around him).

But I do enjoy seeing a race that rewards driver skill, rather than who happens to decide to take 2 tires at the right time at whatever 1.5-mile tri-oval they're on this week (or who happens to find the right friends at a plate race). You've got to hit what can be a really tricky setup just perfectly, and have a driver who can hit every corner perfectly (and, in the case of Mark Martin the last 15 laps, a little bit on the edge).

However, I'll be happy to no longer have to hear the conspiracy theorists/NASCAR cheerleaders claiming that the only reason the Indy 500 outdraws the Brickyard is because the Speedway removes seats for the NASCAR race. The crowds for the last two Brickyards were the worst I've ever seen for an oval race at that track (today's was awful -- both short chutes, the entrance to 3 and the exit of 4 appeared to be virtual ghost towns, as were the lower halves of the Turn 2 & Turn 3 grandstands ... there were also vast, vast swaths of empty seats on both sides of the front straightaway).

 

Yeah it looked very, very scattered. The frontstretch looked like the USGP-style frontstretch.

 

After last year's tire debacle, would you come back?

I wouldn't.

 

I don't blame anyone for not coming back. It's a damn snoozefest.

 

I heard a little about the speeding, that Montoya triggered two of the six sensors and was thus penalized.

Where are the sensors located in relation to pit lane, and is there anything that would cause a false reading?

 

Agreed on all points.

 

Or maybe it's you and Carl Edwards who are wrong ... because he got in due to owner's points. Same for Elliott Sadler. They both had qualifying times worse than two of the go-fast-or-go-home guys. If not for the asinine top-35 rule, both would have watched TV yesterday.

 

OK, for someone who knows next to nothing about the technical aspects of this stuff, I don't understand why Nascar vehicles don't have speedometers. Someone want to explain the rationale behind this? Seems first-grade simple to know whether you're going 1 mph under or over the limit.