After three races; fixing potholes, mending fences (NASCAR.com)
March 4, 2010
Three weeks into the season and it’s time to empty out the ol’ notebook …
So far this season, the most compelling ongoing story is “the pothole” that nearly ate the Daytona 500. Daytona International Speedway reacted quickly and the fix—using reinforced concrete—was comprehensive and should be effective.
You can barely see where the patch is, since the final step in the repair was to shade it the same relative color as the surrounding asphalt.
But from the public’s standpoint, the “cover-up” appears to be a little bemusing. No one was actually convinced it was necessary to educate race fans and any other curiosity seekers about how big it is—a little bit longer than two car-lengths and a little more than a car-width wide.
Daytona’s annual Bike Week races are ongoing, but even if the two-wheeled rockets went over the patched area, they wouldn’t affect it.
A non-spectator Sports Car Club of America event is scheduled in May, but with very few heavy, high-horsepower cars in their class, that event will be inconsequential. Even a scheduled test of the Nationwide Series’ “new car,” scheduled for later in May, will have minimal impact.
For better or worse, the real test will unfortunately come when practice opens for the Coke Zero 400 with plenty of heavy, relatively high-horsepower, set-to-drag-the-pavement race cars ready to rumble.
Classy guy
Ricky Carmichael may be the “Greatest of All Time” when it comes to the Supercross and motocross world, but he’s making a lot of mileage in his NASCAR career with an abundance of class.
Carmichael was scheduled to be on NASCAR’s weekly teleconference advancing the Truck Series race at Atlanta. More than 25 minutes went by with the waiting media on hold.
Carmichael eventually did his session but before signing off, apologized for losing the call-in number and scrambling his butt off to get connected. “If you need me, any time, call me or come by the truck,” Carmichael said, and there was no mistaking the fact he meant it.
He offered another gem when asked to compare his AMA career and NASCAR.
“Everyone has the talent to be here,” Carmichael said—knowing he could be speaking of either discipline—bikes or cars. “So sometimes, the only way you can separate yourself from the rest is to commit yourself to out-working them.”
Olympic celebration
Geoff Bodine has made a lifelong commitment to stock car racing, and for the last two decades has made a nearly equal commitment to the U.S. Olympic bobsled program. So it’s pretty cool to see Bodine attempt to make his first Truck Series start since 2004 this weekend at Atlanta, in a truck that celebrates the U.S. four-man Bo-Dyn sled’s gold medal performance.
The paint scheme on younger brother Todd’s Germain Racing Toyota will also celebrate the achievement.
Mending fences
Hopefully Jamie McMurray and Juan Montoya have settled their intramural spat, which took place during the Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas. Montoya’s reaction was so bitterly personal, and it continued so long after the dust had cleared from the wreck, it was impossible to ignore it. In effect, Montoya’s ongoing tirades were akin to a tornado leveling 20 homes in a small Kansas town but killing no one. That would get your attention.
Return on investment
Looking for a statement on the economy and how hard even big Cup teams have to scramble? From the entry lists for Las Vegas, to this weekend at Atlanta, no less than 22 cars had primary sponsorship changes. Good news is only six cars are unsponsored.
How can social media and the Internet work for you? Joe Nemechek got last-minute sponsorship for his Daytona 500 effort from England’s Stove Works. The final figures weren’t in, but within a couple days of the Great American Race, the company did more than $500,000 in business and its Web site had trouble handling the traffic. “Bravo Joe” for providing a real return on investment.
A similar tale comes from Kenny Wallace, whose Jay Robinson Racing Nationwide Series team is scrambling almost event-to-event to be able to race. Wallace, who has become an ardent Twitter and Facebook proponent, credited social media with securing Zimmzang.com as a sponsor that enabled him to race at California rather than just circulate.
Tired of questions
The always genial but sometimes brutally honest Jeff Gordon had a couple of the best moments of the Las Vegas weekend during his Friday media availability.
First, Gordon was asked about his newly-known interest in track design. He launched into a miniature tirade over the national newspaper article in which that fact had appeared, saying the story “focused too much on when I retire, when the fact is, I’m not retiring any time soon.”
The coup de grace for Gordon was one of the last questions he fielded, as someone tried to relate the rash of new babies in the NASCAR motorhome lot to the need for NASCAR to approve a condom sponsorship.
A short time later, Gordon pushed back his chair and ended the session by saying, “that [session] was strange!”
And to close this week’s edition, a tip: If you were following me on Twitter—DRodmanNASCAR—you’d already have seen the 140-character versions of most of this, so until next time…
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
