Nascar Racing Online

Archive for May, 2009

Bravo, folks. You survived Dale Jr./Tony Eury Jr. Splitapalooza 2009 pretty much unscathed, and with little blood shed. As my reward to you, I present the awesomeness that is Figure 8-track school bus racing:

Deadspin had this one, but I’m sure you can take it in your own wonderful directions. Enjoy, and have a good weekend! See you around here for the racin’!

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Today we welcome to the podcast a guy who was a cougar’s whiskers (and a rain shower) away from winning this past week’s Coca-Cola 600, Mr. Kasey Kahne.

Kasey, as you know, drives the No. 9 Budweiser Dodge, and does so fairly well of late. He’s sitting 15th in the standings going into Dover, and appears poised to make a run. Our topics discussed include the rain (he’s got some pretty harsh words for the winning three), plus the driver’s meeting of Tuesday (guess who fell asleep) and, of course, the Dale Jr./Tony Eury Jr. situation. Kasey also talked about the Allstate Teen Safe Driving program, which you can learn more about by clicking here.

Feel free to give comments and suggestions at jay.busbee@yahoo.com. Play, download or subscribe to us through our new iTunes site; we’ll love you no matter what you do.

Click here to download.

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At Dover this week, all the talk is naturally about the Earnhardt-Eury separation. As Jay Hart will tell you in a column later today, Junior talk is dominating the garage.

It’s like in high school when one of the prize couples breaks up, and everybody’s got to weigh in on who’s right, who’s wrong, and who’s now suddenly available. And, of course, there’s always the guy who’s got to throw a little cold water on all the romantic drama.

Said guy will be played in Dover by Kyle Busch. When asked about the firing, here’s what he had to say, according to Toyota PR:

"You got to make the most popular driver in the sport competitive — so you got to do what you got to do, I guess. He’s the one who brought that crew chief on. He’s the one who pulled so hard to bring (Tony) Eury, Jr. in. It looked like it was working there in the beginning and it hasn’t worked since the summer of last year, really. Whatever makes them better, I guess."

Ah, but the transcript didn’t include a key line which reporters in the room heard and jumped on: "If Junior doesn’t run well, [Lance McGrew is] going to be the problem. You know, it’s never Junior, it’s always the crew chief."

Now, what ever could he have meant by that? Let the speculation begin.

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Every day, we bring you the best in NASCAR news and updates. Get your day rolling right … or left, whichever.

• You must see Tony Eury Jr.’s new LinkedIn profile. Sad, yes, but buck up, buttercup! There’s brighter days ahead! [All Left Turns]

• Ready for more Earnhardt news? Of course you are! Jeffrey Earnhardt, Dale’s nephew, will be making his Nationwide debut this weekend. Expect his crew chief to take the blame if he finishes anywhere below first. [Scene Daily]

• Roush Fenway is hoping that Dover will be the cure to the team’s ills. Hey, they did finish 1-2-3 in Delaware last fall, so anything’s possible, right? [NASCAR.com via Yahoo! Sports]

• There’s a bit of griping that media pressure was the reason behind Tony Eury’s departure. Nonsense; there was plenty of internal action behind it. Plus, if the world worked by media pressure, I’d have a pizza and a beer delivered to me right now. Well? Where is it? [Pocky's Paddock]

• There was no Mayfield Motorsports hauler in the Dover garage as of this morning. Make of that what you will. [Scene Daily]

Got a link/tip for us? Hit us up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com.

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Hey everybody! Time again for a Midnight Marbles, where you can talk about anything and everything, NASCAR or not. Like Ryan Newman there. At first I thought that was some kind of bizarre Photoshop — why on earth would you put Newman in a kilt? — but it’s apparently a promo shot from a new ad campaign. Thanks to devoted Newman fan hugsx5 for the find, and start your pole jokes … now.

Also, to give you a little more value to your Midnight Marbles buck, I want to direct you to a few sites that you need to be checking out (after you visit the Marbles several times a day, of course.) We’ll start with a personal fave, The NASCAR Insiders. They’re an anonymous crew member and an anonymous journalist who use the cloak of secrecy to dig deeply into the morass that is NASCAR. I don’t know who they are — they literally refused to meet with me when I was in Daytona, and they probably snickered and laughed as I walked right past them in the garage and the press room — but they do good work, and you oughta check ‘em out. And if you know of a site I need to check out and promote here, hit me up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com. All right, have at it!

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Carl Edwards and Robby Gordon look out upon something with a mixture of horror and disgust. What’s shaking with them, friends?

After the jump, Tony Stewart rocks the Cart of Tomorrow.

Eclair:
"Folks, don’t park near the shopping cart return lanes in the parking lot. Junior’s been known to shop here."

Mister F:
Tony Stewart was disqualified from the Memorial Day Shop-A-Thon after being found to have violated Sections 12-1 (actions detrimental to consumerism) for having an oversized wallet, and 12-9 (possession of an unapproved part) for an improper handle bracket.

Jimmy J:
But does it fall on the right front? Is it loose in the middle of the turn? Where are the bump stops?

NostraChronus:
"Wow, Carl, you really let yourself go during the offseason."

Richard T:
Wow, where did you find an old DEI car lying around?

(Bravo, all. This was one of those nice-job-all-around posts!)

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So Tony Eury Jr. is gone — well, not gone, but relocated to a "key R&D role" in the Hendrick Motorsports organization. Change was necessary in the Dale Earnhardt Jr. garage, and change came from on high:

"Our performance hasn’t been where it should be," said Rick Hendrick in announcing the news. "It’s impossible to pin that on any one factor, but a change is the right decision at this point. We have a plan in place, and we’re going to move forward with it."

Hendrick’s Brian Whitesell and Lance McGrew will take over the crew duties, Whitesell for Dover and McGrew will be "interim" crew chief after that. Beyond that, well, it’s a bit early to say.

But who the heck are Whitesell and McGrew? Glad you asked. They’ve got a lot of history with the Hendrick organization, which, as you may be aware, has won a championship or two in its day.

Whitesell (top) is the team manager for both Mark Martin’s #5 and Earnhardt’s #88 teams. He got into NASCAR by volunteering for Alan Kulwicki’s team in 1992, and was a part of that championship run. Soon afterward, he got a gig with Hendrick, and worked closely with Jeff Gordon’s team. He served as interim crew chief for Gordon in 1999 after Ray Evernham left, and the team won two of seven races.

McGrew (bottom, the one who’s not Jimmie Johnson) won the 2003 Nationwide championship with Brian Vickers, and also led Vickers to a Sprint Cup victory at Talladega in October 2006. As a crew chief, he’s won in all three series, guiding Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Mark Martin and Ricky Hendrick to victory lane. He was the guy in the box when Tony Stewart won the Nationwide race this past February at Daytona, so clearly he knows what he’s doing up there.

Eury, meanwhile, will be reassigned within the Hendrick organization to what the company called "a key role with Hendrick Motorsports’ research and development group." That’s a whole lotta gray area there; here’s hoping it doesn’t involve getting everybody’s lunch.

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The inevitable has come to pass. As the AP and Yahoo! Sports’ Jenna Fryer reports today, Tony Eury Jr. has been fired as Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief.

Brian Whitesell will serve as Junior’s crew chief this weekend at Dover International Speedway. Lance McGrew will become the interim crew chief beginning the following week at Pocono.

"Our performance hasn’t been where it should be," Rick Hendrick said in a statement. "It’s impossible to pin that on any one factor, but change is the right decision at this point. We have a plan in place, and we’re going to move forward with it.

"We’re going to put our full resources toward improving the situation and winning races," Hendrick continued. "It’s going to be a collective effort that includes all of our drivers, all of our crew chiefs, all of our engineers. Everyone in our company will be involved on some level."

The signs were everywhere, of course. Since moving to Hendrick Motorsports to start the 2008 season, Earnhardt has won exactly one points race, and while he made the Chase last year, he’s steadily languished around 20th place this year and is in severe danger of missing out on the Chase in 2009.

There’s been plenty of blame to go around — driver, car, crew, chief — but since Junior himself isn’t going anywhere, something had to give, and it was Eury. The crew chief had borne an enormous share of the criticism of the #88 team, with critics charging that Eury was overmatched or too close to his cousin Junior to be able to keep a necessary professional distance.

After repeatedly saying that Eury’s job was safe and that the team needed time to work itself out, Rick Hendrick as much as filled out the pink slip on Tuesday. "Could it change?" Hendrick said. "We’re talking about things, we’re meeting, we’re going to make decisions as the days go by, but we haven’t made any decision as of right now."

But apparently he has since then. The obvious question will be how this will affect Junior’s team and, equally important, his mindset. Junior has always seemed to approach racing as a family business, and has perhaps leaned too hard on the "family" when some more of the "business" was necessary. Go back and read his quotes at Bristol, for instance, when he as much as admitted that the Junior-Junior combination was leaking oil, but that he didn’t think any change was necessary.

"I like racing with my cousin whether we are the perfect combination or not," Earnhardt said. "I just like racing with him. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life."

That’s not going to happen, obviously. And now, with one more piece of the puzzle removed, we’re closer to figuring out where the real problem lies with the #88 team.

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You can call us all "casualty vampires" if you like, to borrow a line from one of our live chats, but there’s a reason why "Wreck of the Week" is the most popular category on The Marbles. We want to see wrecks, and no disrespect to NASCAR, but Indy packs a serious punch when it comes to car carnage. Witness this past week’s wreck where Vitor Meira tangled with Raphael Matos late in the Indy 500 (fast-forward to about the 7:20 mark):

Sadly, Meira broke two vertebrae and is out until at least October. But considering how bad Indy wrecks have been in the past, with death a common occurrence, we can be thankful that this one didn’t end worse.

And since that video is eight minutes long — what, nobody’s got an editing truck in Indy? — feel free to watch it and pontificate on the differences between NASCAR and Indy, or Danica and Junior, or whatever. Have at it!

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Memorial Day weekend always stokes the great racing dispute. With the F1 Monaco Grand Prix starting things off, the fabled Indianapolis 500 shortly thereafter and the Coca-Cola 600, well, a day later, it becomes inevitable. And every year, just like rain on Memorial Day, the which-is-best debate is inevitable, too.

After watching parts of all three races, and poking around the comments posted on these here Internets, I think it’s rather obvious that the "best" form of racing happens to be the one that the opinion holder tends to follow. I appreciate this stance, mostly because I employ it categorically. However, it suggests little about the racing itself and more about the likes of the opinion holder. Here is what I learned, transcribed into my language for the sake of clarity, of course.

If you like Moet, you probably like F1. (But really, if you like Moet, does your opinion count?) Similarly, if you like F1, you probably enjoy ants marching, too. Ants, you see, tend to move about in single file lines, they do not pass, and the first person to reach the destination is preordained. Of course, if you like F1 you like racing fast, because fastest is best, and high tech, so high-tech, in fact, it’s called "formula" racing. This basically amounts to building a land-based, $2 million, rolling supercomputer (and please don’t hit anything with it). And you need high-tech because of the Grands Prix-style racing. This means, well I don’t really know what Grands Prix means, nor am I sure when I’m supposed to use that "s" and when I’m not. I do know what it doesn’t mean, and it doesn’t mean ovals. F1 fans are anti-oval. That’s "American" racing, and that doesn’t go well with the Moet.

Now, if you are an Indy fan, you might be a frat guy, and that is because Indy is on the infield party circuit. (It’s the third stop behind the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.) Their argument goes like this: "Dude, Indy is killer. I got wicked drunk and hooked up." This is actually a solid argument, particularly if you happen to be 20.

The other major Indy fans appear to be history buffs who prefer a spectacle. The outcome of the race, to this fan, is less important than the historical significance and the hype that surrounds it. This sentiment is certainly shared with some NASCAR fans, but it is somehow always employed as a defamation of the NASCAR series. This is somewhat ironic, given NASCAR’s rich history and the fact that the Indianapolis 500 is a mere shell of its former self. Don’t get me wrong; it’s still "killer" (and still historical). It’s simply not spoken in the hushed and reverent tones it once was. Furthermore, name another event in the league with similar historical relevancy, or another event with even a fraction of the propaganda. As far as most people are aware, and particularly the frat guys, it’s a single-event circuit.

This kind of Indy fan also considers a NASCAR car a blunt instrument and enjoys a quiet night on the couch while viewing Dancing with the Stars. Indy, you see, is elegant, refined, and classy, and nothing, apparently, says elegance like a perfectly performed tango. I believe the point is that NASCAR is more brut than finesse, and therefore a driver could never perform a perfect tango. I doubt this because it’s beyond proof; a NASCAR driver would never try a tango (line dancing, yes, tango never), but also because I’m damn sure that Boris Said has some serious moves. With hair like that, you can get down.

So in the end, Indy and F1 fans are just like NASCAR fans. They are opinionated (just like the Marbles), they will gladly share their opinion (just like the Marbles), and their sport is clearly the best (just like the Marbles). The fact is, all forms are good, because they are all racing. So, it’s a good question, but sadly there is no simple answer. Luckily for us, NASCAR is the best.

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