Nascar Racing Online

Archive for June, 2009

Ah, wine country. And there’s nothing that says wine quite like NASCAR, is there? I mean, NASCAR and wine go together like, oh, I don’t know — football and lace? Digger and good taste? Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Victory Lane? (Joke! JOKE! Easy, Junior Nation!)

Anyway, it’s time for road course racing in the heart of wine country, so why not kick back and do a little whining of your own right here? (Ouch. Terrible pun. Sorry.) We’ll be hanging at the main page talking live as well. So uncork a bottle of your finest Cabernet — let it breathe, remember! — select your finest cheeses and crackers, and join us for a pleasant afternoon of automotive vehicular construct competition. Cheers!

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The race day feature is back.  Here is the starting line-up:

POS	CAR	DRIVER	MAKE	SPONSOR	SPEED	TIME	BEHIND
1	83	Brian Vickers	Toyota	Red Bull	93.678	76.475	Leader
2	18	Kyle Busch	Toyota	M&M’s / Transformers	93.415	76.690	-0.215
3	47	Marcos Ambrose	Toyota	Little Debbie / Kingsford / Clorox	93.138	76.918	-0.443
4	14	Tony Stewart	Chevrolet	Office Depot / Old Spice	93.039	77.000	-0.525
5	9	Kasey Kahne	Dodge	Budweiser	92.991	77.040	-0.565
6	1	Martin Truex Jr.	Chevrolet	GE Reveal	92.981	77.048	-0.573
7	39	Ryan Newman	Chevrolet	Haas Automation	92.947	77.076	-0.601
8	19	Elliott Sadler	Dodge	Stanley Tools	92.941	77.081	-0.606
9	08	Boris Said	Ford	Carter / Simo Racing	92.938	77.084	-0.609
10	17	Matt Kenseth	Ford	Dewalt	92.922	77.097	-0.622
11	48	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet	Lowe’s	92.909	77.108	-0.633
12	20	Joey Logano*	Toyota	The Home Depot	92.865	77.144	-0.669
13	24	Jeff Gordon	Chevrolet	DuPont	92.829	77.174	-0.699
14	5	Mark Martin	Chevrolet	Carquest / Kellogg’s	92.796	77.202	-0.727
15	16	Greg Biffle	Ford	3M Post-it	92.740	77.248	-0.773
16	29	Kevin Harvick	Chevrolet	Shell / Pennzoil	92.733	77.254	-0.779
17	42	Juan Montoya	Chevrolet	Target	92.655	77.319	-0.844
18	77	Sam Hornish Jr.	Dodge	Mobil 1	92.648	77.325	-0.850
19	66	Dave Blaney	Toyota	Prism Motorsports	92.498	77.450	-0.975
20	44	A.J. Allmendinger	Dodge	Best Buy	92.484	77.462	-0.987
21	07	Casey Mears	Chevrolet	Jack Daniel’s	92.433	77.505	-1.030
22	7	Robby Gordon	Toyota	Menards / Jim Beam	92.432	77.506	-1.031
23	26	Jamie McMurray	Ford	Irwin Vise-Grip	92.372	77.556	-1.081
24	11	Denny Hamlin	Toyota	FedEx Office	92.358	77.568	-1.093
25	96	Bobby Labonte	Ford	Ask.com	92.355	77.570	-1.095
26	33	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet	Cheerios / Hamburger Helper	92.305	77.612	-1.137
27	2	Kurt Busch	Dodge	Miller Lite	92.302	77.615	-1.140
28	43	Reed Sorenson	Dodge	Valvoline	92.054	77.824	-1.349
29	09	Ron Fellows	Chevrolet	Miccosukee Resort & Gaming	92.043	77.833	-1.358
30	98	Paul Menard	Ford	Johns Manville / Menards	91.988	77.880	-1.405
31	187	Joe Nemechek	Toyota	NEMCO Motorsports	91.933	77.926	-1.451
32	171	David Gilliland	Chevrolet	Adobe Road Winery	91.850	77.997	-1.522
33	113	Max Papis*	Toyota	GEICO	91.777	78.059	-1.584
34	99	Carl Edwards	Ford	Aflac	91.750	78.082	-1.607
35	88	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet	Amp Energy / National Guard	91.509	78.287	-1.812
36	31	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet	Caterpillar	91.436	78.350	-1.875
37	204	P.J. Jones	Toyota	Jim Beam / Menards	91.425	78.359	-1.884
38	55	Patrick Carpentier	Toyota	NAPA Auto Parts	90.907	78.806	-2.331
39	12	David Stremme	Dodge	Penske Racing	90.901	78.811	-2.336
40	6	David Ragan+	Ford	UPS	90.813	78.887	-2.412
41	34	John Andretti+	Chevrolet	Taco Bell	90.788	78.909	-2.434
42	00	David Reutimann+	Toyota	Aaron’s Dream Machine	90.603	79.070	-2.595
43	102	Brandon Ash	Dodge	Efusjon Energy Club	91.098	78.641	-2.166
Did Not Qualify
44	82	Scott Speed*	Toyota	Red Bull	90.979	78.743	-2.268
45	127	Tom Hubert	Toyota	Lilly Trucking of Virginia	90.978	78.744	-2.269
46	37	Chris Cook	Dodge	Long John Silver’s	90.429	79.222	-2.747
47	36	Brian Simo	Toyota	California Outdoor Heritage Alliance	82.246	87.104	-10.629

+ Set by Owner Points
* Denotes Rookie

I know I won’t be around for the start but I’ll try to get there for the end.  Some points to ponder:

Man, can you believe Scott Speed’s qualifying effort?  I feel for him right now as he is supposed to be a road race ringer and here he is watching the race like the rest of us – on the outside looking in.

How about Vickers’ pole run?

Do you think there might be a Canadian 1-2 finish?  Could you imagine if it indeed did happen?

How about Carl’s Nationwide win last night?  Cool.

I’m glad that Johnny Benson is making a good recovery from the injuries he sustained in a race last weekend.

Hornaday had a great run in the truck race didn’t he?

Remember to comment and comment often.

Happy Father’s Day to you Dads out there.

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It’s Father’s Day tomorrow and there is no better thing to do with your dad, especially if he is a NASCAR lover, than sit down and watch the Toyota/SaveMart 350 at Infineon Raceway.

When I first started to get interested in NASCAR I hated the road courses like Infineon but as my knowledge and appreciation of the sport grew, so did my love of road courses.

There are a lot of technical driving skills needed to perform well on a road course.

Instead of hating road courses, I now wish there were a few more road races on the NASCAR schedule, with one being in The Chase.

I hope this upcoming race will have as an exciting ending as last weekend’s race at MIS. I turned the TV on with about 20 laps left in the race and watched Johnson and Biffle fight it out for the lead only to have Johnson run out of gas with one lap left and then Biffle doing the same thing shortly after handing the first place spot and the eventual win to Mark Martin. Martin knew he had a fast car but put it in conservation mode to save gas so he could get a good finish and stay in the top 12 of the standings.

Biffle and Johnson just raced each other too hard and burned up their fuel while Martin stayed his course and conserved his fuel right up to the checkered flag.

Fuel mileage races are starting to become more common place this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if this weekend’s race came down to fuel mileage as well.

The drivers to watch this week are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson but I would also keep an eye on Juan Montoya, Mark Martin, Kyle Busch and the Australian driver Marcos Ambrose.

One thing about road courses is that some teams decide to sit their regular drivers and bring in road racing “ringers” like Canadian Ron Fellows who will be in No. 09 Miccosukee Resort & Gaming car owned by James Finch with technical support from Hendrick Motorsports.

Other road course experts who will be in this race are Brian Simo, Boris Said, Max Papis, P.J. Jones and, the other Canadian in the field, Patrick Carpentier.

Out of this group I’d be watching Carpentier because he will be replacing NASCAR regular Michael Waltrip in his No. 55 NAPA Toyota which is a good car to be in.

Honestly, it really wouldn’t surprise me to see a Canadian sweep of the top two spots in tomorrow’s race. That would be cool. In fact that would be a great Father’s Day treat.

- original source thespec.com

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Check out that sweet M&M’s paint job! Kinda freaky-scary, huh? Much better than that yellow, I gotta say. Whatever, it’s time for another Midnight Marbles. For the newcomers, this is where you hang and talk anything, NASCAR or whatever. Conversations can and do include mature subject matter, so if you’re under 18, be sure to get a parent’s permission before visiting the site.

And if you’re looking around for something to check out, hey, why not read my weekly Weekender column over at the main blogs page? It’s a rundown of some of the stranger sports stories of the week, and it’s always good for a laugh or two.

For now, have a good evening, and we’ll see you throughout the weekend with more stuff, leading up to Sunday night’s road course race. Have a good one, everybody!

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Sorry I really haven’t been around for a bit, but I’ve been going through some stuff around here that really didn’t allow me the time I needed to post they way I usually like to.  Between some sort of mono-like illness, family and work I’ve been spread out pretty thin.

The climax of my escapades happened this past weekend when I accidently cut my one index finger pretty severely – now I know just a little bit of what my father went through when he cut off 3 of his four fingers on his left hand when a transmission dropped on it.  No I didn’t loose any part of the finger but let me tell you my finger nail probably saved the tip of my finger from being lopped off, can’t say as much about the finger nail though.

Thanks for some of your emails asking me “what’s up?”, I’m sorry I haven’t replied to them so I hope this will do.  I currently have about 950 emails to still go through, but I should be all caught up in a few days.

Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about this place or you but life has been happening to me and I’m just starting to get back to it.  I’m so looking forward to this week’s race let me tell you – I can’t wait for it actually – I missed Michigan because I was at the hospital getting my finger attended to (great finish to it though).

Thanks goes to Mike and Matt for carrying the tourch in my absence.  Great stuff guys!

Catch you all a little later.

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Time for more from around the world of motorsports. Get your day rolling right … or left, whichever.

• The End Times are near for Formula 1, as eight elite teams have all declined to enter the Formula 1 World Championships in 2010. Much more on this in the coming days, to be sure. [Yahoo! Sports]

• An excellent link-heavy recap of the Jeremy Mayfield situation. Bottom line: he’s more screwed than lug nuts on a four-tire change. [NASCAR Insiders]

• A good breakdown of some NASCAR terminology for the newcomers to the sport. We need to do one of these for The Marbles. [Do You NASCAR?]

• Proof positive of the Obama-NASCAR conspiracy! I knew it! [All Left Turns]

• What time does the race start? Hey, when you’re at the track, who really cares? [Scene Daily]

Got a link/tip? Hit us up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com and follow us on Twitter.

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Forbes has released its annual list of the world’s top-earning athletes, and while many of the names won’t surprise you, some of the broader results will raise some eyebrows. The list looks at players’ earnings from June 2008 to June 2009; all told, the players earned $789 million, with $30 million necessary just to make the dance.

Tiger Woods is far and away the top earner, with familiar worldwide icons like Michael Jordan and David Beckham joining him in the top five. Their combinations of salary and endorsement incomes place them just about in the "small Central American nation" category of earning power.

But let’s take this in another direction. Instead of discussing the individuals, let’s focus on the sports that have the highest earners. And it’s there that some interesting trends begin to emerge.

Basketball (5): Newly-crowned NBA champ Kobe Bryant and Jordan both tie for second on the list, followed by LeBron James (tied for sixth), Shaquille O’Neal (tied for 11th) and Kevin Garnett (tied for 17th). The lack of a hard salary cap in the NBA combined with explosive overseas popularity vault these five future Hall-of-Famers into the stratosphere.

Motorsports (5): Hey, how about this? Kimi Raikkonen (tied for second), motocross icon Valentino Rossi (ninth), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (10th), Lewis Hamilton (tied for 13th) and Jeff Gordon (tied for 17th) represent motorsports quite well. It’ll be interesting to see whether the downturn in sponsor dollars will have an impact on this list next year.

Golf (3): Tiger Woods (first) and Phil Mickelson (tied for sixth) pocket enormous endorsement and appearance fees whenever they step out of their house. Vijay Singh (16th) won a $10 million prize for taking the FedEx Cup last year, which will do wonders for your financial standing.

Boxing (2): Manny Pacquiao (tied for sixth) and Oscar de la Hoya (tied for 13th) tend to make their money in big chunks — Pacquiao made 75 percent of his cash last year from just two fights. But both are international icons, which means that cash pours in from all over the globe.

Baseball (2): Alex Rodriguez (tied for 13th) and Derek Jeter (tied for 17th) share one side of the Yankees infield and could buy one-half of Manhattan, if they joined forces. A significant majority of their income comes from salary, which is why Yankee fans pay twenty bucks for beer.

Soccer (2): David Beckham holds down fifth place, while Ronaldinho is tied for 17th. Famous more for being famous than for actually playing at this point, Beckham can still command top dollar just for sheer awesomeness. Ronaldinho is still on the upswing of his career and should move well up the list.

Tennis (1): Roger Federer, tied for 11th, is tennis’s lone representative. At least he’s got one honor that Rafael Nadal hasn’t taken away from him yet. Give it time, though, give it time.

You’ll note that there are no NFL players on there. (No hockey players either, but that’s not as much of a surprise.) As Forbes notes, despite being the richest of the sports leagues, the NFL’s salary cap keeps paychecks low, and other than Peyton Manning and Brett Favre, there aren’t any serious endorsement pitchmen capable of making the tall dollars. NFL players Ben Roethlisberger and Dwight Freeney were on the list last year thanks to contracts with big signing bonuses, as were boxer Floyd Mayweather and F1 driver Fernando Alonso, who was ranked 21st.

Last year’s earners made 1 percent more than this year’s, but it’s a fair bet that number will continue to fall in 2010. Even so, it’s unlikely any of these athletes will be standing in soup lines anytime soon.

The world’s highest-paid athletes [Forbes via Yahoo! Sports]

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“Yeah that happens more times than not. The car that leads the most laps doesn’t win.”
That was Jimmie Johnson’s conclusion after his heartbreaking finish at Michigan. Johnson of course, dominated Sunday’s race at Michigan leading 146 laps only to run out of fuel on the last lap while leading. It’s a cliche race fans have heard forever, but is it really true?

Given my lack of interesting hobbies I decided to find out. Looking at the last five years worth of races I counted up the number of winners that also led the most and 2nd most laps on the day (Racing-Reference is amazing).

The total win percentage for five years was 47% for the driver leading the most laps and 68% for a driver leading the most or second-most laps in the race. While technically Johnson is right that it happens more often than not, the truth is that if you lead a lot of laps you have a pretty chance of winning a race. In fact Johnson should know quite a bit about dominant cars. In 42 career wins he’s been the dominant car (or at least led the most) in 15 races. Add in the times he’s led the 2nd-most laps and it’s a stout 26 races. While his respective win percentages are slightly lower (35.7%, 61.9%) than the 5 year average, they are pretty close. Further he’s had ten races in his career (including 2 this year) with the most laps led that didn’t translate into a win.

Through 15 races in 2009, 6 cars have won and led the most laps (40%) and 7 have won while leading the most or second most laps (46%). It’s a small sample size and the summer traditionally has had a lot of races dominated by one or two cars. By year end the numbers will likely mimic the last five years.

So what does this mean? It’s pretty simple: the best cars usually win. Sure Mark Martin or Brad Keselowski can steal a win by leading only the last lap, but usually the best two cars will win the race.

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A few days back, we solicited your questions for a Q&A with Tony Stewart, brought to you by the fine folks at Armor-All. Well, after more than 400 responses, ranging from the insightful to the desperate ("Will you marry me?" "Can I have a job?") to the truly bizarre, we’ve narrowed it down to our six questions:

1. Tony, it’s been said that everyone is famous for 15 minutes. What are the most memorable 15 minutes of your life?

2. You have mentioned before that you wouldn’t mind getting out of NASCAR at an early age and racing something else, so how many more years do you have left in the tank? Is it based on age or championships?

3. Lil Wayne recently made the song "Kobe Bryant" before the NBA Finals. What singer or band would you want to create the song "Tony Stewart" and how would the song go?

4. When you were young, what was the moment that you knew you wanted to be a driver?

5. I often wonder if, during a race, you are sneaking a peek at Ryan Newman‘s progress? Does having another car in the race ever become a distraction?

6. How much more successful do you think you would have been staying in IRL with regards to number of wins and championships versus NASCAR? And would you consider giving a fellow open-wheeler, Danica Patrick, a shot at a third car at SHR?

We’ll be forwarding these on to Tony, and will post the answers as soon as we have ‘em from Smoke himself! Meantime, sit tight for another Smoke contest in just a bit …

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Hey everybody! Here’s a couple photos from one of our dedicated readers, who went and decorated this bedroom in ultimo-NASCAR goodness. (Gotta love a kid’s room with a Budweiser car. That kid’s going to grow up right.) Oh, and it was all done for under $250, apparently. If you’re interested in this, I won’t post her email, but you can hit me up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com and I’ll pass your emails along.

And this is your opportunity to chat interior decorating or whatever with the rest of Marbledom. Enjoy, and we’ll see you back here in just a bit with more stuff. And if you’ve got NASCAR goodness like that of your own, feel free to email me with it. Matter of fact, I order you to.

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