Nascar Racing Online

Archive for April, 2010

Because, quite frankly, "Killer Bees" just doesn’t work with a purple and black paint scheme.

The Killer Bees got their name from DeWalt’s yellow and black colors when they sponsored Matt Kenseth from Kenseth’s debut in the Cup series to last season. But now that Crown Royal is on board, the Killer Bees name is going in the dustbin and Roush Fenway Racing is having a contest to find the pit crew’s new name.

The Flying Purple People Eaters seems way too obvious and cliche, so don’t submit that to KensethCrewContest@RoushFenway.com. But if you do, don’t blame it on me. (The contest ends May 10th at 5:00 PM ET) 

However, you have to be over 21 to submit a nickname. You know, because of that whole alcohol thing.

After you send in your name, drop us a line in the comments. But make sure that you’ve already submitted it first. You don’t want anyone stealing your recognition, do you?

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his stepmother Teresa aren’t what you would call "close." When Junior bolted Dale Earnhardt Inc. for Hendrick Motorsports in 2007, their frayed relationship finally tore apart once and for all.

But on Thursday, birthday of Dale Earnhardt Sr., they reunited for a common purpose: honoring the memory of The Intimidator.

The Earnhardts, along with Richard Childress and Dale’s sister Kelley, unveiled the No. 3 Wrangler car that Junior will drive in the July Daytona race. It’s one of many ways that the Earnhardt family will honor Dale Sr. as he’s inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Junior initially devised the idea, as he had some unsponsored races for his Nationwide car. He contacted Wrangler, with whom he has an existing sponsor relationship. Kelley brought in Childress and Teresa to close the circle.

Although Senior is most famous for driving the black Goodwrench No. 3, he drove the Wrangler 3 for several years before that. Childress still retains the rights to the 3, and he’s raced it several times since then, most often by his grandson, Austin Dillon.

The tension between Dale and Teresa was evident in their quotes at the event, as Scene Daily noted:

"Me and Teresa has [sic] always had a lot of respect for each other," Junior said. "Dad always had a way of bringing everybody together. It’s Dale Earnhardt Day. This is a great opportunity … for us to do something together in the good for my father and what he meant for all of us."

"As long as we keep the goal in mind of honoring our dad," Kelley said, "we all tend to overcome whatever it is that we may be holding on to."

As for further reunions? "Let’s get through this one," Teresa said. "We’re really here to enjoy this program and Dale’s birthday."

Sounds like a plan. Look for the 3 in Daytona, and perhaps afterward … but not in Sprint Cup. Neither Childress nor Junior expressed any interest in doing that any time soon, if at all.

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 “Here Comes Wrangler, He’s One Tough Customer”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. stands next to the No. 3 Wrangler Chevrolet at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, N.C. Thursday. He will run the car in the NASCAR Nationwide Series at Daytona International Speedway on July 2. Credit: Mary Ann Chastain/Getty Images for NASCAR via nascar-assets.americaneagle.com

Host Winston Kelley begins a news conference Thursday at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, N.C. unveiling the No. 3 NASCAR Nationwide Series car that Dale Earnhardt Jr. will run July 2 at Daytona International Speedway.  Credit: Mary Ann Chastain/Getty Images for NASCAR via nascar-assets.americaneagle.com

(Front row, left to right) Taylor Earnhardt, Teresa Earnhardt, Kelley Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Richard Childress (Back row left to right) Wrangler VP of Marketing Craig Errington and Kerry Earnhardt stand behind the No. 3 NASCAR Nationwide Series new car at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, N.C. on Thursday. Earnhardt Jr. will run it July 2 at Daytona International Speedway.  Credit: Mary Ann Chastain/Getty Images for NASCAR via nascar-assets.americaneagle.com

(Left to right) Teresa Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. share a smile Thursday during a news conference at JR Motorsports in Mooresville, N.C. unveiling the No. 3 NASCAR Nationwide Series car that Earnhardt Jr. will run July 2 at Daytona International Speedway.  Credit: Mary Ann Chastain/Getty Images for NASCAR via nascar-assets.americaneagle.com

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There hasn’t been much good news coming out of Richard Petty Motorsports of late, but here’s some of the best: Richard Petty’s wife Lynda is responding well to treatment for brain cancer.

"She had a
growth of cancer in her head that messed up her central nervous system,
but we went back last week and found out they completely eliminated
that particular growth," Petty said in a statement. "She’ll still have to take some treatments from time to time,
but at least she has all of her faculties back and we’re looking
forward to another 50 years with her as far as I’m concerned."

Petty hasn’t been closely involved in the running of the company that bears his name since last fall, when Lynda Petty’s diagnosis was revealed. He explained the decision thusly:

"For
50 years I’ve been out messing around with a race car, ever since we’ve
been married – I’ve always told her that racing comes first and if she
works real hard, she can be No. 2,’ Petty said. "Well, after 50 years
and when she got cancer I said, ‘Wait a minute, it’s time I give her my
next 50 years.’"

Petty also addressed Kasey Kahne’s decision to depart Richard Petty Motorsports after this season: "Even
though he knows he’s got a job, he still wants to show his new boss and
his old boss that he can still do the deal, so I think he’s going to
work that much harder at having a good year here," he said. "I think
this gives us a break for next year as far as figuring out what we’re
going to do, and I told [Kahne] the other day that I really appreciated
him making the decision early to get the pressure off of him and also
off of us. We don’t have to keep hearing all this stuff and sponsors
wanting to know where things are at, and by getting it out in the open,
it just makes it easier and better for everybody."

Our best wishes for Lynda Petty and the whole Petty family going forward.

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Hey everybody! Plenty to discuss in and out of NASCAR these days, yes? Like Jeff Gordon there. He’s probably got a lot to talk about. And Scott Speed is probably wondering when Gordon is going to stop screwing around with his keys and MOVE OUT, you know, because that’s a good parking place and those things are tough to come by this time of year. Vamoose, Rainbow!

Anyway, this here’s your Midnight Marbles open discussion thread. For the new folks, this is where you can talk anything you like — racing, politics, religion and other calm, friendly topics.  Enjoy yourself, be good to one another, and we’ll see you again very soon with more stuff.

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This weekend, NASCAR stops at one of the few short tracks on our circuit. Richmond International Raceway is a ¾ mile track set on top of what used to be a half mile dirt track at the Virginia State Fairgrounds. Rather than delve into the history of the track today, I thought that we would stop over and visit one of the most famous families in racing who are from just down the road in Stuart, Virginia.

The Wood Brothers still field the number 21 Ford, driven by Awesome Bill from Dawsonville Elliot (one of my personal favorite drivers and a gentleman who always smiles if I holler “Hey Awesome Bill!” when I see him in the garages.).  Glen and Leonard Wood changed the way stock car races were run and more importantly how they were won. The modern pit stop is the direct result of the Wood Brothers teams. Pit stops, while never leisurely, drivers often would turn their cars off and take a stretch. It was a smoke em if you got em kind of break, while the pit crew screwed off and on the gas caps; raised and lowered the car with hand pump jacks and attended to whatever adjustments needed to take place. We all know how distressing it is when our driver is stuck in the pits for more than fifteen seconds. Can you imagine if he climbed out for a smoke break!? It was the racing smarts of Glen and Leonard Wood that made pit road what it is today.

I have seen this image many times in my books on NASCAR’s history, my apologies if it is copyrighted somewhere. But I love it.

The Wood Brothers have been involved in stock car racing since 1950. Glen Wood entered into his first NASCAR Grand National race in 1953. He took home the burned up shell of his car, he never even made it through the first heat. But from that small step, Glen Wood became one of the most well known drivers in NASCAR. Glen finished 3^rd in his second race and things got better from there. He even took home the Most Popular Driver award in 1959. His younger brother, Leonard, was always in the pits when Glen was racing. When Glen retired after fifteen years of racing, the Wood Brothers team was a well respected and admired racing team. The list of drivers who stepped into their Fords is awesome, a collection of legends in NASCAR that no other team can boast. Curtis Turner, Tiny Lund, Junior Johnson, Joe Weatherly, Banjo Matthews, AJ Foyt, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, and Bill Elliot to name only a few.  The Wood Brothers have always raced Fords, by the way. The Wood Brothers maintain an admirable manufacturers’ loyalty that few do any longer.

The Wood brothers took the time to notice that it mattered how long a driver took on pit road and began to work at reducing the total amount of time that their driver spent there. Glen credits Leonard’s engineering skills as the foundation for the innovation and design for improving the equipment used by the team. He worked with Ingersoll-Rand to develop the pneumatic air-guns which even today wrench the lug nuts off the cars like lightening. He also developed the pneumatic jack which reduced the ten to fifteen pumps on a store bought jack to one or two. With Leonard’s upgrades to the equipment used in the pit and a precisely developed choreography to the actual pit stop, the Wood brothers brought the total time for a pit stop to a sharp 20 seconds. Their methods even impressed the high-tone open wheel crowd. They were hired to run the pit for Jimmy Clark in 1965 for the Indianapolis 500. He won simply because he was in and out of the pits faster than anyone else in the race.

Glen was nominated to, but will not be inducted with the first class of the NASCAR Hall Of Fame. I think that he belongs there, but don’t get me started on who I would have voted for! There will be lots of years to get to all the folks who belong. However, the Wood Brothers have been recognized elsewhere. They are listed in the Motorsports Hall of Fame and Glen is listed as one of the 50 Greatest Drivers among other accolades. The Wood Brother’s Fords have been to victory lane at the Daytona 500 four separate times. They have won 96 races as a team and have been on the pole 116 times. In 1976, the Wood Brothers took home the triple crown of NASCAR, winning the Daytona 500, the World 600 and the Southern 500 with David Pearson behind the wheel.

If you are in Virginia, you absolutely must stop by the Wood Brothers Museum. The museum is in Stuart, not far from the North Carolina state line. Not only is the drive breathtaking, the shop is so full of amazing things, it will knock your socks off. I am not kidding. It has got to be the best racing museum out there. Not only that, but everyone is as nice as you would expect a family who has been in racing for 60 years to be.

http://woodbrothersracing.com/

PS. I have pics of the inside of the museum somewhere around here! I will have to check my archives and post. In the mean time, shall we take a peek at what a pit stop looks like? Also, I’m not the greatest videographer, but I try!

Clickty click here! 14 PIR

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Tiger Woods and the PGA Tour are in North Carolina this week, the heart of NASCAR country. So Jimmie Johnson is teeing it up on Wednesday in a pro-am tournament that will feature golf luminaries like Woods and Phil Mickelson, other reasonably well-known North Carolina figures like Michael Jordan, and hordes of anonymous corporate CEOs whose companies pay millions in sponsorship fees.

Johnson is a good golfer by NASCAR standards, which means he can occasionally break three figures. (In NASCAR terms, he’s the golf equivalent of a start-and-parker who can run a couple full races a season.) He’s run a charity golf tournament the last few years. But he’s most golf-famous for a certain wreck he had back in 2006:

I thought it’d be a great idea to surf on top of the golf cart, but it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done. It was in Florida, at a friend’s golf tournament. I was horsing around, got up on top of the cart and tried jumping off the top. With the plastic cleats on the plastic roof, when I went to jump, I just slipped. I didn’t jump out; my feet just kind of came back, and I went straight down, right on my wrist. At first it seemed really funny, but when I was sitting there with a broken wrist, attitudes changed. My wife gave me one of those deals where she didn’t say anything at all. That was plenty. Thing was, I wasn’t driving that cart. That’s why I was bored and ended up on top. I have to drive the cart to stay occupied, and I’ll get it going as fast as that governor will allow. If you do a little work with the governor, I’m sure you can speed it up.

Unfortunately, Johnson isn’t paired with Woods in the pro-am; the 48 will be playing with Davis Love III. However, if Johnson does check up on the 18th green and send Tiger tumbling into the rough, well, we’ll know something’s up.

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When John Borneman III got caught up in a crash on a restart in the Nationwide Series race at Phoenix on April 9, it damaged the only speedway car that he had, and forced him to miss the upcoming race June 5 at Nashville.

However, he still had a superspeedway car in his shop.

"I bought it before Daytona from (Ray) Evernham. It was a car that was ready to be raced in the Fourth of July race last year," Borneman said.

Borneman, who races off of the money that he makes from his construction business, missed the Daytona race in February because the field was set by points and qualifying draw. But given the unpredictability of restrictor plate racing, that might have been a good thing. The car made it out of Daytona intact.

So Borneman and his team went out to Talladega, hoping to make the race. They only bought one set of tires qualified 30th, and had to wait another day as the race was rained out Saturday and pushed to Sunday afternoon. Usually Borneman can get Kurt Busch or Michael Waltrip‘s crew to pit his car at a companion race. But since the Nationwide race was after the Sprint Cup race, those crew members had a flight to catch.

That left Borneman with just four crew members, including crew chief Kevin Cram, who ended up changing tires. But oddly enough, that was a good thing.

Borneman ran with the leaders all day, but had to finally pit under green towards the end of the race.

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"We only had four guys to pit the car, so we could only do gas or we could only do tires. We were running sixth or seventh there on that long run, and when we had to come down pit road under green, we lost the lead draft and were back with four guys, which was probably a blessing because of that big wreck at the end," Borneman said.

After that wreck that took out Brian Scott and Colin Braun and others on lap 114, Borneman restarted 15th for the green-white-checker finish.

He steadily made his way up through the pack, and wanted to get to the bottom of the race track on lap 120 in turns 3 and 4, but couldn’t. That was a good thing too.

Had he gotten to the inside, he probably would have been tagged by Jamie McMurray or Brian Vickers in that nasty crash that turned Dennis Setzer‘s car into a flying fireball. Instead, Borneman was on Vickers’ outside and slid by the big wreck unharmed.

He finished fifth.

"For something like that to happen… just going there was a financial strap and to come up with a top five finish was just an emotional day," Borneman said.

Borneman plans to take his fixed up speedway car to Iowa on July 31, where he scored his previous career best last year.

"Our best finish was 16th at Iowa and we stayed on the lead lap all day. To come to Talladega, it’s the great equalizer and it gives everyone a chance," Borneman said.

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The IRL announced Tuesday that there will now be two championships within the overall IZOD IndyCar Series Championship. The schedule consists of nine road and street courses and eight ovals, and because the split is fairly even, there will be a championship for the squiggly tracks and one for the circular ones.

The format is the same as it is for the overall championship, as the points accrued on the tracks will count for both the overall title and a sub-title. So it is feasible that a driver could win the overall title and both sub-titles. Or a driver could win both sub-titles and not the overall championship. (Starting in late May, fans will be able to vote for the names of the two sub-titles, as each will be named after a former driver)

That would be a little bizarre, but the season finale at Homestead is excluded from the oval championship so that the overall championship takes center stage. Therefore a driver could win the road title and oval title by a combined five points, but then finish 25 points behind his closest competitor at Homestead to lose the overall championship.

Given her lack of success on the series’ road and street courses, the oval championship is Danica Patrick‘s best chance to win some hardware during her time in the IndyCar Series. Conspiracy theorists will claim that the sub-titles were created with Danica in mind, because as the series’ biggest marketing phenomenon, the series looks more legitimate when its star driver has more hardware.

However, if you really believe that, it’s a bit of a catch-22 for the IndyCar Series. Given Danica’s recent foray into stock cars, theoretically, more success in the IndyCar Series increases the odds that she moves to NASCAR full time. And while it may be annoying that Patrick seemingly gets more coverage than the rest of the IndyCar Series field combined, that’s publicity that the IRL loses if Patrick makes a permanent switch. Given that the IndyCar Series is already fighting for attention with Patrick as one of its drivers, that’s not a good situation.

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