Uncle pressdog's Fireside Chat -- What Think Ye of Daytona?

So, was the Daytona 500 about five hours long or what? Did ya watch? If so (or if you're interested in the recap) let's discuss. Dark roast ... engaged.

Daytona 500 Road Oval -- First of all, Jimmie Johnson won, followed by June-yer (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) and Mark Martin. Danica Patrick ended up 8th. Full results here.

So what we had at Daytona was pretty much a road race on an oval. A road oval, or roval. It was allllll about the draft Sunday. So you get in line and you go. If you pop out of line, maybe you overtake two cars, but then it's like popping a parachute and you go flying backwards (actually, the train of cars goes flying forward without you) and you're like someone on the interstate looking to merge into traffic when one lane is blocked. If nobody lets you in, you're SCREWED. Maybe 10 spots later you find a hole.

So if you started up front, you needed to fixate on getting into or staying in the top line of cars and then just cruise. "Hold station" (DRINK, ye BASTARDS) as Marty Reid used to say. Danica said she spent most of the day in the draft at half throttle. Then, on the last half lap, you pop out and go for the win.

And, just like a road race, there were spots to be made in the pits and restarts and off other driver's errors. Great pit stop gets you a couple spots and, given the draft limitations discussed above, you could stick there. So pit work was super key in this race.

You could also get spots on double-file restarts, again, advancing a few then popping back into the high line before The Draft made it impossible to overtake on the low line again. Also, if a driver in line left too big of a gap in front of him/her (make an error), you could maybe pop out and grab the position and tuck back in before the WALL OF AIR hit you. If you timed it right. There were a few drivers who did that, including Brad Keselowski who led late.

So, in some sense, this kind of superspeedway race put some emphasis on skill. Mostly mental skill and pit stop skill, but still. The veterans won in the end, and the rookie (Danica Patrick) got a little snookered. She followed the wrong guy (Greg Biffle) who faded like an old Polaroid at the end. Danica should have jumped out in front of the charging Dale Earnhart Jr. at the end and maybe gotten pushed up, but hindsight is 20/20. She was conservative because, as she said, she didn't want to throw away a great start trying something crazy as a rookie.

I will say that even "impossible to pass" road races have far more opportunity for driver error -- what with all that shifting and right and left turning and everything -- so that makes it a bit more interesting than watching a line of cars.

I was reminded, frankly, of the Indy 500s between about 2008 and 2010, which (and I'll get a lot of argument here) were the deadly dull combination of road ovals AND fuel mileage races. Not thrilling. Here are my notes from the 2010 Indy 500 which was indicative. To some every Indy 500 is SUPER AWESOME simply because it's the Indy 500 and criticizing it for any reason is BLASPHEMY. I'm not one of those. Call a spade a spade is how I roll.

Stories on the 2013 Daytona 500 are here, here and  here. A good lap-by-lap commentary here.

Reasons for Optimism -- The good news is the 2012 Indy 500 was probably the best race there in at least the last five years (ish), because the new IndyCar formula helped make overtaking, etc. possible. Why is that good news for Daytona? Because it shows that nothing is set in stone. Daytona was the first retrictor plate track with the new Gen. 6 car, so there were a million unknowns. Now that some of those unknowns are known, some tweaking can take place to try and stimulate overtaking.The configuration of Daytona isn't ever going to change -- just as the configuration of Indy isn't ever going to change -- but the car has a million variables. I'm confident NASCAR will work on it.

I saw some twitter based gnashing about how the race was boring and fears that people who tuned in because of the Danica publicity might be turned off. Maybe, but I'm not sure what could have been done about that, given the untested new car, etc. Knowing NASCAR's willingness to change stuff to improve the show, I'm confident they'll do some stuff to make the next plate track (Talladega? I think.) more exciting. Still, expressing concern as a fan (customer) isn't a bad thing. It helps the Powers that Be understand not everyone was Super Excited about the race. Putting on a Happy Face rarely improves the product. Honest feedback does.

I wasn't bored sightless by Daytona, but then again my driver (you know who) was in the top 10 all day and top 5 late. Also I have a road race brain I can engage and focus on pit strategy, spots taken on restarts, etc. Also there was SOME movement through the field. If you had a fast car you could climb through the field of slower cars. You just had to be smart about it and overtake a few at a time, like on the interstate, then dip back into line. Once you got up to the front with the rest of the fast cars, you were kind of stuck there and it was all about the last-lap strategy.

Another reason to be happy is that NASCAR has a good diversity of tracks and a LOT of races. That is really a big strength for NASCAR among oval lovers. Not all ovals are equal by any stretch of the imagination. So if you don't like the high-banked superspeedways, there are smaller, flatter tracks and even a couple road races. 

The Fox Commentary for the Race -- I didn't listen to it. I invest $40 for a year of NASCAR's Track Scanner, now called Raceview Audio (I think). That (when it works) lets me listen to any the radio of any driver in the field. So I pretty much turn down the FOX crew and keep You Know Who in my earphones, have Twitter open and the leaderboard (when it works) and go from there.

This is an especially good plan if your driver isn't in the top five or so, which TV tends to fixate on. So if you are a fan of Marcos Ambrose, for example, and he's back in P19, he'll get zero love from TV but you can listen to him on the radio and kind of track his progress. I highly recommend. Having said that, NASCAR.com still needs to get its shit together. I was able to listen but a lot of people couldn't access their online stuff. Fix it.

Danica Danica Danica -- Briefly (lord knows I do prattle on about Danica), she drove a great race Sunday. She stayed calm. Stayed tucked into the top line. Hung around in the top 5 most of the race and was P3 coming to crunch time. Her drive, along with her winning the pole, earned a lot of respect with a lot of people. Of course the hard-core will find a reason why she SUCKED or it didn't count because it was a plate race or she got "the call" or whatever, but I don't expend energy worrying about what unreasonable people think.

I think Danica has a legit shot to win a race this season. She's got a great team -- which is super critical in any racing series -- and she's got some talent. Throw in the randomness of NASCAR races with all their contact, etc. and it could happen. She'll have to win a couple, probably, to convince the hard-core dislikers. Once could theoretically be a fluke, but twice? But, again, I'm not concerned with what the Negative People think.

So I'm looking forward to the one-mile Phoenix. Bring it on. That's all I got. Feel free to discuss (civilly, please) below. pdog ... out.

Related articles

Danica Patrick Takes the Pole for the Daytona 500

Johnson wins Daytona 500; Danica finishes 8th

Danica Patrick, first woman to lead a lap at Daytona 500

Comments

[Oilpressure.wordpress.com]

You're not blasphemous - the 2009 Indy 500 was watching paint dry. It was a good thing I was an Helio fan. 2010 was worse - simply domination by Dario. Had I not been there, I may have dozed off.

[Ted Wolfram]

You pretty well covered it....I calculated that there was about 6 minutes of exciting racing, four hours of single file running, and coupled with so many commercials that you had time to do anything short of painting a room between racing scenes, so when they came back...it was a always nice to see that your favorite driver was still gainfully employed.

I too was rooting for Danica (much to most of my families disgust), and after watching the last lap (all of it) if The Biff doesn't go...Danica was, excuse the word, "screwed". If she had gone by herself it wasn't going to work well...so she got what she could. Did she deserve more? From her driving, YES, but racing doesn't often give you what you deserve...think Carl Edwards!! Look up screwed in the dictionary..it will have the 99's picture!!

The problem with Daytona and Dega are the tracks, not the cars. Build a high banked 2.5 mile or longer and every car will be running as fast as the engine will allow.

Want to solve it...not "fix" it....cut down at least two corners (3 and 4) to under 10 degrees...and drivers will have to drive and the cars will have to not only go fast, but even "WHOA" down well....you know it is called "RACING", not lining up and play "follow the leader".

Keep up this crap and sooner or later we will have a death in the stands...and then some governmental agency will solve it for them! Bet on it.

As you say..."on to Phoenix" and then Vegas, then back to Bristol..and then we race fans get to see IndyCar in St.Pete...driven by drivers racing for $35,000!! Can't wait...well maybe I can since we even get one F1 race before we see 22 socialistic teams ($1 million+ each from IRL) running around the streets of "retirement center USA".

But what the heck....it is racing and any racing is better than any stick or ball game ever invented.

[Scott]

This is occasionally an issue with the Daytona 500 when there are new cars or more often new rules packages. And it tends to sort itself out during the year over the four plate races.

Losing some key drivers, especially Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart, early in the race hurt the race I think. More could have happened in the low lane, but you needed more experienced drivers familiar with the old style draft and were confident enough in their ability to draft to take risks. It only takes one driver in the line messing up and dreaking the momentum. (See Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano twitter fight).

It was follow the leader, but there was atleast significant tension because one mistake could completely take a driver out of contention.

Talladega will be insteresting. It really is a different track than Daytona because it is a 3 wide track that can be taken 4 wide where Daytona is really only a 2 lane track that can be taken 3 wide. There's more space to get away from eachother and make moves, and as some of the drivers have talked about the warmer temperatures will likely a make difference when it comes to handling.

[KT]

This years Daytona 500 was proof again that you only need to tune in for the last 5 laps (or last lap in this years case).

[ramblinman]

I found Nascar style "train racing" too boring to watch a very long time ago. Also, two cars hooked together with the rear driver pushing and the front driver steering is lunacy and a recipe for disaster.

I'm sure that many Nascar fans would disagree and there probably is some good racing each year. It's just too boring for me to invest my time to watch and wait. The same goes for IndyCar's street and road racing.

I have no answers on how to fix the problem (boredom). But then, perhaps most folks aren't bored with this type of racing.

Just my 2 cents......

[Ron Ford]

"faded like an old Polaroid" Good stuff, though I am not sure how many of your readers remember when cameras were not phones.

Mark Martin is one crafty driver. I do not recall many if any references to him during the race by ol' DDubya and the boys. With a lap to go I thought that Danica had a podium finish locked up. Then, in the twinkle of an eye, there was that Martin guy.

J.J. Yeley in the top ten??!! Was that a typo?

While many commercial blocks were interminably long, NASCAR does a good job of making their drivers seem more interesting and edgy than they are in real life. IndyCar could learn from that IMHO.

[Chiefswon]

I enjoyed reading this PDog. I was lucky enough to be home to watch it. DP may not have won but she raced smart...most Racers never learn how to do that...Thanks again for all your effort:)

[Mike (15 Days In May)]

I was at the race, and I'm with you, Pdog, I tend to focus a lot more on little moves on the track and the overall strategy. I'll watch a battle for 20th place if it's a good one.

Speaking of the scanner, though, did you listen to her conversation with her spotter just before the last restart? She and Dale Jr. weren't liking each other too much then.

[Harvey Pelovsky]

Boring, snooze, sleep, turn off, take a nap, take morphine, anything! Their biggest race is a big BORE!!!!!!!!
NASCAR AND Danica are both big bores (passing? what's that?????) and she is a nothing racer.

[Anne Proffit]

I spent the Daytona race watching without sound and listening/watching the NHRA race on ESPN3 - I thought Danica did a superb job (and I'm not a great fan) and that experience (her lack) showed in the run-up to the finish... it was only 3 hrs and 8 minutes and everybody played nice for the most part... reality begins this weekend at PIR folks - plate racing sucks

[jdh417]

http://www.jdh417.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-danica-500-i-felt-like-hostage.html

Pressdog your Roval tack was straight on.

I actually heard a national late-night sportstalk host questioning Danica and other drivers' courage for not passing for the lead after Turn 4. A caller tried to explain that they couldn't get out line without going backward, and he got screamed at and hung up on.

The sports media that I heard on Sunday didn't care that it was a lousy race, they were only interested in Danica and the story. Look for Jimmie Johnson to start wearing a t-shirt that says, "I actually won the 2013 Daytona 500."

[Vern]

Danica had a good race but like said she got screwed as Biffle did nothing and had she dove down in front of Jr she may have caused a crash and finished worse and crashed others as well she would have got trashed for. Dale Jr is never going to help her win as she is his biggest threat to his male ego and his popularity. Facts are lets be real, Danica sets marks in nascar and helps the ratings no doubt, but nascar drivers are never going to really help her to win as its a "good ole boys" club and she will never belong to that. They have to be respectfull on camera as it wouldnt look good for them to not be concerning her, but its going to to be tough for her, as they say "If it was easy more females would be in the top tier of nascar"--but its not. Danica has fought the male drivers her entire life and its not going to be any different now despite the phony welcome mat out for her from Nascar for what she brings to the series. However, for the guys to treat her equal and really help her and allow her in their "good ole boys" club, I doubt thats ever going to happen--my thoughts anyway.