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What Think Ye of NASCAR “Drama”

 

Kevin Harvick winning at Charlotte actually Cued the Circus Music

Keep in mind that UMBRAGE is good.

So, last week Charlotte turned into a Festival of Spider Monkeys when Brad Keselowski — who gives me an Eddie Haskell vibe, which might just be due to physical resemblance — got crazy at the end of the race and started bashing people on the cool down laps.

Farewell, More Front Wing

Cue the sad circus music and DESPONDENCY. Just heard via The Twitter that MoreFrontWing.com is shutting it down. Paul and Steph and the posse over there did a great job for IndyCar fans. It certainly was a go-to site for all IndyCar news. And their event summary pages, which IndyCar should immediately copy but won't, were hugely awesome for the hardcore fans.

Alas, maintaining a site of that level requires a LOT of time and effort. Paul and Steph, in their farewell letters posted here, said they both were stepping away to use that time in other ways.

I've been operating pressdog.com in this form since 2005, and I can tell you that maintaining a blog is a volunteer effort. Even stuffing your site full of ads will only generate a few hundred dollars a year ($300 a year was my revenue zenith) which works out to about 25 cents an hour for your labor. So if you don't love doing it, or don't have the time to spare to do it, you gotta shut 'er down.

Like Steph and Paul, I've been devoting more of my time to my day job, which pays substantially more than 25 cents per hour, so I completely understand their decision.

Always sad to see good stuff from good people cease, but (cue the odious racing term) it is what it is. Thanks for all the massive effort and fan service and best wishes for the future to everyone at More Front Wing.

The New NASCAR Chase Qualification Format is Working

Clint Bowyer is among those looking to get into NASCAR's 16-car playoff at Richmond. ( Nick Laham/Getty Images)

Earlier this year NASCAR created a blizzard of discussion ranging from ecstasy to despondency (which is one of NASCAR's core talents) by announcing a new playoff qualifying system.

With one race to go before the playoff (aka Chase for the Championship), NASCAR has to be pleased with how the new system is working.

First, you gotta separate analysis of the new win-and-your-in, 16-driver grid playoff system with analysis of if NASCAR should have a playoff at all. Two separate issues. Given the fact that NASCAR does have a 10-race playoff, I’ve found this current qualifying system rather compelling.

NASCAR at Atlanta – Kyle Brain Lock Sets Up A-Main

Kasey Kahne wins at Atlanta. (Credit: 301051Todd Warshaw/NASCAR via Getty Images)

NASCAR at Atlanta rapid reaction ...

The race was officially the “Oral-B USA 500,” and Oral-B toothbrushes and stuff are made in … Iowa City, Iowa. WHAMMY. Shout out to my in-state oral health posse.

Kyle, Kyle, Kyle ... oh KYLE. So, imagine our chagrin, couple laps to go in what seemed like a five-hour race, when Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. “had contact.” Let’s go to the replay. Looks to me that Kyle just got to the back bumper of Marty and turned him on purpose.

IndyCar at Fontana – The Morning After

Will Power celebrates his 2014 IndyCar Championship. (Photo: Chris Owens, IndyCar)

IndyCar finale rapid reaction ..

Congrats to Will Power on the championship. I was glad to see Will win because losing it again in the finale may have made him a threat to hurt himself and others. I like Will because he has a unique personality and a bit of “screw it, I’m going for the win!” streak in him. Both are refreshing.

IndyCar Should Grab the STEM

 

Collete Davis

IndyCar should become the IndyCar Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Series in 2015.

I give Collete Davis -- science brain, race car driver and Woman of pressdog® -- full credit for this idea. It was Colette who first made me realize that racing in general and IndyCar racing in particular is rolling STEM. IndyCar should use that fact to reach out to young fans, differentiate itself from other forms of racing, and simultaneously encourage the next generation to pursue careers in STEM fields.

What Collete did while a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was go to high schools and use racing to drive home the point that science can be dead sexy.

How Much Information is Too Much and Criticizing the Critics

If you’re a life-long student of mass communications like I am, two tragic incidents recently — the death of Kevin Ward Jr. when he was hit by a car driven by Tony Stewart, and the death of Robin Williams — provide opportunity to observe The Media in action and, more interestingly, public reaction to the media in action.

Twitter and Facebook have a lot of downsides, but one of the big upsides is they allow people to voice opinions, and allow the world access to those opinions like never before.

Usually these media critiques come down to a few main themes:

• Too much information
• “Sensationalized” information
• Inaccurate information
• Willful attempts to use the power of The Media to damage someone
• A relatively new one: lack of standing to comment
• An oldie-but-goody variant: intentional laziness or favoritism because the media are complicit with one side or another.

In general (please see discussion below for all the caveats and nuances) 1) people don't get that the media is a business and that it's VERY market-driven and 2) I tend to error on the side of more information over less, within reason.

Let’s break it down (I wish I was getting graded on this term paper …)

Reactions to NASCAR at Michigan and IndyCar at Milwaukee

 

Will Power puts on his gloves before carving the field, surgeon-like, at Milwaukee.

Couple of ovals on the schedule this weekend, which turned my Sunday into a Mr. Sluggard on the Couch day. Insert wife chagrin here. So let’s recap …

NASCAR at Michigan. UMBRAGE TAKEN! Remember that umbrage is good, and we had some umbrage after this one. Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson spent several minutes face-to-face, looking unimpressed with each other, gesturing more wildly as the conversation went on, but no pit brawl broke out. Each was unhappy with the other’s alleged gratuitous paint swapping on the track.

Tammy Kaehler Doesn’t Just Turn Laps with Her New Book, Avoidable Contact

The best compliment you can pay Tammy Kaehler after reading her third book, Avoidable Contact, is a big one: she’s not just out there turning laps.

One of the dangers of multi-installment series featuring the same protagonist is they can morph into a sort of same-story-different-location exercise. That is, the fundamentals of each book start to replicate -- the protagonist pulls out the same bag of tricks to solve the mystery, the same types of characters appear -- and all that changes is window dressing like location or time of year.

But in the racing vernacular there’s no “holding station” for Kaehler in book three. She’s not just doing the literary version of saving fuel and tires trying to make it to the end of a several-dozen-book run of her Kate Reilly racing-themed mystery series. Instead she’s driving for the win, even in the early stages of what fans hope is a long run.

There Have Always Been Crazies, They Were Just Harder to Hear

Inevitably, with every controversial event, the outrage flows. Umbrage is taken. People are pissed about what other people say or didn’t say, implied or didn’t imply, etc. People leap to “set the record straight” and defend the honor or this person or that person. Millions of words are sent to battle from every corner (and mine now join them).

So it is with the death of Kevin Ward Jr. who was hit and killed by a sprint car driven by Tony Stewart.