THE FRONTSTRETCH NEWSLETTER
Presented by Frontstretch.com
The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!
Nov. 5, 2015
Volume IX, Edition CC
Presented by Frontstretch.com
The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!
Nov. 5, 2015
Volume IX, Edition CC
~~~~~~~~~~
What to Watch: Thursday
- Today is pull-in day for NASCAR's National Series at Texas Motor Speedway. No on-track activity is scheduled but the anticipation is likely building for the race. However, today's appeal will likely get more press.
Top News
by the Frontstretch Staff
Matt Kenseth Appeal Set for Thursday Morning
by the Frontstretch Staff
Matt Kenseth Appeal Set for Thursday Morning
Joe Gibbs Racing has officially appealed Matt Kenseth's two-race suspension for Sunday's crash. NASCAR has expedited the appeal. As a result, the National Motorsports Appeals Panel, made up of three members heard arguments beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET this morning. Read more
Dakoda Armstrong XFINITY Hauler Involved in Accident
Dakoda Armstrong XFINITY Hauler Involved in Accident
The hauler for Dakoda Armstrong's XFINITY team was involved in a crash on Wednesday in Louisiana en route to Texas Motor Speedway. In a statement, Richard Petty Motorsports stated that truck driver Will Mallard was unhurt but that their tractor had to be swapped out. Read more
Austin Theriault Hopes to Return for Truck Finale
Austin Theriault Hopes to Return for Truck Finale
Part-time Camping World Truck Series driver Austin Theriault continues to recover from injuries suffered at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He was scheduled to drive Friday night at Texas but Ryan Blaney will now sub. However, Thierault hopes to race at Homestead upon receiving medical clearance from NASCAR. Read more
Have news for the Frontstretch? Don't hesitate to let us know; email us at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com with a promising lead or tip.
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Today's Featured Commentary~~~~~~~~~~
Dealing With On-Track Anger in the Past
Potts Shots'
by John Potts
I said about a month ago I wouldn't be writing these columns too often for personal reasons, and I meant it. But Phil Allaway and Tom Bowles keep putting notes in the newsletter saying Potts' Shots will return in the near future. As a result, I keep getting messages asking how far off the "near future" is…
Well, that's not the reason for this one. It's the current turmoil NASCAR is going through, a crisis which I think is much of their own making.
I fully realize that nearly all of my race officiating has been on short tracks and that none of it was in an organization on the same level as NASCAR (however, I would submit that the original ASA would have attained a status close to that if Rex Robbins had remained in charge). I've also been involved in the administration and operation of some short tracks, and I wonder if fans aren't beginning to think NASCAR should get closer to its roots by adopting some of the policies in effect at those venues.
Case in point, Joey Logano's flagrant dumping of Matt Kenseth at Kansas City.
Sure, Kenseth was blocking. He was trying to win the race. But at some short tracks where I've worked, the policy has been to send BOTH cars involved in a caution-causing situation to the rear of the field. One reason for this move is that it's virtually impossible for an official to determine if the follower is being brake-checked or not. Nobody knows what's in the driver's mind except that driver. Either way, being sent back to the rear a couple of times has the effect on a driver of making him think seriously about it the next time an opportunity presents itself.
Fast forward some weeks and we have the situation at Martinsville, one where Kenseth obviously waited for Logano and put him out of contention for the win.
Because Kenseth was nine laps down, NASCAR doesn't think he had the right to do that, whereas they seem to think Logano's move at Kansas was "just racing."
I'm not going to dredge up all the comments, pro and con, about what happened on that short track. They've gotten all the publicity they need.
Again, I wonder if a return to NASCAR roots is the best thing in order. I'm talking about the days when drivers settled issues between themselves without involving the cars. Once you'd had to confront a seriously mad driver following the race you had some second thoughts about how you treated him on the track the next time you got together. I imagine guys like Curtis Turner, Lee Petty, Buck Baker, Junior Johnson, and any number of those from the early days of NASCAR wouldn't have found much fault with what happened last Sunday.
For my part, I have to wonder what Logano's face would have looked like if he had won a race by dumping some of the guys I grew up flagging. That list includes the aforementioned Turner as well as Al Straub, Bill Kimmel Sr., Andy Hampton, Les Snow, Charlie Glotzbach, etc.
Then there's a guy named Tommy Spaugh, who was one tough driver and tough character in the Louisville area. I'd like to add that Tommy was not as bad as some people made him out to be. In 1964, he drove all the way to Charlotte to donate blood for Fireball Roberts.
Well, Spaugh had a run-in one night with John Sommerville which came back to mind when I was watching that Martinsville race. Spaugh felt like Sommerville had been roughing him up on the track quite a bit, dumping him now and then, and he was getting close to the boiling point. Some of the details of this incident are related mostly from a conversation my friend Frank Scott had with Spaugh recently. I watched most of it from the flagstand.
It was an ARCA race and Bruce Gould from the Cincinnati area showed up with a car built by Jack Bowsher which turned out to be unbeatable that day. Bill Kimmel and Sommerville were doing their best to run down Gould, but Spaugh wasn't running that well in this particular race.
They came up to lap Spaugh, running side-by-side, when he saw a chance to get even. Instead of moving high, Spaugh moved to the middle of the track, giving Kimmel the inside and taking Sommerville almost to the wall.
Naturally, Sommerville didn't appreciate this maneuver and the next time they came up to lap Spaugh, he roughed him up.
"I cut my wheels and took us both out, into the infield, and stalled both our cars," Spaugh recalled. "He was trying to restart his. Mine was all torn up and I was mad. I jumped out of my car, ran over to his driver's side window and I was gonna pull him out and whip him. Well, he climbed over his roll bars trying to get away, so I ran over to that side of the car. He starts climbing back to the driver's side, so figured I'd just climb up on the roof of his car and that way I'd catch him no matter which side he tried to climb out."
By this time, I had the caution flag out and two of our track officials, Stan Dadisman and Big Al Jecker, showed up to rescue Sommerville. Spaugh threw his hands up and jumped off the roof, landing on the hood, mashing it down on the air breather.
Spaugh had no idea that a photo of him jumping off the roof of that car would show up in National Speed Sport News.
"That's about as famous as I got," he told Frank Scott.
Anyway, that's how you could count on this kind of situation being handled back in the day.
John Potts is a Senior Writer for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at john.potts@frontstretch.com.
I said about a month ago I wouldn't be writing these columns too often for personal reasons, and I meant it. But Phil Allaway and Tom Bowles keep putting notes in the newsletter saying Potts' Shots will return in the near future. As a result, I keep getting messages asking how far off the "near future" is…
Well, that's not the reason for this one. It's the current turmoil NASCAR is going through, a crisis which I think is much of their own making.
I fully realize that nearly all of my race officiating has been on short tracks and that none of it was in an organization on the same level as NASCAR (however, I would submit that the original ASA would have attained a status close to that if Rex Robbins had remained in charge). I've also been involved in the administration and operation of some short tracks, and I wonder if fans aren't beginning to think NASCAR should get closer to its roots by adopting some of the policies in effect at those venues.
Case in point, Joey Logano's flagrant dumping of Matt Kenseth at Kansas City.
Sure, Kenseth was blocking. He was trying to win the race. But at some short tracks where I've worked, the policy has been to send BOTH cars involved in a caution-causing situation to the rear of the field. One reason for this move is that it's virtually impossible for an official to determine if the follower is being brake-checked or not. Nobody knows what's in the driver's mind except that driver. Either way, being sent back to the rear a couple of times has the effect on a driver of making him think seriously about it the next time an opportunity presents itself.
Fast forward some weeks and we have the situation at Martinsville, one where Kenseth obviously waited for Logano and put him out of contention for the win.
Because Kenseth was nine laps down, NASCAR doesn't think he had the right to do that, whereas they seem to think Logano's move at Kansas was "just racing."
I'm not going to dredge up all the comments, pro and con, about what happened on that short track. They've gotten all the publicity they need.
Again, I wonder if a return to NASCAR roots is the best thing in order. I'm talking about the days when drivers settled issues between themselves without involving the cars. Once you'd had to confront a seriously mad driver following the race you had some second thoughts about how you treated him on the track the next time you got together. I imagine guys like Curtis Turner, Lee Petty, Buck Baker, Junior Johnson, and any number of those from the early days of NASCAR wouldn't have found much fault with what happened last Sunday.
For my part, I have to wonder what Logano's face would have looked like if he had won a race by dumping some of the guys I grew up flagging. That list includes the aforementioned Turner as well as Al Straub, Bill Kimmel Sr., Andy Hampton, Les Snow, Charlie Glotzbach, etc.
Then there's a guy named Tommy Spaugh, who was one tough driver and tough character in the Louisville area. I'd like to add that Tommy was not as bad as some people made him out to be. In 1964, he drove all the way to Charlotte to donate blood for Fireball Roberts.
Well, Spaugh had a run-in one night with John Sommerville which came back to mind when I was watching that Martinsville race. Spaugh felt like Sommerville had been roughing him up on the track quite a bit, dumping him now and then, and he was getting close to the boiling point. Some of the details of this incident are related mostly from a conversation my friend Frank Scott had with Spaugh recently. I watched most of it from the flagstand.
It was an ARCA race and Bruce Gould from the Cincinnati area showed up with a car built by Jack Bowsher which turned out to be unbeatable that day. Bill Kimmel and Sommerville were doing their best to run down Gould, but Spaugh wasn't running that well in this particular race.
They came up to lap Spaugh, running side-by-side, when he saw a chance to get even. Instead of moving high, Spaugh moved to the middle of the track, giving Kimmel the inside and taking Sommerville almost to the wall.
Naturally, Sommerville didn't appreciate this maneuver and the next time they came up to lap Spaugh, he roughed him up.
"I cut my wheels and took us both out, into the infield, and stalled both our cars," Spaugh recalled. "He was trying to restart his. Mine was all torn up and I was mad. I jumped out of my car, ran over to his driver's side window and I was gonna pull him out and whip him. Well, he climbed over his roll bars trying to get away, so I ran over to that side of the car. He starts climbing back to the driver's side, so figured I'd just climb up on the roof of his car and that way I'd catch him no matter which side he tried to climb out."
By this time, I had the caution flag out and two of our track officials, Stan Dadisman and Big Al Jecker, showed up to rescue Sommerville. Spaugh threw his hands up and jumped off the roof, landing on the hood, mashing it down on the air breather.
Spaugh had no idea that a photo of him jumping off the roof of that car would show up in National Speed Sport News.
"That's about as famous as I got," he told Frank Scott.
Anyway, that's how you could count on this kind of situation being handled back in the day.
John Potts is a Senior Writer for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at john.potts@frontstretch.com.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Critic's Annex: Red Bull Global RallyCross: Las Vegas
by Phil Allaway
For Red Bull Global RallyCross, they've created a couple of high-visibility traditions for themselves in their first couple of years. One is the inclusion of the series in the X Games. It's the only race that doesn't air on the NBC family of networks. The other is the annual season finale at SEMA in Las Vegas.SEMA is technically invite only. The general public cannot buy tickets to the show (if they were allowed to, it would likely be more heavily attended than the San Diego International Comic-Con). With that in mind, Wednesday night was the very wet season finale for the series. The races will air on NBCSN on Sunday night (Supercars) and Wednesday (GRC Lites) but live coverage of the event aired last night on RedBull.tv.
Naturally, being a Red Bull website, there was plenty of advertising of Red Bull's other endeavors on the broadcast. Those include surfing and Frozen Rush, the winter race on a specially-built snow course that occurs in January. That's understandable. Since there were no traditional commercials, why not? However, what I didn't like about the setup was that I had a lot of trouble getting the stream to play. I clicked on the link for the race, which took me to a splash screen. I clicked on the video to play the stream and nothing happened. I clicked on the bottom of the screen, thinking that it was going to take me to the stream, but it took me back to the homepage.
Eventually, I clicked on the description of the broadcast, and it was only then that the stream played. That makes no sense to me. Very unintuitive. Step No. 1: If you're going to provide a free live stream of an event, make it easy to view.
The duo of Toby Moody and Ricky Johnson were in the booth for RedBull.tv. Both are very knowledgeable when it comes to racing off road. You might remember Moody from when SPEED had the rights to the Dakar Rally (when it was still in Africa before terrorists ran it off the continent). Johnson's a former motocross star from back in the early 1990s before eventually transitioning to stock car racing (he ran in ASA for Herzog Motorsports and started a number of races in the now-Camping World Truck Series).
Both are great commentators to listen to. Moody is an enthusiastic commentator while Johnson has some experience in RallyCross Supercars and easily brings that knowledge to the viewers. These are not easy cars to drive. The Supercars have 600 horsepower, a buttload of torque (they get to 60 mph in under two seconds) and tires that aren't necessarily suited for the conditions. A rare rainstorm in Las Vegas only made it worse.
Both are great commentators to listen to. Moody is an enthusiastic commentator while Johnson has some experience in RallyCross Supercars and easily brings that knowledge to the viewers. These are not easy cars to drive. The Supercars have 600 horsepower, a buttload of torque (they get to 60 mph in under two seconds) and tires that aren't necessarily suited for the conditions. A rare rainstorm in Las Vegas only made it worse.
For the most part, the rain didn't really hurt the telecast as much of the storm seemed to fall between the races (go figure). However, the booth had only a tenuous line with race control. For example, Steve Arpin got sent to the penalty box for a stop-and-go on the first lap of Semifinal A. Luckily, he came back to finish third and make the feature, but why did he get the consequences? I don't know. They never said why. Redbull.tv needs to do a much better job of informing the viewers of penalties.
Speaking of keeping viewers informed, they're not all great in following the whole field. Mind you, there's never more than ten cars on the track at any one time yet coverage seemed to be focused on the leaders most of the race. It lends itself to people making runs from the back and everyone asking, "Where did he come from?" I don't care how muddy it is, it's not hard to keep track of less than a dozen cars on track.
In addition, since it was the last race of the season, you had championship coverage. In the Supercar class, it wasn't much of a battle. Scott Speed didn't quite have it won but he didn't have to push all that hard to take the title in his Volkswagen Beetle over teammate Tanner Foust. The battle in GRC Lites was much closer but ended pretty quickly when Austin Cindric got stuck in the mud.
When the race coverage airs on NBCSN it's going to look a little different from what I saw via Red Bull Wednesday night. However, some of the deficiencies I've listed above will likely remain. It's a shame, but Red Bull GRC and NBCSN have a six month offseason to make some changes to improve their product.
I hope you liked this brief look at Red Bull Global RallyCross from SEMA in Las Vegas. Next week, we'll be back with more motorsports TV commentary. Also, the Adam Carolla-directed documentary Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman comes out next week on DVD. I will be procuring a copy and there will be a critique in the coming weeks, perhaps before Homestead.
Until then, I hope you enjoy this weekend's races in Texas and I truly hope that shenanigans don't overshadow the Cup race again this week.
Until then, I hope you enjoy this weekend's races in Texas and I truly hope that shenanigans don't overshadow the Cup race again this week.
Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager and a Senior Writer for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.
~~~~~~~~~~
"There should absolutely be a penalty for intentionally wrecking someone, but it shouldn't be points. Why? Because if we've learned anything with this new Chase format, it's that points mean nothing. Suspension gets the job done better than points ever could." - Sean Fesko, on whether NASCAR should dock points for on-track behavior
~~~~~~~~~~
Frontstretch Line of the Week
From Two-Headed Monster: Should NASCAR Dock Points For On-Track Contact?
From Two-Headed Monster: Should NASCAR Dock Points For On-Track Contact?
"There should absolutely be a penalty for intentionally wrecking someone, but it shouldn't be points. Why? Because if we've learned anything with this new Chase format, it's that points mean nothing. Suspension gets the job done better than points ever could." - Sean Fesko, on whether NASCAR should dock points for on-track behavior
~~~~~~~~~~
TODAY AT FRONTSTRETCH:
by P. Huston Ladner
by Vito Pugliese
by Aaron Bearden and Sean Fesko
by Toni Montgomery
by Danny Peters
~~~~~~~~~~
FRONTSTRETCH TRIVIA:
Q: Speedway Motorsports, Inc., the parent company (owner) of Texas Motor Speedway, normally uses _________ Motor Speedway as the name of their tracks. However, another track already held the rights to that name. Before the name trade a few months before the track opened, what was Texas Motor Speedway originally going to be called?
Check back Friday for the answer, here in the Frontstretch Newsletter!
Wednesday's Answer:
Wednesday's Answer:
Q: For INDYCAR, Texas Motor Speedway has been the home of close racing, high speeds and terrible crashes. In 2001, Davey Hamilton was the victim of a career-altering wreck in turn 2. What happened?
A: Jeret Schroeder blew an engine in turn 2 and spun in his own oil. Hamilton was right behind Schroeder and could not avoid Schroeder's spinning No. 6. Hamilton then went hard into the wall. The contact lifted the car off the ground so that the nose struck the bottom of the catchfence before spinning across the track and hitting the inside wall. Sarah Fisher was also collected. The crash can be seen here.
Hamilton suffered serious injuries to his legs and feet in the crash that forced him to temporarily retire. After spending a year in a wheelchair, Hamilton began working towards full fitness and eventually returned to driving part-time in 2007. Schroeder and Fisher walked away from the crash.
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COMING TOMORROW
In The Frontstretch Newsletter:
We'll cover breaking news from Texas and preview this weekend's action.
On Frontstretch.com:
Zach Catanzareti answers Four Burning Questions heading into this weekend's Cup race at Texas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Talk back to the Frontstretch Newsletter!
Got something to say about an article you've seen in the newsletter? It's as easy as replying directly to this message or sending an email to editors@frontstretch.com. We'll take the best comments and publish them here!
©2015 Frontstretch.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Talk back to the Frontstretch Newsletter!
Got something to say about an article you've seen in the newsletter? It's as easy as replying directly to this message or sending an email to editors@frontstretch.com. We'll take the best comments and publish them here!
©2015 Frontstretch.com
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