Happy Hour: Your place for post-race Charlotte hyperbole
Throughout the week you can send us your best questions, jokes, rants and just plain miscellaneous thoughts to [email protected] or @NickBromberg.We’ll post them here, have a good time and everyone’s happy.
We’re going to start with the latest “old” Chase standings before we get to the ridiculousness that was the comments surrounding Saturday night at Charlotte.
1. Joey Logano, 2,224
2. Kevin Harvick, 2,204
3. Kyle Busch, 2,193
4. Jeff Gordon, 2,191
5. Brad Keselowski, 2,178
6. Ryan Newman, 2,168
7. Carl Edwards, 2,167
8. Denny Hamlin, 2,154
9. Matt Kenseth, 2,153
10. Jimmie Johnson, 2,152
11. A.J. Allmendinger, 2,142
12. Kasey Kahne, 2,136
13. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 2,135
14. Greg Biffle, 2,127
15. Kurt Busch, 2,109
16. Aric Almirola, 2,096
Alright, let’s talk about what happened on Saturday night. These first two emails are from before NASCAR announced penalties on Tuesday. If you haven’t seen what happened, Saturday, click here. If you want to read about the $50,000 penalty to Keselowski and the $25,000 penalty to Tony Stewart, click here.
Be warned, they’re incredibly reactionary.
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After the Kevin Ward incident, NASCAR needs to start to penalizing drivers and teams, for any retaliation on pit road or in the garage after the race with their car. It’s only a matter of time before someone get hurts or killed. What Brad K did in the pits, he and his team should be parked for the following race. What he did in the garage after should be another race. This would be a ban from all 3 series of NASCAR competition too. On top of a 30 point penalty. And yes by this logic I know Stewart should be parked too. If you’re going to settle it, settle with it your fist not the car. – H
After what happened with Tony Stewart this year….what this IDIOT Brad did…using his car as a guided missile, hitting a parked car with a driver that had taken off his safety harness ….was nothing short of attempted battery with a deadly weapon! I mean, he could have killed someone very easily! NASCAR should be suspending if not throwing this guy out of the sport! There is NO ROOM whatsoever in our sport for that stuff! He tried to intentionally hurt another driver…by which the result could have been death! If NASCAR does not do what is right….they are as bad as he is! – Gerrit
Hyperbole much?
Let’s start with what happened on pit road. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movement for a rule mandating that NASCAR drivers remove their safety equipment and helmets only when the car is stopped on pit road. I know that for the most part, the cool-down laps and entering pit road is a calm event, but cars can have things go wrong, even at low speeds and coasting. While Keselowski probably had an idea that drivers tend to take their equipment off early, I don’t think he knew for sure that Kenseth would be unbuckled when he ran into him.
Now, let’s go to the garage. When you watch the video of Keselowski and Hamlin in the garage, there really isn’t much to it. The incident is made more severe-sounding by the loudness of the engine. If you take away the engine noise from the video, does it have the same effect? I don’t think it does. Keselowski’s doesn’t peel out nearly as severely as you’d see a teenager in a parking lot. (Not to mention the fact that Cup cars don’t have manual transmissions and traction control.)
Also, he was trying to get away from Hamlin. It’s obvious that Hamlin was following Keselowski, and with two cars in a confined space like that, Keselowski’s options for avoiding conflict are limited. With more people and more open space in the open-air part of the garage, he had a better chance of avoiding anything even more ridiculous than what transpired after the race.
Asking for a ban or a suspension before or after the penalties were announced is overreaching at the very best. I understand attitudes because of the unfortunate events at Canandaigua Motorsports Park on August 9, but they’re not the same situations. Now, here are two emails from after the penalties.
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Explain to me how BK only gets a $50,000 fine and a four race probation! He ran into Matt on pit road after his helmet and belts were off. Did BK know that, probably not, but that shouldn’t make it OK. I am far from a Matt Kenseth fan, but he could have been injured. Then for BK to go racing through the garage area, supposedly hitting a transmission and tossing is across the garage area, and putting a lot of people at risk tells me his punishment should be a lot harsher. Why didn’t he get any points taken from him? Do you think he should have been sat down for Dega’? That might be a little too much, but BK needs a fine steep enough to stop him from doing that again before someone gets seriously injured. The drama is great and all, and I think it’s good for the sport to have drivers showing their emotion, but safety needs to be the top priority. – Roger
Keselowski should have at least had to sit out 2 races. They did it to Kyle Busch and he never went that far. The fairness is not there. Brad should not be able to compete after all he did….it’s not worth watching for that small of a penalty. To light them up in the garage and hit a man without his safety devices deserves at LEAST one race suspension! Brad went beyond the norm and given a gift and I hope it costs NASCAR. Now there are 2 jerks! – M
Again, what’s with the call to a suspension? What Keselowski and Kyle Busch did are not comparable. Busch deliberately wrecked another driver under caution and it was clear that NASCAR was at its wits’ end with the penalty.
Much like Kenseth’s alleged door-slam of Keselowski, we didn’t see a transmission go flying on camera at any point, even though that’s what Hamlin said happened. And while I’m not saying Hamlin isn’t telling the truth, it’s important to note that humans have a tendency to exaggerate while emotions are high.
There was no reason for Keselowski to be suspended for any races, nor was there any reason for anyone to be suspended. I understand the fines for the contact after the race, but it did look odd that Kenseth and Hamlin weren’t at least given the ever-vague NASCAR probation for their actions. Hamlin could have simply not followed Keselowski out of the garage stall and de-escalated the situation, but he did.
And there’s a clear line here in NASCAR now. You can shove or do what Kenseth did by going for a headlock/grab thing, but you can’t punch, and you can’t do anything with your car when you’re not on the track itself. But if it’s in between those boundaries, NASCAR wouldn’t mind frustration boiling over more often.
They’re real.
That’s not very descriptive of course, and I wouldn’t call Newman a favorite at this point. Nor would I call him a favorite if he was in the final four at Homestead. But as we’ve seen through five races, the ability to avoid a bad finish and advance to the next round is critical. If Newman keeps scoring back-end top 10s and other drivers keep having bad luck, he’s going to be in it at Homestead. And from there, who the heck knows.
Where’s Kasey Kahne? He’s got a chance to move on too. It’s the ultimate situation of equal upside and downside with Junior and Johnson, assuming they’re still both needing a win to get in, and for Gordon, it’s just a matter of making it to the end, because if he does, he’ll be in. If Kahne was with Gordon in the second row and this scenario transpires, wouldn’t it be fascinating as hell to watch?
I don’t think there’s a good parallel for the Royals to a NASCAR driver, so I’m going to go with Denny Hamlin. He’s had the moment of great optimism and failure with the 2010 Chase and then the trials of a torn ACL, back injury and a winless stretch. Now he’s healthy, got his win in one of the most random NASCAR tracks around (Talladega) and has a shot to win. I think it works.
And the Kansas City Royals are going to the World Series. I just typed that again because this is such an unfamiliar thing that I’m not sure it exists.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
