Happy Hour: What race did you prefer last weekend?
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 and have a good time.
Have you recoverd from Sunday? It was a fantastic day of racing, if we say so ourselves. Sometimes the longest and greatest day in racing can be a drain. Sunday didn’t seem like it was one. We were ready for another race after the 600 was over.
OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But the point is made.
Before we get to the fun, we’ve got some penalty news to report. Jimmie Johnson’s team was penalized for sideskirt modifications in the All-Star Race. The penalty? The No. 48 team got the last choice of pit stalls after qualifying on Friday. The team has now appealed the penalty, which means the punishment is deferred until when or if the penalty is upheld.
Even if the No. 48 team doesn’t think it has a case, appealing is a good move. Johnson is the best driver at Dover and pit selection is more important there than at Pocono and Michigan.
Let’s get to your comments. Our first comments stem from the post about the man arrested for domestic abuse after he heard his fiancee and another “talking trash” on NASCAR per police.
Indy or NASCAR? Slept through Indy even a thunderstorm with quarter size hail didn’t wake me. Enjoyed the NASCAR race – Charles
We’re going to go through J.T.’s email graph by graph here. Because it’s quite fun.
Let’s swing to the other side of the spectrum.
NASCAR has a few good races. Most people don’t understand indy cars/ to anyone in doubt go to indy in May and the brickyard in August . The arguments will end right then . You do have to be in good physical shape for Indy cars today. You don’t have to be for nascar. They blow that all out of whack to brainwash people/ sure a few of the drivers are super fit but most of the pit crews are in far better shape . Tony Stewart is one of the best all around drivers in the world and he’s certainly not in shape and many other good drivers are the same. – Mike
Comparing NASCAR and the IndyCar Series on the strength of Indianapolis is foolish. Indy is the biggest race of the IndyCar season and it’s potentially one of its most exciting tracks. Indy is one of the most lackluster tracks on the Cup schedule.
It’d be like comparing a no-lead-change no-caution IndyCar race to a (not this year’s) Talladega race. It’s not fair.
The fitness aspect is a bit of a bad comparison too. Drivers have to be fit to compete in their own sports and while no one is saying Tony Stewart would go to the gym and keep up with Carl Edwards, he’s fit enough to do his job in the Cup Series.
Possibly both?
You have to be a very good driver to win in the Xfinity Series, but you also need the equipment. Sure, it’s the same equation in the Cup Series, but the gap between first and 25th in the Xfinity Series is much, much bigger than it is in the Cup Series. It decreases the margin for error when it comes to a season (bad finishes hurt more because good teams can have an off day and still finish 10th), but the reverse also applies too.
And no one is going to argue that the Roush equiment during Stenhouse’s Cup tenure is anything close to what it was (relatively) in the Xfinity Series when Stenhouse won his two titles. There’s still plenty of time for his performance to pick up, but we’re going to say the lack of results have more to do with car rather than driver.
We’ll save the missives, but as long as cars are primarily reliant on downforce for handling, we’re not going to give it a great grade. We tend to agree with Kevin Harvick’s Friday comments about aero push — it’s always going to exist in traffic. However, there are ways the aero push can be minimized. Namely, by taking away lots and lots of downforce.
Oh, where to begin…
We’re choosing over a season, right? Well, this is a NASCAR blog.
The Dover question comes from this tweet by NASCAR.
No, the entire track being banked is not something unique to Dover. Most oval tracks the Cup Series races on have banking on the entire surface. Per this site, Martinsville, Indianapolis and Phoenix are the only tracks that don’t have banking on straightaways. We get that creating social media content can be difficult at times, but we’re really not sure what the purpose of that tweet was.
And for another no, our guess is that Knaus and Johnson have a couple more years together as crew chief and driver.
