Happy Hour: Endorsements, penalties and official airlines
Welcome to the second 2016 edition of Happy Hour Mailbag. As always, tweet us your thoughts or shoot us an email at [email protected] if you want to participate.
A dull week in NASCAR, eh? We’re still wondering why NASCAR CEO Brian France thought it would be a good idea to publicly endorse Donald Trump for president.
We get making “personal” and “private” decisions to endorse presidential candidates. We also understand that France has the right, just like any other person in the U.S., to support anyone he wants for president.
What we don’t get is believing that NASCAR fans along with the rest of the general public would understand that France’s “personal private decision” as a citizen could be easily separated from an endorsement by the man who is the head of NASCAR and, tangentially, separated from an endorsement of NASCAR itself.
Heck, even Trump was (likely purposefully) blurring the lines between France and NASCAR Tuesday morning on Twitter. Perhaps France’s saving grace from the endorsement was that he made it less than 12 hours before Super Tuesday. There wasn’t even an entire news cycle to be had regarding the endorsement before people moved on to the results of the primaries the following day.
France even sent NASCAR employees an email this week about his endorsement.
OK, enough about Trump. Let’s have some fun. NASCAR announced Thursday that Allegiant Airlines is now the official passenger airline of NASCAR. Seriously. The sport that relies on a bevy of private and charter aircraft to shuttle its teams and crews around now has an official airplane. Maybe Allegiant gets first dibs on those charters? We’re guessing the answer is no.
Now this would be a great example of NASCAR putting its sponsorship money where its mouth is. Wonder how much Allegiant would have to pay to be the exclusive air travel provider of all NASCAR teams? And could you imagine running into Jimmie Johnson two hours after the race in a waiting area for a commercial flight? Yeah, we can’t.
It’s also worth noting that the only places you can fly via Allegiant from Charlotte, the home of NASCAR, are Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa Bay. Quite the route map.
Heck yes it is. Wouldn’t that be fun to see today? How crazy would it be if a driver doing an interview on the pace laps kept talking as the race began? If it happened on Fox it would be even better. Instead of a spotter telling him “Green, green, green” he’d have to hear Darrell Waltrip yell “Boogity, boogity, boogity.”
Come to think of it, hearing “Boogity, boogity, boogity” may be enough to make a driver crash.
Thanks for always contributing and never reading, Turbo (we kid).
If you’re unfamiliar with the reference, Martin Truex Jr. was docked 15 points for a second roof flap violation at Atlanta on Sunday. The first came before Daytona front row qualifying.
We have to admit that our first reaction to the penalties was similar to Turbo’s tweet. Did Furniture Row and crew chief Cole Pearn think they found a loophole within the roof flap rules? And that the loophole was big enough to be potentially exploited again at Atlanta after what happened at Daytona?
And another question; why was this not caught before practice and qualifying inspection at Atlanta. Did FRR make changes to the roof flaps just before the race?
The team is appealing the penalty so we could get some answers to those questions over the next couple weeks. The appeal should take place relatively soon because Pearn got a one-race suspension out of the penalty. Since the team is appealing, he’s crew chiefing at Las Vegas on Sunday.
Regular readers of this column know our love/fear of the bowling pin. But how often do you get to see Eddie Money outside of a concert at a casino? Maybe he took the Kansas gig because there’s a casino just outside turn two.
To end on the racing question … no, there’s not going to be any surprises in 2016. Sure, there could be a driver or two that sneaks a win because of a rain-shortened race or a fuel-mileage one, but the top teams are going to continue to be the top teams with the low downforce package. The new rules won’t be a magic elixir for some teams.
We do think there will be a balance of power shift as the season goes on. But it’ll happen among the teams contending for wins every week rather than someone who spends the first half of the season hovering at the back end of the top 20.
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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!
