"I believe anybody who tells you he is unbiased is a liar. Being human gives you bias, and you can't avoid that. The best you can ever hope to be is fair."
-David Poole
RJO's Favorite Charities
Good friends of RJO
Official Beasts of RJO
|
Quote of the Week |
"Whatever you do, don’t walk away from your race car!"
-David Reutimann to eventual race winner Joey Logano |
By Carol Einarsson | 07/02/2009 | | | An excerpt:
I wonder if followers of Juan Pablo Montoya's twitter wish they'd paid more attention in Spanish class. And I also wonder if I'm the only one that copies and pastes his tweets into an online translator to see what he said.
Daytona has a new texting service where fans can text an emergency directly to their "command center". I wonder what happens in the hot summer sun on the 4th of July when guys with phones have had a few too many beers. If they're not dialing 911, I can't imagine it's against the law.
I wonder what's worse for a reputation: Jeremy Mayfield, had he gone to rehab and come back as a driver who admitted his human condition but overcame the problem, or Jeremy Mayfield, accused meth user who got out of his suspension on a technicality that he didn't get to pick the lab for his second specimen to be tested.
| Comments: 30 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/30/2009 | | | An excerpt:
CHEERS to seeing “little” Jimmie Johnson! And that was before he knew not to put the trophy in front of his face. It was nice to see those highlights, and especially with the accompanying race footage that had been called by Ralph Sheheen all those years ago.
CHEERS to the booth improvement at TNT. Ralph Sheheen has worked long and hard in the business and it’s nice to see him get that recognition. One nice side benefit is that his voice is (at least for me) so tied to lower series that inherently have more excitement, so just hearing him calling the race makes it feel more exciting already!
CHEERS to Jeff Burton, “We’ll go build some more stuff and come back... Nine races is an eternity in this sport.” Is there a more level-headed guy in the sport than Jeff Burton? “We’ve wrecked here on single-file restarts, too; let’s be clear about that.”
| Comments: 44 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/25/2009 | | | An excerpt:
Watching NASCAR Smarts brings me the same kind of joy I used to feel watching the old "expert panel" on our favorite Monday Night Show back before it was split up and reorganized. (I enjoy the new TWIN, but in a different way than when Kenny and Johnny were sharing the desk.) Did that show provide serious insight into the weekly race and provide highly-technical details of mechanical issues? No. But was it an hour of fun with NASCAR personalities that made us feel we were in on the joke? Absolutely! Fans of that old show likely still recall the video of Michael Waltrip, Johnny Benson, and Ken Schrader skipping down pit road holding hands.
| Comments: 27 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/23/2009 | | | An excerpt:
CHEERS to “Just save us three laps..” THREE? I’m siding with Wally over Larry Mac. That seems an awful lot on a track like this, even with the downhill part.
CHEERS to physics!! The 18 hits Hornish, and as Hornish spins, he hits the 18. We love immediate justice like that.
CHEERS to Boris either not hearing or ignoring Frankie’s pleading to conserve fuel. “I think he thinks if you get up next to somebody really close and just root ‘em outta the way, they’ll carry you down the straightaway.”
| Comments: 29 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/22/2009 | | | CHEERS to The Stig at the last race at Silverstone! What a surprising treat that was!
CHEERS to the wheels of change, and “Their ace, Jenson Button has all but replaced Lewis Hamilton in British hearts…” As happy as I am for Jenson, part of me feels kinda bad for ol’ Lewis, a victim of his team’s inability to think outside the box.
CHEERS to Silverstone, but why they’re abandoning it when it is packed even on Saturday is a mystery to anyone with a clue about good business practice.
JEERS to an F1 split, and Ecclestone running his multi-billion dollar business into the ground. Say goodnight, Bernie.
| Comments: 8 | | |
By Mike Deutsch | 06/20/2009 | | | It goes without saying that, while I think water/sand barrels are superior to tractor tires as barriers, I definitely think tires are a better barrier than nothing!
Race tracks, like many businesses, generally maintain their physical plants in such a manner as to promote maximum productivity and profitability. A track will prefer to, say, widen pit road or add suites for sponsors, before replacing fencing or other on-track barriers. This attitude is abetted, in some aspects, by the "release policy," which basically leaves it up to the competitor to determine if the facility is safe enough for him/her to race. From the competitor's standpoint, however, if he/she doesn't sign the release, they don't race, and they don't get paid. So they sign, accept the risks that may or may not be evident to them, and unload the car.
| Comments: 3 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/19/2009 | | | An excerpt:
Off topic, I know, but I wonder if the makers of Aciphex ever said that word out loud before deciding that was the perfect name for their product. If you’re like me and spend more time listening to TV than watching it, you’ve probably looked up with a “What’d he say?!” only to see that it’s not spelled the way it sounds.
David Gilliland will be driving the Dreyer's Ice Cream Toyota in Saturday's race. An ice-cream man in the race? I wonder if they put a string in the car for him to pull and make happy music. I think that would be the best way to announce his arrival on pit road.
| Comments: 21 | | |
By Richard D. Fox | 06/18/2009 | | | An excerpt
Add in the fact that the field is closer than I've ever seen it, from the front to the back, the jumbling of the grid by the new rules that have seen perennial back-markers at the pointy end of the grid, and the unbeatable superteams struggling just to score points, drivers seemingly having decided to throw caution to the wind now that they all have a genuine shot at the podium, and cars that are not glued to the pavement by their downforce any more, but instead are a bit twitchy and unbalanced, and you've got a recipe for a fun way to spend a couple of hours before the Cup race--particularly since, presumably, everyone will be in a road-racing mode this weekend, anyway. | Comments: 3 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/16/2009 | | | An excerpt:
CHEERS to Tony with a shout-out to Johnny; why nobody at TNT did that on the pre-race, I have no idea. Rather disappointing, really.
CHEERS to all the guys finally realizing that their number one sponsor needs more help. It’s great to talk about 3M and Aflac, but to tell people to drive a Ford and to remind fans that Ford gets good fuel mileage is probably long overdue, but good to finally hear.
JEERS to the impact that the COT may have on GM. If the cars looked even remotely like the product they’re selling, perhaps it would be a better platform for their advertising dollars.
| Comments: 36 | | |
By Carol Einarsson | 06/15/2009 | | | It's been a month since the relaunch and a lot has happened in those 30 days! The All-Star Race and Carl Long's suspension, Jeremy Mayfield's expulsion, Tony Stewart and David Reutimann both enjoying first victories in different ways, Dale Jr losing his Crew Chief cousin, and a rule change to allow double-file restarts.
But a lot has happened around here, too! We're continuing to grow in readership and in features. We have widgets, we have easy-to-find archives, we have a site moderator helping out, and we're working on new features all the time that will be coming soon.
| Comments: 11 | | |
|
Previous Poll Results |
| Jeremy Mayfield scandal: Did he take something he's not admitting, or did he get a false-positive result from the lab?
| results accurate: |  | 63% | | results bogus: | | 38% |
|
Follow RJO on
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
|
