Monday, March 10, 2008

NASCAR News With Attitude - March 10th Edition

Are Goodyear Tires Causing Bad Year For Race Teams?

“If I were Goodyear, I’d be very embarrassed about the tires they brought this weekend”, Stewart said. “It was ridiculous. If they can’t do better than that, pull out of the sport. I guarantee you that Hoosier or Firestone could do a better job than that.”

My question is this, why in the world would NASCAR sign off on a five-year deal with Goodyear or anyone else for that matter? Did you know that Goodyear has been with NASCAR for 54 years? I don’t think that any contract should last that long, it doesn’t make good business sense to me.

It’s just like NASCAR has this multi-year contract with Sprint, but now Sprint is in trouble and loosing customers by the droves which, to me, makes NASCAR look bad. Here we go again with another top series name change.

I have to agree with Tony on this one and from what I hear there will be some pretty serious meetings going on behind the scenes this week and on into the near future. Something has got to be done about this tire situation there is too much on the line trying to win these races and all the costs involved. If I were a car owner I’d be livid. I don’t think it’s smart to only allow one company to DOMINATE the entire sport. Does that make sense to you?

The Roush Fenway Saga OR “Oil Lid-Gate” @ LVMS

Speaking of car owners being livid.. “The Cat In The Hat” was about to have a cardiac arrest on Friday morning. What began as a debate over whether the infraction was intentional, which appears to be the overwhelming opinion of the garage area, has turned into a personal warfare between Roush and White. Like someone once said, “Can’t we all just get along?”.

Apparently White, the general manager of Toyota Racing Development, told USA Today on Thursday that Roush Fenway Racing knowingly caused the lid to come off to increase the car’s speed. Mr. White later toned down that comment.

While Mr. Roush says that White is stealing all the good people in the garage area and doubling their salaries to where he can’t afford to run a race team, but then this is not the first time that “the cat in the hat” has had a complaint regarding NASCAR. Personally I think he belongs over at the Hendricks camp, that way all the whiners could be together. They say misery loves company, right?

Oh by the way, NASCAR officials declined to comment on this topic, but got a kick out of the way Roush and White were attacking each other. Maybe the two simply are following the edict of chairman Brian France and showing more of their personalities.

Here are a few interesting comments from the drivers:

“Him saying that there was a mistake in the bolt failing, that’s ridiculous. That’s comical. That is really comical, actually, and they should not allow him to make those kinds of comments. They should have a crew chief get in there and state an honest answer and they would be better off. But I enjoyed reading his version of the story.” Dale Earnhardt Jr.

One thing that I have learned about these race cars is typically things don’t
fall off of cars that hurt the cars.” Jeff Burton

“That’s been a tool for years that people have used. NASCAR has gotten onto it, and we saw a lot of fines earlier in the year.” I think it was last year Jimmie but who’s counting. This, coming from a driver that never knows anything, never sees anything and he never does anything. He just drives his car. Yeah right Champ !

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