Thirty-six races. A few are great venues that produce very entertaining television events. A lot more are not. Some tracks have two events, and you wonder why. Some have two and you wonder...why not three?
This Sunday, NASCAR action takes us to Kansas. We just can not get enough of Kansas, which is why we find ourselves watching the action from there for a second time this season. If not Kansas, I guess there is always Kentucky, Chicago, Dover, Fontana, or Pocono , but allow me to calm down my beating heart.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. started on the pole at Talladega. Most years, that is just par for the course. In this, his final season, it was a return down memory lane. Talladega is where anything can happen, where any lead lap car has a shot to win it, and a where one’s dreams can go up in flames, smoke, and mangled metal without notice.
Nose to tail, side by side, just inches apart, ripping around a 2.66-mile tri-oval that is 48 feet wide with 33-degree banking in the corners at speeds of over 190 miles per hour. It is obvious to anyone watching what could happen. It is amazing when it does not.
When one of the legends in the sport leaves us, we remember. If a man is known simply by the company he keeps, Robert Yates did very well. As a team owner, he was the boss to such NASCAR luminaries as Davey Allison, Larry McReynolds, Ernie Irvan, Dale Jarrett, and Ricky Rudd.
Racing is not foremost on my mind today, but Sunday in Dover early in the afternoon it was all that mattered for a few drivers. Ten looked rather comfortable when they determined which dozen would advance on the championship trail, with six others vying for two remaining spots.
We all have waited for the moment that the iconic number 24 rolls back into victory lane with rising star Elliott aboard. With 40 laps remaining we all thought this would finally be the moment that he scores his first victory in the Monster Energy Cup Series.
When your form of peaceful protest is deemed to be disrespectful to your nation, when the paying customer is offended and decides to take their business elsewhere, maybe one needs to reconsider a more effective form of protest. No matter the cause, you want the people with you, to support you bringing attention to it, to even cause them to rally to deal with the issue. To do otherwise renders the action as ineffective and nothing more than a divisive self-indulgement. Lord knows, we have seen far too much of that lately.
Less than three months to Christmas! If that does not come as good news, then hopefully you are all aquiver over the fact that there are eight races remaining in the NASCAR season. If that does not spark your excitement, enjoy the baseball playoffs and the football season, provided they have not yet ticked you off to the point that you want to boycott them all.
This weekend the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the second playoff race in the Round of 16. Martin Truex Jr. secured his spot in the next round with his win at Chicagoland while Kurt Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman are below the cutoff for transfer into the Round of 12.
