I like being nice. Sure, I can bitch with the best of them, but it is nice when one can say nice things about someone. For instance, I think NASCAR did the right thing by calling the race at Texas last week. Let me see, the race was already delayed by five hours and the skies really opened up with 40 to go. Damn right they should have wrapped things up when they did.
Sometimes you earn by doing, sometimes you earn by succeeding. In NASCAR, perseverance seems to trump performance as it announced the Charter teams heading into 2016 and beyond. It has everything to do with how tenacious a team has been in at least attempting to run, and absolutely nothing to do with their success, be it yesterday, today, or even at some future date.
This Saturday we are off to Kentucky, a day early and an entry short. Well, early if you think of Sunday as the usual race day, and short as we will have 42 entries instead of the usual 43. Michael McDowell, who was 24th at Sonoma last Sunday, won’t be joining us.
After a week of tremendous joy with David Ragan slaying the giant on Sunday, things got a little testy on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. First, NASCAR’s Chief Appellate Officer, John Middlebrook, weakened NASCAR’s penalties to Penske Racing’s No. 2 and No, 22 teams.
Paul Menard’s season has had it’s ups and downs. The season started off solid with a sixth place finish at Daytona. Though the team stumbled at Phoenix, they followed it up with two more top tens. As the season progressed, the roller coaster trend continued with many finishes in the high teens to lower twenties being the norm.
As my father used to say, "I’d have liked to have been a little birdie". We will probably never know what was discussed in that verbal intercourse between Jack Roush and his points-leading driver, Matt Kenseth. But whatever it was saw one of the best drivers in the sport head for Joe Gibbs Racing (or so they say).
