Race Car Stuff

Most of you probably thought I had gone away and given up on this site. I have had a great many personal issues happening, in addition to a couple of months of unemployment and starting a new job, getting adjusted to various other aspects of life that have changed in my world. Add all of these corruptions of life and combine them with the racing off-season (except for the various Australian and New Zealand racing series) and the end result is that Racecarstuff.com has suffered. For anyone that reads this site, please tell everyone you know that it is back. I have some plans that will make it better than it was before — promise!!!

The one thing that doesn’t change for me is my love of racing, both from the grandstands and the drivers seat. So this past weekend I ran my first autocross event since the report I gave on the Joy Fund Autocross last year. If you want to see how the autocross went then check out the “Event Reports” section on Autocross.us and look for the reports on the TidewaterSportsCarClub.com (TSCC) event on February 18th 2007. You will see it started snowing during the event!!!!! I did not fair so well in the competition, as the car had a small coolant hose failure. It was fixed in time to drive the car home, but unfortunately the problem could not be solved in time to finish the remainder of my runs. In spite of that it felt GREAT to be back at any sort of motorsports event after the long downtime that life had imposed on me.

Oh yeah, this is a Daytona report. Well it is going to be a pretty thin report, but included will be a few of my observations.

The Daytona Prototype coupes are setting new standard still in sportscar endurance racing. After 24 hours the top two teams finished seconds apart. In the last hour or two the top three teams spent much time trading positions during pit stops often with the three teams running nose to tail. Similar levels of competition were seen in all of the other classes.

Scott Pruett is still proving that he is truly the best overall sportscar racer in the US. In my opinion there are only a few who can challenge him. One of which is beginning to show signs that his talents are beginning to be on the decline as he is counting the years, and the other is currently unemployed as a competitive driver. Those are Ron Fellows and Tommy Kendall. Maybe there is some bias on my part showing through, and I do think Boris Said on any given day can run with these guys, but he is focusing his efforts in another direction these days, trying to make another go at a NASCAR career.

And then the NASCAR part of Speedweeks was one of the most exciting ever. My personal Ford bias left me with high expectations. The results did not leave me disappointed surprisingly. In the recent years the Fords have not faired vary well at the Daytona 500. This year there was simple inexperience on the part of the part of Travis Kvapil that kept his Roush F150 from victory lane. That is not to take anything from the fantastic job by the winner, Jack Sprague and second place finisher, Johnny Benson who both edged out Travis in the last hundred feet or so.

Then there was the finish of the Daytona 500. Mark Martin is one of my favorites. With the laps winding down, it would have been a great thing to see him pull his Bobby Ginn owned Chevrolet (WHAT???) into victory lane. Mark lost the race because of his gentleman racing style. He should never complain about losing a race because of that, and he did not have any complaints after the race. He was disappointed, but took it in stride. In addition, the ending of the race ended in some controversy.

Ever since NASCAR started their policy of not racing back to the line when a caution flag came out, there have been controversial finishes. I have felt like they should modify the policy in some way for cautions on the last lap. I have always felt like the cars ahead of the accident should be allowed to race back to the finish line. Cars behind the accident should be told to hold their position. NASCAR can surely work within this ideal and come up with a workable set of guidelines that would retain safety and still give the exciting last lap finishes back to the fans that were commonplace before the current caution flag policy.

If it was by accident or by circumstances or whatever, this raced ended the way I have felt a race that had an accident on the last lap should have ended. NASCAR held off with the yellow flag until the race leaders had passed under the finish line. After the accident Kevin Harvick nudged his car ahead of Martin giving Harvick the win. As much as my heart was with Mark Martin, my ideals said that Harvick is the person who should have won that race.

More to come next time.