Newman!
Newman will not be at Penske next year….hmmm..wonder where he is headed?
Stay tuned…
Chicago
I didn’t watch much racing this weekend. I was in the middle of preparing for a birthday for a now 5 year-old. If you are a regular reader to The Park, you know Postman and myself are in the process of adopting a little boy (Little Smoke). His birthday was on Saturday so I was quite busy running around trying to get things all in place for him and his guests.
I did get a chance to watch a little of the Nationwide race on Friday night. Congratulations to Kyle Busch for his victory.
I did Tivo the prerace and part of the race since I wouldn’t be back home until after the race started. However, I was so tired from the party, I really didn’t have the strength to get into the race. I was semi-conscious enough to see Kyle make a last lap pass on Jimmie Johnson to take his 7th win of the season. Congrats to Tony on a top 5 finish which moves him two spots in the standings.
That’s about it for me. I know there isn’t much about the race, but sometimes even I need a break from the grind.
One more thing…here is a picture of Little Smoke’s birthday cake. He loves Wall-E so I proceeded to take the time to make him a Wall-E cake. I have to say it was worth the hours I spent on Friday to see his reaction. (Please note, that is not a smudge on the actual cake. I cannot release his name due to legal reasons at this point.)
Stewart Haas Racing
I have had some time to digest all of this change with Tony not only today, but when I first heard the rumors back on April 24, 2008. I have stated through all this time that I would remain a Tony Stewart fan no matter what team he decided to drive for in 2009 and beyond.
I read an interesting take on all of this by Joe Menzer over at NASCAR.com. He addresses of the what many of us may be asking ourselves…why? Why not? Sometimes in life you have to make that leap of faith to reach your goal. Tony has been with JGR for 10 years. I am sure both Tony and JGR would have loved for him to retire with JGR, but what Tony wanted for his career may have changed over the years. I know for one when I was younger I had certain goals I wanted to accomplish out of my life, however life got in the way and I had to make a few detours. These detours, good and bad, have put me where I am today.
I am sure this a decsion Tony weighed over for a long time. How do you leave a racing team that gave you your break into NASCAR, who you have shared two championships, and several winning seasons with? I can’t answer that or want to even begin to answer it. Tony is the only one who can answer it. Some might speculate he wasn’t happy with JGR’s decision to switch from Chevy to Toyota was the deciding factor. I don’t think so. Tony is looking beyond the time when he will no longer be racing. All athletes regardless of their sport have to look beyond their playing years.
It’s not like Tony is going into this blindly. He currently owns several race teams as well as Eldora Speedway. If one wants to question his skills as an owner, you need to stop and look how Eldora has flourished over the last several years especially with regards to The Prelude. He was out there nursing his “baby” making sure it was ready for racing the day of The Prelude this year. He makes sure every aspect of the event and track are taken care of. He understands what it takes to be a promotor and owner.
I hate the fact that I have read on a couple of fan forum sites of how some people think this is going to be like Michael Waltrip. I don’t see it that way. This is an established team. Tony will have 50% ownership in the team. He has exerperience as a racing team owner. Tony is a proven winner. I am not saying Michael Waltrip’s venture into team ownership has been a failure, but I don’t believe Tony will not have the mountains to climb as Michael did. Tony will surround himself with people who will get the job done. And if he needs some advice on owning a premier racing team he only has to look at his good friends Kevin and Delana Harvick, or the Pettys, or AJ Foyt.
There is still quite a bit of work for Stewart Haas Racing to get accomplish before the start of the 2009 season. First off, who will be the other driver for the team? Rumors have it Ryan Newman may be a possible choice, but as with anything in NASCAR nothing is certain until it has been officially announced. Whatever comes down the road for Stewart Haas Racing, this fan will be there cheering him on along with my new t-shirt I will definitely be purchasing in the near future.
Leaving
I am NOT a morning person…let me repeat NOT a morning person. So when I saw the news brief on Sportscenter about Tony Stewart I was like WTF?
Of course, this comes to no surprise however to me as a Tony Stewart fan. The rumors started several months ago and now it looks like it has reportedly become fact. It was reported by Marty Smith that Tony has been granted a release from Joe Gibbs racing and will move over to Haas CNC to become part owner and driver beginning next year. Tony will formally announce his move today.
More to come later today…
How I really feel about all of this…
You can create this using Wordle. You can either paste something from a post or you can enter your site address and it will randomly create this word cloud. Notice how the words you use more are larger than the other words. Guess I use Tony quite a bit.
This one I just typed in my web address…once again notice the size of the word “Tony”
Recycling
Since the trendy thing these days is to be environmentally aware and all into recycling I thought I would recycle a previous post of mine. Since we just finished Daytona where driving can be somewhat precarious at times, I thought you might enjoy this post rant about my hometown “drivers” which I first posted back on April 21, 2006.
It’s Friday–I am tired and I am in no mood for you Lubbock drivers.
Yellow light–hello–caution!!!–means the light is going to turn red. This doesn’t give you permission to speed through the intersection in the hopes you won’t have to sit through the light cycle again. Of course it doesn’t help when you see a LPD officer do the same thing. Shouldn’t they be setting the example here???
And heaven forbid the light should be red. I was sitting at a light today coming back to work from my lunch and I saw..count them…three cars run the red light. Luckily most of us waited until they went through the intersection. I have learned to hesitate before putting my SUV into an intersection in Lubbock.
Turn signals are a good thing. Just because you know where you are going doesn’t mean I do. I drive a big blue SUV…I cannot…I REPEAT…cannot stop on a dime. I am not participating in some brake experiment for Hyundai to see how well my brakes work.
I don’t know how many road construction projects Lubbock is undertaking at the moment, but it seems where ever I drive around town I see orange cones. People when the bright orange sign reads “Left lane closed ahead” it really is closed. Don’t drive up the left lane until you can’t drive no more and expect me to let you over (even if your signal is on) I read the sign. I moved into the other lane that was available for driving. And don’t even try to “squeeze in” either. Take a look at my back windows…I am a NASCAR fan, I have no problem with hitting another car. Isn’t that what insurance is for????
I dont’ like it when drivers cut me off, but if you do, DON’T SLOW DOWN once you get in front of me. I figured the reason you cut me off was to take the no space for you car spot in front of me despite the fact there was NOBODY behind me!
And finally–those of you who don’t the idea of merging onto the Loop…let me share some of the wisdom I learned in driver’s ed. When you merge into traffic, you should be almost or up to the speed of those cars that you are merging with. You don’t STOP or SLOW down! The only time you STOP is if you can’t merge. When another driver such as myself gives you space to merge—FREAKIN’ MERGE–DON’T SLOW DOWN!!
I would continue on with my discussion here, but I don’t have that kind of time.
So if you come to Lubbock, beware!
Coke Zero 400 and a little extra
I hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th weekend. Like Tony, I too was under the weather.
I want to touch on a couple of things before getting into Saturday night’s race. Congratulations to the #20 Nationwide team for winning another race. This time it was Denny driving the #20.That makes what 9 wins this season for that team with Tony leading with 5 wins for the #20.
Looks like the #5 will be occupied for the next two years by none other than Mark Martin. Mark Martin announced this past weekend that he will run a full time schedule in 2009 for HMS. I guess Mark wants to give it one more shot at winning a championship before he makes his exit out of NASCAR. Well, he has a pretty good shot over at HMS. But as with any championship run it will be a challenge, but if anyone is up to the challenge Mark Martin is. Postman was very excited about the prospect of his favorite driver making a run for the championship next year. I think it is kind of funny that he will be doing it in an HMS car. He is not a big fan of the #88 and don’t even get him talking about the #24. He told me the other day #48 is growing on him (and I have to admit it too, #48 doesn’t rub me the wrong way as in year’s past). But either way he will be rooting on Mark.
Now on to the festivities…in case you didn’t know with the numerous annoncements throught the broadcast and with commercials…if a Coke Racing Family driver won the Coke Zero 400 everyone would get a free 20 oz Coke Zero.
I have to say I enjoyed the race for the most part. Nothing out of the ordinary really upset me other than the fact that Tony had to come out of the car. I have to give major props to J.J. Yeley for bringing home the #20 in pretty good shape. In fact he was in the Top 10 late in the race, but several cautions prevented J.J. from giving the boys a decent finish. The #20 finished 20th and Tony dropped 3 spots to 12th in the point standings. I know drivers hate to come out of their cars and hand it over to another driver, but at some point you have to decide what is best for your team as well as the other competitors and that is what Tony was feeling on Saturday.
From the get go, I thought this was going to be an HMS dominated race and for the most part it was. But with everything that is Daytona, only one of the 4 drivers finished in the top 10. Dale Jr. who lead the most laps finished 8th. While Jeff, Jimmie, and Casey finished 23rd, 30th, and 34th repsectively. I would have found it somewhat funny if Jeff had gone on to win the race. I mean, here we have THE Pepsi driver winning the Coke Zero 400. I wonder if the Coke Executives were having heart attacks when they saw the #24 that close to victory. Do you think they sent a case of Coke Zero to Carl? And what was up with Jimmie in the pits? Every time he exited his pit stall he swung wide. There were times he was moving cars close to or on the grass. I believe one of the broadcasters mentioned about the pit selection causing some of the issues. If that is the case, Chad needs to make note of it. Next time choose a different pit.
As always with Daytona racing gets pretty hairy within the last 25 or so laps and Saturday was no exception. As well all have been told cautions breed cautions. Starting with lap 131, when the 6th caution flew, we had caution 7 (lap 136), caution 8 (lap 140), caution 9 (lap 149) and caution 10 (lap 157) what seemed like back to back cautions. Just when the cars would get up to speed and moving, another caution would come out. Caution 10 of course caused the race to move into overtime. Jeff Gordon brought the field to the green and the next thing you know, there goes Jeff heading for the infield. No yellow was thrown until Michael Waltrip, Sam Hornish, Dave Blaney, Travis Kvapil, J.J. Yeley and a host of others decided to come together.
Have viewing footage, it was determined that Kyle Busch was ahead of Carl Edwards when the caution flew. Congratulations to Kyle for winning his first race at Daytona and his 6th win of the season. Was it me or did I hear fewer boos and more cheers from the fans? There were still quite a few of boos, but now there were more cheers than weeks past.
Way to go David Reutiman…what was it 5 Lucky Dogs? You finished a respectable 21st and on the lead lap.
Elliott Sadler is off the market. Apparently Elliott is now engaged and is planning on a wedding some time next year I believe I heard them say. Congratulations Elliott.
One last thing…testing policy changes…not sure how I feel about this one. If NASCAR is going to change their policies regarding testing they need to make it fair for all teams. I don’t know if just opening up Pandora’s box will fix things. Because once you open it up, it will be a little difficult to close it. We will just have to wait and see.
Funny thing happened on the way to work….sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. I was heading down to the ladies room at work this morning and noticed there was something not quite right with my shoe. I thought maybe there was soemthing on it and that is why it felt weird. If only that were it…but no it wasn’t. I looked down and saw the problem. I WAS WEARING TWO DIFFERENT SHOES! Yep…that’s right I have on a brown sandel on my right foot and a black sandel on my left foot. It wouldn’t be so bad because I have a pair of brown sandels that look like the black one I am wearing, but I put on the nice pretty one that has a decorative strap. It’s ok to point and ridicule and even roll your hinies off laughing…because if you can’t laugh about life, then why bother living.
Park milestone…I reached the 20,000 vistor mark sometime this weekend! Thanks to all of my regulars and lurkers. Here’s to another 20,000.
Trixie's Trailer Park 