A Voice for the Fans ~ What Happens When Racing Becomes Soporific?

I bid you welcome gentle readers, and a warm welcome as well to our assigned reader of all things related to NASCAR. One of these days, perhaps we’ll surprise you and run a column on NFL on these pages. My guess is that would be a welcome break from what certainly must become monotonous after a time.

 

Speaking of becoming monotonous, we have here yet another map of SAFER barriers on the track next up on the NASCAR schedule, Chicagoland Speedway. At least this one isn’t going for its second time around.


 Well, I do believe we’ve seen worse, but the strange placement in the tri-oval of that bit of green amidst two small segments of red seems strangely out of place to me. Their own website identifies that as something that was done at the initial installation of SAFER in 2004, and search as I might, this is another track that apparently thinks things are just perfect the way they are, and they need not concern themselves further with this “safety thing” that everyone is so up in arms about. They ignored the survey conducted by that Florida newspaper that will no longer allow the working press to read without paying first. (No more plugs on these pages!)

 

Your scribe searched their website carefully, and the latest of 7 articles in which SAFER barriers were mentioned was in that same year, 2004. That was 11 years ago, and one would think they might at least have finished those little bits of red on the frontstretch… but one would be mistaken. Not only could I find nothing on their website, Jayski or Google about any additional installation of SAFER, but their not-so-helpful website does not even divulge the name of whomever it is that runs the show in Joliet. To whom then, are we lowly fans supposed to address things that concern the track? I’m just guessing here that Lesa France Kennedy might be a tad too busy to worry about things at Chicagoland, but really Lesa, you might want to just take a peek here. They seem to be running this track much the way that politics are run in the Chicago area.

 

Wouldn’t it be so much better if all track officials were like Roger Curtis (Michigan) and Clay Campbell (Martinsville), two other ISC tracks that along with Darlington and Daytona, get it so right? Those good folks are always available to the fans, and Clay once let this old lady use a sequence of letters between him and me as part of a column about Martinsville. It doesn’t get any better than that!

 

One other small thing I’d like to point out before we move away from Chicagoland, and I know that Kyle Busch will concur with me on this… there is entirely too much grass surrounding this race track! Good grief, one could pasture horses or cattle in the amount of grass we’re looking at, and none of it in the infield, but all directly bordering the race track. I see Jim’s map shows no wall between that expanse of grass in the tri-oval and the wall behind pit road, which for logistical reasons cannot be a SAFER barrier. After consulting two different sources, I cannot see one there either. Yes, these aerial maps can sometimes be difficult to read, but a wall pretty much looks like a wall… every time.

 

And now boys and girls, lads and lasses, ladies and gentlemen, buoys and gulls (it’s cuter on the rest room doors) and race fans of all ages, it’s time to exercise your channel changing finger, or perhaps just your middle digit will do. Yes, it’s that moment that absolutely no one has been waiting for… the beginning of the end, otherwise known as “The Chase”, in the make-believe world of Brian Z. France, commonly referred to in the circles in which I travel as “BoZo.”

 

Once again, this farce is being touted as “10 Battles” among “16 Nations”, a cute word supposed to equate with the word “drivers”, but missing it by a mile. As I cautioned you last year Mr. BoZo, in the real world, when nations do battle, that is called WAR! This aged scribe, a child that predated the Second World War, is still quite sensitive to such words, as are a whole lot of my contemporaries. We are “offended”, to make use of the most overused word in today’s dictionaries, by the notion that you make light of such things.

 

Would you care to know what else offends us? No, I didn’t think so, but I’ll tell you anyway. The very idea of “Pledging Allegiance” to anything or anyone but the Flag of these United States of America! That Sir, is about as offensive as it gets, and ever so many of us old farts that you wished gone when you came to power, as it were, would like you to know exactly how offensive it really is!  Old Glory is our flag, and long and proudly may she wave. That is the one and only flag to which we will ever pledge our allegiance… the American Flag!

 

Gentle readers, if you wish to read what I wrote last year, much of it on this same subject, please click right about here and you will be magically transported to something called, “Driver Nation… What in Tarnation?” That’s much easier than just repeating the same thing over again. I’m learning, in my advanced years, to conserve my energy, and surely, each of you is capable of clicking on a link now and again.

 

Before we adjourn for today, let’s go back in time just a few days, to the race at Richmond… the end of all that’s right about NASCAR racing… in my humble opinion. Did everyone see the overnight ratings from Richmond? The lowest ratings of any race this year, save for the rain-wrecked one at Kansas. I don’t know folks… that might signal some sort of encouragement to Brian, as he floats around inches off the ground on that little pink cloud, but it kind of tells a story to me. No one cares! There is so much hullaballoo coming from NASCAR about how thrilled we all are to see the Chase arrive, yet it’s all contradicted by the fact that no one even watched the deciding race.

 

Well, I can’t really say no one, since I did watch it, and all I can say is that whatever has happened to Richmond is a shame. It’s racing now like a track twice its size, which would be any one of those boring 1.5-mile sleep inducers… like the one coming up this weekend. About the most exciting thing that happened in the race was when Michael McDowell suffered some sort of brain fade and drove straight into a safety truck, which was at the time parked right up against the wall… UNDER CAUTION! Oh yes, and there was that thing about someone (Matt) jumping the restart a couple of times, but NASCAR letting him off with a pat on the head. Incidentally, there were no penalties issued in either incident, but McDowell will be 15 minutes late starting practice at Chicago because he was late in presenting his car for qualifying inspection at Richmond… or something closely akin to that.

 

Even my favorite gang of broadcasters at NBC kind of let me down last Saturday night, when all they could find to talk about for the last 45 minutes or so of the race was whether Aric Almirola could supplant Paul Menard as the final entry into that infernal thing they want us to see as a playoff.

 

Excuse me? We’re supposed to be talking “Championship” here, and with no offense intended, I have to say that neither of those names even belongs in such a conversation. One really has to wonder how NASCAR would handle a bit of reaping what they’ve sown, and be forced to crown Paul Menard as the reigning Champion for 2015. Again, no offense, as I really like Paul as a guy, but he’s just not the best driver out there, by any definition. Paul won a race once… and only once… in the Sprint Cup ranks. Yes, it would be considered by some to have been a biggie… the Brickyard 400 in 2011… but in reality, that race has earned a spot right near the top of the “boring” list. Despite the obvious lack of spectators, the hype surrounding it continues, but again, only in the mind of Brian Z. France. If you read that sentence again, you might find an oxymoron within it.

 

You know what gentle readers? It’s going to be difficult to find things to write about over the next ten weeks that don’t all sound a lot like this column. But remember, you can’t call me “disgruntled” because I’ve never been “gruntled”, at least to my knowledge. ☺
And now, it’s well past time for our Classic Country Closeout. Let’s start with a real oldie. I think we heard this one some time back done by Hank Thompson and his Brazos Valley Boys, but this time it’s Doc Watson, bringing us an older and blue grass version of “Mama Don’t Allow No Music Played around Here.”
Playing on YouTube can become addicting. I had no idea what might be up next until I stumbled across this real oldie, dating back to 1944, and then the same man re-recorded it and had another chart-topper with the same song in 1945. Hundreds have recorded it since, but no… but no one, sings “Jealous Heart” like the original, Tex Ritter.
OK, we’re keeping it short this time, so this will be the final memory for today. This is a pair that have done many numbers together in the Heyday of Classic Country. Here are Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb with one I’ve always loved called “Are You Mine?”
Be well gentle readers, and don’t forget to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!


~ PattyKay