 |
Posted on 07/02/2008 4:27:46 PM PDT by glock rocks
.
|
 |
LOL!
Flash 30th...so far as Nutscar says so far tonight.
And Flipper is still scored 1st!
Oppppppppsss
I’m outta here. See you in Texas?
My bad. (post 905) I misread the schedule. I’m doing Chicago.
My mom called to tell me that my daughter and friend had just left her pool to walk home about a half mile in their bikinis (WHAT!?? oh, wrapped with towels and wearing shorts, okay) at the same time the race restarted with the GWC, and then B4Ranch called to ask how to get his internet working again, and my daughter came home, and the race ended, and I looked up the next week thread and added too many RRRR’s to GR. LOL.
I’ll attempt to go forth and sin no more. I do have to admit... I saw Chicagoland and thought GRRRRR :o)
Dang, too much on the brain!
And here I thought we had some new blood in the mix...
LOL... actually, probably too little :o)
NOTE: On Monday, July 14th, the Yahoo! Fantasy Sports team will perform a scheduled site upgrade which is expected to last for up to twenty-four hours. During this time access to all fantasy games will be temporarily blocked. We appreciate your understanding.
While you were over there did you see that old what’s his name had high score? I didn’t think so...
I challenge you to go back through the thread and see just how awful old what’s his name’s drivers did throughout the race. I mean capital A awful. We’re talking clinically depressing awful. Now where in the world did the final scores come from? It’s like Nascar took all the car numbers and put them in a bingo machine. Yeee!
I think you were looking at last weeks picks during the race.
actually a great American story about overcoming the odds.......
and you know who was a disliked driver before Kyle?....it was Jeff Gordon....he still doesn’t get the love that he should.....
Couldn't agree more. We saw the same with that upstart... what was his name... Flash Gordon. Don't worry about it. For all the people who still dis Gordon, I can say the following: I don't especially like him.
But, I'll tell ya what... folks can call him what they want, but he's a four time Nascar Champion. I call him Champion.
Same goes for Kyle Busch. He's taking names. Sure, folks hated Dale Earnhardt for his aggressiveness, intimidation, etc. but they ended up calling him... Nascar Champion.
I expect we'll be calling Kyle the same someday. I think some folks think that other people are more deserving of the title. Well, that's up to the best driver... and that's what this racin thing is all about. May the best man prevail. And in the meanwhile, it's just racin. I like the Old Man, and Smoke, and going back 30 years, nothing's changed. You don't like my driver? Fine! Yer mama wears camo leggings! So there :o)
Chicargo Land Motor Speedway...only 70,000 seats and they don’t let you bring in a cooler, forcing the fans to buy their cruddy food and drinks at rip off prices.
Was at that track for a Busch race in their second year of operations...never going back...which is too bad because I’m only 1.5 hours away.
From today's Johnson City paper
http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.php?Cat=SPORTS&ID=63809
BMS, racers dealing with leaner times
By Jeff Birchfield Press Sports Writer jbirchfield@johnsoncitypress.com Discuss This Article in Our Forums
BRISTOL — High fuel costs and a bad economy are having an influence on area racing, both at Bristol Motor Speedway and with local competitors.
However, the effect isn’t as great as other areas of the country. While empty seats are easily visible from television broadcasts of NASCAR races at places like Atlanta and New Hampshire, you had to be in attendance at Bristol to notice the approximately 1,000 empty seats at March’s Food City 500.
That race was officially a sellout, and so is next month’s Sharpie 500 for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It doesn’t mean all seats will be filled, although track vice president of public affairs Kevin Triplett remains optimistic.
“I think because so many people book the August race as their vacation, most of them are coming,” Triplett said. “We haven’t heard anything they’re not coming from fans or campground owners. We see other races and we know it’s tough with how high gas is compared to last year.”
Looking at advance ticket sales, Triplett is still expecting a large crowd for the Nationwide Series Food City 250 race. A bigger effect could be seen earlier in the week with the O’Reilly 200 for the Craftsman Truck Series. Cutting vacations short could obviously hurt this event held on Wednesday, Aug. 20 and usually dependent upon a large walk-up crowd.
“We’ve actually seen this for the past couple of years with a large number of tickets sold that day,” Triplett said. “It’s a situation if they’re already here, they usually go (to the truck race). But they’re not buying tickets in advance. They wait until they get here because it’s another $30 to spend on something else.”
Gasoline prices at $1.22 a gallon more than a year ago are also making the speedway change many of the ways it operates as a business.
Triplett said close attention is being paid to how much fuel is used, and employees have elected to travel together to business meetings. BMS and other Speedway Motorsports tracks are even looking at how feasible it is to change some of the company’s trucks, vans and SUVs to cars in the future.
Triplett also knows it’s not a short-term problem; many vendors say costs next year will probably be up from four to seven percent. He said some adjustments will have to be made, but the track is committed to not raising ticket prices in 2009.
“So many of these things are out of our control,” Triplett said. “We don’t want to add to it, so the ticket prices you paid this year will be the ticket prices you pay next year.”
Bristol is in a better position than most tracks in another regard, having many of its sponsors tied up with multi-year contracts. Smaller tracks have struggled for the past several years, with Kingsport Speedway shut down for nearly a decade and Lonesome Pine (Va.) Raceway opening and closing three times in the past seven years.
The crunch has even hurt Volunteer Speedway, the 4/10-mile track outside Bulls Gap consistently voted one of the top 10 dirt tracks in the nation. With crowds down significantly this year, four weeks of racing in May and June were cancelled.
Track owner Joe Loven put most of the blame on rising fuel prices. NASCAR events being televised the same nights as their events were blamed to a lesser degree.
Local racers Wade Day and Tom Lane each said the prices of racing fuel hasn’t gone up as much as passenger car gasoline. Racing fuel averages around $6 per gallon for their machines. Each racer said that’s only around $1.50 more than what he paid a few years ago.
The bigger expense has been getting to and from the race track. Day told about hauling his stock car from the team’s shop in Bristol to Motor Mile Speedway outside of Radford, Va.
“When we drive to Motor Mile, diesel is $5 a gallon,” Day said. “It costs us over a $100 to go up there and back with our Dodge truck. But you know how racing is. The guys who really want to race, they’re going to get there no matter what.”
Lane, who lives near Lamar School, often travels with friends Mike Gill of Elizabethton and Jerry Turner of Piney Flats to Pro Bike drag races outside the local area. They load up all of their motorcycles in one trailer and tow them to the track.
When bracket races are close to home at Bristol Dragway and held on consecutive days, Lane stays at the track over the weekend. He saves additional money by sleeping on a mattress inside the race trailer and using shower facilities provided by the dragway.
This isn’t the first time auto racing has been influenced by a fuel situation.
During the 1974 OPEC energy crisis, many Cup Series races were cut 10 percent in distance, including the Daytona 500. The Southeastern 500 at Bristol was cut to 450 laps, with the first 50 laps showing as not scored. It was merely a technicality for the record books to show winner Cale Yarborough as running all 500 laps.
Triplett said there hasn’t been any talk of shortening any upcoming races. There has been debate among fans about cutting 100 miles off the distance of races at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, but it’s about a lack of action on the track instead of saving fuel.
As a whole, the fuel costs have BMS employees working harder than ever to make sure fans want to spend discretionary income in the local area.
“We’re one of the largest arenas in the world and we have a lot to sell,” Triplett said. “It’s a challenge right now to find ways to make sure people want to continue to come here. We have to evolve with the business because the business model has changed with the environment and the economy.
“But this is what we do. We’re in the tourism business, more specifically the racing business and we have to make the fan experience as enjoyable as possible. What happens between the green and checkered flags is important, but we have to make sure the trip as a whole creates lasting memories.”
Dang. I used the same link om the California page and it works?
This is what they are showing this morning on
http://racecast.nascar.com/races/leaderboard/cup/race/
I had to look and see if there was any changes from last night. My PC was down most of the evening.
1 Carl Edwards
2 Kyle Busch
3 Matt Kenseth
4 Kurt Busch
5 David Ragan
6 Robby Gordon
7 Kasey Kahne
8 Dale Earnhardt Jr.
9 Clint Bowyer
10 Mark Martin
11 Brian Vickers
12 Kevin Harvick
13 Bobby Labonte
14 Patrick Carpentier
15 Martin Truex Jr.
16 Paul Menard
17 Joe Nemechek
18 Terry Labonte
19 Dave Blaney
20 Tony Stewart
Here’s some more Unofficial Results
http://www.nascar.com/2008/news/opinion/07/06/kybusch.daytona.maumann/index.html
Coke Zero 400
Unofficial Results
Pos. Driver Make
1. Kyle Busch Toyota
2. Carl Edwards Ford
3. Matt Kenseth Ford
4. Kurt Busch Dodge
5. David Ragan Ford
6. Robby Gordon Dodge
7. Kasey Kahne Dodge
8. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet
9. Clint Bowyer Chevrolet
10. Mark Martin
If anyone has the Official Results, I’d love to see them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.