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Edwards Placed On Probation For Three Races
posted by Jay Pennell
Tuesday March 9, 2010
NASCAR President Mike Helton addressed the media Tuesday afternoon following Sunday’s late-race incident between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Well over 100 laps down, Edwards intentionally spun Keselowski through the tri-oval while Keselowski was running sixth. The No. 12 car lifted in the air and slammed the outside wall with the driver’s side window. NASCAR parked Edwards for his actions and ordered him to the NASCAR hauler for further discussion on the matter. Tuesday, Helton explained Edwards would be placed on probation for the next three races and the drivers and their teams would meet with NASCAR about the situation. “Following that incident we asked the driver of the 99 to visit us in the hauler, and we made it very clear to him that these actions were not acceptable and did go beyond what we said back in January about putting the driving back in the hands of the drivers,” Helton said. “We believe the driver of the 99 understands our position at this point.” For NASCAR, the biggest issue emerging from Sunday’s incident was the fact the No. 12 car lifted into the air. “But the bigger topic is the 12 car getting airborne at a mile-and-a-half track which we typically don’t see,” Helton said. “It’s been years since we’ve seen that. So a lot of our effort yesterday, today and until we find resolve to it is figuring out how it happened, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.”
Keyed Up and Key Motorsports split
posted by Doug Turnbull
Saturday March 6, 2010
If missing the first three races to date was not enough drama for the No. 90 Keyed Up Motorsports Chevy team and Casey Mears, organizational upheaval may tip the scales. A member with the team tells Frontstretch.com that Raymond Key’s Cup operation, originally formed with ties to Curtis Key’s teams in the Nationwide and Truck Series, has become its own entity. As of Monday, the team began a move into Tommy Baldwin Racing’s old shop while planning to continue trying to qualify on Cup races. However, if sponsorship for the team fails to pan out, Keyed-Up may vie for a partial schedule similar to that of the Wood Brothers and only run about 12 races the rest of the year.
Wood Brothers running FR9 for now, Roush says no big problems with new motor
posted by Doug Turnbull
Saturday March 6, 2010
Ford’s new FR9 motor has not made a speedy entrance to the Sprint Cup Series, mainly because the Ford teams need adequate supplies from the engine parts vendors and not because of performance problems, says team owner Jack Roush. Claiming the engine will perform well over the long-term, he still expects the new design to be “the Ford engine of the future” and fully in use by the end of 2010. While his four Ford teams are not running the revamped engine, Roush revealed that the Wood Brothers Ford team will run the FR9 this weekend at Atlanta and in April at Texas. Beyond that, either Roush nor Ford officials have announced a set schedule for full or future implementation of the power plants.
Crawford says truck team is 'close' on sponsorship
posted by Doug Turnbull
Saturday March 6, 2010
While never a standout in the Camping World Truck Series, Rick Crawford has experienced moderate success over his long career in NASCAR’s third-tier. After losing sponsorship at the end of 2009, his Circle Bar Racing team finds itself on the ropes, wondering how many races the future may hold. The veteran Crawford, though, remains optimistic a deal is imminent. “I would say we’re pretty close on signing a sponsor for the 2010 season and 2011 and beyond. [Not starting 2010 with a sponsor] was a matter of losing a sponsor late last year and [the prospective sponsor] getting its marketing efforts done. We’ve got the contracts ready; we’re waiting to get that signed.” Crawford started 2010 with a DNF at Daytona, placing 28th.
Justin Marks Wins The ARCA Race!
posted by Thomas Bowles
Saturday February 27, 2010
Justin Marks won a rain-shortened event at Palm Beach Saturday, collecting his first ever win in the series. Robb Brent, Blake Koch, Tom Hessert III, and Steve Arpin rounds out the top 5. Stay tuned to Frontstretch.com for plenty of post-race coverage on both the website and our Newsletter.
Looking For ARCA Coverage? We Got It!
posted by Thomas Bowles
Saturday February 27, 2010
While the ARCA race at Palm Beach may not be televised … we’ve got you covered. Our own Bryan Davis Keith is at Palm Beach all weekend and will be posting news, commentary, and features from the Florida road course both on the website and in our newsletter. Don’t miss out! And don’t forget, our own Tom Bowles is spending the weekend in Vegas, too … so we’ve got you covered from all angles. Just another reason why we’re the best seat at the track and the best view on the ‘net!
Carter Simo still plans 2010 Cup races
posted by Doug Turnbull
Friday February 19, 2010
One story lost in the shadow of Speedweeks in Daytona was the absence of Carter Simo Racing’s No. 08 car. Much of the team’s equipment was put up for auction Tuesday; however, a source tells Frontstretch.com the operation still plans to field a car in 2010, with a limited schedule of races TBD. CSR may also try and field a car for the Talladega ARCA race in April; until then, most of the team’s employees have been temporarily released and are working for other teams in the sport. In mid-2009, team owner John Carter bought the assets of beleaguered owner/driver Jeremy Mayfield, using the newly purchased equipment and Toyotas to field entries in five races with two-time champion driver Terry Labonte. Equipment issues kept the team from cracking the top 30 in those races. Road course ringer Boris Said also wielded No. 08 Fords last year at both road course races, scoring the team’s season-best finish of 24th at Infineon. Later on that season, Said and longtime partner Mark Simo split, creating the newly-named Carter Simo racing with Labonte behind the wheel. On Tuesday, CSR only placed the equipment purchased from Mayfield on the block, including five Toyotas, a race hauler, and other pit equipment and tools. However, the source says that the team still owns three old Yates chassis and an old Ganassi piece (all of which they converted to Dodges last year) in the shop, with plans on returning to the track midseason pending sponsorship. The move is similar to what happened with Carter Simo last year, in which they took a four-month break between Daytona and Infineon while preparing to race at specific tracks. CSR, which still splits its time between its shops in Charlotte and in Toccoa, Georgia, just has to modify the top of the noses on their cars before returning to the track, due to a minor, lightly-discussed rules change before the season. As for CSR’s 2009 drivers and whether they will return to the team, Boris Said currently is driving the No. 26 for Bill Jenkins’ Latitude 43 Motorsports, and is working on a long-term deal that should remove him as an option. Terry Labonte is also out of the running; he and former owner Bill Stavola formed Stavola Labonte Racing in 2009, but are currently sidelined due to a lack of sponsorship. According to sources, Labonte was offered but initially turned down a return to the No. 08. A John Carter-owned car did participate in the ARCA race at Daytona on February 6th. Former CSR driver James Hylton borrowed a car from Carter, then leased it to driver Jill George for the race. But George infamously crashed the No. 48 roof-first into the wall just 25 laps into the 80-lap Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200, finishing 31st in the 43 car field.
Parrott In As Crew Chief For Kenseth
posted by Jay Pennell
Wednesday February 17, 2010
Less than a week into the 2010 season and Roush Fenway Racing has already made a switch at the crew chief position. News broke on Wednesday that Todd Parrott would take over atop the pit box for the No. 17 team with driver Matt Kenseth, replacing Drew Blickensderfer. The Kenseth-Blickensderfer combination won last year’s Daytona 500 and backed it up by winning the next weekend at the Auto Club Speedway. Despite their strong start out of the box, the No. 17 team failed to live up to expectations in 2009, scoring seven top-5s, 12 top-10s and failing to make, along with missing the Chase. Now after an 8th place finish in Sunday’s Daytona 500, Blickensderfer is headed to the Roush Fenway Racing R&D Department and Parrott is taking over as crew chief.
Danica Out in Daytona
posted by Mike Lovecchio
Saturday February 13, 2010
A lap 79 crash abruptly ended Danica Patrick’s first career NASCAR start Saturday in Daytona. Patrick went a lap down early in the race and later got back on the lead lap on lap 55 via the “Lucky Dog” rule. As she began moving through the field, she was collected in an incident that involved 12 cars. “I’m just going to take away the fact that I know what it’s going to be like out there come next year,” she said. “I felt we would’ve finished strong if we would’ve finished, but as you can see it’s easier said than done.”
Truck Series Race Postponed Until 7:00 PM Saturday
posted by Thomas Bowles
Friday February 12, 2010
It’s official – Friday track activities were washed out by the weather. Not only was Nationwide qualifying pushed back, but the Truck race was postponed, too – they’ll run at 7:00 PM Saturday night. Be sure to come back tomorrow for the latest news ‘n’ notes from the track! |
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In case you’ve been living under a rock 5000 miles away with cotton swabs stuffed in your ears, Danica Patrick finished sixth in her stock car debut. Not her NASCAR debut, as a Yahoo front page headline proclaimed. And while Yahoo’s declaration on their front page was probably just the product of some aloof intern who summarized an article for the front page without reading it, equating NASCAR to simply mean racing, it’s the perfect example of how Danica’s appearance on the ARCA circuit was nothing but good news for the Series in terms of exposure and attention. Her one, and likely only, ARCA start was nothing more than a sugar rush.
First of all, Patrick’s solid results, including an impressive save after a lap 53 spin, were by no means the spectacular debut that all the media were foaming at the mouth over. If anything, it was “been there, done that”. Fellow open-wheelers, Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Speed, each scored top 10 finishes in their respective ARCA debuts on plate tracks. It wasn’t even that far removed from what other female drivers have done in ARCA. Erin Crocker was the last highly touted female driver with a big name team to run ARCA, and she won a pole in her first race.
This sixth place debut overshadowed every other storyline in Saturday’s 200 miler, and there were a lot of them.
Race winner Bobby Gerhart scored his sixth career win at Daytona after coming to pit road early in the running and making adjustments under the hood because of how poorly the car was driving. To be fair, Yahoo columnist Dan Wetzel did make notice of this: “Patrick didn’t win the race (Bobby Gerhart did).” Sort of.
Patrick Sheltra returned to his home-state track, one year after a harrowing wreck, to score a top 5 finish. Alli Owens ran in the top 5 for much of the later portion of the race after coming back from a lap down. Hell, she arguably was the strongest performing woman in the field. And Venturini Motorsports entered an ARCA record five cars in the field. All of these storylines were acknowledged on TV. Acknowledged, nothing more. Add to that fact a number other regulars, including Darrell Basham, Brad Smith, Tim George Jr. to name a few, were exempted from the broadcast.
Every single one of those storylines and drivers deserved air time as they’re all ARCA regulars that actually contest the series. But they were left on the back burner, as SPEED saw it more fit to analyze everything Danica, from her hand motions to get out of a spin to the first time she ventured into the second groove (they have those at Daytona?) to the first time she utilized her in-car drinking system. Not to mention, Danica’s in-car camera was featured almost on a lap-by-lap basis.
This wasn’t coverage of an ARCA race. It was coverage of Danica Patrick.
But again, the justifications were all there. The people, the viewers and the added media coverage were all there to see Danica. And it was a small price to pay for what arcaracing.com calculated to be an “estimated media value of over $7 million.” Because of Danica, more attention was paid to ARCA than ever before. Right?
Not quite. Because of Danica, one Daytona race that happened to be sanctioned by ARCA got more attention paid to it than ever before. And thanks to the way the coverage of this race was handled, I’d wager that the vast majority of the new viewers and media that were present on Saturday won’t be coming back anytime soon.
Racing wasn’t the focus, Danica was. Like a novelty product, it was thrown in everyone’s face whether they were there to see her or to actually, gasp, watch a stock car race. And it’s hard to believe that any of the 42 other drivers in the field actually benefited from all of this extra attention.
The pole sitter, James Buescher, and winner of the race, Bobby Gerhart, reportedly were able to walk unmolested away from their cars to the post-race press conferences, while masses of media (the ones that likely didn’t make it to the media center for the post-race presser) swarmed the sixth place finisher. With over three quarters of the TV coverage focused on the GoDaddy.com No. 7, dozens of full-time ARCA teams and all of their sponsors were deprived of any significant TV time to enjoy all the race’s extra viewers.
And going back to all the media attention, it’s abundantly clear that the ARCA Series, and its competitors, weren’t even something that the majority of the journalists even took seriously. For all the hype that Danica got this weekend, and has gotten her whole career for being a woman, the other five females in the field were all but an afterthought. Milka Duno and Leilani Munter were forgotten about even before being caught up in the race’s first wreck. Alli Owens was marginalized even though she outran Danica for much of the race after a comeback of her own. Jennifer Jo Cobb, while off the pace for much of the race, managed to stay out of trouble and pick up a top 20 finish. And as for Jill George, who was involved in a vicious crash on lap 26, she became nothing more than a whipping girl for the plethora of media who apparently came into Saturday with no appreciation or understanding of the fact that ARCA is a development series (though to be fair, with Cup guys destroying the Nationwide Series, a lot of them probably can’t fathom what a development series is).
Just look at the many columns about the ARCA race that came out of Daytona. The majority of them didn’t talk about anything but Danica. For the few that actually bothered to consider the fact that the ARCA Racing Series actually will continue even as Danica moves on, all they could find to talk about was how the inexperience in the field led to a number of wrecks and incidents that shouldn’t have happened. Nate Ryan tweeted an older article on how ARCA needed to go back and reconfigure how they approve drivers for their superspeedway races. And Shawn Courchesne, the same bumbling idiot who insisted that Ken Schrader had no place to be running in the Budweiser Shootout (yes, the same Shootout he has won twice), went even further, implying that having inexperienced drivers running ARCA races at superspeedway tracks was a tragedy waiting to happen.
To everyone out there making a big deal of inexperience at superspeedway racing, including NASCAR driver Regan Smith, who tweeted during the race that he felt “maybe ARCA should reconsider this whole superspeedway racing thing,” wake up.
Superspeedway racing is dangerous, experience or not. It’s a tragedy waiting to happen, experience or not.
Experience didn’t stop the Cup Series regulars from wrecking over a half dozen cars practicing for an exhibition race. It didn’t stop a four-time Sprint Cup champion and a two-time NASCAR national series champion from triggering a wreck that took out half the Shootout field. And that was the weekend before they run the first superspeedway race of the regular season that actually counts for something.
But none of that really matters, does it? Next week, the Sprint Cup Series will rightfully take center stage for the Great American race, Danica will be hogging the Nationwide Series stage and the ARCA race will be all but a distant memory.
It didn’t have to be like that. Yes, because of Danica, the focus of the entire racing world for a few hours on Saturday was on the ARCA Racing Series. And though there were lots of wrecks (just like in any other restrictor plate race at any level of racing), the feverish charge to the finish was memorable, rivaling any of the action seen in the Shootout later that night. ARCA’s competitors, officiating and on-track product had nothing to be ashamed of.
Alas, none of that will be remembered, for the media and the broadcast crew had decided on the story before they ever got to the track. Danica was going to be a success, prove her talent, and got ready to race in the Nationwide Series. And because of that, all the viewers who ordinarily wouldn’t tune into an ARCA race likely won’t do so again.
For they didn’t see a stock car race, they saw an infomercial. They didn’t see a development series at work, they saw a bunch of amateurs who have no place racing because they drive in the Cup Series (or have a name worthy of doing so).
They didn’t see an ARCA race. They saw Danica.
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