Race Weekend Central

5 Points to Ponder: 2009 NASCAR Preview Edition

NASCAR’s top national series hits the track this week – which means that finally, finally fans will be able to hear more about on track news and the upcoming year rather than an offseason full of layoffs, mergers and utter confusion. Instead, when the green flag waves next weekend for the Budweiser Shootout – and …

Read more

Mirror Driving: Ownership Smoke & Mirrors, Smoke’s Fiery New Team & Logano’s No Smoke… Yet

Welcome to Mirror Driving. Every week, your favorite columnists sit down and give their opinion about the latest NASCAR news and rumors. Love us or hate us, make a comment below and tell us how you feel about what we’ve said! This Week’s Participants: Tom Bowles (Editor-In-Chief; Mondays/Bowles-Eye View & Wednesdays/Did You Notice?) Doug Turnbull (Tuesdays/Who’s Hot …

Read more

Driven to the Past: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Once again, something I read on the website Dayton Speedway Lives brought back some memories. A photographer named Scott McIlwain wrote about his experience attending the last Dayton 500 in 1979, and mentioned that Glenn Ohlmann was the winner. Ohlmann was from Louisville, and was a regular competitor at the old Fairgrounds Motor Speedway as …

Read more

Driven to the Past: He’s Outta the Park

I found myself taking issue with something that was said during last weekend’s telecast of the Nationwide Series race at Phoenix. After a couple of bad restarts with some cars being wrecked, Dale Jarrett made the comment that the rule is that the leader can speed up anytime between the restart line and the start-finish …

Read more

Driven to the Past: The Best Way to Slow a Racecar Down

Once again, one thing leads to another. In trying to explain how easy it is to misjudge a slower speed after you’ve been traveling really fast, I mentioned that I first heard the phrase “You lose your reference to zero” from Dick Trickle. He said that after the first ASA race at Milwaukee, on May 7, 1978. We had never run on anything bigger than a 5/8-mile track, so it stands to reason that most of our guys had never seen the kind of speeds they were experiencing on that big ol’ mile. Neither had I from the flagstand, actually. When the first car went out to qualify, I threw the green flag and then told the tower to wake me up when he got to turn 3.

Driven to the Past: The Infamous Fake Accident

OK, I got forced into this one by one of Ren Jonsin’s trivia questions. It was Wednesday’s question about the pro football team’s stadium where Tom Pistone, Fireball Roberts, Curtis Turner and Glen Wood won NASCAR races. The answer, of course, was Soldier Field, now home of the Chicago Bears, so technically that is correct. However, …

Read more

Driven to the Past: Sometimes the Guy That Crosses the Line 1st…

All the uproar over the Talledega finish got me to thinking about the past again. As for the finish itself, we’ve been all over that in back-and-forth emails between Frontstretch contributors, and I don’t think this is the place for my personal opinion since it isn’t supposed to be editorial commentary. The idea is to …

Read more

Driven to the Past: The Big Fuel Gamble

Late one night in May 1968, a bunch of us officials and racers were sitting around talking over an early breakfast at a popular restaurant across Crittenden Drive from the Kentucky State Fairgrounds in Louisville. This was a regular Friday- or Saturday-night get-together after an event at the Fairgrounds Motor Speedway. Sometimes on Saturday night, …

Read more

Driven to the Past: Dropping the Flag… Really!

Got another question this week, after I was talking about myself and Shorty Miller, the irrepressible flagman/starter from Ohio. Did I ever drop a flag on the track? Oh yeah, once or twice. Twice at the old Fairgrounds Motor Speedway in Louisville, where the cars were so close to the outside wall sometimes that a flag could …

Read more