Well…I finally got the F1 channel to work this morning and with that, I got to see the new F1 cars on the track for the first time…and I like what I see…these new cars are much cleaner looking than last year’s cars with no barge boards or all of the damn little add ons that made them look so strange….they look like race cars again and it hit me watching practice that they look like cars from the early two thousands like the Brawn that was a pretty good looking car…the team that I root for, Mercedes, doesn’t look like they have the speed yet but they normally sandbag during testing so we’ll see when the races start in a couple of weeks…I really can’t wait to see how they race in big packs and whether the huge changes they made to make the racing better actually worked…one thing I don’t like is that once these practices are over, the engines are frozen and no changes can take place for a couple of years…now, F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of innovation in racing and to tell the best engineers in the world they can’t do anything to make their car better seems to go against that innovation…the same thing happened in NASCAR when they implemented so many rules that your car can be disqualified for a 32nd of an inch in body measurements and everything else is now standard so creativity is gone and the racing is no better for it…in fact, I liked it a lot better when someone could come up with something world beating new that would allow them to dominate until the other teams caught up….I mean do the few people who run nascar have more creativity than a hundred engineers from the teams? No, and the purpose of the team engineers have been ruined by the “parity” that is the goal of nascar….I for one don’t want parity that makes for boring racing…I want people thinking and innovating in both nascar and F1 that gives us something new occasionally that keeps me interested and looking forward to something new…not cookie cutter cars that by rule can’t change over the course of the season…
Tag Archives: nascar
How about some sports?
Well….haven’t done one on sports in a while so I thought I’d see what’s going on in that world…to me anyway…now, Man U is disappointing the hell out of me so far this year…I mean leading until 8 mins to go and then letting Everton back into it and settling for a draw? They just look stiff and they are not playing like a team…there were so many times the defense broke down they got lucky they didn’t lose the game…and this happens in every damn game…with all of the stars on that team, they should do better…if they don’t change something to start scoring more, they can kiss the champions league goodbye for next year. Then Michigan….again, no offense to speak of…they barely squeaked by Rutgers last week and Wisconsin is coming back against them right now and the lead is down to 3 points…not a normal Michigan team at all and it’s getting to be kind of painful to watch them…yeah, I know they are 4-0 but that looks like it’s going to end today against a 1-2 team…and that sucks…one good thing is that nascar is back on in the afternoon today and it isn’t interrupting my nights like it has the past few weeks….not a fan of having cocktails and watching races…would rather watch a movie or a show in my que instead…it just doesn’t feel the same at night with a race on…I would rather watch svengoolie and a bad scifi or horror movie on sat night….and I can do that tonight since the races will be over by then….and then Rat Patrol at 10…..back to normal…
Too many rules in racing….
Well…if you’ve watched any type of racing in the past 20 years or so, you have seen the explosion of rules that have taken all of the innovation out of the sport. Watch any Indy car race for example…every car is a Dallara that looks exactly the same as all the rest…and all of the engines must meet a rule package that is tested all season to make sure that no one figures out how to make more power or reliability…when I started following this series, there were every kind of car imaginable and they only had to have 4 tires and then anything else went…you had Offenhouser 4 cylinders, Ford V-8′s, Novis, diesels, turbines…front wheel drive, all wheel drive, rear wheel drive cars and any body work they needed to cover the engine and driver….and it was cool to see what people had come up with over the winter to try to get an advantage…now they shave .003 of an inch off a side plate of a wing and the car is disqualified….too many damn rules. This misguided reliance on rules permeates NASCAR, too…with cars being rejected in inspection for being .0002 inches too low or for having a rear fender that is a 16th of an inch too wide and all of this is measured by lasers which is taking all of the creativity out of the sport…I sound like an old guy but, again, when I started following nascar in the early 60′s you had people like Smokey Yunick showing up with a Chevelle that had a foot cut out of the center of the car to lower the drag…and no one would have found out but someone parked a rental Chevelle next to it and then you could easily see the difference…and what about Freddie Lorenzen’s 1966 Ford “banana car” that had the front of the car pushed down by a foot while the rear had been bent up by a foot to give it more downforce…or the special manufacturer cars like the Charger Daytona or Torina Talledaga that gave each manufacturer an advantage for a while. And the engines….like the Chrysler Hemi, the Ford Boss 429, and the Ford SOHC 427 that were built just for this series….and now the engines are basically all the same and in the truck series, they ARE all the same engine built by Ilmor and put in the Fords, Toyotas, and Chevys…no innovation at all other than what is allowed by the series…and this has made all of the series just too damn boring. I think they should have a”run what you brung” series that goes back to 4 wheels and a driver and no other regulations…I mean Bill Elliot lapped Talladega at over 215 mph all the way back in 1985 and the cars have just gotten slower and slower since and how can that be exciting? Okay…that’s enough for now…don’t even get me started about formula 1….it will take one of these just for that….
Texans have to be the dumbest people on earth…
Well….sitting here watching the nascar race from Texas and I am just shaking my head at the stupidity of the people they let in to the race today…after a big wreck, the race was red flagged and the cars stopped along the front straight…so, in a state with the second worse coronavirus outbreak that is happening right damn now, these morons all flocked down to the fence in a crowd of a couple of hundred people standing shoulder to shoulder with no a mask on any of them…not one damn mask in any shot that I’ve seen all day…so, you can guess where the next big outbreak is going to be….and the announcers I’m sure have been told to not mention it…just go on and on about how great it is to have fans back at the track…not that there is a pandemic raging through texas that is killing hundreds of people every day…nope, nothing about that…just happy talk about how they can’t wait to have more disease spreaders at the races and it’s a shame that they didn’t let more in today…Governor Whitmer, these morons are coming to Michigan soon, please don’t let them spread the virus more here by letting them have unmasked fans at the track…it just isn’t worth it to put the whole state at risk…or better yet, no fans at the track at all….it’s just not worth it…
Call it what it is…the traitor’s flag…
Well…the fight over a stinking flag took a turn yesterday in the hotbed of traitors, Alabama, when nascar made good on banning the “traitor’s” flag from their venues…okay, and let’s call that flag what it is…it is not “the confederate battle flag”…calling it that imbues it with some sort of veneer of acceptability….remember, it is the traitor’s flag, flown by traitors who tried to tear this country apart just so they could continue to own slaves…and don’t give me the bullshit that the war was about “states rights”…in the constitution of the confederate states, it states bluntly that protection of the institution of slavery is the reason they were trying to destroy the US…and every fact based historian agrees that is the reason…and it wasn’t “brave or noble” to tear apart this country and kill almost a million Americans for slavery, so let’s cut that bullshit out too. Just yesterday, the racists in Alabama put on a show at Talladega speedway where they had a rally outside the gates with hundreds of traitors flags and they even flew a huge one over the track just to make their point that they are a bunch of racist asses…and that point was driven home by the discovery of a noose hanging in the garage of the only black driver in nascar, Darrell Wallace, whose suggestion that maybe, with the nation getting on board with the “black lives matter” movement, it would be a good idea to get rid of the racist symbol of traitors and make the sport a little more welcoming to everybody. It was heartening to see the response to this racist thuggery as swift and sure condemnation of this hate crime…and unlimited support of Darrell as he tries to do his part to make this country a better place…as I do…it’s about damn time that we have this conversation…but it is the 50th time in my life that this “conversation” has happened but just the conversation…it is past time to take on the racist assholes in this country and tell them to go back under the rocks they crawled out from….their time has passed and they deserve to be thrown on the ash heap of history along with their traitor’s flag….keep it up Bubba, we’ve got your back….
NASCAR can go right to hell…
Well…I knew that the owners of nascar and most of the drivers are trump loving morons and that was shown when he was installed and drivers like Kesolowski and Bowyer expressed their glee on twitter and I responded to them with a question…” you have young kids, would you point to trump as a role model for them?” Of course, they couldn’t defend it so they didn’t respond…and we have seen the heads of nascar, the France family, palling around with the idiot boy and wearing their MAGA hats… we’ve even seen driver Austin Dillon giving the white power “OK” hand signal in the intros to the races…so nascar is a cesspool of trump supporting, entitled, right wing assholes…even with that, I have been ignoring those facts since I am still a race fan and wanted to see the races, but, with the invite of the asshole in chief to be grand marshal of the Daytona 500 tomorrow, I have reached my breaking point…normalizing trump with this type of event is something I will not be part of…so I will not be watching the 500 tomorrow…and, being honest, I have been losing my interest in nascar for years now and have basically used the races for background noise as I take a nap on Sunday afternoons…hence the term that I use, “napcar” to describe the series. I hope the trump loving France family enjoys their little bubble of right wing assholes…but for a lot of the rest of us, nascar is dead to us with this last straw….great way to grow the series, morons…
This is what’s wrong with Nascar…
Well…I’m a little tired of the political stuff right now with the drunken Godzilla trump crashing into everything and destroying the world, so I think I’ll talk a little about Nascar. I used to be a big fan of the series but lately the moves they have been making with rule changes is ruining the racing…and you can see that in the shrinking crowds at every track and the dropping tv ratings. It used to be that there was innovation when people were allowed to use their brains to get an advantage over the rest of the racers…but now, the rules are so strict that every car is exactly the same as the rest and all of the engineers and mechanics spend all their time making sure the body is not a thousandth of an inch off. Now they are even going to make things worse by introducing restrictor plates to more tracks than just Talledega and Daytona….if they do this, why do they need professional drivers at all if you can just hold the gas pedal to the floor and get around the track? Cripes..I could even drive one of them if they do that. With the shrinking crowds, I think they should just bar spectators from the big tracks and then unrestrict the engines of the cars that run there…after all, Bill Elliot ran a 212 MPH lap all the way back in 1988 and with today’s technology, they could race at 220…now that I would watch….one more thing I think they should do is, instead of mandating every damn thing down to the thousandth of an inch, there should be a range that the cars could fit in…say a range of 1-4 inches for the rear spoiler…of a range for ride height…you get the idea…and differing engine sizes…run a smaller one that gets better mileage or a bigger one with more power….the cars they have now are just spec cars that have killed the public’s interest…at least it has killed mine…
Thanks Dale Jr.
Well…with the widespread protests against endemic racism throughout sports yesterday, and the fascist response to them by Richard Petty and Richard Childress, NASCAR team owners….threatening to fire anyone that works for them if they express their constitutional rights under the first amendment…it was heartening to read the statement put out twitter yesterday by Dale Earnhardt Jr….I’ve always respected Dale Jr. for his thoughtfulness and honesty, and yesterday, that respect grew when he tweeted this: “All Americans R granted rights to peaceful protests…Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable-JFK” Now, those are some powerful thoughts and I am sure that the troglodytes that infest the NASCAR community will just frickin hate them….Dale Jr. understands that injustice needs to be addressed and it is the right of all of us to do so in our own way…taking a knee during the anthem, or writing a little blog here, or hitting the streets when another person of color is murdered by police…it is what our country was founded on and, when the government won’t do anything to fix these problems, it is our right and responsibility to do what we can….thanks Dale….
I was going to say boycott NASCAR…
Well…after the comment by Richard Petty and Richard Childress today that they would fire anyone who exercised their 1st amendment rights and took a knee before the race today, I was going to say that you should boycott NASCAR….but, while I am done with them, it is up to everyone how to respond to this crap…I sure do hope they fire someone for following the constitution, they would probably be out of business with all of the lawsuits since it is settled case law that you can’t do that…especially since these two idiots already announced their intentions….there is one thing that you can do to express your displeasure that would really hurt these troglodytes as I have done…send e-mails to their sponsors that pay their bills…Petty’s car is sponsored by Smithfield foods and I’m sure they would be concerned when they get lots of e-mails of objection…and one of Childress’s cars is sponsored by Dow Chemical…so make them pay the only place they care about…in their wallets….
Carl Edwards can go to hell, too…
Well…I knew in the back of my mind that most of the people that run nascar and drive for them were repub assholes but I still watched since I was a race fan and could suppress that fact…but, not any more. After this mornings news that Carl Edwards is going to challenge Claire McCaskill for a senate seat in Missouri as a repub….and that reveals that he is a trump lover and has no shred of decency in him for just that fact….so Carl, I’ll ask you the same question I asked Brad K. and Clint B. a few days back…could you point to the idiot trump and tell your kids you’d like them to be just like that lying, racist, delusional asshole? If you can, and probably have, then all I have to say to you and the rest of the racist repub assholes….you can go to hell…that good guy persona you put on for the past 15 years was all just an act…what a piece of crap…geez…