Nascar - Halfway Through The Playoffs At Talladega

[GA_Boater]

Sunday marks the halfway point in the Cup playoffs running at Dega in the Bama 500. The win by Truex at Charlotte gave him the pass into the 3rd elimination round. Since this is a restrictor race and 11 others will be trying to join Truex in the next round, I think some extra fender bending will occur, but who knows.

40 teams are on the entry list and weather shouldn't be a problem like last week.

The X-Guys will be at Dega starting their 2nd playoff round and Trucks return to action next week. Here is MRN's schedule;



News and Notes

• Driver changes continue. Landon Cassill has been told he won't be driving a car for Front Row next year. No word on his replacement.
• Keso will be driving a tribute themed car with a paint scheme similar to when he drove for Junior's JRM in the 1988 Nationwide campaign.
• Nascar is getting flak for the lack of a penalty on Johnson when he stopped outside of his pit box to finish tightening all his lugnuts while exiting after a stop. Nascar said the loss of time was his penalty and the 1 lap penalty as called for in the rules wasn't warranted - Said they haven't called the lap penalty on anyone else when they had the same out of box experience several times this year. And they failed to show any examples. Could Nascar be biased?
• Penalties - Suarez has a loose lugnut, just a fine. In the X-Race - Two teams, Tift & Koch, were whacked for post-race ride heights. Points, money and suspensions for those teams.
• TV ratings - Charlotte had a 1.8 rating and no word on viewers. 2016 ratings were skewed due to rain delay and split across NBC and NBCSN, 2.1/3.2M viewers and 0.7/1.5M viewers. 2015 was 1.6/2.75M viewers and 2014 was 3.1/5.1M viewers. Don't know what happened in 2015.

iBoats Fantasy Live

Smokin! won his 3rd iFL race of the year at Charlotte while I can't win a race! Maybe 'speck is a better picker? Congrats and this one's for you - sportsman3 is padding to his overall lead, adding 100 more points. Now he's enjoying a more than 200 point lead.


You have until roughly 2PM Eastern to play with your roster. Good luck.​

Humpty_Boater, Esq.
Higher ratings than Monster - No Phantom Debris Cautions[SUP]TM[/SUP]

 

[boatman37]

If Jimmie wins #8 it SHOULD boost ratings. Passing Petty and Earnhardt would be a huge event and they can advertise/promote the crap out of that so I'm sure there is some favoritism. Personally I hope he never gets it but hey....

On a side note, my son raced against Matt Tifft a couple times. I think Matt was primarily a dirt racer but he did run a few asphalt road courses. At the time he was just another racer but he was sitting at our friends trailer when we stopped by so met him then. Only remembered him cause he had a shirt on that said Matt Tifft...lol My son also raced against Austin Self a few times. I have a picture of Ryan Tucker (retired Browns and Rams lineman) as he was walking towards us and in the background is Austin Selfs tent with his banner hanging on it. Pretty cool to look back and remember these guys when they were just amateur racers.We only raced against these guys a few times at nationals so weren't friends or anything like that. Except Ryan Tucker. They were regulars at our track as his kids raced there every weekend but they were in a younger age group. But I talked to him every weekend. Really nice guy but he is huge!

Mark Dismore owns a kart track in New Castle Indiana and I had heard that Adam Venetaris son raced there when he was 5 or 6 and Adam was kicking for the Colts. Not sure if he still does or what though. Also heard that the year before McMurray won the Daytona 500 he was at New Castle testing for a kart race there. Nobody there knew who he was and he never told them but a few regulars were helping him out a little. The asphalt road course guys follow Indy cars so aren't familiar with NASCAR drivers. I was talking to a regular at New Castle and he was there helping Jamie and after he won the 500 it was on ESPN and this guy saw Jamie on there and said 'hey'.....' lol. He never knew who it was and said Jamie acted like any other karter there. My son raced with Jamie the week after he won the Daytona July race (think it was 2007). My son was still in the jr. class so they didn't race against each other but did see him and said hi in passing. We raced with Sage Karam a few times too. I talked to his dad a few times but Sage was about 10 then and in a younger class. Same with Newgarden but he was in the sr class when my son was racing jr's so he never got to race 'against' any of these guys but were at the same events. I never met Newgarden but he is good friends with Dismores and we pitted with Dismores at nationals for a few years so I pull for him and Sage for Indy car races.

Another side note...remember Eric Jones? Not the current one but the one that raced trucks and a little Busch about 15 years ago? He was the importer for the brand of karts we ran (Arrow karts). He was the one that invited us to pit with him and Dismores. we were having handling issues and i was emailing Eric for help and he called and invited us to pit with him and Dismores (Dismores own Comet Kart shop and are an Arrow dealer). Eric then partnered with Justin Marks and Michael McDowell and opened a kart track in Mooresville NC. We never raced there but they had races on Wednesdays and Denny Hamlin and quite a few other NASCAR regulars were regulars there.

Pretty cool. just wish we could have stuck with it. our budget was way too small and my son started losing interest. he had the talent to run with these guys but we would run an engine all year where they had theirs rebuilt after 3 or 4 races. the day Eric Jones invited us up it was for regionals. we weren't planning to run regionals cause nationals were the following week and we were saving our money for that but decided we couldn't pass up the chance to pit with these guys so decided to run it. we ran regionals with our older motor and ran a best of something like 57.10. that motor had about 8 races on it. the following week at nationals we put our fresh race motor on and ran 56.3. pole was 55.9 and we qualified 15th! tight field. there were 43 karts in that race. anyway, no other changes other than fresh motor and gained .8 seconds. Mark Dismore Sr ran regionals the week before and was about .2 faster than my son and finished one spot ahead of him so i gave my son a hard time about getting beat by a 50 something year old...lol. although he was a former Indy car race winner. he didn't race nationals the following week as he had hurt his ribs at regionals but they always have their shop trailer at the big races. Mark Jr drives it around. they are both really good guys.

 

[sam60]

Cool stuff boatman37, I rarely tweet but read tweets. Check out Martin Truex Jr's from today if so inclined. Just a throw-back pic. He had some trophies as a youngster.

 

[GA_Boater]

Oooops - Got Trucks and X-Men out of order at Dega. Trucks are on the track this weekend and X-Men return next week.

 

[GA_Boater]

Talladega is a tough track;



^^^^^ This is the 8th place truck of Clay Greenfield! Truck race was won by Parker Klingerman. 2 drivers were eliminated from the playoffs and 8 remain.

Cup qualifying has Junior on the pole! Hope sam60 has a real pleasant visit on Tuesday and Junior is wearing a big !

Behind Dale - Elliott, Joey, Busch41, Stenhouse, Keso, Bowyer, Johnson, Blaney, Bayne, Kahne and Larson.

 

[sam60]

Race Picks made...Thanks for the reminder!

 

[GA_Boater]

Pre-race shindigs are underway and there is a chance of pop-up showers. :blue:

About 2:15 the green flag drops.

 

[GA_Boater]

Let the mayhem begin at Dega - Green flag!

 

[GA_Boater]

Lap 27 and 3 or more get together. Playoffer McMurray in the mess.

 

[sam60]

1 Down dang it.

 

[GA_Boater]

2nd yellow for Menard doing a wall scrape.

4 laps left in the heat.

 

[GA_Boater]

Keso takes Heat #1.

 

[GA_Boater]

Had the required debris caution for #4 and the delay going back to green was forever because Nascar had to replace the transponder in the #72. :doh:

 

[MTboatguy]

Don't look like I have really missed to much so far, been outside trying to finish up the plow truck so the new owner can take it HOME! Never to grace my driveway again!

 

[GA_Boater]

Don't look like I have really missed to much so far, been outside trying to finish up the plow truck so the new owner can take it HOME! Never to grace my driveway again!

Hope you never named the truck. Like Boomerang! LOL

So far fairly uneventful - But this is Talladega.

 

[GA_Boater]

Blaney wins Heat #2.

 

[MTboatguy]

Hope you never named the truck. Like Boomerang! LOL

So far fairly uneventful - But this is Talladega.

No, no! NO! I sold it to a guy that lives almost 100 miles away, once it leaves my driveway it is his, once over the curb never to be seen again! He already has the title and I have the cash and I actually made money on this one!

 

[GA_Boater]

A Jayski's tweet;

Top 8 now single file, followed by double wide raging. 133 laps complete.

It is Talladega! LOL

 

[GA_Boater]

Bayne hits the wall for the 4th caution. 35 laps to go.

 

[GA_Boater]

Let's see who and how many wrecked out on the restart.

6 at least when the tail end started banging.