They absolutely love Jimmy Johnson....caution comes out with 8 laps to go, Ambrose car momentarily loses power, they put Amrbose back into like 7th place even though he was in the lead after they crossed the start/finish. Johnson wins, Amrbose finishes in 6th.
Another reason they suck, they only run two road courses. Besides the late race shenanigans the race was pretty exciting.
Ambrose failed to maintain speed behind the pace car and he was passed by cars that did maintain speed. The rule is clear on that point. Ambrose was completely at fault--he's the one who cut his engine trying to save gas, then couldn't start it again. I like him, but sorry to say he finds new ways to lose a race every time he gets a sniff of a win. Remember him going Dukes of Hazzard off the curb in the last turn of the last lap at Gilles Villeneuve last year?
Will wrote: Ambrose failed to maintain speed behind the pace car and he was passed by cars that did maintain speed. The rule is clear on that point. Ambrose was completely at fault--he's the one who cut his engine trying to save gas, then couldn't start it again. I like him, but sorry to say he finds new ways to lose a race every time he gets a sniff of a win. Remember him going Dukes of Hazzard off the curb in the last turn of the last lap at Gilles Villeneuve last year?
Do you know what series he came from? You ever see how they race down under? lol
Yes and yes. He still screwed up in each race.
More reason to hate Nascrap...
Boris Said ran a nearly flawless strategic race and coming out of the last round of pit stops, he was in 1st. The race goes green and a back-marker #12 (lined up 2nd) gives him a nudge going into the first corner after the restart. He losing a bit of control, off the road and gives up 5 positions. "Avoidable contact"... Nascar should look into holding races and not destruction derbies that have a lap counter. Another caution, another restart, same thing... this is just getting run off the road on the outside of turn 2. Boris falls to 12th.
I don't know that he would have been able to hold of Ambrose or Johnson, but he deserved a right to race them for it. I can't help to think it was a bit of the good ol' boy network trying to affect the outcome of the race.
Boris finished in the top 10, but it really should have been top 3. Sucks.
Marcos said "I listened to the voice in my ear not the one in my head" after the race.
Next thing you know, they'll let somebody pass the race leader going through the dirt in the Corkscrew in Laguna Seca, AND LET HIM KEEP THE WIN!
BradLTL wrote: More reason to hate Nascrap... Boris Said ran a nearly flawless strategic race and coming out of the last round of pit stops, he was in 1st. The race goes green and a back-marker #12 (lined up 2nd) gives him a nudge going into the first corner after the restart. He losing a bit of control, off the road and gives up 5 positions. "Avoidable contact"... Nascar should look into holding races and not destruction derbies that have a lap counter. Another caution, another restart, same thing... this is just getting run off the road on the outside of turn 2. Boris falls to 12th. I don't know that he would have been able to hold of Ambrose or Johnson, but he deserved a right to race them for it. I can't help to think it was a bit of the good ol' boy network trying to affect the outcome of the race. Boris finished in the top 10, but it really should have been top 3. Sucks.
rubbin' is racin'
that's just NASCAR racing. it doesn't pretend to be a gentleman's sport.
i do think that they need to not throw a full course caution for every minor spin in a corner, tho. they are better at letting the people get going on the road courses without throwing a caution than they are on ovals, but there are no provisions for a partial course caution in NASCAR rules. it would have been useful to have such a rule at the Nationwide race yesterday at Road America- those pace laps took forever on that 4 mile course.
up to a certain point, they try to show a certain amount of respect for each other. but at a certain point towards the end of the race, they claw and fight for every spot they can get. no one "deserves" anything on the track that they aren't willing to fight to get and then fight to hold on to.
did Marcus Ambrose "deserve" to get his spot behind the pace car back after shutting his car off and coming to a stop under caution? or did they do the right thing when they lined him up after Casey Kahne where he fell back in line after he got the car restarted and moving?
Ambrose screwed-the-pooch.
While the Nascar "rulebook" is selectively enforced, there is a clear rule about the leader maintaining speed behind the pace car. Stopping on the track, for what ever reason, is a big-time FAIL and this time, it was self-inflicted.
Hate it for Ambrose as he drove a great race, but his problems weren't a result of questionable crap from Nascar.
novaderrik wrote: i do think that they need to not throw a full course caution for every minor spin in a corner, tho. they are better at letting the people get going on the road courses without throwing a caution than they are on ovals, but there are no provisions for a partial course caution in NASCAR rules. it would have been useful to have such a rule at the Nationwide race yesterday at Road America- those pace laps took forever on that 4 mile course. up to a certain point, they try to show a certain amount of respect for each other. but at a certain point towards the end of the race, they claw and fight for every spot they can get. no one "deserves" anything on the track that they aren't willing to fight to get and then fight to hold on to.
Maybe Nascar needs to re-evaluate their rules for road courses, allowing for partial course cautions, and penalizing for avoidable contact (read: Jeff Gordon).
And as for fighting for the position... did Boris even get to fight for it? 12's race was ruined, he just got caught in that position based on the timing of the caution. He was about to be cycled to the rear. Turns out he took out a few other cars on the way.
Meh... for 3/4s of the race I thought Nascar was going not let me down. It all fell apart at the end. Please resume normal service.
BradLTL wrote: Meh... for 3/4s of the race I thought Nascar was going not let me down. It all fell apart at the end. Please resume normal service.
BradLTL wrote: Meh... for 3/4s of the race I thought Nascar was going not let me down. It all fell apart at the end. Please resume normal service.
I cant remember the last NASCAR race ive seen that didnt fall apart at the end. Every single one does.
Let's just wait for "push to pass" from Indy Car to hit the NASCAR shores. And no, I don't mean to augment the current status quo of punt the guy in front of you if you can't pass cleanly.
We always found that Nascar has a way of getting the people they want to run at the front, and shuffling the people back they do not. And yes, they do selectively enforce the rule book, what little there is of it.
So quit watching!
If you're not part of the solution you are part of the problem. With a drop in viewership we'd see less and less of Nascrap.
The only races I watch are the road courses. I hope if I watch more of those, they will put more in the season.
Some observations from yesterdays race.
1) DW kept referring to something called "forward bite" and "side bite". I thought he was talking about techniques for eating a sandwich versus a carrot, and it made me hungry, so I went to the kitchen and made me a sammy and grabbed a few carrots.
2) If you're on a three-stop strategy, you're not dividing the race in to thirds, you're splitting it in to quarters.
3) I bet Jan Magnussen really wished Jorg Bergmeister was racing as well. That way he could pay him back for that last turn incident at that other California track.
It's Show Business folks, get over it.
+1 on the high level of technical sophistication, and driving skill, needed to compete in NASCAR.
Years ago, I was a 20 something, just getting my feet wet with an SCCA G Prod Spitfire.
A local veteran, Dana Barlow, clued me in when I made a crack about stock car racing:
"The cars are in a continual power slide throughout the whole of each turrn. For every turn, for every lap, for each corner, the optimum setup is different, and changing. Tire pressure, compound, camber, castor, toe-in, corner weight, aero, etc."
It looks easy: it's not.
Find Patrick Bedard's article on trying to learn stock car oval racing..
As for carbs vs EFI, who cares? That's infrastructure, the job of the mechanics to make it work, like Klieg lights at a play. When is the last time you heard about a carb issue at a NASCAR race? It works very well for them as-is.
I'm just worried that EFI will allow the race organizers to anonomously determine the outcome with a few mouseclicks, instead of with intimidation, money, and politics like they do now.
Carter
carguy123 wrote: So quit watching! If you're not part of the solution you are part of the problem. With a drop in viewership we'd see less and less of Nascrap.
Agree... this was the first Nascrap race I've watched in a couple years. Really, the only reason I watched it was because I grew up watching Indy/IMSA at Sears Point. I figured it couldn't be that bad, I was wrong.
racerfink wrote: Next thing you know, they'll let somebody pass the race leader going through the dirt in the Corkscrew in Laguna Seca, AND LET HIM KEEP THE WIN!
Didn't somebody do that in a CART race a few years ago ? I think his name began with a Z.
Dual file restarts seem to cause most of the frustration and chaos in Nascar from a racing stand point. They also cause a fair amount of accidents which makes destruction derby types happy. More accidents is good for ratings so they make that call. Never mind that on road races the racing itself can be exciting enough.
erohslc wrote: As for carbs vs EFI, who cares? That's infrastructure, the job of the mechanics to make it work, like Klieg lights at a play. When is the last time you heard about a carb issue at a NASCAR race? It works very well for them as-is. I'm just worried that EFI will allow the race organizers to anonomously determine the outcome with a few mouseclicks, instead of with intimidation, money, and politics like they do now. Carter
David Reutiman's car had carb problems a few weeks back at the all star race. they had to swap in a new carb during the 10 minute break between heats. it's not unheard of for some cars to have carb problems at the smaller tracks and road courses where they are on and off the throttle a lot and the power band of the engines is wider.
one of the stated reasons for NASCAR not going to efi is to keep down costs- somehow, they think that teams spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to build and tune a single carburetor to NASCAR specs is more budget friendly than the same team spending the same thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to setup and calibrate an efi setup.
another stated reason is that teams might find a way to sneak in traction control and other electronic voodoo into their cars. they changed the rules on what ignition boxes to use and where to mount them about 10 years ago because some teams were sneaking possible traction control devices into their cars.
i suppose another issue is safety- fuel feeding a carb at 7 psi acts way different than fuel feeding fuel injectors at 50psi when the fuel line gets broken in an impact..
We used to pay $10k per carb back in the day. The reason they do not go FI is that they do not know how to police it, where it is very simple to check the carb. The carbs give very little trouble, but never assume they are low tech simply because they are carbs. They are small works of art and there is very much a difference between the good and bad ones.
Just getting this thread up there with the other two.
"Uh-huh-uhu-uuhh-huh,...you guys watch NASCAR, uh-huh-huh-huh..."
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