http://www.thatsracin.com/292/index.xml Motorsports News from ThatsRacin.com en-us Copyright 2008 ThatsRacin.com Mobile News Updates 60 Sun, 18 May 2008 14:11 EDT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss McClatchy Interactive Workbench webmaster@thatsracin.com http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11439.html http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11439.html Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:38 EST FONTANA, Calif. – This place just ain’t working.<p/>A lot of good people have worked very hard to make Auto Club Speedway – the track formerly known as California Speedway – something more than a giant waste of stock car racing’s time. Bless their hearts, as we’d say in the South.<p/>But it’s time to give it up.<p/>For each thing that went well for NASCAR during Speedweeks, about three went wrong this weekend. Any momentum this season might have had coming out Daytona is, as of the debacle that was Sunday’s Auto Club 500, now officially stuck in the mud.<p/>After a two-hour rain delay before the start and a one-hour interruption for the recurrence of a problem that should have either been fixed Friday or caused the postponement of the entire weekend, NASCAR waited five hours after it rained again before finally postponing the Sprint Cup Series race until 1 p.m. (Eastern time) Monday.<p/>The race was halted after 87 laps, 38 laps short of the halfway point at which it could be euthanized and still counted as an official event.<p/>Jeff Gordon had led 57 of those laps, but teammate Jimmie Johnson was leading when things were stopped just after 9 p.m. Eastern.<p/>Here’s a quick summary of what happened Sunday.<p/>It rained all morning. It stopped. NASCAR dried the track – well, at least most of it. <p/>The race started.<p/>Water started leaking through the track. A half-dozen or cars got wrecked, with one getting knocked upside down and another catching on fire. The race was stopped and people sawed grooves in the track trying to de-irrigate it.<p/>The race resumed. It rained. It stopped. It got dark. It rained. It stopped. It rained again.<p/>And then, against all that is right and holy, jet dryers were sent back onto the track. As Sunday became Monday in the East, they were still trying to dry the track. But as it got colder and damper, those efforts couldn’t keep up.<p/>Finally, around 2 a.m. Eastern, they gave up.<p/>So now, we’ll try again Monday. The now twice-postponed Nationwide Series race is scheduled to be run following the Cup race.<p/>That is, of course, unless locusts, frogs or rivers that turn to blood rose up to wipe out this God-forsaken place.<p/>The last time NASCAR came here it was as hot as the face of the sun. This weekend has been, as Dario Franchitti said, “bloody freezing.”<p/>You can’t help the weather, can you? Well, you couldn’t help it in Rockingham, either. You remember the track there, right? North Carolina Speedway, the place often fought foul weather and consequently had trouble drawing a crowd?<p/>Only there, it had consequences. Rockingham lost race dates when people didn’t show up. But instead of threatening to take races away from here, NASCAR keeps doubling over backward to prop up this joint.<p/>People don’t show up here either, and who could blame them? God love the ones who hung in there all weekend. They ought to get NASCAR medals or something.<p/>NASCAR tried hard to get this race in. Maybe too hard. Water seeping through cracks in the track had caused problems on Friday. These “weepers” were back Sunday, but the green flag flew anyway – two hours late after morning rain.<p/>The wet spots were then blamed for two wrecks before and the race was halted.<p/>“We should not be racing on that race track right now,” said Denny Hamlin, whose Toyota slammed the wall in Turn 3 on Lap 14.<p/>On Lap 21, Casey Mears’ Chevrolet snapped loose in Turn 2 and slammed into the wall. Three other cars wound up in that crash, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., and after that the race went under a red flag.<p/>“We got going a little too soon,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “There were a lot of wet spots out there. You do the best you can.”<p/>Earnhardt Jr. got collected when Mears bounced off the wall. Sam Hornish Jr. hit Reed Sorenson, and then before Hornish could stop he ran into the back of Mears’ car, picking it up and sending it over on its side. Fire broke out in Hornish’s car, but workers got there quickly to put it out and none of the drivers was injured.<p/>It was about that time that NASCAR decided to try to fix the race track, sending out workers with saws to cut drainage grooves into the racing surface.<p/>You know what would have been better? About 50 sticks of dynamite.<p/>Tom Cruise showed up here Sunday. Normally that would have been enough to send NASCAR and track officials into a paroxysm of ecstasy. Somebody actually famous was here, as opposed to most of the B- and C-list folks usually passed off as celebrities.<p/>But even that wasn’t enough.<p/>This was so bad it wasn’t even laughable.<p/>It was, to use another term we Southerners like, actually right pitiful. http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11301.html http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11301.html Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:15 EST FONTANA, Calif. – Jeff Burton led the Daytona 500 on a restart with three laps to go last Sunday, but wound up finishing 13th. On one level, the driver of the No. 31 Chevrolet handled that disappointment with reason and maturity.<p/>“When you are at Daytona it’s the biggest race of the year,” he said at Auto Club Speedway, where he will start eighth in Sunday’s Auto Club 500.<p/>But when the Daytona 500 is over then it’s just another race.”<p/>Make no mistake, however. A part of Burton knows just how heart-breaking it is to come so close to what could have been a career-defining moment – a part personified in the postrace reaction from Burton’s 7-year-old son, Harrison.<p/>“It tore my son up,” Burton said. “He loves racing, and he thought his dad was going to win the Daytona 500. He cried for hours.”<p/>Burton said he missed his pit stall on an early stop in last Sunday’s race, but after that he and crew chief Scott Miller executed their strategy to get back toward the front. On a restart with 20 laps left, Burton was right there in the pack with Richard Childress Racing teammate Clint Bowyer, who was leading the race.<p/>Bowyer eventually got spun out and, after the race, he and Burton had an animated conversation.<p/>“Clint and I were mad, but we weren’t mad at what people thought we were mad at,” Burton said.<p/>“The conversation that Clint and I had we’ll keep to ourselves. We did have a discussion and it is clear that you can’t have productive conversations as soon as the race is over. That just can never happen, never has happened, never will happen.”<p/>Bowyer said Burton called him the next morning “and kissed and made up and went on about our day."<p/>“That’s part of the sport,” Bowyer said. “You can’t always put a smile on your face and be happy all the time.”<p/>Burton took the lead on Lap 189 just before a crash brought out a caution. On that restart with eight laps left he laid back as much as he could, trying to prevent the cars behind from getting a good jump on the restart.<p/>And it worked.<p/>“We ran along there for a lap and nobody made anything happen,” Burton said. “Then it got double-file behind me and I started thinking, ‘Wow, this could work out. ...We might have a chance to win this thing.’”<p/>But then Casey Mears tried to jump in front of Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as they formed up a draft in the outside lane. Mears got turned and the yellow flag flew.<p/>“As soon as that yellow came out, Burton came on the radio and said, ‘This is not good,’” said Rocky Ryan, Burton’s spotter.<p/>Burton tried the same ploy again on the final restart, lagging back hoping to keep second-place Kyle Busch from building momentum to lead line of cars past him. But as Burton went low to defend against Busch, Stewart, eventual race-winner Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch led a charge in the outside lane and Burton wound up in the middle.<p/>Going backward.<p/>“I haven’t watched a replay of it,” Burton said, “but I know what happened. I played it over and over and over in my mind.<p/>“ ...I’ll be honest, I felt stupid. ...We were leading the race with three to go and you finish 13th, why wouldn’t you feel stupid? But all you can do is the best you know how to do.”<p/>On the plane ride back to North Carolina, Burton tried to console Harrison.<p/>“I was trying to grab him and hold him and say ‘It’s going to be all right,’ ” Burton said. “His response was, ‘Well it’s the Daytona 500!’<p/>“And I wanted to say, ‘Yeah, you’re right!’<p/>“But what a great experience at the same time, to see your dad have a chance to win the Daytona 500.”<p/>Burton paused for just a moment.<p/>“And then blow it,” he added. “‘That’s my dad!’ ” http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11300.html http://www.thatsracin.com/292/story/11300.html Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:44 EST FONTANA, Calif. - They couldn’t keep Kyle Busch from racing – and winning – in the NASCAR Truck series here this time. Busch drove the No. 51 Toyota to victory in Saturday’s San Bernardino County 200, passing Todd Bodine on Lap 76 of the 100-lap race and keeping things under control from there at Auto Club Speedway.<p/>“This win means the most to me because in November 2001 I got kicked out of this race track,” Busch said after his seventh Truck victory in just 38 career starts in that series. “This is sweet.”<p/>Busch was to drive in a Truck race here in 2001 when he was only 16. But that race was a companion event to a race sponsored by Marlboro cigarettes and laws prohibited anyone under 18 from running on the weekend where there was tobacco sponsorship.<p/>Something like that was likely the only thing that might have stood between Busch and victory in this race. He started 20th, but within 10 laps he had moved up to third and by Lap 23 he was leading.<p/>Bodine won the season’s first Truck race at Daytona, with Busch second, and Bodine brought his Truck back to the front just past the midway point. He led for 18 laps, but when clouds moved in over the track, it affected the handling of his truck and, Bodine said, played into Busch’s hands.<p/>“Where he stands above the crowd is his car control,” Bodine said of Busch. “Early in the race I was trying to chase him down and his truck was sideways and sliding. But he was still driving away from me. That’s incredible control.<p/>“There are guys who are just naturals and he’s one of them.”<p/>Busch said his team helped with that.<p/>“I have a lot of confidence in this truck and these guys,” he said. “I know I can put the thing where I want to put it and it will stick – most of the time.”<p/>Johnny Benson was third for the second straight week.