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The long green runs today cut the ‘on lead lap’ drivers to a sorry few. And it diminished the number of Lucky Dogs, which may be a good thing. In the old days, if you wanted to get back on the lead lap, you had to prove yourself by blowing the doors off the leaders. But NA$CAR has changed….they don’t have doors any more.

Pigtails: Sooo, Mr. Pigtail got booted from his seat, and then throws out a suggestion that he’s willing to drive for another team. What a complete turnaround, although he appears to be kicking and screaming in the process. He could certainly drive in the truck series. That’s like a 50-year old golfer jumping to the Champions tour, and rejuvenating his career (for a few years). Sorry to say, though, that he just can’t recognize that his better years are behind him. That being said, the Petty cars are light years behind the average competitiveness level, and need to dig deep to solve this problem. Adding Loomis to the squad didn’t bring the magic band-aid that was needed.

4th Place: In this instance, being the 4th driver at RCR is gonna be a good thang. All three existing RCR drivers are firmly of the opinion that the 4th man will have to fit with the other three, and not drag the whole organization down. Thus, they appear to be looking for an experienced driver, so this might rule most out except da Biff, Blobonte, and perhaps Truaxle. None of them are looking to jump ship, but you never know in NA$CAR….

Yates: Despite a working agreement with the Hat man, neither of Yates cars seems to have a firm grasp on new sponsorship. And running the rest of the season without sponsors would be fatal to this flimsy organization. There are some very obvious teams that need to merge in order to succeed, and this is one of them. But alas, none of them wants to diminish their name power. Yates and Wood Bros come to mind, but there are other ‘newer’ teams that need to merge if they want to have any hope of chalking up a ‘W’ every now and then. Success breeds success, and failure breeds a mentality to just do well. Some drivers think that they can win; and given the teams they are running for, the others just hope that they can get a reasonably good result for their efforts.

Pre-race: Was that a screech owl doing the ‘Gentlemen….start your engines’? Some babe won a contest and warbled, nay, scratched her nails on a blackboard to get the attention of the drivers. But then, the SMI guys like to make a big splash, so maybe they were looking for someone to scare us as a warm-up for a distant Halloween. Ye gads, I might have nightmares tonight.

Da Race: Sorry, I missed the first 8 minutes of the race. Our TiVo decided this was the precise time it ought to upgrade the software, and gave no options for doing it later. It was almost if it said “you’ve been a bad boy, and we’re going to punish you”. Luckily I had my trusty radio warmed up, so sat there imagining what was happening. If there had been a wreck during this time period, I definitely woulda had a hissy fit.

Mikey: My first authentic note for the day indicated Mikey spun out. Frankly, I haven’t got the foggiest idea why this has any relevance, other than to point out that he’s far from distancing himself from the black cloud that’s hanging over his head. What with the ‘alleged’ theft of the Hat man’s part, he’s dug himself into quite a hole. But you’ve got to admit, he’s not as cocky as he once was, and that’s a good thang.

Gordhead: My second note of the day related how Gordo dropped like a rock, eventually spinning and hitting the wall. They didn’t even come close to having the right set-up for the car…..not even by a long shot, even though they worked the rest of the afternoon trying to brainstorm their way back to respectability. Another testament to LeFarte’s checkered past, I suppose. Thus far in 2008, out of the seven races, the flaming 24 team has only three (3) races where they finished better than 30th. Ouch.

Wreck of the day: Yelleybean won the honors by dinging the outside wall, then plunging into the inside wall where there (again) was no SAFER wall. Not as bad as the humongous wreck of rookie Michael McDowell over the weekend, but nonetheless it was a good lick. This is a perfect example of when you can distract someone from their misery by saying “I hope you didn’t damage the wall…….”.

Jr.: Of course, the unsung story (other than Gordo’s infamous defeat) was Jr.’s fall from grace. With his very rare pole position, he managed to be competitive on the short hauls, but quickly fell off during a long run. One of the announcers speculated that there might not be enough communication between driver and crew chief, and this might be right on the money. Jr. can’t expect to have a race-long competitive car without some feedback on how to keep it up front. On the other hand, crew chiefs have bad hair days. Ask LeFarte, das Knaus, and a bunch of other high profile crew chiefs.

The rest of the race was sort of ho-hum in my opinion, with few Yellows, and a lot of green flag racing. KidKyle made things interesting several times, and the Flipster lived up to various predictions in the garage. It also appears that das Knaus’ extra testing efforts over the Easter break has paid some dividends. If da Biff and Blobonte have a few more races like this one, they may take a longer look at RCR’s 4th seat.

Heaps of 3’s all over yer cute little Aflac duck,
Racing Maniac #3, #88e