Comments on: You make the call… are they starting and parking?

By: Michael Phipps

Michael Phipps — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:32:40 +0000

I refer everyone to the interview that happens every monday morning at 10AM with Slugger Labbe on The Morning Drive. They were a start and park at Chicagoland, because of trashing 2 cars at the home race at Infineon(including the the one in the race which was originally Martin Truex’s backup and another in the Coke Zero 400. Besides that Slugger reported that at Indy, Goodyear will be mounting 20 sets of tires for every team, whether you run the entire 400 miles or are there to do a start and park. And from what I heard and understood the #71 team planned to run the entire distance and Kevin Buckler was still working to try to obtain $1Mil in sponsorship, which according to Slugger was all that they really needed to finish the rest of the season.

By: Heather

Heather — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:39:07 +0000

MISSU3
My understanding about this and I have double checked with a team, You can NOT keep tires from the weekend. Good year has started giving teams some tires to test on but tires from race weekend are turned in at end of weekend. Some teams maybe using tires over and over in a weekend.

By: Nan

Nan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:39:40 +0000

They are for sure starting and parking. I play a game called First & Last 5. To play you have to pick the cars you think will finish in the top and last 5 spots. I have been playing this game for 6 years and do not recall anyone getting all 5 picks correct. This year in the game there have been 4 times that all five of the bottom 5 have been picked. Myself I usually pick the same 5 cars and have done great with them as they are usually in the bottom five if there is not a wreck or equipment malfunction taking out one or more of the top drivers. Sure picks are the 187, 171, 66, 09 (if Brad is not driving it), and the 37.

By: GW

GW — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:31:50 +0000

These guys are trying to run as much as possible. Parking does not impress potential sponsers. They park because of broken parts or wrecks. When a team runs on limited funds, the parts are generally where they have to lean out the spending. The result is unreliable and sometimes even used parts get put on the car resulting in breakage.

By: MISSU3

MISSU3 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:17:13 +0000

At the TX race this spring I had my scanner on the TV feed. While they were on commerical break they were talking among themselves. Blaney had gone in after just a few laps. One said “He’s whatamacallit broke.” Another one laughed and said “No, that was last week. His thingmajig broke this week”. They were talking about how they can use the same tires for 3 or 4 races so you can deduct a big tire expense right there. Wasn’t it a Nationwide team a couple of weeks ago that didn’t even bother to have a crew chief on the pit box? If that doesn’t say start and park, what does? Must be making money. No one would be putting out that kind of money if something was coming back in.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:45:34 +0000

If sponsorship dollars are so tough to come by, drop the Top 35 BS. If you have have a Top wahatever make it the Top 12, you enough Chase points you get the breather.
All the other 31 – 36 cars trying to qualify are on equal ground, the Top 12 go out last in case of rain. Take the Top 12 and the fastest 31 qualifiers. . . o yeah, no provisionals.

Level the playing field, more chances to get into the race for sponsors and you have to at least race for the Top 12 points not take a Sunday drive for the Top 35.