BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

I'm officially the newest writer on Turn 4 Racing News! For the latest posts from me, check out http://turn4racingnews.com/

I'll be writing NASCAR posts every Monday! See you there!

Big announcement coming tomorrow!

Check my Twitter page tomorrow for the news!

What are we to expect this weekend at MIS?

Going into the Pocono race weekend is typically dreaded by NASCAR fans.. it is referred to as "boring","a snooze fest", or "too long of a race". The track even shortened the 500 miles at Pocono to 400 due to fan complaints. Even then, fans still exclaimed on Twitter that they'd like to see the race go down to a 350.. that was, until the drop of the green flag on the freshly repaved Tricky Triangle. Diving in to turn one of the first lap, we saw Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards getting dicey, resulting in a tire rub, and almost immediately after, a multi-car wreck involving Landon Cassill, A.J. Allmendinger, and Juan Pablo Montoya in turn three. With a race-total of seven cautions, and several speeding penalties on pit road, Pocono redeemed itself from being infamously known as the most boring race of the season. The repave of Pocono transformed the race completely, bringing the speeds up by about 7mph and influencing the wrecks in the formally action-deprived race.

The trend continues this weekend as we head to Michigan International Speedway, the 2-mile oval that was recently repaved along with Pocono. When the Cup drivers participated in tire tests at Michigan on the new surface, speeds topped off at about 216mph, shattering the current qualifying record of 194.232mph held by Ryan Newman. Fans and drivers alike are excited to return to MIS and see what the repave has in store, as we were all pleasantly surprised by the new Pocono.

So, what are we to expect at Michigan this weekend? A track known for going four and five wide has just been repaved. Due to the smooth new surface, according to testing, speeds have skyrocketed. We're accustomed to pretty exciting racing at Michigan, so will the repave amp up the quality of the race even more this weekend? Will it have a positive affect on Michigan, as it did Pocono? As we get ready to go 400 miles at Michigan this weekend, we will soon find out. Regardless, 216mph into turn one sounds pretty crazy to me.

Dear NASCAR, a rule is a rule.

As some of you may have seen, when the field of today's Nationwide series took the green flag at Dover, pole-sitter Ryan Truex was not the first car to the start-finish line. Unless you were paying very close attention, the fact that Joey Logano inched ahead of him to the line would go unnoticed.

Start of today's NNS race at Dover

When I saw this, I rewound the recording and played it back several times, catching the point where the cars crossed the start-finish line. As the picture clearly shows, the nose of Joey Logano's 18 car beat the 20 car of Ryan Truex to the line. Restart rules state that cars are to stay in line until they've passed the start-finish line, and the leader of the race must cross the line first.

At Richmond this year, we saw second-place Carl Edwards jump the restart on Tony Stewart by a long shot, because Carl was unaware of the fact that he was in second. Carl was black flagged within laps as NASCAR deemed that he jumped the restart and beat leader Tony Stewart to the line.

Carl Edwards black flag, Richmond

Though the margin of Carl Edwards jumping the restart is far greater than Joey Logano's, did they both beat the leader to the line? Yes they did. Is beating the leader to the line a penalty? Yes it is. So, why is the penalty enforced in the event of a major rules infraction, but not a minor infraction?

If a professional basketball player steps three feet out of bounds, the ball is turned over to the other team. If that same player steps an inch out of bounds, the ball is still turned over to the other team. A rule is a rule: if a player steps out of bounds, no matter how small or large the margin is, the ball is still given to the other team. Shouldn't it be the same in NASCAR? Whether the second-place car beats the first-place car to the line by several inches or several hundred feet, did they still violate the rules? Yes.

My point is that NASCAR should be more concrete with the enforcing of their rules. A simple rules violation like Logano's today should not go unnoticed, just as stepping an inch out of bounds in basketball would not go unnoticed. There should be no grey area as there was today. NASCAR, all I'm saying is: a rule is a rule.

Don't you agree?

The evolution of NASCAR.

*For some reason, I think the amount of picture data in this post, I wasn't allowed to publish it all in one post. This is in four different posts.

I have this really awesome book that my uncle gave me, and it’s called The NASCAR Vault. It basically tells the important highlights of NASCAR’s history throughout every decade from the 1930s to present. I was flipping through it when I got home from the All-Star race, and it was really interesting to me how drastically the paperwork, advertisements,  and credentials have changed in the last century. Here’s a few examples.

Tickets -

1939. Check this out, 55¢ to get into a NASCAR race. Could you imagine paying that much to go see a race nowadays? I wish!

 

1998. This is the next ticket example in the book, and it’s a little bit more like what we’re used to. A total of $125.

 

2012. Here’s my ticket from the Kobalt Tools 400 this year, a grand total of $176.00. How crazy is that, compared to a mere 55¢ just 73 years ago?





Credentials -

1938. This is Bill France’s garage pass for Indy. It would be pretty easy to replicate in this day and age, wouldn’t you say?

 

2012. My hot pass from Charlotte, allowing me all-access.. similar to what Bill France had in 1938, despite the “working in the garages” part. Fancy, huh?