Enjoy The Game… Er, Race More

by Diecast Dude, Special To NASCAR commentary and driver pictures, 2011 NASCAR schedule, video, Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie

February 22, 2010 9:55 pm CST 1 Comment

The flagship station for the San Francisco Giants has a sports talk format. One afternoon a few years back, the show hosts were talking to Jeff Kent. During his career Kent, who is now retired, played for the Giants and won the National League Most Valuable Player award one year during his tenure with the team. At the time of the interview, he had left the Giants and was playing for their archrivals the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Kent never was much of a media favorite, and he freely returned the favor. During the interview, he interrupted the hosts complaining about whatever, most likely how the Giants almost always come up short against the Dodgers, with this comment: “All you guys do is bitch and moan. Enjoy the game more!”

Fast forward to yesterday, when before the Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway Katherine McPhee was shepherded into the media center. Pretty much everyone with a press pass somehow managed to magically appear, especially all the photographers. Go figure. Anyway, someone asked McPhee if she was a NASCAR fan. Her reply? “To be honest, I’ve never been to a NASCAR game before.”

Well alrighty then.

Combine Kent’s snark with McPhee’s silliness and you have a solid base from which to examine yesterdays race. Instead of kvetching about the attendance or whining about the quality of racing, have people thought about, oh, enjoying the whole thing?

You’re not going to get Daytona or Martinsville at Auto Club or any other cookie cutter track. There are going to be periods of cars being spread out. It happens. There are times at Bristol when nothing much is going on. This is the nature of auto racing.

This duly noted, there were several moments where two or more cars were dueling for position. The race ended with multiple laps of Jeff Burton doing his best to run down Kevin Harvick who was doing his best to run down Jimmie Johnson. Good stuff. A couple of restarts late in the race looked like surefire massive pileups looking for a place to happen. There was action in the race; far more than for which it has been given credit.

Next, the obsession with attendance at Auto Club is inane. The weather in the Inland Empire in February is unpredictable at best and is seldom warm sunshine. Also, drive east from Fontana for four hours and you’re in Las Vegas. If you’re a party person and have to choose between the two, where are you going to go? The question isn’t why doesn’t Auto Club fill all 92,000 of its seats. It’s how it manages to fill as many as it does.

Some more thoughts on the weekend that was:

Bet there’s more than a few “let us review” sessions taking place at assorted engine builder teams today. Juan Pablo Montoya, Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon all suffered different degrees of powerplant woes. All Chevys. Could be a connection, but since the issue was different for each driver, probably not.
What happened to the Roushketeers? They had owned this race the past few years. Sunday they were barely an afterthought. Cookie cutters have long been a Roush strong suit until last year, when after Matt Kenseth won the February race at Auto Club things went south and stayed there. Difficult to imagine the same thing happening this year, but if yesterday was any indication something’s still awry.
On the other side of things, Richard Childress appears to have added via subtraction. Dropping the fourth team certainly hasn’t hurt the remaining three.

A few personal notes; hope you don’t mind.

Deep thanks to Charlie for the opportunity to attend the race as accredited media. An enriching experience in numerous ways. I am indeed grateful.

As to the media I met, Dustin Long is a gentleman in every sense of the world. Thanks also to Nicole Manske and Jorge Mondaca for their kindness. Hope to see you again soon.

Thank you to everyone who offered condolences over the passing of my aunt last Thursday. The past few days have been quite the emotional rollercoaster. I was quite thankful for the distraction provided by the races.

Enjoy the races more, people.

Filed under: Auto Club Speedway

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Comments

One Response to “Enjoy The Game… Er, Race More”

JA Mondaca on February 23rd, 2010 8:14 am

Good to meet you too. See you down the road.

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