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Top Five Best of NASCAR

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by Charlie Turner

Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. The best NASCAR and IndyCar news and opinion, exclusive pictures and video. I'm Charlie Turner. Follow me on Twitter @onpitrow

September 25, 2008 3:06 pm UTC 4 Comments

Pretend you are Kyle Busch.  The pressure is on.  You have a limited number of chances to get it right.  The big difference between you and the Shrub – if you do something stupid, millions will be clueless about it.  This blog ain’t that big.

Here is my list of the five best things about NASCAR – right now, to me, myownself and for my reasons only.

  1. Barney Hall, the veteran announcer for MRN, the Motor Racing Network.  I actually prefer listening to a race on radio than watching the tube.  I have a soft spot in my heart for great radio guys.  I grew up listening to Ernie Harwell do play by play of the Detroit Tigers.  And I’ve listened to plenty of MRN broadcasts while on Sunday drives and working in the backyard.  Hall has the same easy going, natural way of running a race broadcast.  In a small way,  I’ve learned in the last year how tough that can be.  I respect pros like Barney more so for that.  But even before, Barney Hall was my favorite way to get my NASCAR.
  2. That TV shot from the top of pit row, when the pits are full of 43 cars for a green flag stop,  looking down the length of the pits.  The color and the pit signs and the cars and the frenzy.  It’s all there and you can’t find it anywhere but NASCAR.
  3. Bobby Allison.  I didn’t have to compete against him. Maybe, if I had, I wouldn’t like him so much.   But I do.  We’ve talked to him a few times and they are the highlights of my time ON PIT ROW.  And he drove hell out of a race car.
  4. NASCAR has a drug testing policy.  It sounds pretty loose, as drug policies go in professional sports.  But, to the best of my recollection, there have only been a couple of incidents of overt drug abuse uncovered up to now in the sport.  If you are going to encourage a kid to have a sport figure as a role model – and I’m not endorsing that – it seems you could do a lot worse than having your little tike follow Smoke or Jimmy, Jeff  or Junior.  For a sport founded by bootleggers, it’s turned out pretty wholesome.
  5. 51.410 seconds.  That’s the total margin of victory –  from first to second place - for the 42 Sprint Cup races run from the beginning of 2007 through mid May of 2008, according to Bob Zeller of Speedway Illustrated.  The average was 1.22 seconds, per race. 

That’s my list of the Top Five Best of NASCAR – as of today, anyway.  What’s your top five?  Let us know in the comment section of this post and we may pick your list as the Shell Gasolines Top Five of the Week.  If we do, we’ll send you a very cool Kevin Harvick bobblehead, compliments of Shell Gasolines.

The Shell Gasolines’ Top Five of the Week is brought to you by Shell – reminding you to help keep your engines gunk-free and running at their best by using high-quality gasolines like Shell.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Filed under: Bench Racing Contests, NASCAR & the Media, Nascar Legends, On Pit Row The Fastest Two Hours on Radio 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Top Five Best of NASCAR”

  1. User Avatar Steve Wronkowicz on September 26th, 2008 6:51 am

    1– Walking through the Cup garage and having Richard Petty walk past and he looks you in the eye and nods a hello, when he doesn’t know you in the least.

    2– Forty-three cars coming out of turn four to take the green flag to start a race. The roar of the cars and the crowd melding into one The start of a NASCAR race is unlike any other–more cars–more noise–more vibration. You don’t get the rumble that comes with 3500 pound stock cars in other forms of racing.

    3– Fans lined up along the fences from the motor coach lot to the garage imploring drivers to come over and sign this or that. The “driver pick up lines” that fans use are amazing. When a driver-any driver-starts signing, its like a wave moving toward that driver. But when he he says “this is the last one”, the rail birds move back to their original perches to wait for the next driver and rarely is a disparaging word uttered.

    4– Knowing that bored drivers will make “banzai” runs through the infield in the evenings to meet fans and maybe have a brew with them. The stories of Tony Stewart and others riding 4-wheelers into the lots to hang with the fans doesn’t happen in other comparable series.

    5– Having the entire 1987 season on VHS and remembering how difficult it was to remember what channel to set the VCR for. Is this race on TNN, TBS, ESPN or CBS? The tapes are fading away now, but it still makes me smile when I watch Bob Jenkins, Larry Neuber and ON PIT ROW regular Dave Despain be part of a NASCAR telecast (yes I know Despain didn’t work with Jenkins and Neuber). Seeing what the entire field was doing and getting the story of everyone on the track was paramount.

  2. Pre-Kansas Bump Linkin’ Friday - Get Your Free Stuff | Bench Racing With Steve and Charlie on September 26th, 2008 3:43 pm

    [...] Top Five Best of NASCAR [...]

  3. Amy on October 3rd, 2008 4:39 pm

    I decided this would make a great blog post so I posted my answers here:

    http://www.badgroove.com/index.php/2008/10/03/my-fave-five-bits-o-nascar-lovin/

  4. User Avatar Charlie Turner on October 3rd, 2008 6:57 pm

    Nice list Amy. The cool thing is, there are no bad lists, if they’re sincere. Thanks for the link and for joining the discussion. BTW, ii is ON PIT Row – with a “W”. …don’t ask.

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