2011 NASCAR Thread

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Kimi to NASCAR, hope it's true, could be fun... I've always liked Kimi, but I'm not sure if he will get along in NASCAR? Obviously direct comparisons will be made to Juan Montoya, but really, the two drivers have different backgrounds, with JPM having raced and won on ovals before he went to F1, and when he joined NASCAR he went to a team he'd already raced for and knew. Kimi's got a big learning curve ahead, and I wonder if he has the patience or character to be a NASCAR driver?
 
One thing about Kimi is he isn't very media friendly and NASCAR is extremely heavy on sponsor endorsements, consumerism, etc. Can you imagine Kimi plugging his sponsors after a race? :crazy:
 
One thing about Kimi is he isn't very media friendly and NASCAR is extremely heavy on sponsor endorsements, consumerism, etc. Can you imagine Kimi plugging his sponsors after a race? :crazy:

True, I can imagine him having a ice cream though. :lol:
 
The one snag in the Kimi plan is Foster Gillett.. unfortunately he is the son of the guy who managed to destroy the teams that use to be Evernham and Petty Motorsports before Richard Petty jumped in to save his organization from vanishing for good.

:(
 
For the pit crew thing? I don't know. What I do know if since Gordon won at Phoenix he's been the Pizza Hut fan favorite.
 
Martin Truex's stuck throttle made for a violent trip into the wall. There's no good external camera angle, but the bumper camera (1:25) is painful to watch.
 
For the second week in a row, that was a great finish. I'm not really a Kevin Harvick fan, but it's really exciting to watch someone be going so much faster than anyone else at the end and steal the win in the last few laps.
 
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Last week, I predicted Jimmie to win California and Harvick passes him on the final lap. Yesterday I was joking with family that green cars are unlucky and Dale Jr. gets passed by Harvick with 4 to go.

I think Harvick will win Texas as well. :dopey:
 
So Kevin Harvick becomes the first repeat winner this season. My boy Jeff Gordon finished 5th and had a pretty good run. Kind of hard to believe just how well he's done at Martinsville through his career.

Up next... Texas. That's right! Texans of GTPlanet... unite! The Dallas-Fort Worth area will kindly welcome NASCAR for the first of two races. Sad we don't have a good enough track to represent us here in Southeast Texas, but the Lone Star State gets some NASCAR loving next weekend in Nationwide and Cup. And as always, it should be a great one at one of my personal favorite ovals.
 
Clint Bowyer expressed a thought in the press conference after the race today that I found quite interesting but had never heard before. He said, essentially, that his team had gone in a particular direction with the setups to begin the season and it just wasn't working for them. Meanwhile, Menard had been doing quite well, and because RCR had basically imported his old team and all of its employees, they came into the season with a different base of knowledge with regard to setups and were on a fairly different path. So, basically, expanding RCR by adding a team might actually have helped them because they brought in people from outside the organization with their own, separately derived expertise.
 
Matt Kenseth wears the Crown tonight! :sly: :D --- Randy
 
It seems like my fav does terrible in the DuPont car. Still, a move from 32nd to 23rd ain't bad. 9 positions ahead when out of gas last lap isn't good, but it beats 32nd!
 
I thought I liked the two-car drafting, but after the Nationwide race, I'm not quite so sure. The end of the race felt more artificial, or random, than exciting, and there was just so much carnage throughout; every car seemed to be significantly damaged by the end.
 
Margin of victory for Jimmy Johnson = .002 /sec. :eek:

Great race today, and EPIC saves by Ryan Newman and Dave Blaney. Kudos to them. 👍
 
Can somebody post up a picture of the finish?

Looking at the results the top 8 are sooo close!
 
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It's funny how even 0.002 seconds actually equates to a difference of about seven inches at the line at these speeds (not that seven inches is a lot in any absolute sense). I suspect that most people would guess a significantly smaller margin than that.

I didn't get to watch the race, but Race Rewind was pretty fun in itself. I think the two-car stuff works really well with the Cup drivers and makes for very enjoyable racing to watch, but it becomes a circus with Nationwide drivers as almost every car crashes.
 
Gordon had that race. If he went down low in front of Johnson or if Martin had kept his pace then Gordon would have won. Still a great race though.
 
I called that finish coming out of turn 4, and changed my mind by the tri-oval, and then again before the finish. :P
 
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