NASCAR Goddess of Fortune Stands by Her Man (Tonight)

For all the great driving, great teams and great cars out there this year, there is only one who has all that AND great luck — Kyle Busch. And that is why he’s kicking everyone’s keister this year.

More than anything else, luck — the only quality no driver can master, purchase, nor even sufficiently woo — has determined the fate of the 2008 NASCAR season. Winnie, the NASCAR Goddess of Fortune, is one hot and fickle lady; she deals it out how she sees ‘em – a view which is inscrutable to the rest of us.

Let us consider the following turns of Winnie’s Wheel this year:

- Last year the Chevvies of Hendrick Motorsports could do no wrong; flip that coin this year for them. Now Joe Gibbs Racing is king, ruling both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide roosts. And Toyota, a car that could win no races last year, can’t stop winning them this year.

- The Number 20 car this year is probably the luckiest car ever. It wins no matter who’s in the driver’s seat.

- Green seems to be an especially lucky color this year, especially festooned on Kyle’s green Interstate Batteries No. 18 Toyota. The AMP cars of Dale Earnhardt Jr. (second in points) feature green designs.

- Remember those unlucky Goodyear tires, which Dale Earnhardt and Tony Stewart derided with such heat after Atlanta? A bad, bad tire they said, not safe for plebian road driving, much less a Sprint Cup race. Yet somehow Goodyear’s bum luck passed on to the cars themselves, derided now as terrible to drive — like cement blocks without wheels — safe but mostly responsible for the bad fortunes of so many drivers this year.

- Jimmie Johnson gambled on fuel strategy to win his only race of the year at Phoenix. Similarly, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s only victory of the season was due to a lucky gamble on fuel (astonishingly lucky; his car ran out of gas as soon as it crossed under the checkered flag). Of course, fuel strategy looks great when it creates a win. Carl Edwards’s fuel strategy turned out to be bum luck at Martinsville, losing the race on the last lap when he ran out of fuel.

- Michael McDowell was very lucky to walk away from that crash at Texas, smacking the wall at full spin and then tumbling over and over and over and over and over. Everyone says it was the generic car that saved his ass, but I think he watches the tape and crosses his heart for Winnie.

- Perhaps the most consistently unlucky driver this year has been Tony Stewart. Despite having arguably the best team and the best car out there, a crapstorm of bad luck has fallen on Tony: accidents, flat tires, broken parts, bad weather, even the flu. Smoke is surely this year’s Job, crying “How long, oh Lord!” as he sits dejected in his stalled Home Depot car. I hope Clance is correct in her most recent astrological prognostication, and Winnie spins Tony’s fortunes around the other way.

- Jeff Burton was hot early in the season but of late the dice have gone cold, resulting in finishes of 15, 13, 12, 37 in his last four races.

- Kurt Busch was astonishingly lucky to win at New Hampshire. This was no mere matter of preparation meeting opportunity, as he said after the race: Tony Stewart’s bum tire (it blew with three laps to go) plus bad weather put Kurt in the catbird seat where previously he was in 22d place in the standings. His luck was so weird that the race finish was like an episode from “The Twilight Zone.”

- Kasey Kahne, who was too far down in the rankings to qualify for the All-Star race, had lucky hunky-enough looks — an accident purely of birth — to get the popular vote for placing in the race anyway, won it, and has gone on to race as fiercely as those piercing blue eyes of his.

Drivers are a superstitious lot; they know how much Winnie plays in their eventual fortunes (or lack of them) to hedge all of their bets. Why do you think that so many of them trot out such jaw-droppingly beautiful wives and girlfriends to the races? Why else? They’re good luck charms, rubbed every which way both the night before and just prior to getting into their cars on race day as an appeal to Winnie.

Individual drivers have unique superstitions. A sick 6-year-old girl gave Dale Earnhart a penny, which he glued to his dashboard as he went on to win first Daytona 500. David Reutimann always puts his gloves on the same way — left hand first, and hi 6-year-old daughter tapes his heat shields if she’s at the track. David Ragan picks up pennies off the ground and puts them in his left shoe because his dad does that.

Other drivers have superstitions to ward off bad luck. J.J. Yeley makes sure black cats never cross his path. If he sees one, he’ll drive the other way.
$50 bills have a cache for bad luck; Humpy Wheeler signed and gave one to Dale Earnhardt Jr. before qualifying for the Coca-Cola 600; Earnhardt rejected the bill and went on to qualify sixth. Kyle Busch didn’t take the bill and made sure nobody on his crew did, either, and won the pole in the race.

What has all of this to do with great cars, great teams, and exceptional racing talent? Nothing. But it seems to have everything to do with what makes racing so addictive. Winnie the NASCAR Goddess of Fate is the penultimate track bunny, standing by her man in ways that no amount of skill will ever come close to.

Perhaps this hearkens back to the whiskey-running nights of NASCAR’s roots, where runners in jacked-up ‘39 Fords rubbed a rabbit’s paw swinging from their rear-view mirror as they raced up and down and round moony Appalachian roads, chased by stern black cruisers. Hot car and consummate skill were less than half of the equation back then, and drivers knew it. They got through because Winnie (or Tammie back then) sang them through on their car radios.

If Winnie loves a racer, he can do no wrong. She hovers over the fortunate as they race like a Faith Hill, angelically opening ways through the press of roaring metal, turning the wheel just right or left to avoid catastrophe. And for the unlucky she reveals her other side, standing in their way Gretchen Wilson all jacked up for a butt-kickin’, legs wide, hands on her hips, her eyes glowering through the darkness out back of trashiest redneck roadhouse beyond the last lights of town.

Who can woo Winnie? I doubt anyone can. It’s her race. She picks her winners. Maybe she’s stay with Kyle, or maybe she’ll jump in someone else’s car. The rest of the boys are right now performing their ablutions to her, stroking these soft curved rabbit’s feet, whether it hangs from their rear view mirror or is tucked inside the panties of their fantastically beautiful loves.

We have no way of knowing which way Winnie will turn her wheel at Chicagoland. We suspect that her romance with Kyle will continue. But she’s a moody dame. She is what makes racin’such a thrill.

(note: this post also went up today on my blog over at Clance’s wonderful Church of the Great Oval networking site. If you haven’t been by there, check it out. It roars.)

 

Call it the Rain-Delay 400, but it’s pure Coke to me

“I dream of Daytona,” today at NASCAR This Week, is my own rave about the race this weekend. Too long and loud and proud perhaps but hey, someone’s got to sing this song, in full volume to the dream.

 

On the champs, chimps, chumps (and more chumps) of New Hampshire

Whew-ee, whoda thunk it would be Kurt, Michael (Waltrip) and JJ (Yeley) 1-2-3 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, their sheepishly grinning faces schmeared with inevitable rain? In “Kurt Busch wins New Hampshire Lottery,” my boy Monte Dutton shows how “rain, wrecks, bad decisions and bad blood” turned “a leisurely Stewart roll” into, well, whatever you choose to call what happened on Sunday. In “A race where things were not as they seemed,” Dutton further ponders the many imponderables of a race where nothing in Peyton Place was as strange as the Lenox 301’s twists. And for anyone feeling weepy for Smoke’s ill fortune, Monte tosses a Kleenex and offers an appreciative low whistle at Tony’s back luck in “Team Tony takes one on the noggin.”

And for something completely different, “Mr. Smith goes to New England” examines the, uh, extensive changes (NOT) O. Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports have brought about at New Hampshire Motor Speedway since purchasing it last year. Visual proofs provided by Monte ..

In a day or so, look for Monte’s latest recording, “Go Big Red,” on the site.

Here in my gloomy corporate cubicle nestled deep in Florida’s humid groin (ahem), I’m patiently sharpening thunderbolts for Saturday’s Firecracker 400 … Gonna be wild! Vroom and boom!

 

Oh Jesus, I thought you were Dale (Smoke, Kasey, Danica, etc.)

Fan affections doth run high in this sport — such mania fuels our blogging trade, don’t you think?  Over at NASCAR This Week, Mike Smith’s current Stockcartoon suggests fan elation may be the only thing buoying up the general depressive state of things these days (that is, if you were a Dale Jr. fan last weekend). We got a record number of hits last night for Monte’s current Feud of the Week between Matt Kenseth vs. Dale Earnhardt Jr.; a minor tiff, no fisticuffs or swearing off-camera, but it seems popular imagination loves it when gods clash on pit road or in Turn Three. And if there is the merest suggestion of nipples in a post, as in Monte’s post “A female stock car star,” you better duck and cover, ’cause Curious Eyes gotta see. I’m not suggesting at all that the ideal post manages to say all of these things at once, but it does seem to me that NASCAR blogging is a darn good conjuration of trackside hoodoo, don’t you think? Journalism drunk enough on the fumes to swoon at the drivers and ogle trackbunnies. I can’t wait to get done with the trifecta of yawner races (Pocono, Michigan, Sonoma) and get NASCAR naked and devout at the Pepsi 400.

 

Tiger and Dale on a 4-iron and fumes

Exhiliarating news indeed of late if you’re a Tiger or Dale fan, or just needed some much-needed, improbable drama somewhere, be it the back nine or the loud oval. I mean, what about that towering 217-yard, 4-iron shot by Tiger over the pond fronting the 18th green, followed by 45-foot, 2-putt birdie to send the US Open into Sudden Death Texas Chainsaw Double Dog Dareya Overtime? O-or Saint Dale down to fumes and Mountain Dew burps on the final laps at Michigan, stopping and restarting his engine during the caution, zooming, floating, the entire grandstands united in one held breath, two crossed fingers, praying that this one would be the win Earnhardt has been within kissing distance for almost forever?

They weren’t pretty wins, but both were mythic, jaw-droppers which confirm why we stay so tuned into this stuff. In both cases, a whisper of wind from the wrong direction would have toppled them from victory. But Fate was smiling on our need for heroes, flawed as they may in sooth be — Tiger gets to ice that bum knee, Dale gets to sort it out with those who felt he got too much favor from NASCAR at the very end, which failed to penalize him for passing the pace car during the final caution lap. Not pretty, but sweet.

OK, ’nuff said from the pit monkey. Over at NASCAR This Week, Monte Dutton comments on the new world of the strategic race here as well as suggest that Dale might have gotten a blessing from his daddy on Father’s Day from the Sunoco Station in the Sky. What else? Oh yeah, Dutton says that Kasey Kahne’s a lot more than “kute,” but what the hey, I got demographics to worry about, so I threw in a Kute picture of the lad anyway. And be sure to check out the Burning Issues of the week.

 

New at NTW: ‘Stockcartoons” by Mike Smith

Today at NASCAR This Week we begin running Mike Smith’s “Stockcartoons.” Mike is the editorial columnist at The Las Vegas Sun and has been drawing his NASCAR-themed toon since 1999. He’s been with King Features Syndicate (a partner in this blog) since 2003. Check it out and don’t be afeard to comment!

Also on the posting plate: Roush Fenway Racing and Greg Biffle appear close to a new contract; Juan Pablo Montoya and owner Chip Ganassi seem to be settling their differences; a private equity firm buys into Petty Enterprises, ensuring that Bobby Labonte stays on as the driver of the team’s No. 43 Dodge; Ryan Newman’s sponsorship looks shaky with the recent acquisition of Alltel by Verizon; opening jitters for Michael McDowell; and in Monte’s Feud of the Week feature, it’s Jason Leffler vs. Denny Hamlin muah-ing fenders in pit row.

Let’s git in on!

 

I dream of Kasey

OK, I get it, fan fave ‘n’ racin’ rave Kahne zoomed to an impressive finish at Pocono yesterday: but I’m not sure why the Dream Channel last night opted to send me for a day with the guy, doing some sort of promotional stint at a sidewalk booth (like a lemonade stand), Kasey mugging for the girls, me wearing his bright red suit. Go figure … Maybe my dream libido needed a babe magnet, sick cats is all I see of late … All through the dream I asked Kahne questions I now forget, to which he responded at length, also all forgotten … One of those colloquies which must have been good for the dream if I just scratched my head upon waking.

Anyhoo, Monte Dutton writes today bout Kasey’s unKanny Konnection with Kayoed race Kittens in “The ‘Hillary voters’ turn to Kahne in Pennsylvania.” Also today, for those of you who wish to gloat, video of Kyle’s crash at the race, and a new song by Monte titled “There You Are,” with the chorus “If you ain’t an outlaw / You can’t sing outlaw music / If you ain’t got money / You can’t buy no car / If you can’t drive / You can’t race in NASCAR / And no matter where you go / There you are.” Monte didn’t file much about the Pocono race this weekend coz he was in the studio laying down this track.

 

Dario, Ashley, Nicknames, Getting Naked & More from Monte

Greetings fellow zoomzoombloggerheads,

Hope you like the new interface for NASCAR This Week — we changed from WordPress to a Joomla so we could add some bells ‘n’ whistles like enhanced audio and video capability. We’d love any feedback you can offer.

Today on the site, Monte writes about the struggles of former Indy driver Dario Franchitti to get back into the NASCAR fray. (Read down the post and you’ll get a peek at his wife Ashley Judd, caught in the act at the track by our photographer John Clark.)

Also today, Monte opines that NASCAR nicknames stink.

And be sure to check out Monte’s latest tune, “First I Took My Clothes Off,” posted on the front page. Monte, to say the least, presents a unique voice in roots music.

In two recent posts, Carl Edwards shares the pain of race fans who are paying high and higher prices for tickets and driving long distances to races, and Kyle Busch talks about the leeway he was given by Joe Gibbs Racing to do his thang.

Git er done,

David/Ovalscream

 

A plea for help from a jonesing NASCAR junkie

ZuDfunk sends out a cry for help to day in his blog:

Starting to get a runny nose
Legs and arms starting to ache
Feels like the flu, but I know what it really is.

Withdrawal Symptoms
No, not for Dope, but for NASCAR!

(read more)

Blankets, fireberry Gatorade and Mexican road races just won’t do! Bloggers, any remedies for our sufferin’ brother?