Green Flag 12.06.07: Dancing Derby
Posted by Jim Carson on 12.07.2007
Everything that matters in racing, from foxtrots to portable toilets.
This time of year more thoughts are directed toward football and basketball than motorsports, and with good reason, so I'll join the fun. I'd love to see the BCS produce a four-team playoff; any more than that and you'd always have at least a couple of undeserving teams in the mix. For this year, no one has a decent argument that they're left out of the title game, because everyone except for Ohio State and Hawaii has 2+ losses. Undefeated Auburn got screwed a few years ago. One-loss USC got screwed a few years ago. Two-loss Georgia got what it deserved this year. Two-loss USC got what it deserved this year. Anyway, I'd love to see OSU win in triple OT January 7.
Here's a guarantee: the Tigers will win New Year's Eve in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. OK, lots of groans from the audience, because in the Georgia Dome it'll be my Tigers and the War Tigers, aka the two teams that just gave their lukewarm-seat coaches long contract extensions after close wins over the in-state rivals. In what's jokingly called Auburn With A Lake, plenty of fans and boosters aren't pleased with Tommy Bowden's ability to close out games and the fact that he has repeatedly gotten less than the full potential out of his stellar recruiting classes. Plus he's a serious Bible-thumper (the ACLU is all over him because he has insisted in the past that his players attend church), and when you're introducing a new offensive coordinator, the words "good Christian man" should NOT be in the first descriptive sentence. But he did go 9-3 this season, with only one bad loss (@Georgia Tech), and you're definitely going to extend the contract of a coach that goes 9-3 and has beaten the University of Stupid Chickens seven of the last nine years.
Let's talk hoops: Clemson's 8-0. No eye-opening wins, but plenty of halfway-decent ones: @Mississippi State, Old Dominion, Gardner-Webb, Purdue, and the Chickens. At least it's tougher than the pre-ACC schedule we played a year ago. The Tigers have two more games against second-division BCS-league teams (DePaul and Mississippi, both in Puerto Rico) and two puffballs, then a New Year's Day tilt at Alabama which will be oodles more exciting than the Rose Bowl. Mark this date down: January 6, when the hopefully-still-#1 Tar Heels visit Tigertown. Must-see TV. And why the hell do they still call it the Big Ten/ACC Challenge when the Big Eleven is 0 for 9?
Y'all clicked on this link to read about racing.
YES VIRGINIA, THERE WAS A RACE LAST WEEKEND
The 40th annual Snowball Derby is in the books. What's a Snowball Derby? It's regarded as the biggest pavement Late Model race of the season, held at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola FL. It's currently one of only two pavement Late Model races that attract fields from all over the country, more than a few cars from outside the region anyway (the other is the All American 400 at Nashville's awesome fairgrounds short track). The Snowball also has a list of past winners including Darrell Waltrip, Donnie Allison, Ted Musgrave, and five-time winner Rich Bickle.
After this year's event the trophy belongs to Augie Grill. Augie is the son of Frankie Grill, one of the South's leading chassis builders. The Grills have been to every Derby since Augie's birth in 1976. Augie was an eight-year-old wandering waif when legend Butch Lindley won the Derby in Frankie's car. Then in 2001, Augie was the crew chief when Frankie went to victory lane for the second time as a car owner, with one of this generation's most accomplished short track drivers behind the wheel in Wayne Anderson. The next year Augie took up driving, and a couple years later he became pretty darn good. Now he's on the list of Derby winners. With 30-40 laps left in the 300-lap Derby, Augie passed 2006 race winner Clay Rogers and Georgia's current hottest young gun Matt Hawkins (who made a slight mistake by tapping a car with worn tires and getting momentarily pinned by that spinning car) and pulled away to the checkered flag.
Unless you're at least a casual follower of short track racing (and you should be), there's a bigger reason to care about the Snowball Derby. A couple of NASCAR stars wound up looking rather foolish. First, there's Kyle Busch, who has brought his own Late Model to some big-time shows in recent years (the Slinger Nationals in Wisconsin, the Winchester 400 in Indiana, and the fall biggie at his home track in Las Vegas, plus borrowing a car for the Oxford 250 in Maine in 2005) only to come up short of winning. Shrub had another driver qualify his car at the Derby since he was in New York for the banquet (which I didn't watch), then flew to Pensacola in time to watch that other driver (able and excitable twentysomething Jason Hogan) win a last chance race and take an apparent spot in the Derby. Uh oh...the car was found to be too low in the inspection line and disqualified, and Shrub was left out of the Derby and quite irate about it. Another driver who was in New York, soon-to-be-Nationwide-Series-bound 17-year-old Joey Logano (as the Busch East Series champion), also was left out of the Derby; he was scheduled to drive a car owned by former Cup driver Stanley Smith, but Smith spun twice in practice and loaded up after qualifying.
Then there's Crusty Wallace Jr. People who only know Steven from driving Rusty's #66 in the Busch Series don't have a sense of how loose this cannon really can be. Steven also missed the qualifying cutoff, but he was fast enough to start on the pole of the other last chance race, and he won that. Steven then took his car to the scales and it came up a few pounds light. It's customary for cars to get rolled on the scales, then off and on again if it's light the first time. Well, between weighings Steven made a trip to a nearby port-a-john and started filling the pockets of his firesuit with sockets and other small, dense metal gizmos. That didn't go over well with the tech inspectors and the other witnesses, and Wallace was given the DQ. Believe it or not, Steven had the race of his life and won the Derby in 2004, and there's a spot held for a past winner who didn't qualify, but Clay Rogers didn't get in through time trials either so he took the last spot. Wallace came back for race day in street clothes and helped Rogers with his pit stops, but he was in the dumps the whole time. That's the worst he's felt...since he knocked over another port-a-john with a golf cart at the same track.
The most challenging job in NASCAR might be the PR rep for Steven Wallace. I wonder if that's a revolving door.
QUICK LAPS
- After 2008, it will no longer be the Craftsman Truck Series. The Sears brand of tools will be branding the #3 NASCAR circuit. I guess Craftsman's running out of new tools for Ray Dunlap to look foolish using during the breaks in the Truck broadcasts. It took less than a year before the nationwide search revealed a replacement sponsor for the Busch Series, so this doesn't look like a horrible predicament, especially since the pricetag on a Truck title sponsor would be a good deal less than for the #2 tour. The factor that must be overcome is that all but 2-3 Truck races are on the Speed Channel, which has roughly half the visibility of ESPN2 (well, my cable gets Speed, so that's the most important visibility). A bigger loss for the Trucks is the fact that the Spears Manufacturing team, which has been a mainstay in the series since its inception in 1995, has shut down, robbing the series of some valuable history and robbing 2006 Snowball Derby winner Clay Rogers of his best lead for a 2008 ride.
- So Danica might not be the biggest media darling in the IRL next season. As much as I hate reality shows, Helio Crazydancer winning is the second-best thing that could happen to the pointy cars (the #1 thing is a giant rewind button to send us back 12 years to erase the Big Split of '96). There will be Helio signs made in the grandstands, Penske #3 diecasts and shirts galore sold (good thing the Marlboro decals are off so they're kid-friendly), and generally more interest from casual fans. Then some of those casual fans can discover that sometimes and at some tracks (cough*Brickyard*cough), the IRL cars produce more exciting racing than the NASCAR Wingboxcars. And maybe the edge will be off of the pressure on Danica and she can produce that long-awaited victory. But can she and her husband/trailer Paul do the foxtrot?
We'll find some year-end motorsports topics between now and the end of the year. Neat how that works out.
