Maybe NASCAR should turn the 400 over to FV's

[rstackjd]

Any else watch that garbage? What a crappy race. I can understand NASCAR's safety concerns and I imagine Goodyear is feeling like they really screwed the pooch. At least I didn't spend money to sit through it!

Nothing like 4 hours of 10-20 lap heat races! 4 hours to go 400 miles! LOL - the FV's could have done it faster than that!

[vreihen]

Nothing like 4 hours of 10-20 lap heat races! 4 hours to go 400 miles! LOL - the FV's could have done it faster than that!

What was that about spec tires in FV???

Seriously though, what was the difference between yesterday's race and a typical NASCAR event, other than the fact that everyone knew when the next yellow flag was coming out instead of being kept in suspense about whether they would make it 10 laps before the next car wrecked like usual? The most annoying part to me was that Junior's crew chief figured out the strategy for short-pitting right before the yellow to get ahead of everyone, and NASCAR seemed to make a decision to close the pit road on subsequent planned yellows to prevent anyone else from trying it. Actually, the most annoying thing was that ESPN kept going to commercial at lap #5 of a 10-lap green flag run, and kept their blabbering commentators on during the post-pit stop yellow flag laps instead of going to commercial then!

The only reason that I kept watching this living goat screw was that I'm a chair in our local SCCA region, and I wanted to remember the most horrible event in the history of motorsports for one of those days when an event that I'm chairing has problems.....

[rstackjd]

[quote="vreihen]The only reason that I kept watching this living goat screw was that I'm a chair in our local SCCA region, and I wanted to remember the most horrible event in the history of motorsports for one of those days when an event that I'm chairing has problems..... [/quote]

Man - you made me shoot coffe out my nose! I still can't stop laughing at that!

[dd46637]

The only reason that I kept watching this living goat screw was that I'm a chair in our local SCCA region, and I wanted to remember the most horrible event in the history of motorsports for one of those days when an event that I'm chairing has problems.....

That may be THE funniest thing I've ever read on here

And they (Nascar) are supposed to be the professionals

[lee]

They had a living goat screw?!?!?! CRAP ... of all the times to listen to the race on the radio.....

[vreihen]

That may be THE funniest thing I've ever read on here

And they (Nascar) are supposed to be the professionals

It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't true! Page 62 of the August "Sportscar" magazine contains a whole page article about a Solo event that I put on back in May going bad. (The article didn't mention the police intervention to remove the knucklehead from the site, for obvious reasons.) The icing on the cake at that particular event was a first-time novice who felt obligated to give me his critique of everything from the registration line to the course design, as if I had never done this before to know when things aren't working smoothly because half of the core workers who were supposed to be doing the morning setup and working registration/tech were tied up dealing with the referenced matter.

The ultimate shock for me came when Jeff Burton whacked the two birds on that one restart yesterday. About 5 years ago, I had to red-flag an event because a "Manhattan Chicken" (aka: dump chicken, aka: pigeon) decided to adopt a pointer cone on the course as it's new nest. I booted it out, went back to green flag, and 5 minutes later it came back and moved right back into the same cone! Somebody shot video of me evicting the bird the second time, and I actually received an e-mail a few days later from an animal cruelty person for trying to save the bird's life by making it move! Anyway, when Burton hit those pigeons, NASCAR officially took the title for the most horrible event in the history of motorsports away from me as far as I was concerned.

I was just looking for a video clip of the bird incident yesterday, and came across this blog entry (with video clip) that called yesterday's meet at Indy the "Worst Race In The History Of Humanity":

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/blog/fro ... scar,96244

Next time somebody feels obligated to point out the obvious when we're having a bad event day, at least I'll be able to smile because no birds were injured in the making of our events!

Does anybody else think that NASCAR's problem yesterday may have been fixed simply by letting some fire trucks hose down the track every 25 laps, which I suspect would have filled the grooves enough to let them get normal tire wear out of the pencil erasers that Goodyear accidentally shipped to Indy?????

[Lynn]

Worst event in the history of motorsports. Not even in the top 1000. Number 1 is the 1955 Le Mans race.

While Goodyear is a long way from the company it was in the 80's before it swallowed the poison pill, NASCAR bears a lot of the blame for Sunday's fiasco with the Crapmobile of Tomorrow.

First, they reduce downforce by 50%.

Second, they raise the center of gravity, a lot.

Third, they reduce the left side static weight.

Fourth, the teams are greatly restricted in car setup, especially camber. And a flat track (Indy) requires a lot more camber than a 33 degree speedway.

Fifth, NASCAR allowed no testing at Indy this year.

Finally, after making those stupid changes they expect the COTs to run the same lap times as the old cars without reducing weight or increasing tire width.

So, does Goodyear make hard, long wearing but undriveable tires or do they make soft tires to make the drivers and NASCAR happy?

I think NASCAR owes the fans in the stands a free race next year. And Goodyear should refund all the money the teams paid for tires at this race. I understand most teams used 22 sets at $1408 per set. At most races, they use 8 to 10 sets.

[Rickydel]

Deja Vu?

Seems Indy is proud to be the venue for two of the worst races ever.
Lets not forget only half a GP field racing because the tires for the other half of the field were deemed unsafe.

Maybe the Grand Prix should have been run 10 laps at a time too......

[brian]

One minor correction about testing. NASCAR did not make the choice to exclude Indy from testing. According to Mikey,(Waltrip) the competitors chose where the tests are to be held and Ponoco won out over Indy.