Kathy's Pit Stop

What will NASCAR look like in 2009?

With all the recent layoffs and teams closing shop, what is NASCAR going to look like come February 2009?  Teams have been having problems finding sponsorship and that's not recent news, but now teams are shutting doors because of it.  With all the news lately, it makes you wonder if NASCAR will be able to have full fields for all three of it's major series. 

It's sad to see teams fold when NASCAR supposedly puts things into place to help with costs.  Obviously, these things Brian France have come up with are not doing any good and if something isn't done soon, the sport is really going to start suffering, more than it already is.

I have a bad feeling that there will be more layoffs and maybe even teams closing before the start of the season in February and I think a lot of it is NASCAR's fault for not keeping costs down for the teams.

Your thoughts?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog buddies!

FOX and ESPN look to cut costs

It was said that executives from FOX and ESPN are going to meet with NASCAR to look at ways to cut their costs of broadcasting the races.  With the economy the way it is, I guess even the big guys need to cut costs.  They will be meeting with NASCAR to discuss the best ways to do this and NASCAR says it understands but doesn't want it to affect the fans.

What exactly will be discussed is anyones guess, but some things that were mentioned were the number of production trucks, number of different camera angles, etc.  While the production trucks won't make a difference to fans, the camera angles might, depending on which ones (if any) they choose to cut, hopefully it won't be ones that are showed often.

Also, with the downturn of the economy and difficulty of getting sponsors, Bobby Hamilton Racing will close its doors at the end of the week after ten years in the sport.  The reduction down to one truck last season helped, but now they lose Dodge as the sponsor of their one lone truck and apparently can't find a sponsor to continue.

It's going to be interesting come February to actually see how many teams there are left, especially in the Nationwide and Truck Series.

Your thoughts?

Edwards wins at Homestead

Edwards stretched his fuel mileage and won the race, unfortunately, he didn't win the championship.

Johnson didn't need to do much to win, just stay out of trouble and crew chief Chad Knaus made sure Johnson stayed out of trouble. 

While Jimmie Johnson may be crowned the Sprint Cup Champ, I tip my hat to crew chief Chad Knaus, he's the one that really won it all for Johnson.

It'll be interesting to see how Johnson fairs next season with the testing ban or if HMS finds a way around it and gets Johnson his testing.

Now we have the long wait until February.

Your thoughts?

Congrats Bowyer, Nationwide Champ

Good race, Edwards won the race, but Bowyer kept himself where he needed and won the championship.  Congrats Bowyer and and the whole RCR team!

Landon Cassill won the Rookie of the Year honors, ironically, he wasn't even in the race.  JGR won the Owners Championship with the #20...congrats to them for an awesome year also!

Johnny Benson wins the championship

Johnny Benson finished one spot ahead of Ron Hornaday and won the championship.  It was a good race, for the most part pretty clean, hard racing among the leaders too.

I was rooting for Hornaday, mainly because of his owner, but congrats to Benson for winning the title, like him or not he deserved it.  Benson and Hornaday put on a good show this season for the fans, something we can't say about the Cup Series.  Way to go guys!

Your thoughts?

NASCAR bans testing

NASCAR announced this morning that it is banning testing for all three of the top series, Cup, Nationwide and Truck at all NASCAR sanctioned tracks in 2009.  This includes all the pre-season testing done at Daytona prior to the Daytona 500 weekend.

According to NASCAR, this will save teams a lot of money.  In theory it makes sense, but what about the larger teams that will test outside of the NASCAR sanctioned tracks like they did with the COT before it went full-time.  Granted these tracks are not exactly the same, but will the larger teams of HMS, RCR, JGR, etc. test at thest non-sanctioned tracks?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Your thoughts?

At least the other Series have exciting points battles

Once again, Johnson had the perfect car, no matter what Edwards did, he just couldn't move up through the field enough.  While mathematically, Edwards still has a shot, it's Johnsons title again.  I swear that is one team that didn't have any bad luck at all this season and it certainly paid off for him.

That was some wreck with Gilliland's car ending up on top of Speed's car, glad no one was hurt there.  Unfortunately, the race wasn't exciting, once again with one car basically dominating the race.  Kurt Busch gave it go on the green white checkered, but just couldn't get him.

I guess we can hope for an exciting race next week.  Without the championship being on the line anymore, maybe we can see an exciting race with a different winner.

Good job for Kurt Busch and Jamie McMurray being up there in the end.

Oh and ABC's choice to move the race to ESPN2 for the finish was bull, if it had been football, basketball or baseball, they wouldn't have been relagated to another channel, especially for AFV!

Your thoughts?

Close points battle going into Homestead for the Truck Series, as usual

The Truck Series has always given us a great points battle going down to Homestead and this season is no different with only 3 points separating Benson and Hornaday.

I honestly thought the battle was lost on lap 1 when Hornaday and Busch got together and caused that big wreck, Hornadays KHI truck was a mess.  Granted, Benson got some damage, but it appeared to just be mostly cosmetic, but I have to give a "great job guys" to KHI and company for getting that #33 patched back together and back out on the track!

Benson had another close call with the #6 truck, but once again, it seemed as if luck was on his side and he didn't get much damage out of that one.  At the rate things were going, I thought for sure, that the championship was won by Benson because of that lap 1 wreck, after all, Hornaday was 29 laps down after getting back out on the track.

Then on lap 87, Benson got the bad end of a wreck with T.J. Bell and had to go behind the wall for repairs.  While he had a bit of damage, I was basically thinking it was still over, but they spent more time behind the wall than I anticipated and now we have a close points battle again going into Homestead.  After all of that, Hornaday actually gained 3 points on Benson when it was all said and done.

Congrats to Harvick for winning the race in his #2 truck, making it three in a row for KHI, not only that, but it set a new record for the Truck Series, three wins in a row by a team with three different drivers.  Way to go Harvick and KHI!

Your thoughts?

Edwards wins on a gamble and gains points

Carl Edwards and team decided to gamble on fuel and somehow pulled it off and won.  He also gained 77 points on Johnson, who struggled and finished 15th, a lap down.

It was a huge gamble considering they could have lost all those points that he gained if he had ran out of fuel.  I wonder what Edwards was thinking when Jr. who was running 2nd and gambled on fuel also, ran out with five laps to go?

The big thing that happened, other than Johnson struggling, was when Gilliland got some payback on Montoya and got himself parked.  Both drivers tried to act so innocent in their interviews, Montoya not knowing why Gilliland took him out and Gilliland saying he "misjudged" when trying to pass Montoya.  But, it was obvious during the replay that Gilliland knew what he was doing.

Edwards needs Johnson to struggle again next week so he can gain some more points.

Good finishes McMurray, Truex and Reutimann, not normally top ten finishes, but all finished in the top ten this week.  Good 7th place finish for Harvick after starting 23rd!

Your thoughts?