Scott Kalitta Killed Today
Sad news from the NHRA yesterday…
Two-time NHRA Powerade Series Top Fuel champion Scott Kalitta was killed Saturday when his Funny Car dragster crashed and burst into flames during a qualifying run at the Lucas Oil NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.
The 46-year old Kalitta was the son of NHRA legend Connie Kalitta and the cousin of current NHRA regular Doug Kalitta.
According to the Star-Ledger of Newark, Kalitta’s car exploded, hit a sand trap, then vaulted over a protective catch fence.
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1,100 Miles Of Racing All In One Day!
What an interesting couple of races we had this weekend huh?
I will start with the Indy 500. Wow. There were more surprises in that race than I am used too. How many times do you see a driver knock his teammate out of the race, and then watch another driver crash into another driver on pit road to the extent it knocks them out of the race too?
First, Marco Andretti knocked Tony Kanaan out of the race,
After Briscoe’s parking lot-caliber mishap, the second-worst move probably belonged to Marco Andretti, heir to one of the great names in the sport. The grandson of Mario, the patriarch and only Andretti ever to win one of these, pinched teammate Tony Kanaan on the low side while passing him on Lap 106 and caused a spinout that ended the Brazilian’s day.
Told afterward that Marco Andretti said over the team radio he was sorry, Kanaan, one of the pre-race favorites, shot back, “He’d better be. It was a very stupid move.”
And then Ryan Briscoe smashed into the backend of Danica Patrick on pit road.
Danica Patrick, the sport’s glamour girl, saw her day ended when Ryan Briscoe pulled out of his pit box too quickly and skidded into the back of her car, wrecking the suspension. After climbing out, a steamed Patrick began striding purposefully down the lane, yanked off her gloves and looked ready for a second collision with Briscoe—this time between her fist and his face.
But after she brushed past one uniformed speedway official, a plainclothes security officer persuaded Patrick to climb over the pit wall and back in the direction of the garage. She stormed past a few waiting TV cameras and into a sponsor’s hut but eventually cooled off and reappeared later.
“Probably best,” she conceded, “that I didn’t get down there, anyway.”
Holy smoke. Oh yeah, While we’re discussing Smoke, the Coca-Cola 600 was Tony Stewarts to lose. And lose he did.
Tony Stewart suffered his second heartbreaking defeat of the season Sunday night when a flat tire late in the Coca-Cola 600 handed Kasey Kahne the victory in NASCAR’s longest race of the year.
Stewart, who lost the season-opening Daytona 500 when he was passed on the last lap by Ryan Newman, had the tire go flat with three laps to go. He was forced to pit, allowing Kahne to zip past him for the victory.
I tell you… Neither race ended the way I expected them too, but they weren’t boring, that’s for sure.
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Sometimes Change Is Better, Sometimes It’s Not
I guess there was a bit of a kerfluffle about some billboards that will appear near the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas.
Reason No. 1 for Texas Motor Speedway to replace billboards: unhappy Earnhardts.
Four identical billboards referring to the strained relationship between Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his stepmother, Teresa, will be replaced within the next two weeks. The flap is over ads featuring a picture of the driver and the wording “Reason #88: Step-Mom.”
TMS president Eddie Gossage said Thursday night that the billboards, part of a series of similar ads to promote the NASCAR Nextel Cup weekend at the track in April, will be changed after a request from Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, the driver’s sister and business manager.
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Earnhardt will still be displayed on the billboards, but the wording will change to “Reason #88: New Car Smell.”
Now come on. I know Dale Jr. and his sister Teresa didn’t like it, but we all know the reason he left DEI and went with Hendricks has nothing to do with that “new car smell” and everything to do with Teresa refusing to sign him. I think the original slogan made more sense and the second one makes no sense when you compare it to the other ones they have scheduled.
Ford In It For The Long Haul
Ford Motor Company, which earlier this week announced they have lost even more money and are preparing to offer buyouts to all of their union employees, but now they say they are committed to NASCAR and promise better times ahead!
Ford isn’t giving up on NASCAR.
After a dismal 2007 season that saw the manufacturer win only seven Nextel Cup races — to Chevrolet’s 26 — Ford officials made a point Thursday to show their commitment to the newly named Sprint Cup.
Edsel Ford II, a member of Ford’s board of directors and the great-grandson of Henry Ford, visited Roush Fenway Racing’s shop Thursday during the final day of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Media Tour
”There’s been a lot of talk in the Ford Motor Company in the media in the past year, much of it negative,” Ford said. ”People have wanted to write us off, to say we couldn’t compete in the marketplace or on the race track.
”I’m here to tell you one thing today: don’t underestimate our resolve.”
If they had this much resolve in the marketplace, they wouldn’t need to be offering buyouts to their employees to save money, would they? Good luck during the race season though.
Sphere: Related ContentDale Jarrett Replaces Rusty Wallace On TV
Last season, it was difficult, at times, listening to Rusty Wallace’s analysis of the race. Our son, who idolizes the veteran drivers, loves Rusty Wallace. In fact, several years ago, we went out and waiting in a line for hours just so he could meet him in person. Rusty Wallace was a great racecar driver, but as a television announcer he’s not quite there yet. He seemed to loosen up during the season, and I really think he will do better this season, we shall see.
Dale Jarrett will replace Rusty Wallace in the booth this season for ESPN’s coverage of NASCAR, while Wallace will become the lead analyst for the network’s studio programs.
”We now have the opportunity to provide our viewers with analysis from a pair of former NASCAR Cup champions,” Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president, said of the switch.
The move is not exactly surprising — Jarrett thrived last season when he helped call Nationwide Series events last year, and many believed he was headed into a second career of broadcasting when he retires from racing after driving the first five races of 2008.
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But Wallace struggled at times in the booth, and fans complained he mispronounced drivers’ names and didn’t seem comfortable.
Now in the studio, Wallace will run all the studio programs and will fill in for Jarrett when needed.
Don’t you love the way the television execs sugar coat the whole thing? Wallace is now running all the studio programs, yada yada yada. Ha!
There’s Nothing Worse Than A Cry Baby
I don’t know why I hadn’t heard about this lawsuit before now, other than the fact that it’s frivolous, unwarranted, and a total waste of time.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed an antitrust lawsuit filed against NASCAR by a Kentucky track that was left off its premier racing circuit.
Kentucky Speedway alleged that NASCAR had conspired to leave the Sparta track and others out of the Sprint Cup — formerly known as the Nextel Cup — series despite their superior amenities.
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The speedway, located about halfway between Louisville and Cincinnati, has drawn huge crowds to some of its other races. The NASCAR Busch race, now called the NASCAR Nationwide series, last year drew more than 70,000 people to the 1.5-mile tri-oval in northern Kentucky.
The speedway had asked that ISC be ordered to sell some of the tracks it owns that host Sprint Cup races and that the speedway be awarded in excess of $200 million in damages.
If I read this right, they wanted ISC to be “ordered” to sell off some of their tracks that host Sprint Cup races so other racetracks (like theirs) could host the races instead. Huh? Why would anyone allow that to happen?
Would it be right to tell Waffle House to sell off some of their restaurants (that just happen to be at every exit along the Interstates down here) just so some competitor has a chance to make money from hungry travelers? I think not.
Stupid lawsuit. Waste of time. Sore losers.
Robby Gordon Should Be Angry
The entire reason terrorism continues to spread is because people do stuff like this. The race organizers should not have buckled to the pressure, and even if they were going to buckle, they could have eliminated that leg of the race or re-routed the race.
It’s not like there aren’t millions of square miles of desert to race in over there.
The race trucks cost more than a $1 million each, their lightweight, off-road bodies fashioned completely out of carbon fiber and Kevlar. They had been packed and shipped to Lisbon, Portugal, where 40 members of Robby Gordon Motorsports were waiting for them. They had paid $360,000 in entry fees, bought thousands of dollars more worth of spare parts, and were ready to beat the desert. They were in line for technical inspection on the day before the start of the Dakar Rally when they learned the entire 5,760-mile endurance event had been cancelled because of terrorism concerns.
So instead of racing across the Sahara Desert, Gordon found himself at Daytona International Speedway on Monday for the opening session of Preseason Thunder. And still stunned at the cancellation of an event he had spent roughly $4.5 million to compete in.
Now he’s simply out a whole lot of cash, and only a small part will be refunded. A whole lot of contingent deals will not be carried through, and there is no way to tell exactly how much was lost all because they simply quit, rather than re-route the race.
As Robby Gordon says, it’s all about perspective, and it seems the organizers of the Dakar Rally lost theirs.
Benny Parsons Highway
Benny Parsons was one of a kind.
Residents of North Carolina’s Wilkes County will pay homage to their hometown hero, Benny Parsons, by naming a portion of U.S. Highway 421 in honor of the 1973 NASCAR champion.
The “Benny Parsons Highway” will be unveiled during a dedication ceremony at 11 a.m. local time on Thursday. The five-mile stretch of road runs from the Maple Springs community to the Watauga County Line.
[Source: NASCAR]
And They Call Me Hard Headed
Are they telling me there is no noise at the speedway except on big race days? Huh? Lowe’s Motor Speedway is huge. Are the houses really close enough that (a) they would be effected by noise, and (b) adding another type of racing to the speedway would lower someone else’s property values?
The owner of Lowe’s Motor Speedway threatened to shut down the track and open another one somewhere else after the city council derailed his plans to build a drag-racing strip at the site.
City officials angered Bruton Smith when they voted this week to change zoning to ban drag strips, addressing concerns of nearby residents worried the noise would disturb their neighborhoods and decrease property values.
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Shutting down the speedway would cost both Concord and Cabarrus County millions in tax revenue. Last year, officials said, Lowe’s Motor Speedway brought in $169 million in tourism spending to Cabarrus County. It’s worth around $1.02 million and $722,000 in property taxes to Cabarrus County and Concord, respectively.
“If Mr. Smith wants to spend $300 million in retribution, there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Mayor Pro Tem Jim Ramseur.
I just don’t get it. Personally, I wouldn’t close the speedway and spend $300 million to make my point, but then again, if I was a city or county official I would consider making an exception seeing that the speedway generates so much revenue for the surrounding area.
Drag Racing Pioneer Wally Parks Dies
Wally Parks, an automobile enthusiast who founded the National Hot Rod Association and helped turn drag racing into a legitimate sport, has died. He was 94.
Parks died Friday at Providence St. Joseph’s Medical Center of complications from pneumonia, said Michael Hollander, a spokesman with the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona.
As a test driver for General Motors, Parks started organizing car races in Southern California’s dry lake beds in the 1940s.
“He effectively created drag racing,” Hollander said. “These kids were racing jalopies and he wanted to get them off the streets and start them racing in an organized manner. He set up a system of timing and scoring and turned it into a legitimate sport.”
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His wife Barbara died in 2005, Hollander said. He is survived by two sons, Richard and David.o