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Daytona Time!
Feb. 17th, 2019 07:24 pmSo, once again, it's Daytona 500 time!
Fox does a completely shitty job of driver introductions, frankly the worst I've ever seen. Traditionally, TV intros go row by row, showing a picture of each driver, and at a minimum, reading his name. They just skipped a whole lot of them, e.g., "Row X has two rookies", flash both their pictures for two seconds, and on to the next row.
The in-person intros at the track follow the current fashion of introducing the drivers on a stage, and then having them walk down a catwalk with the crowd on either side. They do them one at a time, and the drivers high-five the fans as they go along the catwalk. Every driver seems to veer toward the right to high-five with their dominant hand, so only the fans on that side get to see them.
The Daytona 500 is sold out as usual, but NASCAR is slowly dying. They had to lay off one third of their employees over the winter, and even at Indianapolis, large portions of the stands are empty.
National Guard choir has a serious bass section. NASCAR crowds and participants always behave respectfully during the prayer and national anthem, which is pleasing. That seems to be a racing thing in general, come to that. Steven Tyler got seriously booed during the pre-race at Indianapolis some years back, when he decided to goof around during the national anthem.
Guy giving the start command to the field is loud and enthusiastic. He really doesn't need the microphone.
First four cars in the field are from Hendrick Motorsports.
It's snowing here, huge composite flakes of late winter snow.
They're racing two wide the entire way around the track. Unexpectedly, the bottom line seems to be the faster.
Most of the Ford teams take an early pit on lap 18. Yellow on lap 20 wrongfoots the ones trying to pit then.
Wood Brothers still use their classic red, white and gold paint scheme, just like they did when I was eight years old. It's nice to have that continuity. 1969 was in most respects a completely different world, but there are, here and there, threads of connectivity.
First eight cars are Fords at lap 25, largely (I think) because of that yellow.
35 laps. Kyle Busch, who started way in the back, now leads.
49 laps. Another yellow. Kurt Busch tried to move down on Stenhouse, and wasn't as clear as he thought.
Stenhouse claims no contact, and the replay supports that. Busch apparently just got the air taken off his back left. MacMurray and Wallace were just unlucky.
Good Lord! This fellow Tift had surgery for brain cancer two months ago, and he's racing today. This really isn't the world I grew up in.
70 laps. Fords are still in first six places, so it wasn't just pit shuffle.
72 laps. Maybe half the Fords pit together again.
Kurt Busch gets a 'suspend scoring' black for not taking his penalty for too many over the wall. Not a good day for him. It's really kind of academic at this point, since he's lost seven laps trying to do repairs.
The first six (who have to be running short of fuel) have opened up a 40 second lead over P7.
Halfway. The lead pack are beginning to lap the field. You don't see that too often anymore. All forty cars are still in competition. I love that they're being allowed to race, instead of being artificially bunched up.
And... Mears just blew up and oiled the track. Big mess. No more "all forty".
24th and back are all a lap down now. And Bowman penalized from P2 for crew over the wall too soon. Seeing NASCAR actually calling the penalties in accordance with the rules, instead of using them to bunch up the field and protect the favourites, takes some getting used to. It's nice to see, though. Perhaps they really do intend to reform.
Blaney's pit crew found a $5 bill stuck to his grille.
Lap 135. Suddenly, Willie Byron seems to have set the mode selector to "conquer". He's able to pull away from the lead pack with no draughting partner.
Lap 145. Johnson and Harvick are working together, and still can't take Byron.
Three quarters. Stenhouse is back up to P2.
Huge pile-up at pit entrance. Stenhouse and Johnson, among others, are ruined. Both could have won. I'm not entirely sure what happened there. I think someone lost it at speed in T4, and slid into the group who were slowing to pit.
The left rear of Johnson's bodywork is missing, with just the fuel filler sticking out all by itself. And they manage to fuel him, and get him back out.
Apparently Ware took out his team-mate McLeod, which is how that started.
Fox astutely comments that missing most of his rear-end is "not ideal" for Johnson.
Lap 165. And they throw the penalty on Johnson for "improper fueling", which I've not seen before. Apparently that's if the fueler "performs additional service".
Lap 167. Stenhouse, somehow, is still in third. I'm not sure how.
And they send Stenhouse to the back for 0.3 seconds late crossing the line on pit closure. I'm not sure he was really in control of the car at that point.
The entire track is in shadow now, and there seem to be three usable lines.
Lap 174. Debris yellow, probably legitimate after all that happened. Oh, yeah. Huge piece of black & white bodywork, probably Johnson's.
Lap 180. Larson crashes all by himself, apparently cutting a tire on debris. For the two previous laps, they'd gone from three wide to single file.
Byron pits for tires. Johnson works himself up to the lead lap again, which is a testament to his skill. That car looks like it's been through a battle.
Lap 187. Another cutdown. Keselowski's car won't refire until the truck pushes him away.
And, that restart went straight to hell. :(
Red flag on 191.
I was just starting to think Menard (Wood Bros' driver) had a chance, and then he initiated that.
Incredible amount of sparks anymore from tire rims. It looks like the 4th of July.
It had been a really nice race up to that point. That took about half the field out. No injuries, though. And Byron, somehow, drove through the middle of that unscathed.
Hemric, a Team Childress driver, is DQ'ed for trying to drive back to the pits under red. My MAGA hat is off to NASCAR - they're actually enforcing the rules, with no favourites. I haven't seen that in years.
Menard apologizes, and takes the blame for that.
Fox takes the opportunity to show the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, with Cale Yarborough and the Allison bros. brawling. For all of NASCAR's issues, I don't think you'd see such a display of poor sportsmanship these days.
Lap 194. Byron drives through *another* huge crash unscathed. O.O
Lap 198. Bowyer hooks and takes out Byron. Another cutdown? No avoiding it when they hit you from the side. And, that godawful stupid "green/white" rule is invoked. I hate that!
Red again. They seem to be making a serious effort to clean the track, so good on that, at least.
That was sad. Byron had a real chance to win - sixth on the restart, but he was the only one with (relatively) new tires, and was tucked in right behind Logano as he charged for first up the outside.
They're doing the Wave while they wait. A couple times, on slow days in the late 80s at indianapolis, they'd time the wave and post it as a practice lap on the board :)
And Hamlin wins! That was a good race.
Fox does a completely shitty job of driver introductions, frankly the worst I've ever seen. Traditionally, TV intros go row by row, showing a picture of each driver, and at a minimum, reading his name. They just skipped a whole lot of them, e.g., "Row X has two rookies", flash both their pictures for two seconds, and on to the next row.
The in-person intros at the track follow the current fashion of introducing the drivers on a stage, and then having them walk down a catwalk with the crowd on either side. They do them one at a time, and the drivers high-five the fans as they go along the catwalk. Every driver seems to veer toward the right to high-five with their dominant hand, so only the fans on that side get to see them.
The Daytona 500 is sold out as usual, but NASCAR is slowly dying. They had to lay off one third of their employees over the winter, and even at Indianapolis, large portions of the stands are empty.
National Guard choir has a serious bass section. NASCAR crowds and participants always behave respectfully during the prayer and national anthem, which is pleasing. That seems to be a racing thing in general, come to that. Steven Tyler got seriously booed during the pre-race at Indianapolis some years back, when he decided to goof around during the national anthem.
Guy giving the start command to the field is loud and enthusiastic. He really doesn't need the microphone.
First four cars in the field are from Hendrick Motorsports.
It's snowing here, huge composite flakes of late winter snow.
They're racing two wide the entire way around the track. Unexpectedly, the bottom line seems to be the faster.
Most of the Ford teams take an early pit on lap 18. Yellow on lap 20 wrongfoots the ones trying to pit then.
Wood Brothers still use their classic red, white and gold paint scheme, just like they did when I was eight years old. It's nice to have that continuity. 1969 was in most respects a completely different world, but there are, here and there, threads of connectivity.
First eight cars are Fords at lap 25, largely (I think) because of that yellow.
35 laps. Kyle Busch, who started way in the back, now leads.
49 laps. Another yellow. Kurt Busch tried to move down on Stenhouse, and wasn't as clear as he thought.
Stenhouse claims no contact, and the replay supports that. Busch apparently just got the air taken off his back left. MacMurray and Wallace were just unlucky.
Good Lord! This fellow Tift had surgery for brain cancer two months ago, and he's racing today. This really isn't the world I grew up in.
70 laps. Fords are still in first six places, so it wasn't just pit shuffle.
72 laps. Maybe half the Fords pit together again.
Kurt Busch gets a 'suspend scoring' black for not taking his penalty for too many over the wall. Not a good day for him. It's really kind of academic at this point, since he's lost seven laps trying to do repairs.
The first six (who have to be running short of fuel) have opened up a 40 second lead over P7.
Halfway. The lead pack are beginning to lap the field. You don't see that too often anymore. All forty cars are still in competition. I love that they're being allowed to race, instead of being artificially bunched up.
And... Mears just blew up and oiled the track. Big mess. No more "all forty".
24th and back are all a lap down now. And Bowman penalized from P2 for crew over the wall too soon. Seeing NASCAR actually calling the penalties in accordance with the rules, instead of using them to bunch up the field and protect the favourites, takes some getting used to. It's nice to see, though. Perhaps they really do intend to reform.
Blaney's pit crew found a $5 bill stuck to his grille.
Lap 135. Suddenly, Willie Byron seems to have set the mode selector to "conquer". He's able to pull away from the lead pack with no draughting partner.
Lap 145. Johnson and Harvick are working together, and still can't take Byron.
Three quarters. Stenhouse is back up to P2.
Huge pile-up at pit entrance. Stenhouse and Johnson, among others, are ruined. Both could have won. I'm not entirely sure what happened there. I think someone lost it at speed in T4, and slid into the group who were slowing to pit.
The left rear of Johnson's bodywork is missing, with just the fuel filler sticking out all by itself. And they manage to fuel him, and get him back out.
Apparently Ware took out his team-mate McLeod, which is how that started.
Fox astutely comments that missing most of his rear-end is "not ideal" for Johnson.
Lap 165. And they throw the penalty on Johnson for "improper fueling", which I've not seen before. Apparently that's if the fueler "performs additional service".
Lap 167. Stenhouse, somehow, is still in third. I'm not sure how.
And they send Stenhouse to the back for 0.3 seconds late crossing the line on pit closure. I'm not sure he was really in control of the car at that point.
The entire track is in shadow now, and there seem to be three usable lines.
Lap 174. Debris yellow, probably legitimate after all that happened. Oh, yeah. Huge piece of black & white bodywork, probably Johnson's.
Lap 180. Larson crashes all by himself, apparently cutting a tire on debris. For the two previous laps, they'd gone from three wide to single file.
Byron pits for tires. Johnson works himself up to the lead lap again, which is a testament to his skill. That car looks like it's been through a battle.
Lap 187. Another cutdown. Keselowski's car won't refire until the truck pushes him away.
And, that restart went straight to hell. :(
Red flag on 191.
I was just starting to think Menard (Wood Bros' driver) had a chance, and then he initiated that.
Incredible amount of sparks anymore from tire rims. It looks like the 4th of July.
It had been a really nice race up to that point. That took about half the field out. No injuries, though. And Byron, somehow, drove through the middle of that unscathed.
Hemric, a Team Childress driver, is DQ'ed for trying to drive back to the pits under red. My MAGA hat is off to NASCAR - they're actually enforcing the rules, with no favourites. I haven't seen that in years.
Menard apologizes, and takes the blame for that.
Fox takes the opportunity to show the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, with Cale Yarborough and the Allison bros. brawling. For all of NASCAR's issues, I don't think you'd see such a display of poor sportsmanship these days.
Lap 194. Byron drives through *another* huge crash unscathed. O.O
Lap 198. Bowyer hooks and takes out Byron. Another cutdown? No avoiding it when they hit you from the side. And, that godawful stupid "green/white" rule is invoked. I hate that!
Red again. They seem to be making a serious effort to clean the track, so good on that, at least.
That was sad. Byron had a real chance to win - sixth on the restart, but he was the only one with (relatively) new tires, and was tucked in right behind Logano as he charged for first up the outside.
They're doing the Wave while they wait. A couple times, on slow days in the late 80s at indianapolis, they'd time the wave and post it as a practice lap on the board :)
And Hamlin wins! That was a good race.
