Gotta know when to turn out the lights
Then I got to thinking. Back in the day we wouldn't have done that because we didn't have lights. Back in the day, if it started raining and it got dark, you'd go home. Back then, races had to be called, shortened and postponed because of darkness.
That got me thinking. It would have been nice at California if somebody ran around and pulled the plug on the lights. We could have all gone home and come back the next clear day, as the rules state — which in our case was the next day, an absolutely beautiful day for racing.
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If I had any point of contention about the weekend, that was it. We knew that Sunday night was kind of shaky at best. We knew the weepers were there and that they would be an issue, and we knew that, based on the forecast, Monday was going to be a beautiful day to race.
If I were making the decisions, I think I would have cut my losses and gotten out of there earlier. I've been doing this a long time, so I understand that if you get it done, everybody gets to put it behind them and go home. But there's a point of diminishing return, and I think we reached that much earlier than 11 p.m., when they finally called the event.
I know some people have said and written that the track organizers knew they had these weepers, but I don't think they did before the weekend. I think it probably rained more in California this past week than it ever has before. All that rain, coupled with all the water underground, caused the seeping through the seams in the track. I don't know if it ever happened before, but I did notice that making those cuts in the track did seem to alleviate the problem. Maybe they should have done it earlier in the weekend.
Everybody's got hindsight, everybody can be a Monday morning quarterback, so I'm not going to press on that any harder. They've got problems, they've got work to do, and they know it. We won't go back there for a little bit, so hopefully they'll have everything fixed by then.
I know people are disappointed with the way turned out on Sunday, but you gotta admit that the race turned out to be pretty exciting. The 87 laps on Sunday afternoon shaped things up for what I thought was a whale of a race on Monday. You had three cars at the end of the race fighting for the win, but Carl Edwards was able to get past two champions — Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson — to win the event.
I thought it was an exciting race, and it was one of the better California races. I'm happy with the way the racing has gone this year. We've had some pretty exciting races. One way that the excitement is being reflected is in our TV ratings. It seems to me that everybody wants to write about how ratings are down. In fact, after Daytona I how read some writers said that the ratings were down and the new car was to blame for it.
They must have not been at Daytona, or they had old copy they wanted to get rid of, because the Car of Tomorrow is putting on a good show, the teams are getting more and more comfortable with it, and our TV ratings across the board from Daytona were up and our numbers from California, even through all the rain delays, were incredible.
That shows people want to watch the show, and they are watching. Fans are interested in NASCAR. The COT has created some interest that normally would not have been there, and the racing is good. I'm pretty happy about all of that.
It's unfortunate that we had weather issues at California after such a great Daytona 500, but you can't control Mother Nature.
One other thing that I think the new car has brought to the table is horsepower. I haven't heard people talk about horsepower in quite a while. They Chassis Dyno the things all the time, but horsepower is usually an afterthought. It's all about aero — who's doing the coil binding setup and all the aerodynamic things these guys have dealt with all these years. But it's kind of fun now to hear guys changing spindles, A-arms, chassis components. Now all of a sudden the engine is a big factor in what is going on.
I think this new car is creating every bit of that because the body is what it is — you can't alter it. So it puts emphasis on a lot of things that we haven't paid any attention to for quite some time.
From that perspective, I know Toyota has been working hard on their engine package, and Dodge is working on their new engine package. I just read where Jack Roush is working on a redesigned new engine package for Ford and Chevrolet has their new R07. So now we've gone from worrying about the bodies, the aerodynamics and who has the best fabricators to who has the best engineers and the best engine departments.
That's exciting.
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Race Trax:
News:
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Can you dig it?
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The drivers are all saying that this car is hard to drive, but it's fun to drive. It reminds me of the cars back in the day when I raced. Those cars were hard to drive, but they were fun to drive. You could swing them around, they'd get loose, they'd push a little bit, they'd move around, but you felt like you could save it all the time. I see that with this new car, too.
Overall, I know there's still issues. It's not perfect, and I don't know if it'll ever be perfect or not, but based on how we thought this season was going to go and how we thought racing was going to be, it's so far, so good.
California is a tough joint to get cars to work right and put on a good show, but I thought we put on an entertaining product.
The rain delay was wild and crazy with all the different drivers we got to talk to and our trying to name the Gopher Cam — and I know, some of you are saying "forget that." But you know what? It's all for fun. It's raining, what are we supposed to do? We were looking for some entertainment, so we wanted to name the Gopher Cam. Thanks to all you folks who have e-mailed us with your ideas. We are looking at the list now and we are going to pick one so that ol' Gopher has a name, maybe by the time we get to Vegas.
Couple of sad notes
Tim Sullivan, an old buddy of mine from the early days of my career who worked with us in the PR stuff, passed away Feb. 24. I've never know a more sweet and gentle person and a more considerate man to work with than Tim Sullivan. He was the perfect gentleman and I cherished the time I worked with him. He was a special guy. I learned a lot from him.
He will be missed.
Jimmy Johnson over at Hendrick Motorsports passed away died last week. I worked side-by-side with Jimmy from 1987-1992 putting things together and trying to help Hendrick Motorsports become a dynasty, and Jimmy was responsible for so much of that. Rick trusted Jimmy to run the company like he would run it, and during the formative years Jimmy did an incredible job with drivers, sponsors, crew ... the whole nine yards. He was basically running the place.
He will be greatly missed.
And then, of course, you heard me talk about my nephew Jason who passed away over the weekend very unexpectedly. Just an incredible loss, nobody was expecting that. It was just unfortunate circumstances. We were in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday night with my sister, her husband David, all my sisters and all my brothers, my mom and everybody. We had a memorial and it was sad, but it was good to be together as a family loving and caring for each other. That's what family is all about.
Oh, by the way
Trust me, folks, we are in the TV business, but we are no different from you all — we are race fans. We didn't want to stay at the track in California all night and keep everybody awake. That wasn't us, we were just like you all — along for the ride.
Sometimes people in the stands and people at home on the radio or on the Internet know the race is called before we do. NASCAR has done a much better job working with us, but there seemed to be a lack of communication this weekend about what was going on.
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