Regan Smith was Hosed...

That is all.

Kansas Race

Well, two things: I missed most of the race while I was out with the family at Cedar Point, and caught the last 5 laps, and wouldn't you know it, I caught the best part. Which pretty much goes for all the races nowadays. Thank goodness for Carl Edwards going for broke instead of settling for second.

Kansas Speedway

So where is Kansas going to get a second date from?  As it stands right now, ISC/Nascar's policy is to keep dates within ownership groups.  This means they must pull a date from another ISC track.  ISC tracks with two dates include California, Phoenix, Michigan, Daytona, Talladega, and Martinsville.  Well Daytona and Talladega aren't going to be losing dates so lets rule those out.  There are two criteria used to make the decision - attendance, and the importance of the market the race is in.  The quality of racing is NOT a criterion, otherwise Rockingham and North Wilkesboro would never have lost their races.  Of those two criteria, Nascar favors the importance of the market.  Thus I predict that Martinsville will lose it's race even though the racing is fun and the attendance is good.  Michigan and California have boring races but Michigan is relatively well attended, serves a large metro area and the home of the 3 American manufacturers, and Southern California is too big a market for Nascar to remove a race from, even though that race is both boring and very poorly attended.  Phoenix also serves a relatively large and growing market.

By the way, I predict that Pocono Speedway will be bought by ISC within the next few years to counter the purchase of Kentucky and New Hampshire by SMI.  If this happens within the next two years, Pocono will lose one of its dates to Kansas instead.

That Southern Cal has no interest in Nascar on a percentage basis, along with New York City, and the Pacific Northwest will be a topic for another rant.

Welcome to Raw Racing Commentary: Nascar Unseen

Now that I'm no longer representing Nascar Scene magazine, I feel I can go ahead and air out my opinions about Nascar racing without hurting the magazine. My first post, albeit biased, concerns the end of the freelancing program at Nascar Scene magazine. Although the staff photographers are quite competent and good photographers in their own right, I think the magazine suffers from no longer having freelancers contribute to the publication. What a lot of people don't realize is that the Scene freelancers cover a lot of track that often isn't covered by any other still photographers, and as such, have a lot of unique photographs. For example, fellow ex-freelancer Jim Smith is the only still photographer to cover the Davy Allison horrible wreck at Pocono in 1992. I think Scene has lost a big chunk of its soul.