by: PattyKay Lilley![]()
Good day gentle readers, and welcome to RacersReunion, a site we know for a fact is read by folks that matter. I extend that welcome also to whomever is reading this page at the new Fan and Media Espionage Center in Charlotte. You drew well today, as your assignment will actually make it to a desk in a larger office, probably in another city… and a very good morning to you Mr. France. As you are aware, the racing season is rapidly approaching; the fans are waking up from their winter of hibernation and they are beginning to grumble well before the first green flag flies.
The first thing I’d like to put up for discussion Sir, is the new nascar.com website. For years, I defended NASCAR when folks threw large rocks and sharp missiles at that site, because I knew that it was under the control of Turner Broadcasting, not NASCAR, courtesy of a deal struck between Ted Turner and your departed father. As you have so proudly and loudly announced, that is no longer the case. The “New” nascar.com is solely and totally controlled by whichever arm of your media program sees to such things.
Sir, I ask you… no, I beg you… please go to your new site and read the comments being left there for you and those that you employ. Your readers are not happy! Upon first visiting the new site, I was very kind to it, because it didn’t cause my cursor to go wild and quiver as though in terror, as did the old site filled with far too much Flash and Java. There were times when it was so bad that I literally could not scroll. Time to look elsewhere. That part is much better. The site is pretty, but extremely difficult to navigate. With any dramatic change, there will be complaints. Some will be warranted while others will simply reflect the inability of the user to adjust to change in a proficient manner. Knowing the difference is priceless!
Problems in navigation might be real, but many simply stem from someone not knowing to click here rather than there. Creatures of habit are difficult to reorient. However, a much larger problem exists, one that stems I am sure, from that old law of unintended consequences. Media members and fans alike are finding a roadblock has been set up in search engines. Any search citing nascar.com as a source page draws only a blank stare from a computer screen as it looks back at you and says, “Huh?”
Didn’t anyone consider that when that switch was thrown, you were also throwing away access to all that had gone before? Google seems to be getting the message, and your page references are disappearing from their engines at an alarming rate. It’s almost as though the site never existed. Case in point… the old site carried a chart of car history by the car number. It was semi-useless, since it only went back to 1975, while another site, http://racing-reference.info/, carries the complete chart back to 1949.
I used that as a test case, mostly because I knew exactly where to find it, and entered “car number history” into your on-site search engine. That is exactly as it was listed on the old site. I was taken to some articles and blogs that contained the words individually. I then ran a search for “NASCAR 101″, which was the page on which the car number history used to be found. That search led me to a couple of articles about the opening of your wonderful new site, and one on breast cancer awareness. What search engine are you using? I’d just like to be sure…
Trying another search altogether, I entered the word “Forum” into the search engine. It came up empty and asked me if I meant “Ford.” Sir, I have been writing for many years and am quite proficient with both keyboard and computer. No, I did not mean Ford; I clearly meant Forum. That was the way it was cited in a post I had read from a fan. Apparently, it should have read “comments”, which appear at the end of some of your articles. The old site had several Forums, covering different topics. The new site appears to have none.
I read a second complaint from a fan about the minute size of type used at the very bottom of your Home Page, where one finds the “Home Tracks” listed. I was about to make him happy by telling him that the Home Tracks are also linked at the very top of the page, though in that same 2-pt. or smaller type.(Mouse print) I was about to, until I clicked the links, both top and bottom, only to find that both are dead. That is quite discouraging to those of us that promote the small tracks near home. They are where the next generation of racers comes from Sir. They deserve better, don’t you think? Oh, and by the way, the Grand-Am link doesn’t work either, and they have already run their first race… at your track in Daytona Beach.
Gentle readers, it’s your turn on this topic. Have you had good, bad or indifferent experiences with the new site? Can you find things there easily? Can you find anything there that you were looking for? Please… be respectful. I won’t let this column become a scream-fest or a place to merely trash NASCAR for someone’s 15-seconds of fame. We are serious here… as serious as a heart attack… and our purpose is merely to discuss and make known the things that bother us or please us. It doesn’t hurt to share one’s good thoughts as well as the other kind. The sport is still racing, and we still purport to love it.
With that in mind, this old fan is truly looking forward to Daytona, which this year brings us not only a new season but a whole new car… no, that’s not quite right. This time, it’s three new cars, Gen-6 cars, each one different and distinct from the others. The days of one-car-fits-all are over, and not a minute too soon for most fans. Not only that, but the new cars are constructed in such a way as to pretty much discourage any sort of push-me-pull-you games on the big tracks. We saw that when our most popular driver tried to offer a bit of “help” to The Tasmanian Devil during Daytona testing, and wrecked most of the cars on the track. So we only have racing to look forward to, with no more dancing. Now, if those new cars can just race…
While we’re on the subject of looking forward, Mr. France Sir, it seems to this fan that we are looking forward about seven days too far. The NFL did not extend their season to 18 games last year, nor Sir, do I believe that was ever even seriously considered. You see, the NFL has what is called a Players’ Union, a concept unfamiliar to NASCAR, and its members objected in large numbers, citing the already excessive injury rates caused by the last extension of the season, from 14 to 16 games. The human body can only take so much, and the Players’ Union rightly convinced Roger Goodell that theirs were already stretched to the limit and beyond.
And no Sir, “Acceleration Weekend” is not going to convince anyone with an IQ greater than his age that it is the reason for the delay. That idea is getting so little play that I haven’t heard even a single fan mention it, let alone comment or complain about it. Fans, if you haven’t heard of the latest attempt to part you from the contents of your billfold, just click here and read all about it. Our racing season begins with the Daytona 500… The Great American Race in Daytona Beach FL. All those other shenanigans are going on in Charlotte NC. Not even close! I haven’t asked the fans, but I will now… and any drivers or team members that would like to comment are more than welcome to do so. Which makes more sense to you… using this weekend each year to party it up in Charlotte… on your dime, of course, or moving the Daytona 500 back to its long-held place in rotation, thereby clearing a week off for teams at a later date… maybe the weekend before the Chase?
So, what say you gentle readers? Your comments left on this page will be read. That is a promise. What I cannot promise is by whom. This is why I ask you to keep it respectful. I know from personal experience that anyone is more likely to listen to a well-thought out idea than to a rant that contains words such as “hate”, “detest”, “stinks” and my own personal turn-off, “sucks.” I don’t slow down to read much of that, and neither, I suspect, would Mr. France or anyone representing him.
Just as an aside before closing, I’d like to mention that the NFL has Bill Simpson working on helmets for them in an effort to reduce the number of concussions in that sport. I haven’t really had the time to delve into all that is entailed there, but I am watching it with great interest. Why? Because I care… about head trauma, and about Bill Simpson. One of the greatest sorrows of my life is to look back to 2001, at another Daytona 500, and wonder… what if he’d listened to Bill Simpson…
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
Twitter: @MamaPKL
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One of my big things, as you know, is wanting people to know there was racing before the advent of the so-called” modern age in 1972. Continued thanks for all you do toward that end too!
Thanks Don, for the vote of confidence. That’s what our whole site is about you know; keeping a true and living history of our sport alive for the young folks that will be here after we’re gone. As noted, a lot of NASCAR’s stuff on their own website didn’t go back too far, and now it has for the most part been buried in the obscurity of cyber space. Might make our job a tad tougher, but we’re up to it.
I do appreciate you taking time to leave a comment.
Bingo, cha-ching, Ye-Hawwww you nailed it. I can not believe the stupid, idiotic D-W-E-E-B; he will totally ruin nascar at this rate. I hope that his soon to be ex wife will take him to the cleaners and let another member of the France family run nascar. I should say I have only just begun but you could not print it if I really stated how I felt.
Thank you,
Philip L. Hall
Phil, you and I have been friends a long time, but sometimes I have to think that it must be difficult living inside that mind. Did I not request NO name calling? I’m going to ask you once, nicely, not to do that again. Okay?
Have not visited nascar.com for years. I find links to everything I am interested in reading or searching for on Jayski usually. He seems to provide the best links. And if we comment on them or pass them along, I feel it is always important to thank him. I did go to nascar.com today just to check it out after reading your article and I find it hard to navigate and it is not user friendly, imo. I won’t be going back any time soon.
I think the Daytona 500 should be a week earlier. I don’t usually watch the Hall of Fame ceremonies as I do not think they are choosing the inductees as they performed and deserve as I feel they are choosing them on a who knows/knew who and who liked/likes who basis. Again, jmo.
Thank you for another great article!
Vivian, thank you so much for taking the time to comment, and for keeping your comments sensible and logical. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate those that do that. Like you, I was an infrequent used of their old site, but for the reasons stated in the article. It drove my computer crazy! My mouse would lose control of the cursor and it would take wild flings around the page on its own. Then, it would tremble and quiver like a cornered animal. Too much is exactly that… too much.
At first glance, the new site was much better looking, and my computer could be friendly with it… but nothing is in a logical place. Half of what I can find, doesn’t work. I’m not sure what they were looking for but that likely isn’t it.
The biggest problem I see is that they have essentially buried still more of their own history. How long before no one on the grass side of the ground even knows who Raymond Parks was? That is my biggest worry… revisionist history.
Hmm, you don’t plan to spend this weekend in Charlotte either? For the sake of the inductees, I do hope the HOF thing draws a nice crowd, but the rest of the weekend should include Daytona qualifying, not some trumped up “come spend more” deal far away from Daytona. JMHO, of course.
Vivian I agree with you wholeheartedly on the H.O.F. selection procedures.It boggles the mind.
I imagine we’ll be getting to the Hall of Fame once again in one of these discussions. I tend to make myself unpopular in some corners for my feelings on that… but they are my opinions and the Constitution says I can have them. Stay tuned… same bat time; same bat channel; same batty old lady.
PattyKay,
I’ll be the first to admit that I have little to no interest in nascar.com.
The old site was a quagmire and I will take your word as to the current one.There are alternatives.
What did catch my eye was Bill Simpson.
I’m glad to see the N.F.L. had the smarts to hire him.
He will serve them well also.
He was treated badly by Nascar and a lot of ill informed fans.
Sadly,Daytona took Dale back in 2001.And racing
is the worse for it.
But as you stated,’If he had only listened’.
Bill Simpson..Free spirit that he is will never see the inside of the H.O.F.
The man has saved many lives.He deserves better.
Sorry to get off the subject,so I’ll just get off the soapbox.
Mike, you are not one inch off subject. I included Bill Simpson in the column because I think he and his major contributions to racing safety need to be acknowledged, and those uninformed fans you spoke of need to be informed. Bill was made the scapegoat in an effort to take the heat off NASCAR for not moving forward far more quickly with the safety measures we see in place today and the young crowd takes for granted. Older fans know the price that was paid, and we know that ALL of the things adopted and mandated since Dale’s death were available BEFORE it.
In the article from AutoWeek that I read on his efforts with the NFL, it stated that Austin Collie, Wide Receiver/ Indianapolis Colts, who has been extremely prone to concussions, wore a Simpson-made helmet last season and suffered not a single one. For whatever reason, he wore someone else’s and went down once again with a concussion. It hurt my heart to read Bill’s answer… “I can’t make them wear them.” Nor… could he make Dale leave the five point harness as he had designed it. If only…
Bill may not see the Hall of Fame in NASCAR… like too many other deserving souls… but is he not already in the NHRA Hall of Fame? I’m not positive, but I “think” that is the case.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I do appreciate hearing from the fans. All of them, agree or disagree. I hope Brian France does as well.
Bingo!
Right on the money!
The new NASCAR.com is an abomination.
I forget sometimes, though, that the current leadership at NASCAR seemingly has no interest in history. Unfortunately, too, even those on the NASCAR periphery – such as over at the NASCAR Hall of Fame – seem to get their history wrong much too often (see Buz McKim and his writeup of the history of the Billy Biscoe #43 door i.e.)
At least, though, give us easy access to the NASCAR sanctioned local track news. Those locales are where the future “stars” of NASCAR “ought” to be cutting their teeth and many of us would like to read about them – or at least figure which local tracks are NASCAR sanctioned these days. Anybody know?
If I were a local promoter of a NASCAR sanctioned track, paying the big bucks for the sanction, I’d be looking to Daytona and saying, “Well, excuse me folks, but the fans can’t find us on your new website – please get that fixed right away.”
And we all know that we should be seeing Twin qualifying races at Daytona on Valentine’s Day, not later in the month of February.
Yes, Ms. PattyKay, you have pretty well nailed it. Hope the decrypters down the road from me at Spy HQ in uptown Charlotte get your message on down to Daytona when they have it figured out. That, however, is probably wishful thinking.
Thanks Dave, for taking the time to comment. If you somehow missed the fact that by killing all those links back to the old site, that history was being destroyed with them, I’m happy I was able to enlighten you. Same old, same old. Praise the Lord and Alan for Racing-Reference.info. He has built the Bible of automotive stats, and it keeps growing like Kudzu gone wild. Now if he could just unearth a treasure trove of stats on LMS…
Since the departure of RJ Reynolds, the “Home tracks” have not gotten their due. Sprint doesn’t get their relevance to the “big picture” and NASCAR doesn’t care. What earthly good is their dubious sanction when no assistance any longer is given for advertising or general operational expenses. The marketing department of R.J. Reynolds was second to none, and I don’t care what they were selling, they did a darn fine job of it.
I really was elated to find the link right at the top of the page, though I had to use glasses to even see it, the print is that small… until I tried it and nothing happened. Dropped immediately to the very bottom of the page and tried that link with the exact same result. You can bet I was bummed!
Did you check out “Acceleration Weekend?” I heard that term used somewhere and just had to go looking for it. My first thought was, OMG! They’ve given the mistake a name! My guess is, someone liked the sound of “Carburetion Day” at Indy and tried to copy it. DUH! There is ONE DAY between Carb Day and Race Day at Indy… NOT two full dang weeks!
I think I need to lower my blood pressure…
PattyKay,
As always, well written and on point. I will offer my 43 cents worth thusly: I went to the new NASCAR.com twice. Used to visit NASCAR.com every day and would often comment in the Forum section. After two trips to this “new” site, NASCAR.com is removed from my favorites. I don’t know what the NASCAR computer gurus were trying to do but they sure screwed up a good site. Maybe they can find a new job dancing back up for Beyonce’s next Super Bowl Half Time Show. Or, even better, maybe the folks at the Super Dome can show NASCAR.com how to pull the plug.
Tim
Have you heard, Tim, who they’ve got lined up for the Daytona 500 halftime show?!
Surely they don’t expect us to tune in just to watch racing.
We had a great half-time show at Daytona last year. The star was Juan Pablo Montoya. Don’t you remember???
How soon we forget!
Ah Legend, you are in rare form today! You managed to get Beyonce, NFL, NASCAR and Richard Petty AND the night the lights went out in New Orleans all into one short post. As you know, I did not frequent their pages often, as they never had what I consider “News.” That seems to appear anywhere but there. Still, as I said in the article, I had hopes that removing Ted Turner from the equation might be just the ticket. As Waylon Jennings was prone to intone, “WRONG!”
I still see the flushing down the cyber toilet of many thousands of pages of past history as the crime of the century, but it really ripped out my last good nerve when neither of the “Home Tracks” links would take me anywhere but to frustration.
God bless you Tim, and thanks for taking time out of your busy day to comment. Always appreciated my friend.
Oh Patty …you take all the fun out of being able to interact and throw out our thoughts and feelings! We’re NASCAR fans…not ladies at a sewing bee! But alas…I really don’t have any wise a@@ remarks…so I’ll just state my peace in concise and kind and gentle language! I don’t go to the NASCAR.com site…I tried…it has always been a mess…so I stick with Jayski’s. To be honest…I just have always felt due to it being a site named “NASCAR”…how unbiased could it possibly be? And now..with NASCAR REALLY running the site…it’s totally out of bounds to me! I don’t read every bit of news I can find on the sport..or stats…or predictions…it has gotten too saturated and overwhelming. I personally have found for me, skipping a good majority of the written hype and the pre race programs makes my actual experience of watching a race much more enjoyable. I found I was on “NASCAR overload” and my attention span had dwindled. So I hum along in my own world..read a few articles here and there..and I am truly enjoying watching the races again!
Good morning Erin! I see you survived the winter and are ready for some racing. I’ve missed you. Heck, I’ve missed a lot of people. How ’bout we take up a petition to ban winter? Well… it’s a lovely thought though, isn’t it?:)
I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled any of your fun (I do know you’re joking), but we’ve both seen boards and Forums that have turned totally disgusting and for the good folks among us, unusable, due to poor monitoring or none at all. I send these columns along with the intent of having attention paid to the content within them… content hopefully presented in a constructive, not a destructive manner. Calling names rather than suggesting solutions won’t fly here, hence the warning you saw issued earlier to one gentleman that has been a reader for well over a decade.
Just for the record, ladies from sewing bees can be NASCAR fans, and I am a perfect example. Moving on to nascar.com, like you, I never used it much… mostly because it didn’t offer much. Nothing has changed but that what little there was of an historic nature is gone. I think you know and understand what I think of that… and it “ain’t” good!
Reading has become almost as interesting as the sport itself. Remember when there were maybe only a dozen or so sites on the Internet that carried any sort of NASCAR news? Today, there are easily hundreds… thousands if you count all the individual blogs by folks that can’t write but don’t know it. I generally go to one or two sites… Jayski, who has always been my Bible, and of late, Sporting News, not because of any love for their site, which keeps trying to sell me the Huffington Post, but because they employ some good writers and seem to keep up with the news of the day.
I simply don’t have either the time or the inclination to read the same thing twenty times or more, in only slightly different wording. There is only so much news on a given day, and if every single soul on the Internet decides to write about it, the choice comes down to author, not content or site. If you are on Twitter, you’ll already know that when any little crumb is tossed out to the circling sharks, you will see it repeated by every writer you “follow” there… but not this one. I tend to swim to the other side of the harbor and feed off the dock while they follow the boat and bait. When we first started this page… and having writers… Jeff asked me what I liked to write about. I told him, “Anything they are not.” And here I am…
TV? I tune in for the race. Actually, I try to be there in time for the pre-race ceremonies, so I can verbally trash whichever butcher was appointed to kill our National Anthem on that particular weekend. Where DO they find these people… and no, I don’t care to go into anyone named Alicia Keys or Beyonce. Tim covered that quite well on Tuesday night.
Thanks so much Hon, for taking the time to comment. You are always a bright spot in my day.
I didn’t hibernate…I had no interest in the Danica/Ricky romance so I’ve not been paying attention to NASCAR lately. Oversaturation of NASCAR in the written sense doesn’t even begin to describe what is on the Net…I don’t follow Twitter and I use Facebook only to keep up with my family. So I suppose I am not a modern fan…but I truly enjoy seeing the green flag in the air.
I know some of the singers NASCAR gets aren’t the greatest..but it really doesn’t bother me…they’re doing their thing..giving it a shot..and putting themselves out there ..so more power to them!
~LOL~ For sure, you didn’t find anything about anyone’s romantic life on these pages. Why would anyone really care? I told my readers not to expect any romance here but mine… and not to hold their breath on that one. I could not be dragged kicking and screaming onto FaceBook. I am a writer/editor, and as such, I have a product to advertise. Twitter is a great help in reaching thousands of people I could reach no other way. It’s a tool of the trade.
It’s probably generational, but I always have and always will get markedly upset when someone disrespects my country or my flag, which is a symbol of my country. Making love to a microphone while wearing clothing that shows me more of someone’s body than I’d ever care to see is NOT the proper way to present our National Anthem… nor is using it as a training exercise either for vocal chords or lung expansion. I wish they’d just elect to use a nice military recording of the dang thing and stop trying to be “America’s Got Talent” while proving beyond a doubt that it does not.
You’re probably right on the singers…but for some reason the older I get the less I concern myself with “stuff”. But I will tell you…I sometimes sing along with them…and none of them can hold a candle to some of my outfits and the sound of my voice! I’m not walking around in skimpy clothing..but I’m sure alot of folks would wish I’d put a blanket over myself! come on Daytona !!
OH, Too Funny! I know just a bit about that. I am perhaps the only person that readily admits to lip-syncing when ANYONE is within earshot. I couldn’t carry a tune with a fork-lift, and I grew up with several younger siblings… all but one of whom could sing like nightingales… ready and anxious to remind me of my shortcomings. Maybe that is why I’m so critical of others? When I hear a good presentation, I am first in line to praise that singer. One day, I hope you might get a chance to hear our “Legend”, Tim Leeming sing the Anthem. I promise, it will give you chills.
Even though I get superaggravated over the Daytona 500 Spring Races, I feel that for 2015 and 2016, they will actually be in the Spring, to the chagrin of fans. I think one of the side effects of Brian France’s Divorce is he’ll be out of a job as Mike Helton would helm the sport to retirement.
Good morning Tony! I take it from your remarks that you, like me, are not a fan of moving the Daytona 500 back a week in order to accommodate the whims of the NFL. Bravo my friend. I have not yet met a fan that thinks it was a grand idea. I do so hope that this column gets all the way up the corporate ladder this week. Something has to penetrate somewhere, that unhappy fans equate to empty seats. We don’t want The Great American Race to be referred to as our “Super Bowl”, we prefer their little game in February to become known as their “Daytona 500.” We WERE here first, you know. Through two generations of the Family France, they worked around us and we all lived happily together. I see no reason whatsoever for that to change.
Ironically, right before going here, I went to NASCAR.com and found that all of the pictures on the articles and home page would not load. The SOLE REASON that it is still in my favorites is because of it’s fantasy game, which I intend to play. I am not happy about the deletion of the archives, as there was some gold there, as well as blogs from the users of the site, including myself. I really don’t have anything else to say except congrats to Herb Thomas, Buck Baker, Cotton Owens, Leonard Wood, and Rusty Wallace for their Hall of Fame inductions later tonight, and to Ken Squier and Barney Hall for getting the 1st Squier-Hall Award.
Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to comment. I won’t fault their website for a momentary glitch; they all have them, this one included. Essentially burying all that went before, without giving it an apparent thought is, to my mind unforgivable. I hadn’t realized before you alluded to it, that others were storing their personal works on the old site as well. That is a shame, but it happens; it happened to me.
A couple years after I left Insider Racing News, I received a message from Ron, the owner/editor of the site, advising me of a major server shut down… with NO backup in place. What that meant was that every word that I and many others had ever written there was lost. Fortunately, I was not foolish; I had backup of at least the raw copy of all my efforts. If you did not, I’ll bet you start now. In this new cyber world, if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will bother. The entire world no longer cares, one about another. Sad, but true.
I’ve never played their fantasy game, but I’ll remind you that I host one on Yahoo and still have a few spaces open. If you’d like to play there, shoot me a message here on site and I’ll give you the group# and password. I’d be honored to have you with us, but choice is yours; no pressure.
Enjoy the inductions this evening. I’ll be there… from my living room, not in beautiful downtown Charlotte.
There’s really not much for me to add to all the great comments (the polite as well as the impolite lol) I’ve read here.
I’ve got no problem with promoting HOF inductions as something that should be experienced first-hand. I do, however, have a problem with manufactured drama/excitement on any level which is why I avoid reality programming like the plague. I understand that with the economy as it is & people more hesitant to part with their money entities that need money to survive try harder to get it. But what they need to learn is that if people feel like they’re being treated like idiots who will buy into anything those folks will head for the hills & never come back.
One pet peeve I’ve had with nascar.com is the failure to update content in a reasonable amount of time. For WEEKS after Matt signed with JGR, clicking on “20″ would still bring up Joey. You’d think a site run by the league would know who is in what car. Other sites, such as MLB & NHL not only have players w/their new teams in less than an hour (I’ve personal experience looking them up!) they have the players “wearing” their new uniforms! Now if other leagues can use computer wizardry to superimpose the correct uniform on a player that quickly it stands to reason NASCAR could at least fix a link.
I find myself going to dedicated sites less & less. Part of my fun on Twitter is following folks whose writing I enjoy. It makes an easy starting point for me to get information & opinions without driving myself nuts trying to navigate sites.
Hi Judy and thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I have to disagree a bit about one of your points. When Matt signed with JGR, it was for the following season, and he remained in the employ of Roush Racing through the 2012 season, as did Joey with JGR… not moving to Penske until time for the new season.
While all that was going on, nascar.com was still under the thumb of Turner Broadcasting. NASCAR had nothing whatsoever to do with it them. As I said, I spent years defending them on that point because so many folks never did understand it. The new mess they’ve created though, is all on their shoulders.
Like you, I have no problem with them promoting their Hall of Fame… which by the way is paid from by the taxpayers of Charlotte NC, not by NASCAR. Just don’t tell me that’s the reason the Daytona 500 had to be moved because of it and try to convince me this is somehow ADDING a week to the schedule. Did you read all their promotion stuff? Yikes! I was born at night, but not last night.
If I’m to continue this column, I am rather compelled to visit other sites and hear what fans are saying here, there and everywhere. I can now write off theirs, since they have done away with the Forums that used to be found there. Yes, sometimes less is more, but it depends on what it’s less of, don’t you think? Best news site around right now seems to be Sporting World, and as much as I loathe giving them a plug, that’s the simple truth. Notice that more and more of Jay’s links are coming from that site as well.
Gonna be an interesting year. I am SO looking forward to this season with these new cars. I still don’t think we should have to wait an extra week. They’ve done some good things over the off-season. You’d think they’d be as anxious as we are to get them on the track and racing.