. We don't just tell folks we're going back to our roots.....we're going there. How's that for a tag line?
-RacersReunion® OUTREACH
Today's racing is not ruthless, it's rootless.
Forum Activity for @dave-fulton
-RacersReunion® OUTREACH
I Never Got Used to It Back Then in '69 Either
General
I was definitely one of those folks back in 1969 who couldn't believe Richard Petty would actually drive a FORD after taking the Petty Plymouths to the pinnacle. I know there's been a lot of water over the dam since those days and multiple car changes for the Petty name, but I still do a double take when I see a Petty Blue Ford. That will never change.
updated by @dave-fulton: 03/30/17 12:31:55AM
The Gospel Train Sunday Mornings on ShagCityUSA.com
General
The picture in my mind of a bunch of North Myrtle Beach New Year's revelers shagging to "Just A Little Talk With Jesus" at daybreak on this Sunday's New Year's Day was more than my feeble mind could process after those two glasses of sparkling grape juice last night!
I LOVE CONTRACTS!!!
General
This commentary was published Friday in Scene Daily. The comments by former Roush Racing President, Geoff Smith (a highly respected individual whose daughter handled team PR in its early days) about the Busch Brothers is especially revealing. Note that the team declined to hire Kyle when it had the chance before Hendrick did. Smith cites the entire family's behavior problems for the reason Roush declined on the opportunity to take the younger shrub. Very interesting reading.
Travails of Busch brothers show it's all about keeping sponsors happy
By Erik Spanberg
Friday, December 30, 2011
Kyle Busch, 26, and Kurt Busch, 33, race for different teams, but have similar track records when it comes to controversy.
Last season, Kyle Buschs travails included driving 128 mph on a public street with a limit of 45 mph in North Carolina; tussling with 65-year-old rival car owner Richard Childress and intentionally wrecking an opponent in a Truck Series race, leading to a one-race suspension and prompting primary sponsor M&Ms to remove its logo from Buschs car for two races. Joe Gibbs Racing decided to keep Busch as a Sprint Cup driver for 2012 and M&Ms will return, but everyone knows Busch is on a short leash.
Big brother Kurt, the 2004 season champion, known for tirades and tantrums with crew members and others, wound up looking for a ride after cursing at ESPN pit reporter Jerry Punch during the season finale. A subsequent apology and $50,000 fine from NASCAR werent enough to keep Busch at Penske.
Which means the brothers face crucial tests in 2012. That is, staying out of trouble and treating teammates, bosses, reporters and sponsors with respect without fail. Otherwise, Kurt and Kyle Busch could be out of chances.
All these things are warnings, says former driver and owner Darrell Waltrip, an analyst at Fox Sports. It mounts. Its a cumulative thing. At some point, its the tipping point. And I think both those boys are right there. They better get control of themselves or theyre going to be driving for each other.
Kurt Busch snagged a new ride in December, signing with Phoenix Racing, a single-car Sprint Cup team owned by James Finch.
Finchs construction company will sponsor the car if no outside backers are found.
Busch remains confident his new team offers plenty of upside for prospective sponsors. In some ways, he views his recent controversy and subsequent departure from Penske as beneficial because of the spotlight sure to follow in the new season.
Were going to have a lot of attention geared our way just with how last year ended and the attention of how Im going to resurface, he says. The attention value around what were going to do as a team together will be highly anticipated, so involvement from any type of sponsor is going to be a good and bad type of recognition. But a champion driver and one that knows how to get to victory lane this is a group that is going to show so much promise this year that its a good investment.
Team executives and other experts say sponsors long ago began including behavior clauses in contracts, giving companies tremendous leverage in deciding what is and isnt permissible behavior for drivers.
In 2002, Home Depot fined Tony Stewart $50,000 after a physical confrontation with a news photographer. Stewart also sought counseling. Stewart had his share of on-track feuds and fines in subsequent year, but, since becoming a team owner in 2009, has stayed mostly out of trouble.
The predicament faced by Kurt and Kyle offers proof that, at some point, even winning cant overcome attitude problems and sour reputations.
Remember, Kurt Busch not only has a championship on his rsum, but also 24 Sprint Cup wins. Kyle Busch has 23 victories in NASCARs top series and 104 wins combined in the Cup, Nationwide and truck series.
Beyond winning, Ive also got to do things personally to make the right steps to be an overall better package, Kurt Busch says. The racing results have always been there for me, but those always seem to be shoved underneath the rug when people are really talking about what I am as a full package.
Geoff Smith, the former president at Roush Fenway Racing, worked with both Busch brothers during his 21-year tenure.
Kurt Busch left Roush after the 2005 season, but was suspended for the final two races because of an embarrassing episode in Arizona. After being stopped and issued a ticket for speeding, Busch taunted the police and was detained.
Between them, the Busch brothers have run afoul of four of NASCARs most respected team owners: Gibbs, Penske, Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick.
A penchant for finding trouble led Roush to decide against extending a contract offer to Kyle Busch just before he signed with Hendrick Motorsports, Smith says.
A lot of people didnt know that, he says. There was an assumption that Rick Hendrick stole him away and outbid us, but we declined. We thought that having to deal with certain behavioral characteristics that were similar had a chance to blow our whole organization apart. We decided we were going to try to make do with Kurt and hope that worked out.
Instead, Kurt Busch left for Penske a year after winning the championship.
During his days at Roush, Busch ran into trouble with rival Jimmy Spencer and, Smith says, frustrated primary sponsor Newell Rubbermaid. For Smith, such episodes were alarming, because the loss of a primary sponsor can wreck a teams fortunes and, in the worst cases, cost 100 or more team members their jobs.
Constant controversies can also taint a team, making other companies leery of committing to sponsorships.
Such concerns have only become more important in recent years as companies demand better terms and exact heavier concessions from race teams.
In todays world, image is everything, Waltrip says. Youve got to have a squeaky-clean, fan-friendly sponsor attitude if youre going to succeed.
Kurt and Kyle Busch both issued apologies and promised to avoid further incidents after their controversies.
Kurt Busch recently hired a sports psychologist to improve his relationships with teammates and others. The counseling will make him a better racer, he says.
Smith, among others, remains unconvinced. In the Busch family, the thing that shocks you the most is that there is absolutely no respect shown to any individual. Ever.
Overcoming such sentiments takes time, but the main emphasis should be on making racing fun again, Kurt Busch says.
He cant quite leave it at that, though.
With Geoff making a comment like that, you just have to consider the source, Busch says.
IF YOU'RE PLANNING ON DRINKING AND DRIVING TONIGHT........
General
Some of us are only here today by the grace of God and some of us never killed anyone behind the wheel for the same reason. Not preaching, but it's been 13 years since I raised a glass and I was a terrible offender. Trust me, I shut down every bar in every town at one time or another. Guess that's why I'm so gun shy now to be on the roads at night. Please don't drink and drive. Not only may the life you save be your own, it may also be a family member or loved one, yours or mine. I hope to make it past Auburn destroying my University of Virginia Wahoos in Atlanta's Chick-Fil-A Bowl this evening. If so, there are two bottles of Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice in the fridge. I'll watch the "Ball" drop and share a glass of sparkling grape juice with my wife and our younger daughter and grandson who will be here. Happy New Year and thanks for the reminder Legend.
Thanks to Ruby & Roger
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With the colder weather of winter approaching, I went through one of my annual rituals this afternoon, adding a blanket to our bed in the master suite. As I unfolded this favorite lightweight thermal blanket that we have used for almost 30 winters, I noticed a little tag in the corner. It read "Crafted With Pride in America By Ruby A."
The tag on my blanket
Now I don't know Ruby or whether she is still in the work force or even still living. I do know how much we have enjoyed the old frayed American made blanket with Ruby's name on the tag. I immediately recognized the Crafted With Pride logo, because it was the same one we started running on the Wrangler Jeans sponsored Winston Cup cars driven by Dale Earnhardt and Ricky Rudd for Bud Moore and Richard Childress beginning in 1983.
A very quick bit of research revealed something unknown to me. The Crafted With Pride in USA/America campaign was designed by the famous textile magnate Roger Milliken of Spartanburg, SC, not far from the Bud Moore race shops. Maybe that's why we were so quick to put it on the Bud Moore cars... afterall, 70,000 Americans were manufacturing Wrangler Jeans at the time. None (ZERO) do today.
I quickly saw something else. Mr. Milliken died exactly 1 year ago today, December 30, 2010 . He was aged 95 when he passed, meaning he was already age 68 when he invented the "Crafted With Pride" campaign. His accolades were legendary. He was a much loved and respected businessman and humanitarian.
I think this particular old blanket on my bed was purchased in a JP Stevens outlet store in Smithfield, NC on I-95 in 1983-1984. That means that Ruby was most likely employed at either the JP Stevens Roanoke Rapids, NC location down the road from Chantilly Speedway where our new member Joe Dean Huss battled Nathan Wright and company on Saturday nights through the 70s. Or, Ruby may have made it at the JP Stevens plant in Eden, NC, where lots of us always stayed when racing at Martinsville.
As I have noted before, I don't keep any racing memorabilia in my home except for a picture of my late dad with a 1982 Bud Moore T-bird. But, somehow, my home continues to be full of racing memories in the most unusual places. Thank you Ruby A. and thank you Roger Milliken. We sure do need to see that Crafted With Pride logo on the stuff we buy again.
updated by @dave-fulton: 04/02/17 07:48:04AM
Wide Tracking at Dover
General
Inquiring minds wanted to know. This San Diego Union-Tribune article is 7 years old, but seems to have had a "leg up" on seating standard changes when it was written in 2004. And, I note from the article that in Charleston, WV, when you order a "double-wide" you may not be requesting housing! Of course, we should have known that it is a NC company that is the expert at butt scanning. Probably something they picked up from NASCAR.
Girth of a nation leads to wider seating options at many venues
By Jenifer Goodwin
STAFF WRITER
April 11, 2004
Union-Tribune
At 19 to 22 inches wide, the seats at Petco Park are larger than stadium standards.
Humvees on the freeways. 5,000-square-foot tract homes. Big Gulps, venti lattes, all-you-can-eat buffets and the Atkins diet. (Goes to show you how much you were consuming before if a diet of steak and cheese can actually help you slim down.)
There's no doubt about it: We're a super-sized nation. So it should come as no surprise that not only are our seats expanding, so are our chairs.
Seat-size standards, set about 70 years ago, are going by the wayside. Stadiums, theaters, school auditoriums and city halls across the nation are installing wider seats to accommodate our ever-growing girth.
Petco Park, following the lead of recently built stadiums in Seattle, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, has done away with the 18-inch-wide seats that were standard issue in stadiums in decades past. Instead, each peanut-scarfing patron has from 19 inches to 22 inches to spread out.
Seats on new trains in Philadelphia allow 21 inches per rider, 3 inches more than those on older trains.
When ferry operators on Seattle's Puget Sound noticed passengers were sprawled on the floors because there was no room left on the previously adequate benches, they decreased capacity by 10 and added extra seats.
Also, venues ranging from a Charleston, W.Va., municipal auditorium to the Lamb's Players Theatre in Coronado have discreetly purchased double-wide seats 44 inches for extra-large patrons.
"Everybody is asking for wider seats and wider row spaces," said Barbara Patterson, vice president of Specified Products, which provided the XL seating for the Lamb's Players Theatre. "They want all of the chairs to be comfortable and accommodating to a larger person."
You can blame carbs, fast food or our coach-potato culture, but abundant research shows America has a big problem. Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, up from 46 percent in the late 1970s, while nearly 31 percent are obese, according to the American Obesity Association.
The number of extremely obese adults, or those who are at least 100 pounds overweight, has quadrupled since 1986 to about 4 million, according to a RAND Corp. study.
Research has also shown a slight uptick in height, at least for Americans whose families have been here for a few generations. (Recent immigrants tend to be shorter.)
But it's our ballooning backsides that are causing the most consternation.
At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 350 pounds before gastric-bypass surgery, Devon Neubauer, general manager of the Spreckels Theatre in downtown San Diego, has had his share of seating issues.
On airplanes, stuffing himself into coach left him with bruised thighs. On a trip to Manhattan theaters, he had to stand in the back.
Even at his own theater, he wouldn't even consider trying to squeeze into the 17-inch-wide balcony seats, installed in 1912. (Newer seats on lower levels are roomier.)
"People who are large enough won't even come to the theater because they can't sit in the chairs," said Neubauer, who has since dropped 135 pounds. "People don't want to make a scene when they're obese. So you either don't go or you wedge yourself in, even when you're in pain."
Stale standards
Our broadening bottoms are prompting several industries, from cars to clothing, to rethink their assumptions about what "average-sized" means in America.
[TC]2, a North Carolina-based consulting firm, has done three-dimensional body scans of some 10,000 volunteers for the garment industry. The SizeUSA survey, released last month, found that not only are we getting larger and heavier, but our shape is changing.
Men now have broader shoulders and thicker middles. Women's waists and hips are spreading beyond their shoulders. "We're no longer an hourglass shape; we're pear-shaped," said Karen Davis, marketing communications specialist.
According to the standards currently in use, which are based on pre-World War II data, the average woman is a size 8, with a 27-inch waist and 37-inch hips.
But the SizeUSA study found that less than 10 percent of women were so svelte. Most were significantly bigger, with 69 percent having hips greater than 40 inches, making today's average woman closer to a size 14.
Seat sizing dates to the same pre-World War II and post-Depression era. A 1930s edition of Architectural Graphic Standards, the comprehensive guide for the building and design industry, listed 18 inches as the minimum acceptable seat width and 21 inches as "ideal" for theaters and stadiums. Restaurant seating is even smaller, with 15-inch chairs considered acceptable.
Those seating standards haven't changed since, to the chagrin of larger Americans.
Jane Rickert, a 6-foot-1, 187-pound massage therapist from Ramona, avoids the booths at certain restaurants because they're too tight a fit. An avid traveler, she begs gate agents for the exit row.
Even in the plush seating of newer movie theaters, Rickert and her two sons both well above 6 feet opt to crane their necks in the front row so they don't have to cram their knees against the seat in front of them.
"I've always had to cope with being uncomfortable," said Rickert, a member of a basketball team for women 50 and up. "They simply do not make chairs large enough. It's time for them to do something about it."
Finally, it seems, they are.
When the Los Angeles Lakers moved from the Great Western Forum to the Staples Center, spectators got an added treat: as much as 3 inches of extra seat room.
On the Puget Sound ferries, "the Coast Guard was having a fit" when it noticed passengers plopping down in the aisles, said Susan Harris, customer information manager.
Ferry officials tried to remedy the situation by allowing fewer passengers on board. After commuters complained, ferry officials agreed to add more seating this time, using 21 inches instead of 18 inches as their benchmark.
"We called (the Seattle Mariners') Safeco Field, and they said, 'Absolutely, you have to go to 21 inches,' " Harris said.
While the smallest seats at Qualcomm Stadium are a mere 18 inches wide, the tiniest ones at Petco Park are a full inch wider (with the exception of a limited number of bleacher seats that allow only 18 inches per derriere).
"We haven't installed 18-inch seats in 10 years," said Jack Rogers, vice president of sales at Hussey Seating Co., which installed Safeco's and Petco's seats.
Health concerns
Despite the growing realization that Americans need roomier seating, logistics and cost guarantee it's going to be a long time before every venue has larger seats.
Also, the industry most notorious for cramped seating the airlines seems to be successfully ignoring cries for more space for the masses.
Most coach seats are a smidge over 17 inches, not much wider than a fast-food tray. According to the SizeUSA survey, 6 percent of men and 19 percent of women simply don't fit, their hips spread wider than 17 inches when sitting down.
(First-class seats are usually about 3 inches wider and have about 7 inches more legroom.)
The steerage conditions have led to brisk sales for the Knee Defender, a plastic device that protects the kneecaps of taller passengers when those in front of them try to recline their seats.
Cramped airline seating is also causing health and safety concerns.
A 2001 study funded by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority concluded that coach passengers do not have adequate space to assume the emergency "brace" position, that rows were so close together they would cause major obstacles during an evacuation, and that having little room to stretch can cause DVT, or deep-vein thrombosis, dangerous blood clots in the legs.
Strangely enough for an industry as tightly regulated as the airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration has no minimum space requirements for seat or row width.
As for buildings, John Ray Hoke Jr., editor in chief of Architectural Graphic Standards, thinks the 18-inch seat standard will be history in the next edition of the book, due in a few years.
What should replace it?
Maybe 21 inches would work as the minimum. But even that would be uncomfortable for Hoke's 6-foot-4, 275-pound frame.
"I'm a big man," he said. "I want my full 24 inches."
Wide Tracking at Dover
General
Remember Pontiac's longtime signature commercial tag line, "Wide Tracking?" Now, do ya think race fans' posteriors are getting wider or does Dover Motorsports just have a lot of time on its hands with all its recent track closings (Nashville, St. Louis, Memphis) and thousands of empty grandstand seats at the ole horse track? They evidently don't expect attendance to increase again at their NASCAR events if they can reduce their seating capacity by 27,000 seats. Now if they had the money making thinking of that ISC marketing crowd, they'd have just charged the Dover fans a premium to put their coolers in those empty spaces.
Dec 30, 6:10 AM EST
Dover International Speedway to widen seats
DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Dover International Speedway in Delaware is hoping to make race fans' experience a little more comfortable by widening seats in the track's outdoor grandstands.
The speedway announced Thursday that the process of increasing seats from 18 inches to 22 inches will start next year and will be complete by 2014.
Denis McGlynn, president and CEO of Dover Motorsports, says the widening comes in response to fans' suggestions. The change will reduce the capacity of the speedway from 140,000 to 113,000.
2011 The Associated Press
updated by @dave-fulton: 04/02/17 08:23:04AM