Forum Activity for @andy-denardi

The 43 will NOT race at Martinsville this weekend

Current NASCAR

That's fantastic! I appreciate that it's all the right color too and not one of those green, yellow and purple messes. How long has it been a Petty car qualified and it wasn't #43? Gotta be fifty years. I know Richard missed a few races before they added the Champions Provisional but I don't recall if Kyle was with PE at that time and if he made the race. And of course there was no #43 through most of 1965 but there were no other Petty cars either.It's about time that they re-numbered Marcus Ambrose's car to #40. I don't even remember which team the #9 came from, but that's mostly because I'm old and forget a lot of things.Here's hoping that we see #41 in the winner's circle this weekend. It's been a long time.

An ebay auction just for Tim Leeming

General

I'm sure the resemblance between uniforms is purely coincidental

An ebay auction just for Tim Leeming

General

I don't believe I've heard of this Darrell Waltrip fellow. Was he a gas man or something?

SHE IS ALL SMILES NOW

Stock Car Racing History

GoDaddy has pulled its primary sponsorship in Indycars. Don't know whether they'll still be an associate. I'm wondering if they are giving a second look at The Princess. Without their money, she won't even get a ride with FAS Lane Racing.

GoDaddy was sold last year and her big supporter in that company went away. There was some question whether they'd cover her this year. If GoDaddy sticks with her, they may be making a mistake. Indycar costs half as much to sponsor, and the driver they left, James Hinchcliffe is a well-liked rising star with a great media presence. Open wheel is a struggling series but it's on the way up while NASCAR is slowing down.

The fans have begrudgingly accepted that this is a learning year for Danica, but they're going to expect top ten finishes in 2014. She's got two more years before she'll be forced to slink away with her tail between her legs. She's making millions of course, so she'll be OK.

Jeff Burton Takes Exception to Premise of Current NASCAR "Action Plan" to Attract Young Fan Base

Current NASCAR

Well, I'm one whose father didn't bring them into the sport. But in my case, the cars did. If your Charger couldn't pass because of aero-push then your engineers went to work, filled in the back window and pushed out the grille. And then you sold that model in the showrooms along side the less aerodynamic version. It ain't like that today.Soon after I signed up, they had the wing cars. How could a teenager not think those were cool and want to go down to the showroom where the salesmen could work their magic? Cars had the same paint job from race to race so it was easy for a novice to figure out who that guy was that he was rooting for last week and pick him out of the pack.And since teenagers have the attention span of a gnat, having the race edited down to two hours and presented a week later on Wide World of Sports allowed me to watch it and still have time to go out and do things with my friends.

Jeff Burton Takes Exception to Premise of Current NASCAR "Action Plan" to Attract Young Fan Base

Current NASCAR

Burton is wrong about kids still being psyched about cars, but that doesn't mean that NASCAR is doing the right things to keep up with them.

If they insist that they need African-American and Hispanic drivers (and they're probably right), they need to get extremely good ones that are competitive within two years. The public has been exposed to a similar story with Danica Patrick for the last nine years. Danica hasn't returned results good enough to hold the audiences she's bringing in. Montoya was also a flop. NASCAR's diversity program has been going on for a lot of years and hasn't accomplished anything. That's good. They're waiting until they have someone worth cheering for.

I think it would do them well to shorten several of the races and to cut back on the sponsor recitations in driver interviews also. I've also been saying for years that they need to go to fewer cylinders and to hell with fans complaints about how the cars will sound.

Southern 500 Moves to Darlington's Old "Rebel" Weekend

Current NASCAR

Many speculate that the date change is a deliberate attempt by NASCAR to set the Darlington track up for failure and shutter its doors forever.

That's foolish talk by some people. Darlington is owned by ISC, is their oldest superspeedway, and the only Sprint Cup track in South Carolina in the heart of NASCAR country. I see no reason why they'd want to kill it; it's not like it's easy to get permission to build a racetrack these days or need the date for a race in a new market. They were stupid to take away the Labor Day race date but I don't think they'd repeat that stupidity by shutting down the track.

Maybe they want to choke off the economy around the track so that the area pleads with ISC and the state to add a casino there in order to restore tourism revenue.

October 9, 1983: The unofficial end of Petty Enterprises

Stock Car Racing History

It wasn't so much that they were cheating that did in Petty Enterprises, but the implication that they had to because they weren't good enough anymore. Everyone cheated in NASCAR, but they not only had to build a big engine, they needed to swap the tires too. Although it was mainly coincidence, leaving Chrysler in 1978 was the point where his decline began to pick up speed.

If Kyle had lived up to our hopes, I think the Petty team would have remained dominant into the 1990s, and Adam may have picked up the torch from there. But that's how it goes. Had Dale lived and Junior gone to DEI, I believe the same thing would have happened to them. Dynasties don't last forever. I'm thankful that I was a fan when the King reigned and the sport had not yet been ruined by big money. That's really the biggest stain on Petty Enterprises' reputation, they were the first to sell out to big sponsors.

Messy Sabates Divorce Reveals France, Jr. Bankrolled Ganassi Sports Car Team with $400,000 Guaranteed Annual Profit

General

but that the payments stopped when Bill France died in 2007.

Carolyn Sabates, Felix Sabates ex-wife, says in the filing that it would look bad for Brian France to have financial ties to a championship-winning team. Scott Pruett, a driver for the Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates team, has won the Grand-Ams Rolex series five times.

Sabates (and Ganassi) should be happy that Brian France isn't giving them any money. He stopped in 2007. The team won the championship once with Frances' help, in 2004. Payments stopped in 2007 and they won the championship in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Sabates is right that it's a crap series with no purses or prestige. It was the France family's test program for the standardized "car of tomorrow" where everybody ran the same body but with different engines. Fans didn't like it and moved in droves to the ALMS sports cars series instead. You'd think that would tell them something, but instead they decided to do it with stock cars too.

Unfortunately for sports car racing, the ALMS wasn't financially sustainable and NASCAR bought them up. When the series are merged next year, fans have serious doubts about the outcome. They're jealous of Sprint Cup's success and are witholding their blessings on the series. For fans, the ideal scenarion would run ALMS cars and rules with NASCAR money. But then the Frances would finally have to admit that their vision was second rate. They already did that with the Gen7 car, will they eat crow for the 2nd year in a row?

It's possible. Sprint Cup has lost its mojo and fans are taking a second look at Indycar. But Indycar is still in rough shape and can't do what it takes to steal an audience. NASCAR has a chance to control things by shifting a little bit of focus to sports cars while still keeping a tight grip on how much exposure to give stock cars. They can play the two against each other in just the proper amount to shut out Indycar. And when the open wheel series is on its last legs, sweep in and buy the series in order to get the jewel, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500. Eternally the world's largest one day attendance of any event in the world. Brian France wants that to be his legacy.

79 Year Old James Hylton Takes Final Checkers

Stock Car Racing History

It's always amazing to see a driver that I watched as a boy, still behind the wheel. Especially when I don't feel that I have the stamina or skills to compete anymore. Hylton never gets enough credit for his many close runs at the championship in an independent car. It's a real shame that he never got his "Benny Parsons" year.