Beautiful weather, more cars and some more good racing added up to a great show Saturday night at Evergreen Speedway. It was nice to see some folks making season debuts, and it was great to see 21 Super Figure Eight cars out for the 16th annual 60 Minutes of FEAR.
The crowd looked to me to be the largest of the season so far, and I believe they got their money’s worth and more, including seeing two great last-lap duels.
The first came in the Stinger 8 feature with Seth Funden and Lance O’Grain dive-bombing to the finish line (O’Grain won, barely) and the second when Daniel Moore got around defending champion Naima Lang on a green-white-checkered finish to come in a career-high second place in the Super Late Model feature.
Greg Scott dominated the 60 Minutes of FEAR, fearlessly (no pun intended) driving through the X and weaving in and out of lapped traffic. I asked him about it after the race and he said “I’m an old guy; I don’t have anything to lose.”
Not true, Greg. You were holding your granddaughter as we spoke, and she looked mighty worth hanging on to.
— As much as I enjoyed the 60 Minutes of FEAR, and the largest car count of the season, is it wrong of me to have wished there were even more cars there? So that when a car left the race for mechanical or tires, there would be cars waiting to get into the action, just like the old days?
— I’ve seen some rumblings on certain message boards about having a racers group put together a bid to manage Evergreen Speedway in 2011. While I’m not going to give you my opinion of that idea here, I would like to point out that something kinda-sorta similar has been going on in Detroit with the automakers.
Herald business editor Mike Benbow wrote a pretty good column today (read it here) about how Ford is doing better than Chrysler or GM in part because a non-“car-guy” is running the show. Something to think about, that. May be a good idea to have someone who likes racing, but isn’t a racer, running the show. (Ed: Being smart about business wouldn’t hurt, either.)
— The Anti-Kyle Busch Nation must be overjoyed this Monday. Shrub dominated both the NASCAR Nationwide and Truck races at Dover, and ended up winning neither. And after that move in the Nationwide race, how many of your Shrub-haters are rethinking your views on Joey Logano? On-and-off troubles in the Cup race kept Busch from getting to the front on Sunday, too.
— I’m not the Daly Planet or anything, but for my two cents the SPEED announcing team for the NASCAR Truck series are overall better than the groups calling the other series.
In addition to sounding like they’re enjoying themselves immensely, Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip do a great job of talking about more than just the top two or three drivers or teams. They give updates on sponsors, upcoming races, and other tidbits on all of the drivers during any given race.
— There’s loud, and then there’s IndyCar loud. The lucky winner of a Northsound Racing Show give-away of tickets to the Indy 500 was Al Haines, a crewmember on the late-model team of Naima Lang.
Haines reported that his trip to Indy was good, and his seats were between turns 3 and 4, right about where Tony Kanaan wrecked. Haines also reported that IndyCars are loud. He said even with hearing protection, he couldn’t stand to be right next to the track when they went by.
Although I was shut out locally, I did OK this weekend on the national front, correctly picking Scott Dixon to win the IndyCar race at the Milwaukee Mile and Ron Capps to win the Wally for Funny Car at the NHRA Summer Nationals in Topeka, Kan.
That leaves me, still, with the figure-eight divisions at Evergreen Speedway, and Pro Stock Motorcycle in NHRA to correctly guess to complete my Grand Slam of Prognostication. Not bad, all things considered.
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