The Frontstretch Newsletter: Texas Practice Gets Underway

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THE FRONTSTRETCH NEWSLETTER
Presented by Frontstretch.com
The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!

Apr. 7, 2016

Volume X, Edition XLVI

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Editor's Note: In yesterday's Newsletter, we misidentified the conductor of the Beyond the Cockpit interview with Chris Buescher.  It was Zack Catanzareti that sat down with the Rookie of the Year contender, not Joseph Wolkin.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.

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FRONTSTRETCH JOBS: SALES & BRANDING MANAGER

Frontstretch is seeking a dynamic, creative individual to head our sales team. The individual would be responsible for the following:
– Engaging new partners and taking the lead in brokering agreements for sales & advertising across all Frontstretch outlets: Website, Newsletter, Podcast, and video content
– Responding to exposure inquiries from potential advertisers
– Working with our social media team to enhance the marketing and branding experience for our advertising clients

The position will be a direct report to our Business and Financial Manager, a position that also will work closely with the Majority Owner and Social Media team. A fast-growing website whose writers have won multiple NMPA Awards, the Frontstretch is well-positioned for success in 2016 and has a healthy audience of over seven figures per year. The role, while initially commission-based offers a generous percentage and perks down the road for this startup company. Frontstretch management has, in many cases been in place for nearly a decade before becoming a for-profit website and we’re excited to welcome the right person into this family atmosphere.

 

Interested parties should email tbow...@yahoo.com with a short note on why they’re interested and their current resume.

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What to Watch: Thursday

- Today is the beginning of practice at Texas Motor Speedway for the Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series.  XFINITY Series opening practice will be joined in progress on FOX Sports 1, but the remainder of on-track activity will be aired live in its entirety.  We'll have write-ups on all three practice sessions later today at Frontstretch.

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Thursday's TV Schedule can be found here.

Top News
by the Frontstretch Staff

Kyle Busch Warned Following Martinsville Victory

On Wednesday, NASCAR issued the weekly penalty report.  No full-fledged penalties were assessed this week.  However, a couple of teams were given warnings, most notably Kyle Busch for failing pre-race inspection twice.  Read more

Have news for the Frontstretch? Don't hesitate to let us know; email us at phil.a...@frontstretch.com with a promising lead or tip.

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Today's Featured Commentary

Potts on the Speedway and Andy Hampton

Potts' Shots

by John Potts

Well, here we are in the first full week of April, and as you might expect, talk around Indianapolis is mostly about the 100th running of the 500-mile Race.  Sometimes I wonder…if somebody moves into the town of Speedway, does the Chamber of Commerce send a representative around and explain May to them?

Things have a tendency to get a little weird around here once the track opens. Not as bad as it used to be, when it was a month-long thing with something going on most every day. But it’s still fun.

For a few years back before 2001, we lived like 2.2 miles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was cool on qualifying days and the day before the race, when driving to work at Indianapolis Raceway Park, to see all the barricades, 55-gallon barrels, and yard furniture setting out in the street where people were reserving parking places for their friends. Came home once and found a couple of barricades in front of my own house. Had to tell a neighbor he wasn’t poaching off of us.

“Can I put ‘em out after you go to the track?,” he asked. I pointed out I’d be driving my handicapped electric cart, and the car would still be there.

We could hear teams running on Tuesday of this week from where we live now at 23rd & Illinois, but not much on Wednesday when there was supposed to be an open test. Looked at a site I frequent and found out it was raining off and on over at the speedway.

Lots of talk about the new “domed” skid pads on the bottom of the IndyCars. The drivers don’t seem to think much of it. The purpose, as announced by officials, was to keep the cars from taking flight when they got sideways.

I understand that the drivers feel like the cars are going to be harder to handle in traffic and will detract from the close racing we’ve had at Indianapolis in the past few years. I guess times going to tell. We’ll keep our ear to the ground here and try to pick up as much track talk as we can.

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Here comes one of those that’s hard to write. I can improve much on what my friend Frank Scott wrote on Facebook last Friday, so much of this is Frank’s reporting.

Frank said it truly broke his heart to report that at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Friday, Apr. 1, Andy Hampton passed away peacefully at the age of 88, knowing he had led a full life. Andy was diagnosed and treated for cancer 20 years ago, but it returned recently.

In private life, Andy was one of the Louisville area’s most successful dealers of pre-owned automobiles, having several locations in the area for several decades. On the racing side, Andy was as much of an icon as anyone could have been in the Louisville area.

He won five consecutive track championships at the old Fairgrounds Motor Speedway in Louisville, something no other driver had accomplished before and nobody has come close to since.

He won the first Figure Eight track championship in 1961, and won the overall title the only year the points races were combined between the Figure Eight and the Late Models.

He then went on to repeat in the Figure 8 in 1962 and 1963, before teaming up with Harry Hyde, along with Jesse Baird in what amounted to a “Super Team,” both of them driving 1964 Pontiacs prepared by Hyde.

I’ve told the story before about how Harry would go down into the Carolinas each winter and pick up all the “slightly used” parts he could from NASCAR teams. He must have struck it rich when General Motors bailed out after the 1963 season. Those two Pontiacs were practically unbeatable for two years, with Andy outpointing Jesse for the championship in 1964 and 1965.

The first promoter at FMS, Bob Hall, envisioned a “Kentucky Stock Car Derby” for the finale of the 1961 season. Andy and the late Jack Purcell co-drove the 100-lap segments to win that one.

That race evolved into the ARCA-sanctioned “International 500,” and In 1967, he teamed up with Bill Kimmel of Clarksville, Ind. to win it.

Hampton won away from home, too. In 1968, he won the ARCA Dayton 300 in a 1967 Dodge Charger, and his old teammate Jesse Baird placed second in another Dodge. The eventual 1968 ARCA champion, Benny Parsons, finished third in that race. NASCAR offered Hampton a starting position in the next week’s Daytona 500, and he acquitted himself well in that one, too, with some help from another loyal Louisville-area racing supporter. Ervin Etscorn, owner of a propane gas business and an owner-sponsor at the Fairgrounds, called Nichels Engineering and managed to rent a new engine for Andy to use in the 500, so he’d be on equal ground with the NASCAR regulars.

Four years later, Andy again won the 300-mile ARCA race at Daytona, driving a 1969 Ford Talladega owned and prepared by the legendary Jack Bowsher.

Although he never officially retired as a race driver, one of his final events was the 1974 “International 500” at FMS, driving a Chevelle owned by Jim Atherton and built by Jack Brown Engineering. He was leading the late LaMarr Marshall near the midway point of the event when the rear axle assembly seized.

His memories and accomplishments will live on, and may he rest in peace.

Myself, I have a personal reason for remembering Andy Hampton. In what may have been my second or third year of flagging, we had a confrontation in the office at FMS over a black flag. Out of the blue, Andy smacked my face and left.

Haven’t talked about this in print at all, but it’s time now. That shocked me, of course, and I didn’t make any move to retaliate. However, it had a profound effect on me and my career. At that point I decided I would never back down in front of a driver. To put it bluntly, Andy did something when I was in my early 20s that made a man out of me in the flagstand, and we became friends for life.

John Potts is a Senior Writer for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at john....@frontstretch.com.  Potts also provided the picture of Andy Hampton racing at Daytona above.

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The Critic's Annex: Sebring 150

by Phil Allaway

Welcome back to another edition of the Critic's Annex.  This week, we're going back to Sebring to take a look at FOX Sports 1's tape-delayed and highlighted coverage of the Sebring 150, round No. 2 for the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge.  Interestingly enough, the broadcast of this race had higher viewership than any segment of the live broadcast of the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, or any of the highlighted broadcasts that also aired on FOX Sports 1.  Did the slightly higher viewership get a good broadcast to watch?  Let's take a look.

 

For those of you who wish to check this event out for yourself, the whole race is online here.

 

As is the norm in even the livestreams, pre-race coverage was minimal.  During the pace laps, the on-air crew talked about the individual stories of interest (Billy Johnson getting a ride for Le Mans with the factory Ford Chip Ganassi Racing squad, BimmerWorld's No. 84 winning the ST-pole, then getting their time disallowed, etc.) prior to the green.

Remember that this was a 2.5 hour race cut down to a two hour timeslot with commercials.  As a result, there was a lot of content cut out.  The aforementioned No. 84 BMW in the ST-class came from the back to fourth in class in the first 25 minutes.  Since so much was cut here, Tyler Cooke looked like he came out of nowhere.

That said, there was a lot of good racing on the broadcast in both classes.  The first half of the race saw multiple car battles for position, a little drafting (less than at Daytona, but still some), and some contact.  The field spread out later in the event as the green-flag stayed out (it was not a caution-free race, but what little time under yellow was edited out of the broadcast). 

 

Car count in the GS-class is still way lower than I'd like to see and I'm sure that it will be a problem all season.  However, the teams we do have in GS have put on a good show so far.

The new Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport was the story of the weekend.  Five of the cars were in the field and one of them, the No. 12 entry from Bodymotion Racing shared by Cameron Cassels and Trent Hindman, won overall.  The series actually allows two different fueling setups for the car, which was covered in detail during the livestream.  Not so much here.  The issue is that there are two approved fueling locations.  One is the one at the lower right corner of the windshield.  This is the stock location.  CJ Wilson Racing lost a bunch of time with that setup at Daytona.  For Sebring, they switched to the hood setup that other Porsche teams use (most notably in this series, Rum Bum Racing).  Bodymotion Racing won using the old setup, though.

 

Later in the race, pit strategy played a huge role in the overall outcome.  For ST teams, they can just about do the entire race on one stop.  So, they do for the most part, although cautions can change the strategy.  The GS teams need two stops.  The one caution for Rebel Rock Racing's No. 7 ST-class Porsche Cayman stopping on-course with engine issues led to a split strategy.  The strategy, plus some fast laps, allowed Bodymotion Racing to win overall.

 

Post-race coverage was ok.  Viewers got interviews with the top-2 teams in both classes and a check of the unofficial results before FOX Sports 1 left the air.  This is somewhat typical, but it's more than you get with the livestream.  Unlike the Pirelli World Challenge livestreams, IMSA livestreams go dead seemingly right after the cool-down lap ends, but before Victory Lane so we don't get interviews.  Weak.  I feel like they should change that going forward.

Overall, the delayed broadcast was a decent way to watch a strategy-laden race.  However, the editing can be brutal at times.  It's one thing to cut out unnecessary segments of the race.  It's something else to cut out important stuff.  Also, FOX Sports 1 still had a full compliment of pit reporters for Sebring.  That won't be the case next time out for the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in May.  We'll see what that ultimately looks like when we get there.  I still watch the livestream broadcasts when I can, but the race times are not really ideal.  Three of the biggest races for the series (support to the four Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup races) all run on Friday afternoon.  As a result, viewership of the streams is not the greatest.  I do enjoy the commentary from IMSA Radio, but it doesn't really go with the pictures since Greg Creamer and Calvin Fish are in their isolated booth in Charlotte calling the action live as well.

I hope you liked this look at the Sebring 150.  Next week, we'll be back with some more motorsports broadcast criticism.  Until then, enjoy this weekend's action from Texas Motor Speedway.

 

Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager and a Senior Writer for Frontstretch.com.  He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.
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Frontstretch Line of the Week
 
From Beyond the Cockpit: Chris Buescher Eyes Results Over Hype in Rookie Cup Season

"It is cool to be racing around the same guys again. It’s like you can’t ever get away! That’s good though, that means we’ve all been able to move up through different ranks and be successful at it. We’ve competed on other series and here we are at the top of our motorsport industry and we’re competing for the same honors, just in a different series now." - Chris Buescher on racing with his rookie counterparts
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TODAY AT FRONTSTRETCH:

Happiness Is...Pits, Vickers & Spring

by P. Huston Ladner

2-Headed Monster: Should Teammates Race Each Other Differently?

by Aaron Bearden and Sean Fesko

Eyes on XFINITY: Can Brennan Poole Maintain a Strong Start?

by Bryan Gable

Truckin' Thursdays: 3 Drivers That Need to Step Up Their Game

by Beth Lunkenheimer

 

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FRONTSTRETCH TRIVIA:

Q: You've probably seen the clip of Dale Earnhardt running to meet his son in Victory Lane at Texas in 2000 after Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won his first Winston Cup race.  Who did Earnhardt shove out of the way and deposit on his tokhes in order to get to Dale Jr. first?

Check back Friday for the answer, here in the Frontstretch Newsletter!

Wednesday's Answer:

Q:  The 1998 Coca-Cola 300 at Texas Motor Speedway is best known as the race that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won for his first career win in the then-Busch Grand National Series, beating Joe Nemechek in the process.  However, there should have been another challenger in Jimmy Spencer late in the race, but he was eliminated.  What happened to put Spencer out?

A: With 19 laps to go, Spencer blew a tire and hit the wall in turn 1.  He then grinded to a halt at the exit of turn 2.  Unfortunately, CBS did not show a replay of the incident, but crew chief Corrie Stott (years before he owned a team in the series) stated that it was a blown tire in an interview.  Spencer walked away from the crash, but was done for the day.

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COMING TOMORROW

In The Frontstretch Newsletter:

We'll have some news from today while we preview Saturday night's Duck Commander 500.

On Frontstretch.com:

Zach Catanzareti answers Four Burning Questions heading into this weekend's action in Texas.
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