The Frontstretch Newsletter: Cindric and Theriault Return to BKR

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

Apr. 28, 2016

Volume X, Edition LXI

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What to Watch: Thursday

- Today is pull-in day at Talladega Superspeedway.  No on-track activity is scheduled. However, if anything else of note breaks, we will have it for you at Frontstretch.

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Thursday's TV Schedule can be found here.

Top News
by the Frontstretch Staff

Brad Keselowski Racing Announces May Driver Lineup

Thursday, Brad Keselowski Racing announced the return of two racers to the fold.  Austin Cindric will drive the No. 2 Ford at Dover while Austin Theriault will drive at Charlotte.  Read more

JJ Yeley Replaces David Starr at TriStar Motorsports

TriStar Motorsports announced Wednesday that David Starr has been released from his No. 44 ride in the XFINITY Series, effective immediately.  JJ Yeley will slide over from the No. 14 to replace him. Starr, 48, had failed to earn a top-15 finish with the team in his first seven starts of 2016. He was replaced by Yeley due to "illness" prior to last weekend at Richmond; Yeley promptly scored the best finish of the season for the No. 44 team (12th). 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 NASCAR Reversing Itself and Barber Park

Potts' Shots

by John Potts

Well, it looks like the question I asked in my last paragraph last week was answered rather quickly. NASCAR indeed had second thoughts about their new policy on lug nuts.

Of course, this change of heart occurred after Tony Stewart raked them over the coals about it and they saw fit to fine him $35,000. Does their change in policy mean he doesn’t have to pay the fine? I’m sure it doesn’t.

The Driver's Council voted to pay the fine for him but Smoke has since said he didn’t want them to do that, asking NASCAR to give the $35K to charity instead. Word is that it will go to Autism Delaware; I guess Tony intends to pay the "donation" himself. Let’s see, that would be 3,500,000 pennies, right? Sounds like something Tony would do, but I think they’ve instituted a rule against paying your fine in pennies since Rusty Wallace had 500,000 pennies delivered to them several years ago.

I keep wondering what all this sudden crawfishing on NASCAR’s part means – “Hey, Tony, you were right, but we still don’t like you telling us we’re wrong.”

Don’t expect that to happen.

Kind of reminds me of an incident back in the early 1950s. I was still a teenager and I heard the information from a pretty good source (someone close to the officials) during a sprint car race at Salem.

This incident was before AAA dropped race sanctioning (after the 1955 season). Seems Troy Ruttman was suspended the week before by their Contest Board for calling AAA “…a son of a b***h organization.”

I noticed Troy was there with his car, and was practicing, so I asked my source what happened. This was before I knew anything about an appeals process.

“Well,” he said, “They called him in and asked him if he really said it, and he admitted that he had. They lifted the suspension, they said, because he told the truth.”

I walked away wondering if he’d told the truth by admitting he said it, or by saying it in the first place.

Paying due diligence by paying attention to the IndyCar race at Barber Motorsports Park Sunday I was interested in the problems Simon Pagenaud had getting around Conor Daly. The jam-up allowed Graham Rahal to gain ground on Pagenaud and quickly make a race of it.

Daly was the last car on the lead lap and was doing his best to not get lapped. It’s my understanding that the “layover” flag is merely advisory if the car it’s being shown to is still on the lead lap, but that car is obligated to move over if he or she is a lap down.

I had to get a kick out of Pagenaud’s comment later in the week that maybe IndyCar should take a look at NASCAR’s “Lucky Dog” rule for cases like this one.

As it turned out, Rahal got close enough to challenge, actually taking the lead after bumping Pagenaud approaching Turn 8, sending the leader off course. Rahal kept his car fairly straight and took over the top spot. Pagenaud said Rahal initiated the contact; Rahal said Pagenaud blocked him.

The three-man group of stewards saw it as hard competition with the race on the line and less than ten laps left.

Rahal said, “That’s racing.”

Pagenaud commented, “He gave me a good piece of driving. It was amazing from him, and I have to put my hat off for that.” He later added, “That was a late pass, not a corner where you can pass. I went off but in the end it made me really upset. I have to say I said I was going to pass him back, and that’s what we did.”

Pagenaud got the lead back after drawing alongside Rahal as they were in Turn 5 and they came up on Jack Hawksworth, who was at that point the last car on the lead lap. Already driving a mishandling car because the right side of his front wing had been damaged, Rahal apparently misjudged the slower car and broke off the left side.

As you can imagine, this made his car even more squirrelly with virtually no front downforce. As uncontrollable as it was, Rahal still hung on to finish second.

Personally, I thought it was great entertainment.

The next race on the schedule is also a road race, held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 14.

I can hardly wait.

Speaking of entertainment, I did manage to catch a replay of Carl Edwards’ “bump and run” on Kyle Busch on the last lap of the Sprint Cup race at Richmond Sunday.

Carl said later he would have expected the same kind of move from Kyle if the positions had been reversed. Kyle wouldn’t even discuss it.

The next race on the schedule is Talladega. Don’t expect any recriminations there. As a matter of fact, I suspect owner Joe Gibbs has already had long talks with both drivers.

This one also reminded me of a past incident… I was announcing at I-75 Speedway near Mt. Vernon, Ky. back in 2002 and there was a great race going on in the Late Model feature between Robbie Brown of Corbin, a local favorite, and the late Chris Harmon of Louisville, an old friend of mine.

Coming off Turn 4 on the last lap, Chris nudged Robbie just enough to get him out of the way. At the time it happened, knowing Chris, I was surprised that he would want to win that way, but he proved I was right about him. He backed off, let Robbie regain control, and accepted second place.

I explained to the crowd that he just wasn’t that kind of driver.

He told me later, “I didn’t want to win it that way, but I wanted him to know I could have.”

John Potts is a Senior Writer for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at john....@frontstretch.com.

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The Critic's Annex: Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama

by Phil Allaway

Hello, everyone.  Today, we dive into the world of rolling hills once again for 207 miles of action.  That's right; we're going to Barber Motorsports Park to check out Sunday's Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama on NBCSN.  

Like Long Beach and Phoenix, we had the team of Rick Allen, Townsend Bell and Paul Tracy in the booth.  Also, like Long Beach interpretation of the rules was one of the day's primary stories.  Tracy doesn't like being in the dark when it comes to stuff like that and he made that fact known.  While I have no doubt that the grey area chafes his butt in general, I'm sure the drivers actually in the race have somewhat similar sentiments.

Also of note, most of the driver interviews (with the exception of Juan Pablo Montoya) were done in the paddock with fans all around.  I found that interesting.  It's a nice touch and shows that the drivers are maybe a little more in touch with the fans than other series (like NASCAR Sprint Cup).

IndyCar Live is focused upon actually previewing the race and talking to the principals involved.  You'd think that it would be obvious but not so much in the world of NASCAR broadcasts.  If you want that on FOX, you basically have to tune in for NASCAR RaceDay.  While I do like watching NASCAR RaceDay you shouldn't have to watch the pre-pre-race show to get it.  It's frustrating.

During the race itself, the drivers had some trouble getting started.  However, once they did, it was all green-flag racing.  Knowing that Sunday's race had all of four lead changes, I struggle to grasp how FOX would cover such an event if it occurred in Sprint Cup.  Here, NBCSN gave constant updates on the running order but sought out the battles on-track.

To me, that's a good strategy for FOX to use for their Sprint Cup coverage.  Yes, it seems like a number of companies (most notably Toyota) have paid a significant amount of money for their products to be featured on the broadcasts -- that should not matter.  When it comes to information, I prefer having too much instead of too little.

There was a good chunk of discussion on the conduct of lapped drivers as well.  John Potts covered that a little bit above in this week's edition of Potts' Shots.  Potts wrote that Pagenaud pitched the idea of a Lucky Dog earlier this week.  Yeah, that wouldn't have helped at all.  Even if they did have one, Daly would rather have not needed it in the first place.

Tracy made a good point about how wing damage can cut down on rear tire wear and cited an example of a Champ Car race at Exhibition Place in Toronto.  He's referring to this incident where he had contact leaving the pits with Sebastien Bourdais.  From there, Tracy set a series of fast laps until retiring later in the race.  In that case, half of Tracy's front wing was knocked off, yet he kept on truckin'.  Here, Rahal lost only a small piece.

What I'd like to know is what happened to cause the initial wing damage to Graham Rahal's car.  That was never shown on the broadcast. Since Rahal had an in-car camera, NBCSN should have had the footage.

In NASCAR, there would have been a debris caution after Rahal's contact with Jack Hawksworth.  Instead, the debris stayed on the track for the remainder of the race and everyone had to dodge it.  Man, it was a mess.

Since the race effectively ran caution-free once again (aside from the botched start) there was plenty of time for post-race interviews and checks of the final points and results.  You got roughly what you would get if a NASCAR race ended with 30 minutes to spare.

There were a couple of stories that weren't covered as much as I would have liked.  Helio Castroneves noted that he actually corded tires at one point during the race.  While yes, there was a good amount of coverage given to the tires it was based around tire falloff -- not so much on wear.  I don't recall the last time I saw someone take a tire in the Verizon IndyCar Series down to the cords unless they locked that tire up like no one's business.  We didn't get the full story here.  Another explanation must have been at play.

Overall, the telecast was decent.  Allen has really settled in calling INDYCAR races, even though he's just the substitute.  INDYCAR does need a regular booth presence on NBCSN.  We already know that Allen won't be in the booth beyond the end of next month; meanwhile, Townsend Bell is still full-time in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for Change Racing and is going back to Le Mans for Scuderia Corsa.  I couldn't tell you if Tracy will be there for all the remaining NBCSN races.  You literally never know who's calling the races until a couple of days beforehand.

For what its worth, Allen does have good chemistry with Bell and Tracy.  Tracy's still relatively new to TV, but I think he's made the transition fairly well.  Leigh Diffey is scheduled to make his season debut at Road America in two months, then who knows.  I don't think it's healthy long-term.  NBCSN, if possible, should consider hiring a third play-by-play man so you're not trying to cover four series from three sanctioning outfits with two play-by-play commentators.  This situation is especially so when all three series race on the same weekend.  That's a killer.

The last 25 laps were also likely focused too closely on the race for the lead.  There was some other stuff going on that could have been given some coverage as well.

That's all for this week.  Stay tuned for some more motorsport broadcast commentary next Thursday.  Until then, enjoy this weekend's action in Talladega, Salinas and Sochi.

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 The 10: Bristol Bump and Won

"According to Tony Stewart, Chase is bringing sexy back to NASCAR.."  - Tony Lumbis, on Chase Elliott.  That refers to this move.

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TODAY AT FRONTSTRETCH:

Happiness Is... Tony Stewart

by P. Huston Ladner

2-Headed Monster: Heat Races ... Are They Worth It?

by Aaron Bearden and Sean Fesko

Revamped Front Row Motorsports On the Rise In NASCAR

by Amy Henderson

Eyes on XFINITY: Has Elliott Sadler Finally Found the Right Team?

by Bryan Gable

Nitro Shots: We Just Can’t Help Ourselves

by Toni Montgomery

Truckin' Thursdays: Ben Kennedy's Saga Continues

by Beth Lunkenheimer

 

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FRONTSTRETCH TRIVIA:

Q: In 2000, Jeremy Mayfield won the pole for the DieHard 500 at Talladega with a lap of 186.969 mph, the slowest Cup pole speed at Talladega since 1974.  What rule change put into effect for that weekend caused that? 

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

Wednesday's Answer:

Q:  The 1995 Winston Select 500 came down to a duel between eventual winner Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Morgan Shepherd and Dale Earnhardt.  Earnhardt had the lead with a lap and a half to go; however, his finish was far worse than anything in the lead draft.  What happened?

A: Coming to the white flag, Mark Martin was able to get underneath Earnhardt to take the lead inside the tri-oval.  Jeff Gordon tagged along as well.  Morgan Shepherd tried to follow past, but got a little loose and pushed Earnhardt up the track.  Exiting turn 2, the two had contact, spinning Earnhardt out.  He would eventually nose into the outside wall.  The pass for the win and resulting crash can be seen here.

Shepherd ended up losing the draft of Martin and Gordon and finished a distant third.  Earnhardt dragged his damaged No. 3 back around to finish 21st, the last car on the lead lap.  While it's hard to say that the spin changed the title race, the points Earnhardt lost this day were more than enough to cost him the 1995 Winston Cup Championship.

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COMING TOMORROW

In The Frontstretch Newsletter:

We'll have some news from today while we preview Sunday's GEICO 500 at Talladega.

On Frontstretch.com:

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