PLINKING and POP SHOTS

Here are a few little tidbits that have been floating around lately in NASCAR and Sadlerville. Nothing really mind-boggling but sometimes you just have to take a step back and ask ‘what is the deal here’?


The ‘tongue and cheek’ picture above is one that is linked from this blog by other sites more than any other picture for reasons that I have no idea. Literally, this blog receives over a 100 hit a day from this, but really that’s not important. We all have heard the engagement news and fall out by some from it, but I have to wonder something. According to Sadler, his future wife has in three weeks, already made all the wedding arrangements for a January wedding. Three weeks? I’m thinking that the Sadler PR Machine should employ Amanda to plan and get the details for the next ‘bigger than ever’ Sadler Barn Party. That way Sadler fans would not have to wait and wait and wait for the ‘more info coming soon’ excuses in order to make travel plans.


Speaking of the Sadler PR Machine, they have been working overtime the past few weeks and there are all kinds of ‘feel good’ fluff stories being written. Even going so far as Brett Griffin making a few token appearances on the Sadler Fan Club Message Board. While his presence is always welcome and insightful, this time Griffin dropped the ball on a few pending and direct questions. Griffin conveniently ignored questions concerning the demise of VLP. Frankly, the fans just want to know what happened, after all it was Brett and Elliott that less than a year ago, spoke of ‘how great and fun this is going to be’. But like most Sadler PR nightmares, just don’t speak of it and it will eventually go away.


Seems I am not the only one who is critical of the Sadler PR Machine and just how behind the times they seem to be. NASCAR INSIDERS recently blogged about the 'BEST and WORST' NASCAR driver websites and guess who was 'number two' on the worst list? Yep, it seems that they have also seen through the facade of ElliottSadler.com and the presentation there. Quoting the blogger:
"If I was a race fan searching out my favorite driver’s website, I’d want a slick place where I could hang out, get news, see some photos, or maybe catch a podcast or a blog. These five just don’t deliver........In today’s corporate NASCAR, I feel like it reflects badly on drivers who have a crappy website. I’m sure their sponsors are less then thrilled also. More and more, the first place most of us go for information is the internet."
Remember all the promises of 'exclusive' content and that Sadler himself would be 'stopping by for frequent updates'? These guys would like to have seen those claims actually become reality aswell.

Remember a few weeks ago the comments made by Elliott Sadler and his opinion concerning the Roush/Yates alliance and that Roush ‘never helped Yates and still doesn't’? I made it clear that he was simply doing the ‘Sadler Speak’ routine and made a small mention wondering how Robbie Gordon feels about his alliance with GEM. If you were listening to HotPass from the Watkins Glen race during the red flag you would have heard Robbie expressing his discontent to Larry McReynolds that ‘he wasn’t getting the same engines as the other GEM cars’. I received the normal hate emails not liking my comment to Sadler about ‘glass houses’, but it seems that it is justified in this case at least Robbie thinks so.


On to Michigan, and a pretty unusual promotion for the 19 team. It seems that Stanley Tools and Ace Hardware have pledged a million dollar donation on one condition. That the 19 goes to victory lane on Sunday. So Sadler jumps on the bandwagon and once again requests his fans to donate money by stopping by an Ace Hardware store and purchase a "Racing for a Miracle" icon. Again we see the ever growing trend of a multi millionaire holding his hand out to the masses whom many are living pay check to pay check. (more on this in a future blog) To his credit, Sadler did spend a couple of hours Thursday at Sparrow Hospital, the Children's Miracle Network area hospital in Lansing, Michigan and that was a good thing. But the premise of having a third party to donate a substantial amount of money to a charity for a win does lend to the ‘tin foil hat’ theories if they came to fruition. Chances are Lloyds of London has already ‘done the math’ and realized that the odds are pretty good to risk a million dollar payout on a driver who has one top 5 in 19 attempts and an average finish of 23rd.


And lastly, I have been cautiously optimistic about the way the 19 has been running over the past couple of months, and taking aside the ‘bad luck’ excuse weeks is the 19 really becoming a contender or an apparition? I have voiced displeasure in the past concerning how the 19 seems to be more concerned with ‘track position and two tire stops’ more than ‘fixing the car’ and making it better for the final 1/3 of races and I still think that displeasure is justified. Looking at the NASCAR scoring loop data, the numbers still tell a story that the 19 does significantly more ‘passing’ in the pits than on the track. The final results over the past few months also show the risk verses reward with relying too much on such a strategy. Is the 19 better than they were this time last year? Of course it is and things will only get better I think. But playing the strategy game week after week and rolling the dice is not the best way to prepare a race team to be a contender next season.



Time to reload the plinker!

Perception is a funny thing

Yesterday, Nascar announced the penalties for the #7 team and driver/owner Robbie Gordon for attempting to pass through pre-qualifying inspection a non-approved nose. It didn’t take long for the ‘NA$CAR flaming’ all over the innerweb defending the #7 team and the cries of the ‘NA$CAR agenda’. This is where perception comes into play, and how that perception creates memory loss to many of the Nascar faithful.

First lets hear from the team owner himself:

“This was an innocent mistake made by someone not even on my team. They accidentally supplied us the new Dodge noses that NASCAR hasn't yet approved because of what amounted to a clerical error. It was discovered during technical inspection and corrected before the race. It was not even close to being an intent to create some competitive advantage, and the mistake was not even made by my team.”

Now I understand why Robbie would want to point fingers and deflect the blame to someone else. (In this case GEM supplied the nose) But this is not the first time a team has been penalized for having ‘unapproved’ parts supplied by another team. Hall of Fame Racing was fine and had points taken away in their VERY FIRST RACE two years ago thanks to Joe Gibbs Racing. At least that was where the blame went. There is your precedent Robbie and you stance takes another blow when one looks at the penalty for the 8 team last season for using 'unapproved rear wing brackets' on the C.O.T. and they attempted the same 'it was just a mistake' justification.

The first volleys thrown were the ‘comparisons to any Rick Hendrick team violation’, whether it was from the C.O.T. or not. So that got me thinking, just how a team that fields FOUR full time teams can be compared to a single car team in terms of ‘frequency of violations’. These fans might be surprised just how many times over the past few years the #7 team/driver/owner has been caught ‘cheating’, yet somehow is ‘innocent’.

Just a quick scan of Jayski’s penalty pages shows that the one car team seems to appear almost as much as the four car Hendrick Motorsports teams.

2005 Daytona: “unapproved intake manifold on the #7 Chevrolet discovered during the initial Daytona 500 inspection”, $50,000 fine and 25 owner points (car failed to make the field so no driver points were deducted)

2005 spring Martinsville: “unapproved deck lid”, $5,000 fine, no points deducted

2006 fall Atlanta: “intentionally causing a caution condition during the race”, $15,000 50 driver and 50 owner points

2007 Summer Daytona: “equipment used do not conform to NASCAR rules”, $25,000 fine, 25 driver and 25 owner points.

I will omit the handful of penalties access by Nascar to Gordon for altercations or language.

No I am not going to sit here and say that HMS is an ‘angel’ when it comes to rules violations but I will say that ‘perspective’ and bias comes into play if one wants to defend the #7 team. As a single car team they have proportionately been guilty of just as many and just as severe violations. Maybe more importantly comes from the ‘innocent’ justifications Robbie gives in many of these violations with ‘we are not doing anything different that anyone is doing’ or the ‘the issue was found before qualifying so way the severe penalty’?

Nascar has to take and stance (and has) that simply submitting a car for pre-race inspection show intent to run that car’s configuration during qualifying and during the race. If not, then why was the car submitted to the inspection line in the first place. Bottom line, once the car enters the pre-qualifying inspection line, the ‘official entry’ for that team has been made.

Robbie can shift the blame to Evernham all he wants, and there are enough Evernham violations to go around over the past few years to fill the bucket, or he can say it was just a ‘clerical’ mistake all he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact of what his team attempted to do. Nascar has taken a firm stance one ‘messing with the aero of the C.O.T.' and the fines/penalties ($100,000 fine, 100 driver and 100 owner points) issued for this was in all honesty the ‘minimum’ in terms of precedent. Robbie feels differently with this quote: "Other teams who have had similar issues to what happened with the nose on my car were only penalized 25 points." I challenge Robbie to site just one 'similar' C.O.T. violation where only 25 points were deducted. In fact, I would go further to say that he could look for ANY C.O.T. violation. Fact is, he can't.

If Nascar was to turn the other cheek on this, doesn’t that open Pandora’s Box?

I think it would.