Racing Of The United States Variety

[Massa 0]

ABC's TV window is up. They're going to call the race so ABC can show something someone will actually watch.

[Massa 0]

Also relevant: Randy Bernard's wonderful Chinese race in Qingdao isn't going to happen unless they move it to the season closer or go to a magical mysterious cool fun exciting "backup plan" that is probably like the "backup plans" for the Indy 500 if Dragon couldn't go; something that should probably be allowed but won't be unless something else that was shaky from day one fails.

if it becomes the finale, RIP IndyCar. You don't have the champion crowned at 2 AM in all of the largest U.S. television markets after what probably won't be the most interesting race given the layout. Ending with the 400-mile Fontana race as planned sounds like a better idea. CART used to end with 500 miles up there and while I'm not the biggest fan of tracks with banking for IndyCars, they're using the same wing package that they used at the Indy 500 so it could be a good show.

[Massa 0]

Restart at 6:30? What channel will that be on? ESPN8?

[JHS18 0]

Question: Do Indycar have a time deadline like F1 does? Apparently F1 races can't go on for longer than 4 hours now, so if a race got red flagged before half distance but didn't start again after 4 hours, too bad.

Does time become an issue in Indycar? Or do they just try to get it done before it goes dark?

[Massa 0]

Yes and no.

No, the regulations don't have a time limit.

Certain cities will have a time limit (even on a permanent course) due to noise so if a track has lights, it can't run past whatever time.

ABC has a time limit on their broadcast and they cannot extend it. In 2007, the finish of a race wasn't even shown on TV because it was bumped from ABC after exceeding the scheduled timeslot (two hours for the race).

[Massa 0]

And the race just got moved to ESPN News for the issue I expressed, with ABC not being able to go over.

I don't even know if ESPN News is a real channel.

[Massa 0]

I think I'm erasing IndyCar from my memory until next year's 500. It's too frustrating.

[Massa 0]

Kurt Busch has been suspended until June 13.

Bull**** is a good word for that.

All Busch did was reply to a dumb question with a sarcastic answer containing a cuss word starting with "s."

This happens on a weekly basis in NASCAR yet I've never even seen a fine for it (unless it's on network TV, then the government fines the TV network which fines NASCAR which fines the driver).

I think Busch is a jerk but let's see...all he's done so far is just say some words that any driver has said on his radio or in an interview at some point. Hell, A.J. Foyt and Tony Stewart are heroes for saucing the media up.

And Stewart's the guy I want to talk about:

He's always sarcastic with the media. Every week. He'll tell them how stupid they are. Look on YouTube and you'll find more videos than you care to watch of Tony Stewart being an ***hole to the media.

But he's not just verbal like Busch. Stewart assaulted a member of the media in 2001 or 2002. He broke an Australian track promoter's eye socket. He punched a USAC official. NASCAR never suspended him.

NASCAR is just a joke sometimes. They want the headline. Suspending Busch is a good headline whereas suspending Stewart would have done more damage than the media attention would have helped.

[Massa 0]

The exact comment:

It [probation] refrains me from not beating the s*** out of you right now because you ask me stupid questions.

How is that...how does someone get suspended for that? Many drivers have said much worse to the media, and some have actually followed their word and beaten the **** out of them!

The question he was answering?

Did it impact you how you raced Justin the fact that you're on probation after that you said he kept he's racing you?

Try translating that to English.

[JHS18 0]

What an awful, awful tragedy for poor old Kurt Busch.

You know my feelings on him already. Not saying it was right to suspend him, but maybe given him that suspension will give him time to work sh*t out and sort his problems, rather than talk about sorting them and doing nothing.

[Massa 0]

I don't think one week is going to give Kurt time to figure things out when he had an entire off-season and went nowhere. He is who he is and it's not changing. I'm not sure if he's ultra competitive or he has some issue off-the-track or some type of mental condition or whatever but it's obviously not something he's just going to get over and I'm sure now that he got absolutely screwed by NASCAR he's only going to be more frustrated than ever before.

The suspension was completely unfair. I don't like Kurt, either, but this is horse****. His language on the radio is his team's problem; they can fire him if they want. His comments to the media aren't NASCAR's problem because NASCAR has never intervened when Tony Stewart's been an *** and physically assaulted them.

NASCAR's set a new precedent now and it isn't one I like.

Then they should suspend Pockrass for not being able to formulate a grammatically correct sentence, and then they should suspend everyone other than Bobby Labonte so he can win, and then...

[Massa 0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H1vLdIZWmM

That isn't suspendable. That just isn't suspendable. In no sport should that be a suspension. Kurt said the f word or s word (I hear f, but he's quoted as s) in response to a dumb question and threatened to do something Tony Stewart actually did and received no suspension for. What a joke...

[Massa 0]

Hey look, this happened at a NASCAR K&N race over the weekend:

So are they going to suspend those guys?

[Massa 0]

Oh, there's a video, and a police officer involved, but no, suspend Kurt Busch, he swore! Swearing's bad! Kids might hear that!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzmA7Mi-bKY

What's a scuffle and trying to disobey a police officer? Lifetime ban? Pull his license? Lock him a jail cell?

[Massa 0]

Oriol Servià tweeted "F*** Texas." He clarified that it was not about the state or the people, but rather race/track promoter Eddie Gossage.

Servià's publicist then issued an apology.

Servià was one of the drivers to lead the charge against racing at Texas in 2001 back in the CART days, and he and Gossage had some issues then. He's recently taken offense to Gossage and the catchfence-gate post-Wheldon. There was a lot of drama among Gossage, the drivers, and IndyCar about whether or not the race should be run and Gossage basically called the drivers pussies for wanting the fence posts moved before they'd race there. A boycott was rumored but is obviously not happening.

I hate that Oriol had to put that fake apology out there, but I like him telling it the way he sees it whether I agree or not (I honestly don't know if I do, but having interacted with Gossage, he's...the less I say the better, I guess, but that's irrelevant to the situation of safety).

So I guess he's a cult hero now to all of us who got blocked by Gossage on Twitter that one night RE: NASCAR.

[Massa 0]

Though if he were in NASCAR he'd be doing hard labor in Siberia now for saying a mean word.

[HandyNZL 1]

The exact comment:

It [probation] refrains me from not beating the s*** out of you right now because you ask me stupid questions.

I do believe the suspension was for the use of a double negative, and not for saying Sh#t. Or sex. Or sausage.

There should not be a not in his statement.

[JHS18 0]

My thing with Kurt is this - okay, maybe saying that didn't deserve a suspension on its own, but this guy constantly seems to be in some sort of controversy, whether it's fighting in the pit lane, swearing at media (what happened with that Jerry Punch guy last year), sounding like he's on the verge of a mental breakdown every time he's on the team radio...maybe if he just didn't do sh*t and sorted his problems out be wouldn't BE in that situation in the first place. Respect. He needs to learn the meaning of what that means.

Accept that sometimes media will ask stupid questions to get a story, accept that sometimes races don't go your way. Be grateful for the position you find yourself if before you end up losing your drive permanently.

Like, if he wasn't on probation in the first place, would that question have even been asked? No. You do stupid things, you get asked stupid questions.

Okay, Eric probably has a point that the penalties are inconsistent, but Kurt Busch seems to be the most regular offender of any of them. There's one type of people I don't have sympathy for - it is those that realise there's an issue, but they don't do anything about it. Kurt Busch seems to fall into that category.

It seems he is pretty consistently a sideshow to the NASCAR race now, you could have a show named "What will Kurt Busch do next?" - whether that's good for NASCAR and it is increasing the viewing figures, I honestly have no idea, but I suspect that NASCAR given Busch this probation is a message to him to sort his sh*t out. Whether he'll take any notice of that though, again, I have no idea.

[Massa 0]

NASCAR cannot, and has said they cannot, take any action over driver-to-team radio communication. What Kurt says on his radio is his business and if his team doesn't want to hear it they can get a new driver. Not NASCAR's problem or place to step in and NASCAR makes that clear all the time (same with drivers flipping other drivers off; NASCAR has never and will never penalize that). If you want a radio meltdown, get the IndyCar scanner. Josef Newgarden, James Hinchcliffe, Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay...every single week it's just f word after f word. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some guys are competitive. Those are just the ones I've heard; I'm sure all the drivers get angry if you tune in at the right times.

NASCAR cannot take action over comments made off-camera. There is no rule there. His comments to Dr. Punch were off-camera, and honestly, his comments to Jamie Little were warranted because she is the worst pit reporter in the history of pit reporting, no exaggeration, what a dip**** she is. They could just play a recording because it's the same every week..."four tires and fuel no adjustments Doc" during every pit stop and every question she asks is stupid, if it even gets an answer, because she is so unaware of how an auto race works that she almost always tries to talk to someone who is clearly busy and gets turned down. So Kurt had every right to cuss her out.

You aren't wrong about what Kurt or his team should be doing for their own success, but that's exactly it, it's their own success.

NASCAR doesn't need to step in and tell Kurt how to act and tell his team how to feel about it. That's going too far. One week changes nothing for how Kurt is going to act. Losing his job and having a few months to think about it changed nothing. Missing Pocono has no impact. Kurt is who he is at the track and until I know him off the track I'm not passing judgment. Some people are just ultra, ultra competitive and I'm not saying it's right, but a lot of racing drivers in F1, NASCAR, Indy, whatever, they hate to lose. Some are better at disappearing than others; everyone faults Danica Patrick for not meeting with the media after a bad race, but this is exactly the thing...she knows she'd pull a Kurt Busch if she did so she just leaves and takes care of it privately and kudos to her. I'm sure there are guys in F1 who throw complete fits behind closed doors when they have a bad day. I don't get the impression that Ayrton Senna enjoyed losing and took it in stride as "we'll get them next week, I'm so honored to be in F1." Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm not saying it's right to act the way Kurt does, but he's competing and his style has worked; he's a NASCAR champion and everyone likes to pretend he isn't but in 2004 he won the Sprint Cup (at the time NEXTEL Cup).

Look at a coach in hockey. The language to the refs is worse than Kurt's. It's just a style of competition. Maybe Kurt has issues off the track, maybe he doesn't. For all I know, he could be a really great guy and I just think it's wrong to pass judgment on his character without knowing him. Every racing driver in every series is only who they are in public to us. They could all be like Kurt or worse in private. They could all be better. Who knows?

[Massa 0]

I guess what I was trying to say in that post is: Kurt Busch is not someone I support in NASCAR, but his issues may not actually exist, and if they do, that's for him to figure out. The guy has a wife and he has parents and he has a brother and I'm sure he has friends and he has his sports psychologist and he has the money...if there's a problem they can figure it out and if he has an actual problem I sympathize with him, has to suck to be dealing with his problems publicly and maybe he should have taken a year off (I'm not saying this is true, but you could see a scenario where he and his sports psychologist were making progress over the winter and once the season started and everyone got on his case again it just fell apart...but even so that's a case where he either needs to get out of the public or he needs to be transparent and say "look, this is what I'm dealing with, I'd like to be left alone" and people would respect it...but he could be dealing with nothing at all). NASCAR has no need and no business stepping in. They are suspending him on reputation, not on actual actions, and that's not cool.

Anyway, James Finch is looking to bail on Kurt Busch now. Selling sponsorship's pretty hard when your driver crashes every week overdriving bad equipment.

[Massa 0]

No aerokits for IndyCar in 2013.

The team owners don't want them.

They apparently don't want me watching again, though they have a point about costs not being what they were told they would be...but they're also pretty stupid because everything always costs a lot more in reality than on paper.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/indycar-owners-reject-aero-kits-again/

IndyCar will also park HVM (Lotus) at Texas.

[Massa 0]

At least Bullseye showed up at Detroit after being absent from Indy 500 victory lane:

I had a Bullseye of my own as a kid so the big one in the firesuit makes me happy.

[Massa 0]

Dario Franchitti was on David Letterman's show last night. Letterman owns Sato's car.

http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show/video/?pid=EC45dMI_36Iz97orCosk1sVRcD9YpSCV

Nice guy when he's winning.

[BradSpeedMan 6]

Yeah, I admit it. I watched Nascar the other day. Danica was 3rd and seemed a sitting duck, everyone passing left right and centre. Whats that all about? Car set up for qualifying perhaps??. God knows, I lost interest after like... 5 laps. Then DP was like... 20th or something...

[BradSpeedMan 6]

yeah, it was this thing. Was passed left right and centre. This proves looks are definately deceiving... Take my word for it folks...