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WE PHOENIX NOW!
There's no limit to the FUN, so why should there be a limit to the TRACK!? We got three excellent races this weekend: a round of the Camping World Irritating Rich Kid Wins Series on Friday night, some CUP DRIVER WINS LOL on Saturday, and then a NASCAR race on Sunday. Be there or be trioval.
A song to start us off. If that wasn't written by a NASCAR fan I'll eat my keyboard.
Dat Schedule
8 November (Friday)
10:00am - 11:30am: Nationwide practice
11:35am - 01:30pm: Sprint Cup practice/Kyle Busch douchebaggery begins
01:35pm - 02:20pm: Nationwide final practice
03:40pm - 05:00pm: Sprint Cup qualifying
06:00pm - 08:00pm: Camping World Truck race
9 November (Saturday)
09:30am - 010:25am: Sprint Cup practice/Kyle Busch douchebaggery continues once more
10:35am - 11:45am: Nationwide qualifying
02:00pm - 04:00pm: Nationwide race
10 November (Sunday)
01:00pm - 04:00pm: Sprint Cup race/Kyle Busch douchebaggery intensifies
Note: All times posted Mountain/Worst time zone. For Eastern time, add 2 hours. For British/European, add 7 hours. Don't blame me, blame the universe.
Other Important Stuff:
(click to open .pdf, or maybe it's just a normal link)
Jayski link with countdown timers (default is Sprint Cup, click "Nationwide" or "Camping World" and the timer will change to count down to those races)
Sprint Cup entry list (or .pdf)
Weather Channel forecast for the weekend
Vegas Insider odds to win the Sprint Cup race and to win the Championship
Live audio coverage on the Motor Racing Network
"I can't watch the race on TV! Can someone give me a stream?"
Out of respect for the noble art of piracy and ensuring those of us lucky enough not to be born into the United States of America can watch racing too, it would be unwise to post a direct link here. Having said that, I sure hope you don't Google "Race Fans Only" and bookmark the first link to show up, and watch all 3 races this weekend there. And if that doesn't work, it would be really terrible if you went to Justin.tv and got a stream from there. Please don't do that, you'll make Kyle cry.
Obligatory cat:
Another small note is that some of you may wish to join the race discussions on 4chan as well. Always entertaining, the anonymity afforded by that site allows you to use the actual words that come into your head when you see Cup drivers winning the Nationwide races, or long diatribes about owner's points. There will be threads for all three races: go to the sports board (www.4chan.org/sp/) and look around 15 minutes or so before the green flag flies. For the benefit of anyone who cares, that particular board is worksafe, meaning you need not fear seeing any boobies while trying to enjoy the race. Nevertheless, only a fool would attempt to chat about the race there at work.
Well, it's been a hell of a year in NASCARland. Perhaps the most surprising news is non-news, since to the best of my knowledge, no one has torn any cowboy hats of anyone else's heads. Or just did us all a favor and tore the entire heads off. We've seen more meaningless drug suspensions, Travis Kvapil hitting his wife more times than he's hit the wall, a Nationwide championship ruined by people who shouldn't be there, Martin Truex was boned out of a decent ride by Michael Waltrip Racing being morons, and.. well I'm sure some fun things happened. But I can't remember too many off the top of my head. There was that memorable pit stop Clint Bowyer had. There was also the interesting social experiment of sympathy for an injury vs. what the injured person had done to you, where it was revealed that most NASCAR fans committed enough to spend their free time during the week complaining about NASCAR on the internet decided almost unanimously that although it sucked Tony Stewart broke his leg, anyone who ruined the genius invention of Soda Cookies by subjecting the world to that commercial may have had it coming. Although it was certainly amusing when his replacement in the #14 showed up unannounced at the 12 Hours of Sebring.
There was also the sad business of the death of Jason Leffler, sad both because from personal accounts he was a top guy, and also sad because his accident proved the racing media intends to swear anyone who heads to the great superspeedway in the sky before they're 60 must be the greatest lost talent the world has ever seen, devoting paragraphs to emotionally-conflicted predictions of what might have been, rather than warm recollections of exactly what was.
It really was a rough year.
David Ragan won at Talladega, that was pretty sweet. Truex won at Sonoma. Allmendinger won two road course races in Nationwide, and the Trucks went to Eldora and Mosport, and Darrell Wallace won at Martinsville. Decent season, 7/10, would watch again. Jeff Gordon could have had a better year, though.
Here is our track map + grandstands and infield road course:
Cousin Carl Edwards won here in March and Kevin Harvick this race last year. Mark Martin was on pole last time we were at Phoenix and finished a memorable 21st. If there were interesting things to say about Phoenix, this where they would be.
This is pretty much it for the season. Comastead-Boreami next week, and that's all she wrote until the five hunerd next year. We all know what the highlight of the year was.
Max Slapis a close second.
So, what the hell happened last race? You remember, it was Texas! So not a God damn thing.
With two races to go, now would be a good time to learn how points are awarded in NASCAR. Most of you will know already but it's so much easier than the IndyCar system of 7.329 points for staying awake during the driving briefing and 11 43/92nds for going a whole race without picturing Simona naked that it's worth explaining here. NASCAR uses a points system that is inverted from the finishing order, meaning in a race with 43 cars, the winner gets 43 points for finishing 1st and the guy who finishes 43rd gets one point. This is the same for all positions except for the winner, who gets 3 bonus points, so it goes 46 for 1st, 42 for 2nd, 41 for 3rd, and so on, down to 1 points for 43rd. Nationwide and Trucks don't have as many entries, but they use the same system, so if there are only 40 cars in the Nationwide race, last place (40th) gets 4 points. 35 Trucks in the Truck race, last place gets 9 points. You get 1 bonus point for leading a lap, and 1 bonus point for leading the most laps.
The most any driver can get on a single weekend is 48 points (46 for 1st, 1 point for leading a lap, 1 for leading the most laps). NASCAR does a good job of updating points during actual races and telling you where drivers need to finish in relation to each other, but for once in racing this is not a hard system to memorize so you can do your own math during the race.
Dem Standings
(2 races to go for all series)
Sprint Cup
01 JOHNSON, Jimmie (2,342pts, 6 wins)
02 KENSETH, Matt (2,335pts, 7 wins)
03 HARVICK, Kevin (2,302pts, 3 wins)
Nationwide
01 DILLON, Austin (1,107pts, 0 wins)
02 HORNISH, Sam (1,101pts, 1 win)
03 SMITH, Regan (1,053pts, 2 wins)
Camping World
01 CRAFTON, Matt (741pts, 1 win)
02 BUESCHER, James (695pts, 2 wins)
03 DILLON, Ty (694pts, 2 wins)
And now, all the usual features!
Unecessary Danica Mentions
(Unless she crashes or debuts a see-through race suit. These things are harder to predict than they look).
You wish you had..
Take a drink every time..
Useless NASCAR Fact of the Day:
Thanks to my repeated obnoxious postings of this video, it's impossible to watch this .gif without hearing Japanese commentary in your head.
Do you remember..
..anything from this hour-long video of the most cringeworthy things that have ever happened in NASCAR history?
I couldn't get past 3 minutes. If you can top that, I'll paypal you ten bucks.
Anagram of the Day:
Morgan Shepherd / Her damn gophers