Shifting? We don’t need no stinkin’ shiftin’. We need Fast Laps!
by Charlie Turner
I'm Charlie Turner co-host of the syndicated, mostly NASCAR radio show On Pit Row. Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. Oh yeah, Steve is an idiot.
June 25, 2007 1:59 pm CDT 4 CommentsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
So we take a last sip of California Chardonnay and turn our thoughts to long straights and left turns….only.
Nice job by Juan Pablo Montoya becoming the first driver to start worse than thirteenth at Infineon Raceway and winning anyway. Too bad for Robby Gordon, who dominated the first half of the race and got caught out on pit strategy. Another good run by that team though. Tough luck too for Jamie Mac, who showed me that the last two qualifying performances at Sonoma were no fluke.
Speaking of no flukes - that Fast Lap last week was pretty good. At least it was if you enjoy the entertaining nature of Steve’s wacko opinions. Just like Juan Pablo, let’s go for two in a row. Remember, we want to use your best responses, offensive or defensive, on the next ON PIT ROW radio show!
1) Is Juan Pablo Montoya’s win at Infineon a surprise?
2) With so much past road racing experience at Roush Racing, why can’t they win a road course race?
3) Did TNT really think their “in car reporter” was going to work better than it did?
4) Was the decision to replace Aric Amorola with Denny Hamlin in the middle of the Busch Race the correct one?
Now we go to something completely different. Well, sort of. They will be driving those strange cars with the wingy things again, this time in New Hampsha’. Tryin’ their best to turn some Fast Laps.
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4 Responses to “Shifting? We don’t need no stinkin’ shiftin’. We need Fast Laps!”
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About the Fast Lap blog
Fast Laps! Welcome to the On Pit Row Fast Lap blog. Every week On Pit Row we pose four Fast Lap questions. Four corners - four questions. On the radio show, Steve and I have 30 seconds each, to give our response to each of the four. If you are a listener, you already know that we rarely agree on any answer. The Fast Lap is NASCAR debate. Hannity and Colmes. Lincoln and Douglas. Wronkowicz and Turner. OK, maybe not Lincoln and Douglas. We have more fun than Lincoln and Douglas. Here's the challenge. We will post our Fast Lap questions some time each Monday. Four questions on topical NASCAR related subjects. Your mission is to comment with your answers and each answer is limited to 100 words. The questions, answers and comments will form the basis of this blog for that week. Comment on the Fast Lap questions. Comment on the comments. Insult the commenters. Witty ridicule is rated at least as highly as cogent commentary. Just remember that you have limited words and penalties are severe. Or not. Steve and I will select worthy blog entries to be featured on an edition of On Pit Row. That's the plan. I'm sure we will have some other things to post about each week but the intention is to pose most posts as questions. I want to argue with you! Bring it on.
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Damn, guess I burned up the spanish humor a week early…
1) Not really shocking, considering this is one of his strong points. That he did it in a Ganassi car is, but Ganassi isn’t on a rebound.
If you cross the finish line first, doesn’t that mean you have the overall fastest car? Poor Robby, if it weren’t for that post-race comment I’d have given him some kudos.
2) They’re that far behind the competition at the moment from Jack’s arrogance about the testing policy.
3) Well, they want to be everybody else but TNT. I’m glad the stretch is almost over. ESPN has been on the ball (mostly) since their big screw up at Bristol, and I could listen to the Doc all day.
They conned LarryMac into doing the dirty (how did he get that one by Fox?), they’re copying ESPN’s In-Race Reporter, they tried to get a fancy set-up like Fox, but they forgot one important thing: Covering the damn race.
4) That was a case of pure retardation right there. (Can I say that?) Aric was there to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and he was fresh out of bubble gum. He was getting it done, but the Sponsor trumped it. The team didn’t want to do it, Denny didn’t want to do it, and Aric sure as hell didn’t want to do it either. My “guess” is that Rockwell called “the Boss”, and the “Boss” made it happen.
If I was Aric, I’d be looking for a new deal.
Whether he was “technically” a replacement/fill-in or not, once you make the call to put ‘em in the show, you should stick with it. Especially if they’re running in the top 5 and lead most of the laps up to that point.
… … … …
Here’s an aside (I know, I always have one):
Why isn’t anybody talking about the number of “incidents” caused by Todd Blodine Saturday night? Look out boys, he’s trying to qual for the Brickyard.
…
How about this one: Do you think Rusty is tired of reporting his boy is around in every week? Man, talk about keeping your composure in the TV booth. I couldn’t do it. As soon as the mic was off me for a second, I’d be on that radio faster than a hottie on Junior.
1- Juan was supposed to win this race. Every “expert” in the world said if he were going to win a race it would be this one. Talk about pressure. This win just proves again what we all learned in fist grade–the race doesn’t always go to the swiftest.
2- Roush’s best road racers aren’t on the payroll any more. Mark Martin is gone and obviously didn’t pass along his wisdom before he left. Would someone please take Matt Kenseth to a driving school to learn what a road course looks like–so far he only knows what a gravel trap is. That boy was positivly embarassing.
3- Bulletin-TNT–Sonoma is hilly. As long as the NASCAR boys have been playing out there, you would think that someone would know that you loose communication from parts of this race track. NASCAR wouldn’t let Kyle play during green flag runs. These alone add up to a poorly thought out plan at the least and a nightmare when you add in the f-bomb that was dropped during a TAPED replay. Sheesh-what was they thinking?
4- Aric got screwed–plain and simple. Sponsorship dollars must be hard to come by for the JGR Busch team as someone with some balls (JD Gibbs) should have told Rockwell what was best for the sport, team and Rockwell was to keep Aric in the car. It’s not like Aric isn’t part of this race team. He drives that car on a semi-regular basis, or at least did until this deal blowed up. If David Gilliland can turn one Busch win into a full time cup ride, I think you should be able to turn being screwed by a sponsor, enroute to a technical win, into a full time cup deal. Try DEI, they’re looking.
Well, well, well. Looks like I’m on the button. Raise.
1. Let’s see if Steve can figure out what I’m saying today. Luke. Que pasa. Anytime any particular driver wins any particular race it is surprising. There is no clear-cut favorite to win a Cup race. Just too many realistically possible winners each week. What Juan did was beyond winning a race that all the “so called experts” predicted he would win. They were probably the same S C E’s that predicted his failure. It was a great win and he has swept the NASCAR road races so far this year. But saying it was expected, makes it sound easy. It was not easy.
2. I hate agreeing with Steve. But it won’t last long. Roush was a great raod race team when Tommy Kendall was winning every race he drove. Mark Martin was very good. Jamie Mac and Cousin Carl have showed well the last couple years but Biffle, Ragan and especially Kenseth are comparative dogs on the road.
3. What the hell were they thinking and who got fired. The best part was Kyle’s f-up.
4. I think most of the “blame” if there should be any, falls on Hamlin. It just looks to me like he tried to do too much and ran out of time. Maybe he never caught up with that alarm clock. Aric will end up on the top side of this deal. He won the pole and the race, got taken out in the lead, before anything bad could happen to him to cost him the win and now he has Gibbs IOUs to cash in down the road. Every veteran driver that I’ve heard or seen, except the Speed pre-race guys, thought it was just a replacement driver deal. They’ve been happening since NASCAR was a….for a long time.
Luke, I didn’t see the Todd Bodine incidents. I don’t know how I missed them but since this is one of your issues, I will try to pay more attention. I admit to a positive bias towards Bodine. He has been a guest on the show and was a very good interview. But I’ll be watching and I’ll be at INDY, too. With the dummy.
I agree it has to be tough for Rusty. He’s the car owner too.
I’m wondering why we’re not seeing TNT being fined yet? I’m sure the FCC will be all over it.
What I can’t recall though is whether or not it was completely aired. There was a bleep, but was it late?
I don’t see any driver penalties coming out of this, TNT at least covered their tails on that one by their “We apologize… yadda yadda yadda… pull in so much team communication… yadda yadda yadda… can’t determine exactly which driver it was… yadda yadda yadda…”
It was pretty funny though. Cars are wreckin and if “I” were in that situation that’s probably about the same thing I’d have said. Maybe add in a flying somewhere.
But, lesson learned. An important one at that. These guys really are human.
I’ll bet that 80% of the people that would raise a stink about it have said worse.