Jay Busbee from Yahoo’s From the Marbles joins the show – from the track – to talk about the Daytona 500 and the week in NASCAR. We end up talking a lot more about potholes than I ever expected.
Was is just a string of bad luck, or was there something NASCAR could have done about the giant holes in the track that held the race up for nearly three hours? And while we’re all making Pothole 500 jokes this morning, is there something more serious about the issue. Jimmie Johnson was interviewed after the race and mentioned that when his tire went over the pothole, it was never the same, intimating that he was bounced from the race early because the track screwed with his car.
We talk about the race, and how NASCAR reacts when someone like Jamie McMurray — a relative unknown in a sport with some enormous names — wins their biggest race. Is this good for the sport to bring another name to the forefront, or would they really have rather seen Dale Jr. pass him on the last turn? Well, I think I know the answer to that, but the point still remains about McMurray; is he the type of guy NASCAR wanted to win?
The guy did cry during his interview, which the FOX booth quickly excused and applauded to likely avoid the pre-emptive ‘sissy boy’ comments from traditionalists.
We touch on the green, white, checkered, repeat situation and wonder if that’s good for the race — close at the end in a shootout — or if that devalues the other 490 miles or so, making it all posturing for position for a sprint at the end. Is there a way to fix that? I bet Kevin Harvick, who was winning before the second overtime caution came out, wishes there were.
Oh yeah, five graphs in and I haven’t mentioned Danica Patrick at all. We talk about her week, the media crush that comes down on an event like her first stock car event and get into a lengthy discussion about why it was such a big deal that she was moving to stock cars from open wheel. People were talking about her transition like she was going from riding go carts to Sprint Cup cars. Isn’t she a professional driver at the highest level already? Is it THAT different to go from open wheel to NASCAR that they need to make this big a deal? And I always thought, growing up, that open wheel racing was more difficult than NASCAR, but the latter was just more popular in America. We talk about that, and if my old assertion is wrong.
More on the media side of things as well, specifically how the throngs of press were handling the wait during the the patchwork. What did Jay think about FOX’s coverage of the delay? And I can’t believe Digger didn’t come up.
Last, we talk about the sponsorship deals and if the sport gets a cut, or if each driver works out their exclusive deals with sponsors without NASCAR getting a piece. Either way, that’s a lot of revenue driving around the track smashing into each other.
Tags: Danica Patrick, Daytona, Jay Busbee, NASCAR
Good job Jay. DIS track repair crew should have used all the “marbles” up in the turns and melted them down to fill Potholio.
Liking the new look Dan. Keep up the great work!
New site looks great, Dan — let’s hope the comments section catches on. It’ll be a great way to keep the conversation going.
As for the Danica issue, if you removed the gender issue from the conversation, there would be little to no issue with her arrival in the Nationwide series. The greater Nascar enterprise would quite happy to bring in an IRL driver with her resume and list of sponsors directly into the Sprint Cup level. She’s a career professional driver who has the physical ability to handle these cars — there are other drivers of similar stature (Kasey Kahne for one) who are quite successful. The “these cars are a completely different beast” argument doesn’t hold water.
For the record, the Sprint Cup cars do have power steering.