The race has been cancelled. The remaining drivers drove a five-lap salute to Wheldon around the raceway to honor him.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Wheldon’s family and friends.

[source] [photo]

#1: Who is Kyle Busch?

Well kids, he’s the jackass race car driver who thinks he’s special, you know like the people who park next to the curb at the grocery store while they run in to buy whatever it is that people with fancy cars buy.

“Ah”, said the oldest, “he must have an expensive car”.

Righty-o chap. He does have that.

Kyle says he was test driving a new Lexus and got carried away and he’s sorry for his ” lack of judgment”.  Oh, it’s okay Kyle. I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it.

#2: How fast was he going?

He was driving 128 mph in a 45 mph zone. Yes, kids, he was driving super fast. In fact he was driving 33 mph over the “reckless” driving statute in North Carolina. That is a mere 83 mph over the posted speed limit.

Kyle only had his license suspended for 45 days. If it was me, they would have locked me up and thrown away the key, no matter how many times I said I was an excellent driver. Just because he drives fast cars for a living doesn’t mean that he should be driving a fast car on the mean streets of the city or the suburbs or even a country road. He’s just another dumb son of a gun who thinks he’s invincible and gets away with it.

#3: Does he still get to race cars?

Yes, kids. Yes he does.

How does that work? You get your driver’s license suspended, but you can still drive? I don’t get it.

Source

Photo

Joey Logano, left, and Kevin Harvick when they were playing nice.

I don’t understand NASCAR and I doubt I ever will.  I get dizzy watching my daughter run track.  And, she’s really slow.  Also, my favorite button on our remote is “Mute”, so any sport that involves wearing ear plugs is not for me.  Except for going to the gun range.  I like shooting things.

But, when the boys of NASCAR start talking smack and act more catty than the women of Dynasty, count me in.  I enjoy watching a good train wreck.  This is why I DVR Jersey Shore.

Although it is clear to me that the drivers believe their 3400 pound cars are penile extensions, apparently it isn’t cool when you whack someone with it, as Kevin Harvick did to 20-year-old Joey Logano Sunday at Pocano.  After the race, Logano whacked him back when he said, “It’s probably not his fault, you know, his wife wears the fire suit in the family and tells him what to do.”

I think young Logano is overestimating the power of a wife.  I can’t even get my husband to take out the trash, let alone wreck his car into someone.

[Photo]

[Source]

Call me uninformed about race car driving – really, you should – but I had no idea she wasn’t racing NASCAR yet. I could blame it on a world and a news media that would rather I focus on her pinup appearances and signature Hot Wheel ™ cars (the Danicar, naturally) than learn that IndyCar is different but it’s really my fault for not knowing enough about car racing.

I have started reading up – on breaks from drawing wild, unfounded conclusions about her jumpsuit.

This woman is totally sponsored by GoDaddy, and she can also snag you a Slurpee ™ and a Big Bite ™ for your next domestic automobile or airplane trip, in your lime green dreams.

Right, Saturday’s wreck (do you see how this gets really complex, really fast? And I’m not even dealing with the pinup stuff. Or my feelings about the Danica section of the GoDaddy Web site or the horrible music that automatically plays when you go to her official site, neither of which I can bring myself to link. The further down the Internet rabbit hole you go, Danicamania – and of course its backlash – gets pretty deep.)

Patrick was, first of all and most importantly, unhurt in the crash that happened on the 69th lap of the Drive4COPD 300 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday. She was coming off of a first try at stock-car racing the week before that was by all accounts successful, a 6th place finish that helped her earn a spot in this race. Her car, owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., had a little trouble early on but she made it through a pit stop only to get hung up in the wreck.

She was lime green philosophical in the aftermath.

“It’s important to have realistic expectations,” she said. “There’s going to be spikes in performance, I don’t doubt that. But there’s also going to be tough days. And today, I would say, was more of a tough day.”

Web chatter calls out Patrick’s unfounded media domination of auto-racing while it thanks her and Junior too for giving a supposedly slumping scene some juice.

And while her image and commercial choices have nothing to do with winning races, she was still the first woman to win an IndyCar race. There’s no telling how things will go with NASCAR.

I may lack tolerance for the flashy stuff but I never discount ambition.

And I also need to figure out if a male driver gets this much flak for wrecking on his first time out in the biggest league, no matter what he’s wearing. Give me time.

[Source]

[Photo]

As a woman I should probably rise up and cheer. Hooray! She is the first female IRL winner. It even makes me feel a little bit better about the whole misogyny in sports media thing.

How come instead I just keep thinking, Oh good, maybe now she won’t have to act slutty for money anymore.

Poor Danica. I think it is too late for you to ever win with the ladies. I know I can’t take you seriously. This isn’t even the sleaziest picture of you I could find.

There is another great post on this subject over at The Big Lead.

So, to the best of my ability, I start to explain the pace car – the lapping, some basics about racing that I was borrowing from my days as an old school Indy Car fence hanger.

Cuz I’m an Indy Car Girl. Open Wheel racing for me. Life Begins at 225 MPH etc etc etc etc.

And then, they started wearing THIS around the house all the time.
I don’t even know which DRIVER’s hat this is….Kasey Kahne? Why do I know his name?

Oh shit.

Nascar just came to my house.

OUT VILE DEMON! OUT I SAY!

Why would you kick a horse in the stomach? On TV.

So Victor Molina got suspended 30 days and fined $1000. It doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for kicking an animal – especially since he works with horses every day. But he says he was surprised at the severity of the penalties.

Wait until he finds out about karma.

In some specific Indy Car news, I’m quite put out with the Rahal Letterman team as they are the ONLY team I can possibly root for (Hoosier requirement, they come to your house and take your kids if you root for anyone else) – anyway they’re stuck with a turd for a chassis – the Panoz. The acquired the superfly Dallara earlier this week and despite the fact that it has either rained or been to cold to run MOST of the week they didn’t make the change to the better chassis. Danica Patrick is running the fastest times on the Panoz but Dan Wheldon is kicking it in the Dallara. It’s a similar phenom to the year that Penske showed up with the Mercedes engines which sounded completely different (you could hear their scream a mile away) and kicked everyone’s asses until the next year when everyone made the adjustment. Apparently the problem with the Panoz is that it reacts poorly to the corners at Indy in combination with the harder slicks the indy cars are racing on there.

Ummmmmm – not like the turns at Indy have changed people. Bad choice Letterman/Rahal team. But I still love you!