After a week off for NASCAR, we’re coming up and looking at the Brickyard 400 at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Coming into the race weekend, we have a few bits of information to think about and the weekend schedule.
First up,
the Brickyard 400 Race Weekend Schedule
- First Practice is at 1pm ET, on Speed.
- Second Practice is at 3pm ET, again on Speed.
Saturday, 7-30
- Third Practice session is at 10am ET on ESPN2
- Qualifying is at 2pm, ET on ESPN2
Sunday 7-31
- 1:00pm ET, the Brickyard 400 live on ESPN
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Saturday (June 25) at the NASCAR Sprint Cup series practice session at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma was a very productive day for myself. I was doing some work for myself and my buddy Charlie, over at On Pit Row. Part of that was doing what I do best and that’s take pictures. And boy did I.
I took over 400 pictures of the cars, the drivers, the track and I had much perusing to do to filter out what I wanted to show you guys.
Here are a few examples of what I snagged:
Juan Pablo Montoya, pre-practice cell phone call
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This weekend NASCAR visits Southern California and races at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. But living in CA, I was wondering if they’d get the race in, considering the way the weather has been! Last weekend was a pretty torrential downpour and storms keep creeping down from Northern California. I have to pipe in about the rain… my wife ran the L.A. Marathon last weekend. I was watching remotely from home. The weather site I was watching said light rain all day on the website. But the videos of palm trees leaning over from the persistent gail force winds that brought down the most rain that L.A. has seen since the 40′s, or forced runners to DNF due to hypothermia doesn’t constitute light rain in my book! LOL. I’m just sayin!
I hope NASCAR has better luck with the weather!
Rain and Track Seepage
Friday’s practices at the Auto Club Speedway and such were delayed due to what is known as weepers, or little bits of leakage or drainage issues from under the track surface. Crews cut into the track surface to open up some drying vents.
Practice finally kicked it in gear, two hours later than normal. Of course that included a wreck from Kyle Busch that sent his team scrambling for their backup car.
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a Daytona International Speedway hosted the Daytona 500 last weekend and was also the spot to see the first official public appearance of the Transformer 3 Autobot Wreckers Roadbuster (No 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevy), Top Spin (No. 48 Jimmie Johnson Chevy) and Leadfoot (No.. 42 Juan Pablo Montoya Chevy). Also in attendance were was director Michael Bay and actors Josh Duhamel and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third film in the Transformers movie franchise that Michael Bay has brought to life.
Last Sunday the Daytona 500 went into the record books and produced a great win with the 20-year-old Trevor Bayne won the race in his 2nd ever start in NASCAR. It was a very popular victory as he was driving for a great, established team in the storied No. 21. During the race, we even got a taste of a new movie trailer for Transformers 3, featuring the Wreckers in a few scenes.
But before the race, Michael Bay, Josh Duhamel and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were making the media rounds and prior to the race, being the Grand Marshals of the event, they got make that classic call, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”
'Transformers 3' Director Michael Bay, actor Josh Duhamel and actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley pose before the Daytona 500
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Michael Bay & company have landed Bill Fagerbakke to voice the Jimmie Johnson No. 48 Autobot in Transformers 3, (Dark of the Moon). According to various sites, they’re surmising that the NASCAR themed* Transformers could be The Wreckers team of commandos.
NASCAR In Transformers 3
The three NASCAR teams involved in Transformers 3 are the Rick Hendrick owned No. 48 Lowe’s team helmed by Jimmie Johnson, another Rick Hendrick owned team, the No. 88 AMP Energy drink Chevy, helmed by Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing No. 42 which is usually driven my Juan Pablo Montoya… on the track that is. (No Dale Jr. is not part owner of the third team. His step-mother is. Dale Jr. owns a few tracks, a few bars, a few race teams, a real estate brokerage and such of his own, but he’s not part of the No. 42 team.)
Transformers 3 No 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr NASCAR Cup Car
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I tried chatting the teams up about the involvement of their cars a few months back but they wanted to stay tight-lipped about the project so not much could be gleaned from that angle, but it’s great to see NASCAR getting some notoriety in a major film.
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2/20/11 update: I presumed they were Decepticons because they usually get the cool cars, but it turns out these are the Wreckers team and are Autobots.
Finally… I found a few more images of NASCAR Cup cars from Hendrick Motorsports and Earnhardt Ganassi Racing in the forms of the No. 88 of Dale Earnhardt Jr, the No. 48 of Jimmie Johnson and the No. 42 of Juan Pablo Montoya from the set of Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Dark of the Moon. All Chevy’s which makes sense, being that all the Transformers are of a Chevy ilk. I’ve sent emails to all the shops but they’re pretty busy right now and no one has answered me. (Or my spam filter cut them out! DOh!)
These mean looking cars are representing pretty good here though they aren’t going to pass any body template any time soon. Then again, go ahead, try and fine them! Check it out! And no Tom Cruise. Just exploding, butt kicking alien robots. Nice!
Transformers 3 No 48 Jimmie Johnson NASCAR Cup Car
Apparently Jimmie can only drive fraking fast, but can’t parallel park!
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NASCAR Logo - National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing
Next year NASCAR is headed to using E15 fuel in the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series. E15 fuel is a corn based fuel and it has reportedly generated more horsepower for teams that have tested it.
In the same article there was chat on what they can do to improve TV ratings of the sport. Of note, NASCAR Chairman Brian France said that the racing is great and that over time, that will take care of itself. When questioned on other factors like changes to the Chase, he declined to answer that.
Bruton Smith chimed in on fixing TV ratings and said he doesn’t believe that ratings are down 25%, but then added that he doesn’t feel that running at 1 p.m. is doing the sport any favors. With that, he meant being up against the biggest ratings catcher on weekend TV, football. Football is the dominant TV sport. He thinks starting at 2 p.m. might be the answer as people get tired of watching football after an hour of the sport is on TV.
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I’ve recently become addicted to the humor and action of the Transformers franchise and now, it’s great to get some more news from the set of the Micheal Bay‘s Transformers 3 movie and that news is in the form of new set images from the Detroit shooting location of Transformers 3.
One of the new images is that of a huge rocket car transformer which I presume is a bad guy… a Decepticon. They always seem to have the coolest toy looks!
But my jaw dropped when I thought I saw NASCAR colors on some transformers!!!
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The Kobalt 500 as a tale of attrition as tires eliminated one after another competitor at Atlanta Motor Speedway. I was surprised because we’ve not heard or seen much about tires this season, but now we have Atlanta. At least it’s not track surface chunks or stray running caution lights. It’s something that someone had some control over, when you dwell on it.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. led the pack to the first green flag start, but Kyle Busch just took the lead from him and spanked Jr. Dale should have taken the outside line to start the race maybe. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered actually.
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As it was like with Danica Patrick’s decision to join NASCAR, we were left in the dark until the last second. It would seem, so too, are we left in the dark about her plans to run the Daytona 500.
With no decision made yet, she will be at least competing in the ARCA Daytona race. It’s after that race that she’ll be leaning towards whether she’s ready to tackle the Nationwide Daytona event.
In the meantime, I caught a snippet of a press session she was holding the other day where she asked the media to back off and let her do her thing.
LOL.
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