While balancing out pros and cons for keeping KHI afloat, Kevin Harvick had one tipping scale reason to NOT having kept the NASCAR Truck Series team going, it would seem, as Kevin put it,
“When your wife tells you she’s not starting a family unless you get out of the race team business, that’s a pretty big factor in things that are going on.”
No pressure there!
But all joking aside, it was a matter of evolving priorities and timing with other events going on around the NASCAR race industry across the different series that helped Kevin pull the plug on KHI.
So much for all the aspirating rumors!
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As you might all be aware, with Clint Bowyer‘s Talladega win last weekend, was the 6th win of the 2011 NASCAR season & 12th win at the track for Richard Childress Racing (RCR). But more importantly, it was the milestone, 100th win for the RCR garage.
This puts RCR at the top of the all-time wins at Talladega.
RCR’s first win was in 1983 at Riverside International Raceway with Ricky Rudd behind the wheel.
Later, the late Dale Earnhardt came along and put himself at the top of the organization’s win chart, with 67 wins. He’s followed by Kevin Harvick’s 18 wins.
Check out some milestones for RCR:
Win #:
- 1: On June 5, 1983 at Riverside with Ricky Rudd.
- 11: RCR won its first Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, on May 25, 1986 with Dale Earnhardt driving.
- 23: RCR won its first Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. On Sept. 6, 1987, Dale Earnhardt led 109 laps en route to his own milestone – victory No. 30.
- 50: On July 3, 1993, Earnhardt won the Daytona International Speedway night race.
- 59: RCR won its first Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Aug. 5, 1995, as Earnhardt won the second running of the Brickyard 400.
- 64: RCR won its first Daytona 500 in an emotional win for Dale Earnhardt on Feb. 15, 1998.
- 84: RCR won its second Daytona 500, with Kevin Harvick on Feb. 18, 2007.
- 100: Clint Bowyer outdrafts Jeff Burton for the Talladega win on October 23, 2011!
NASCAR Bits & Pieces on Twitter
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On Monday, October 17th, twelve NASCAR Sprint Cup teams took to the the track at Charlotte Motor Speedway to run some tests on the EFI (Electronic Fuel Injection) engine systems that will be deployed in the 2012 season.
Of the twelve NASCAR teams that participated in the tests included four teams from Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing, Roush Fenway Racing, Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, NEMCO Motorsports, two (both? All?) teams from Stewart-Haas Racing and Richard Childress Racing.
The fastest on-track car during the test was the No. 6 Roush Fenway Ford with Trevor Bayne behind the wheel. This was also Kasey Kahne’s first chance to wield a HMS car.
“The entire NASCAR community has worked very closely together in developing the EFI system,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice president for competition. “Today was a positive step in the right direction for us. We have associated ourselves with some world-class technology partners, including McLaren, Freescale and Holley, and going to EFI next season is only going to enhance the racing. The horsepower should be about the same, or perhaps slightly more, the cars will be more fuel efficient, and it’s the right thing to do from an environmental standpoint. Plus, it helps us become more relevant with the production cars that our fans drive every day.”
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You would think that being third in the points would hold some merit with folks, but apparently not so with the folks at Turner Motorsports!
TM released Reed Sorenson today from the NASCAR Nationwide team and is now scrambling to get drivers behind the wheel for the rest of the season.
(Well if you hadn’t of…)
Right now they’re looking at Brian Vickers for a few events and they’re not sure about the rest of the season.
Not sure what’s up with that, but there it is.
Also, the team will be losing Dollar General as their sponsor for 2012. So they have double troubles.
But Turner Motorsports isn’t the only team with issues in the NASCAR.
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Yesterday there was a news clip on Sirius XM NASCAR radio about how a Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) rep made the public statement that they’ve come far enough along in NASCAR over the last few years to be considered by some drivers as a viable alternative for a driver contract.
This particular issue was brought up because with Clint Bowyer‘s free agency hitting the rev-limiter for next year, as he’s obviously looking at his options in NASCAR.
Right now, Clint Bowyer drives for Richard Childress Racing (RCR), in the No. 33 Cheerios Chevy. In that car so far this year, he has 3 top-5s and 9 top-10s. His average finish is 15.9th and he’s sitting 12th in the points.
But as Dave Moody pointed out yesterday afternoon, with RPM making the statement that they’re talking with Clint Bowyer, he pondered out-loud if that doesn’t make it more challenging for Clint to negotiate his deal with whomever he’s looking at.
Does this make it harder for Bowyer to wrangle his contract at RCR, talk to other teams period, or not?
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NASCAR Contracts
The bit wait is over and Carl Edwards is staying with Roush Fenway Racing. For a while fans were worried that Edwards was going to be moving on from the organization who went out on a limb and gave him his opportunity to race in NASCAR, but alas, he did.
The consensus was that since we had not heard news of his renewal, that he was moving on. And, as indicated per Sirius-XM, he was representing himself. So I had been wondering what would happen.
Part of that contract renewal also would be that he won’t be running a full-time NASCAR Nationwide Series season, but instead, wants to focus on the Cup side of things.
He’s one of the top go-to drivers in NASCAR, despite his propensity for how he races/treats his competitors, but in the end, he’s chosen to stay where he got his racing career break.
This also frees up other parties around the garage who were wondering if his ride was going to open up or not at Roush Fenway.
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Jayski’s wrote up a bit about the current values of various NASCAR entities based off of a piece from Forbes online. I found it interesting. Forbes reported that NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series team, Hendrick Motorsports was the highest valued team, weighing in with a current value of $350 million, with a revenue stream of about $177M and an operating income of about $18M.
Behind HMS was Roush Fenway Racing, whose estimated value was at $224M, with a revenue of $140M and an operating income of almost $9M.
RFR was followed by Richard Childress Racing, whose value clocked in at $158M, $90M in revenue, & almost $6m in operating income.
At the bottom of the 10 team list was Red Bull Racing, with $58M, $48M 7 -$2.8M.
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For drivers, it’s no surprise to see reported that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the highest paid driver in the series, pulling in $29M annually, last year. His income streams also include a 50% take on winnings & bonuses, plus his huge assortment of product endorsement contracts which include Chevy, Nationwide and Wrangler.
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With wallets thinner than normal these days, times aren’t as flush as we’ve become accustomed to. It’s not just the average Joe, but sports and the industries that support those sports that also have to look at their purse strings these days before they pout support/advertising monies into businesses such as NASCAR. When that happens, some things that we’ve become accustomed to tend to have change in the wind. Those changes can range from the sport itself to the participants like Kevin Harvick, Marcos Ambrose and others within the sport… including fan-favorites.
When we watch auto racing, in my case NASCAR, we see the racing of the high powered machines rubbing fenders and chasing each other to the checkered flag. We don’t always see the complications behind those metallic colored beasts running the track of choice each week. The physics of racing, the conditioning of the drivers, the money behind each team and the human story within each car’s cockpit and each team’s infrastructure. It’s a very convoluted set of relationships that intertwine around and throughout the visuals and experience of the race.
It’s a sad thing in this era as monies have dried up and our sport, NASCAR, is no longer living fat and happy and rolling in dough. Yet the financial crisis has had some good impact, believe it or not: NASCAR started listening more intently to what fans had to say and that was one of many changes that got our attention. When NASCAR was in power and didn’t really need to worry about things, they did what they would do, regardless. But now, as they look to keep the survival of the sport flowing, TV ratings afloat, they find themselves paying attention to the fan has become a paramount focus!
But we also see the stands that appear to be sparsely populated. But that’s not because of the racing. The racing is the best I’ve ever seen in the sport. No, some people just can’t afford to drop money on a race weekend. Especially when sometimes weather threatens & events are nonrefundable.
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After further review from NASCAR’s Chief Appellate Officer, the penalty assessed against Clint Bowyer’s No. 33 car has been upheld as applied.
A few changes were applied to the outline of the penalties:
The Crew chief fine was lowered from $150k to $100k and Chad Haney’s six week suspension was reduced to four.
All this stemming from the penalty assessed the team after the September 19th race where the car body location on the chassis did not meet NASCAR-approved specs.
It’s a shame that Clint Bowyer’s win had to be tainted with this mark. It was a popular win and even though the fans are more than likely still behind him, the poor guy has to have this marring this win.
[ thatsracinluckydog ]
If you were like me, you might have been watching the Twitter feeds of the media that covers NASCAR while waiting for any word on the appeal process for RCR. Some of the Twitter traffic was humorous as they stood around in the rain awaiting the results of the appeal board. We even received live reports of when pizza arrived and who opened the door and what not.
But to the serious matter at hand was the appeal of the penalties handed out to Richard Childress Racing in regards to Clint Bowyer’s No. 33 Chevy having not passed post race inspection after the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire.
In short, the penalty was not rescinded and all original penalties, as originally prescribed, stay as put.
Below is the official release of the Appellants findings:
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