Find out who won a few NASCAR Loopies awards, how many years Sprint has renewed their title sponsorship for and the specials on SPEED that are focused on the NASCAR HoF inductees!
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I have a collection of press releases sitting in my inbox so I thought I’d share some of these items.
Sprint Extends Their Contract
First up, NASCAR and Sprint have extended their relationship with each other, through the year of 2016. And that’s a good thing, considering how some sponsors aren’t fully committing to sponsorships within the sport.
So to Sprint, thank you for re-upping and remaining the entitlement partner to NASCAR.
Sprint Nextel has been the NASCAR title sponsor since February of 2004.
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NASCAR’s Loopies
NASCAR has put together what they call The Loopies, or their fifth annual Best-Of-Loop Data from the 2011 season. That’s right, the statistical look at some milestones in on-track performance.
And they added a new category that is funny and interesting, that has to do with Brad Keselowski.
But first some simple Loop stats:
“There were 131,989 green flag passes this season, the most since NASCAR started recording the stat in 2005. Though not Loop Data, there were also an average of 27.1 lead changes and 12.8 leaders per race, both Cup Series records.”
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We keep hearing it again and again… Kyle Busch is approaching a NASCAR milestone as his next victory in NASCAR is going to be his 100th win in the sport.
It’s understood that having that many wins, period, is pretty big. But if analyzed, as Leon Hammack did over on Working On My Redneck (WOMR), only 22 of those wins are in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Kyle Busch‘s other wins have come from the Truck Series (29) and Nationwidd Series (49).
In fact over on WOMR, Leon makes an interesting point, in that Kyle’s 22 Cup wins compare to his older brother’s 23 Sprint Cup wins or that of Terry Labonte.
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Danica Patrick hired Johnny Benson to help her out at a few tracks during her NASCAR Nationwide Series endeavor. One of those being Las Vegas. It looks like it might be paying off.
Danica Patrick just made a bit of history and finished 4th in the Las Vegas Nationwide Series race and that is the highest NASCAR finish by a woman in a NASCAR national series. She achieved the finish through a combination of digging back from a 2-lap down position and fuel management to finish 4th.
That was great to see her snag a decent finish finally. Mark Martin won the race, this being his 49th win under the 2nd national tier series, the NASCAR Nationwide Series.
But with Mark Martin starting on Sunday in the Cup race, will mark his 1,052nd start in NASCAR. Richard Petty started 1,199 races.
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Best Western International renewed their relationship with Michael Waltrip Racing for the 2011 season.
Best Western has backed Waltrip’s team for the last seven years. Best Western also has a Speed Rewards program for race fans. Check out the Best Western press release below for other info!
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Richard Petty is back behind the business wheel
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Richard Petty is back behind the business wheel of Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) once again. What an odd trail this company has taken even up to the point of having to have Richard Petty himself buy back into his own company. How bittersweet.
Richard Petty, with the funding of two investment companies bought out George Gillett and took the reigns back of RPM. Petty will be chairman and overlook the day-to-day activities of the newly (re)formed NASCAR Sprint Cup race team.
The other investor/owners are Andrew Murstein, and Douglas Bergeron.
In 2011 RPM will field two Fords, the No. 43 driven by A.J. Allmendinger and the No. 9 of Marcos Ambrose. They’ll also keep other aspects status quo, and that includes receiving engines from Roush-Yates, and chassis from Roush Fenway. Oddly, two more conjoined teams. They’ll also stay put in their current facility in Concord, which is owned by Boris Said.
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This article is an opinion on the performance of NASCAR’s Jimmie Johnson and how consistently he has performed since his rookie year, no matter what points system or car type he’s been in. After I’m done, you just might understand why I’ve started see Johnson’s performance for what it is .
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I’ve always been a bit confused about a vocal part of the NASCAR fan base who have such a rage-on for Jimmie Johnson.
It’s amazing how people can dig up the hate on the guy. An acquaintance of mine had spouted his distaste for Jimmie after he won his fifth straight championship. According to his opinion, my peer declared that NASCAR made sure their golden boy won his fifth title and went on to declare that it was a crock of refuse. (But with the grittier word in place of refuse.)
NASCAR’s Golden Boy
But if you really have to know, NASCAR’s golden boy is Dale Earnhardt Jr., who accounts for over 50% of all merchandise sales of diecast, clothing & accessories of the sport. And as his performance has been declining, so too have been the sales, and NASCAR feels that pinch, whether you realize it or not.
If NASCAR were to actually back their “golden boy,” they’d do everything they could to get Dale Eanrhardt Jr. in the winner’s circle and out of his business suit where Dale Jr owns a lot of companies like television production companies, race tracks, race teams, real estate offices, bars and what not. They wouldn’t be applying so much parity to the sport to spread the wealth of winning if they had a “golden boy.”
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On Monday, 11-22, Richard Petty announced that RPM (Richard Petty Motorsports) will be reducing the team down from a four-car operation to a two-car team for the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
The two cars moving forward will be the No. 43 car with A.J. Allmendinger and the No. 9 car with Marcos Ambrose.
All this is good news as A.J. Allmendinger is quietly coming into his own in the Cup series and I didn’t want to see him lose his ride. Plus Ambrose just walked from his team that he’s been with for some time and that was a hard and risky move to make. And for a while, no one knew if it was his best move or not.
After watching both teams perform at Homestead, I think refocusing on the No. 43 and No. 9 cars creates a great promise for both.
I hope the team can muster through 2011 and give both drivers what they need to show what it is they have to offer the sport, behind the wheel.
While other events are going on around NASCAR, the name of NASCAR seems to be running into a performance wall that is not of his doing. Richard Petty Motorsports floats in it’s quandary of the unknowns… Earlier in the week the website for the organization was gone but right now they’ve replaced the blank page with an “under construction” splash page. I have to wonder why you need that for an established website. It can’t be good when your website goes down. Yet Richard Petty Motorsports facebook link returns an invalid response and their twitter account is live and updating as I write this.
Right now Richard Petty is scrambling to pull together some investors… which is just just a sad statement after a NASCAR team was bought by George Gillett then merged with Petty Enterprises then merged with Yates Racing. I know it’s a tough economy but seriously? You’ve merged multiple times and you’re still struggling?
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NASCAR Autograph / Public Appearance Alerts
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If you’re headed to Charlotte this weekend for the NASCAR events and the only night race in the Chase event, you might want to find some extra time to try and check out some of the driver autographs / appearances scheduled for the weekend!
Check it out:
JR Motorsports Autographs:
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Thursday, October 14, 2010 from 10:30 – 11:30am Eastern.
There will be a limit of around 200 guaranteed autograph wristbands and there will be no photo with the driver ops.
Wristbands can be snagged from JR Nation Retail Store at JR Motorsports beginning Wednesday, October 13 at 8:30am, and they’re on a first-come first-served basis.
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I heard this question on the SIRIUS NASCAR channel the other day and it reflected on whether or not Jimmie Johnson would get his 5th consecutive title in as many years and if so, would this make his achievement the greater achievement than say Richard Petty or Dale Earnhardt achieving 7 championships?
I have a real hard time trying to gauge that one. 7 titles “from the day” are impressive and so far, untouched and as far as I can tell, will more than likely stay untouched for a while. I just can’t see Johnson taking the title for the next 4 years to achieve the status of overtaking that magic No. 7. But then again, I’ve been wrong before. (That’s assuming a consecutive streak.)
No, there’s nothing technical I can quote as to why Jimmie won’t win #5, but I can reference an athlete’s worse fear, and that is the dance with lady luck. Lady Luck can have an awful affect on one’s mental outlook after so many moments when you dance with her.
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Jeff Burton is making his 500th consecutive start in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, this Sunday in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway, barring any complications.
This will put him as the 10th-longest streak in series history, and third-longest active streak (Jeff Gordon has run 596 consecutive races; Bobby Labonte has run 595 consecutive races).
Burton began this streak on March 24, 1996 at Darlington Raceway and in the process, has garnered 120 top fives and 222 top 10s.
Below are the 10 longest consecutive start streaks in the NASCAR series history:
Consecutive Starts – NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Driver – Starts
1. Ricky Rudd – 788
2. Rusty Wallace – 697
3. Terry Labonte – 655
4. Dale Earnhardt – 648
5. Mark Martin – 621
6. Jeff Gordon – 596
7. Bobby Labonte – 595
8. Ken Schrader – 579
9. Richard Petty – 513
10. Jeff Burton – 499
