Now let’s move on to the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Dover.
HOORAH to Clint Bowyer for winning the Dover 200 last Saturday. It was a nice belated birthday present for his team owner Richard Childress who turned 64 earlier in the week. It’s also a major shot in the arm for Childress Racing an organization that is not exactly enjoying the 2009 season.
WAZZUP with Brad Keselowski’s horrible day during this race? First he attempted to make a pit stop, totally missed the pit road entrance and had to drive around he track and try it again. Then, in an effort to get it right, he got caught speeding down pit road and wound up restarting the race in 18th one lap down. Then, later in the race, he managed to hit the rear of Denny Hamlin’s car which caused Hamlin to crash hard into the wall and lose a potential top five finish.
At the end of this race there was a brief scuffle between the two drivers on pit road. Whether or not that’s a HOORAH or a WAZZUP depends upon your personal point of view of this type of activity. It’s safe to assume that NASCAR officials were yelling WAZZUP. It’s also relatively safe to assume that the ESPN2 broadcast producer was yelling HOORAH.
Quite frankly, yours truly was yelling HOORAH. Sometimes these race broadcasts have a tendency to become a little overloaded with vanilla flavoring. Sometimes covering vanilla ice cream with hot fudge and sprinkling some “nuts” into the mix is a good thing.
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HOORAH to Johnny Sauter for his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series win that came last Saturday in Las Vegas. The win moves Sauter up to fifth in the championship standings and is going to be a huge factor in his team winning the Raybestos Rookie Of The Year title.
Another HOORAH goes out to Thor Sport Racing. Their drivers, Sauter and Matt Crafton gave the team a one-two finish at Las Vegas.
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The final thoughts.
The final HOORAH of the week goes to crew chief Chad Knaus for suggesting that NASCAR should look into mid week racing. That comment was made during his weekly appearance on “This Week In NASCAR” aired by the Speed Channel last Monday. A lot of long time fans, including yours truly, who are considered to be old school, late fifties and up, can testify that during the early years of NASCAR there actually was mid week racing.
In his commentary Knaus suggested that a race on a Wednesday or Thursday night could possibly counteract a no win weekend television ratings war with NFL and college football. There were some numbers from the Nielsen Ratings Service, released on Tuesday that reinforces Knaus’ point. The ratings from Sunday’s race at Dover were 6.9 percent down from the same race one year ago. However, those low numbers were reported to be 8 percent higher over the opening Chase race from New Hampshire held the week before.
Those ratings numbers now leads to the final WAZZUP of the week which is being sent to NASCAR Chairman Brian France. The NASCAR Czar, also on Monday, was quoted as saying that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the ratings at this point in time and pointed out that the competition level, plus the abundant story lines, from this year’s Chase will help raise the television numbers.
You know who is worried about those television ratings? That would be the executive in charge of programming for the ESPN2 network. That’s the guy who, very likely, spends a lot of time sitting in his office mixing top of the line scotch whiskey and Bromo Seltzer into the same glass while trying to figure out how to explain the NASCAR numbers to the upper echelon of the network’s chain of command.
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