February 26th, 2012 
Journo Well, as I write this it’s raining in Daytona and we won’t have a start until Monday at noon 7pm - the first time in the 54 year history of the race. As veteran motorsports writer Ed Hinton wrote:
“What we long called Big Bill France’s deal with God expired Sunday.”
Not exactly what I was looking forward to, but it is what it is. Even if we find disappointment with having to wait another day, the weekend has been anything but.
Some guy named John King won the Truck race and James Buescher went back to front in the space of about 100 feet, past spinning, wrecked racecars, to win the Nationwide race. Both were nothing short of thrilling. And i’ll bet you’re not saying, “John King, who?” anymore.
Another interesting storyline this weekend is the implications of Danica Patrick in the sport. Not since she entered the sport has the mainstream media covered her and the sport quite so much. Her wreck at the Duels, her qualifying run for the Nationwide race and even Miguel Paludo’s hard wreck during the Truck race made the front page of various major news websites.
No matter your feelings about Danica, her media prowess is uncanny – including an interview Friday with NASCAR fan and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams – it’s undoubtedly a benefit to the sport.
And on to tomorrow where anything is liable to happen. If things keep going the way they have, you never know, you might see Tony Raines or David Stremme in victory lane!
Hope everybody has a great Monday!
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Hmnn.., after looking at the weather reports for Monday… I think you guys will be there on Tuesday to race.
-W
Even better now, prime time Monday!
I know it will never happen, but don’t you know that NASCAR would love to have the chance to move up a race to Sat when imminent inclimate weather is on it’s way in? I know, I know it would be a logistics nightmare, but the NFL moves game times on the fly during playoffs.
FWIW: the weather in Daytona Th-Sat was gorgeous and the racing was entertainingly chaotic!
I hope they get it done tonight. I feel so bad for people who couldn’t stay. Guess you should always add one more day to your race trips just in case.
Tony Raines, now that would be wild. Guess Rick Santorum would be happy about that! lol
Wow! You weren’t too far off.
Never ever thought a jet drier would get caught up in a wreck. What a week.
holy smokin’ safety truck batman!
I think maybe the jet truck dryer guys should be fire suited up and helmeted from now on maybe! yikes!
Juan Pablo can’t even drive under caution!
ha ha ha.
All in all, a pretty good race… but I think they needa tweak the aero package some more so the outside can make runs… since I know they won’t get rid of the plates.
-W
p.s. I think they should put the burnt up safety truck in the museum!!
Well, wasn’t that interesting!
is it me or does D.I.S. need to upgrade its firefighting equipment and use trained firefighters. some guys were using powder(correct)on the fire, and some other guys ran up and started putting water on it(incorrect) notice that when they put water on it ,the fire flared back up. the length of time it took to start fighting the fire and the keystone cops attempts at extinguishing the fire were embarrassing.
I was glad to see the 17 in victory lane, but looked to me like Biffle was acting defensively trying to keep the 88 from running the 17 down? And, I’m no JR fanboy…
I say scrap the avgas fueled jet blowers and simply harness all of the hot air that spewed from Darrel and Mikey. That was agonizing and I am convinced that DW has single handedly propelled Danicamania to a new cosmic and utterly nauseating realm. To hear DW state that DP has “taught” these drivers to let go of the wheel and then later contradict himself to state that “he noticed drivers have been doing this for the last year” convinced me that ol DW needs a hard weggie. The best part about actually being a spectator “at” the track is that you don’t have to listen to DW on the tube….what a Nimrod!
Please tell me…when do we get to switch networks?
Woogeroo: I assume you were being sarcastic about Montoya – clearly, his car broke as he was trying to catch up to the pack. That being said, it WAS pretty weird!
John: good point. Why can’t NASCAR have a traveling safety crew like struggling IRL does? Maybe they couldn’t bring enough folks to handle the jet fire, but they certainly can and should have someone to put in charge.
The race: I dunno, I was left kind of empty. As good a driver as Matt Kenseth may be, his win doesn’t have the emotional wallop that a win by Regan Smith or Dave Blaney or Jeff Burton (my favorite) would have had. Second, it just went too long – from Sunday noon til Tuesday early morning. Third, there were a LOT of long cautions, including the red flag. When it finally ended (at about 10 PM for us Californians), I switched off the TV within five minutes and headed for bed. Normally I’ll watch a good half hour of post-race, but not yesterday. With all the time filling (and all the networks fill time pretty well), I had had enough NASCAR to last me … almost a week! Let’s go to Phoenix!
You want trained personnel at a NASCAR event?
That costs money.
I mean, they still don’t have series medical personnel that travel with the circus like F1 does… so any incident that occurs, the doctors on scene have the medical records and a relationship with the drivers.
That costs money and makes too much sense for NASCAR.
I think they should add fuel cells to the jet driers!
-W
The powder extinguishers are great for small fires, ie. the flames on the fuel vapors coming down the track. And yes, when the AFFF foam was applied from the fire hoses it did flame a little larger. This is from the vapors, which is what was burning, being disturbed. However, once the layer of foam did its job, the fire was extinguished. If you look at a timeline of the incident the powder extinguishers had 2 1/2 minutes to do what they did. Once the AFFF foam was applied the fire was extinguished in 1 minute and 27 seconds. My complaint of the incident was the length of time it took to get the fire truck there, connect the hoses, and start PROPERLY applying the foam. Praise GOD the driver had gotten out of the truck before the flames to large, or else turn 3 would have claimed another soul.