Dale Jr’s tire fails as Dale Jr. Goodyear Commercial Airs—No, Really

Late in today’s Toyota Owners 400 a Fox “side-by-side coverage” segment showed a Goodyear commercial featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr. as a Goodyear tire failed on Dale Jr’s car failed on the track.  Sources close to the situation added “No, really, this actually happened” without any prompting.

“It was so weird, seeing that Dale Jr. Goodyear commercial just as the Goodyear tire was falling apart for him on the track”, said one race fan watching from home, adding, “No, seriously—it really happened—I know it sounds like a joke but this really did happen for serious.”

The ironic moment was a diversion from the usual procession of events in Nascar on Fox coverage, such as announcers mispronouncing Matt Kenseth’s last name and talking about action nowhere to be seen on screen.

“I had kind of dozed off, and I thought for a minute I was hallucinating when I saw that commercial just as the 88 went in the wall”, said a well-respected sportswriter from the Richmond media building.  “I asked the guys around me and they all agreed it actually happened.  Pretty ironic too since I was working on a story on how Nascar is screwed now that Dale Jr’s going to retire.”

Experts couldn’t remember the last time such an event had happened, especially considering that “side-by-side” coverage typically just shows standard green-flag ‘action’ or track workers picking up debris.

When asked about the strange event, Dale Earnhardt Jr. himself replied “That sounds almost as exciting as watching Kyle Larson race!”

Uncle Max: Richmond Weekend Picks

Weekly picks from Spade Racing’s writer/webmaster/janitor Mike Mackler’s uncle.

Well, it finally happened—thanks to a well-timed rain delay, I was finally able to sit down and watch an ENTIRE race, not just the second-half of it.  I gotta say that if you’re not on the Nascar bandwagon (and if you’re not, why the heck are your reading this), you should be.  It might not be wall-to-wall action like football, but its still a damn exciting show.

With that being said, I’ve been trying to gauge interest in the sport this past week and woah—big mistake going online looking for Nascar opinions.  Seems like everybody who likes Nascar also hates Nascar for whatever reason.  If you hate its so much, why do you watch it?  And now we got every Johnny-come-racefan saying that the sport is dead with Dale Earnhardt Jr. about to retire.  Hey, I remember when this happened to Major League Baseball after the strike—people said the sport was dead, but it came back, bigger and better than ever.  Of course, it later turned out that pretty much all the stars were on steroids, so…

Anyways, here’s my picks for the upcoming race weekend at Richmond (total wins in parenthesis):

Xfinity Series ToyotaCare 250 (3 wins): Kyle Larson—just too damn hard to pick against the guy.

Cup Series ToyotaCare 400:  FAVORITE (1 win)—Kyle Larson—Dale Jr.’s favorite driver (apparently) sweeps the weekend.  NEXT FAVORITE (1 win)—Matt Kenseth—always in Junior’s shadow, eh?  DARK HORSE—Dale Earnhardt Jr.—its an all-Junior-related trio for this race!

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Retirement Press Conference—Further Questions

Dale Earnhardt Jr., Nascar’s most-popular driver, officially announced that he will step away from the Nascar Cup Series at the end of the season.  While FS1 provided coverage of the press conference (stepping away from their usual afternoon programming of people angrily yelling at each other), they cut away midway through for in-studio perspective.  Here’s some of the other questions you may have missed:

“Bernie Glenn, News-American—I know that this is somewhat sudden and there’s still lots of moving pieces, and I wouldn’t dare to ask you who would be driving the 88 in 2018, but it’ll be William Byron, right?  I mean, you don’t have to answer it now, but, it’ll be Byron, right?  Don’t say anything if it’ll be Byron.  Wait, you adjusted yourself in the chair—does that mean it’ll be Alex Bowman?”

“Brian Scott, Shore Lodge Dispatch—People have talked about all the big names that have left the sport recently—Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edawrds, myself, and now yourself.  How did my retirement impact your decision?”

“Elton Leeds, IndyCar 360 dot com—This is actually a question for Jenna Fryer—if Dale Jr. decided to run the Indy 500, it would be a big deal because he’s American, right?  RIGHT?!?”

“Scott Wilson, Diecast Collector Digest—Your 2005 MLB All-Star Game special paint scheme 1:24th scale diecast car, some of them have a 3/16th inch top black stripe on the sides, but some have a 1/4th inch top black stripe—was that on purpose to stimulate sales as an intentional ‘error piece’?”

“Car—er, um, Edward Carl, yeah, from some website—Wouldn’t it make more sense to just leave without a farewell tour?”

The OTHER Proposed New Flags for Nascar

Due to today's rainout, there'll be no real "The Burnout" article this week--dang real life getting in the way!!!

In early 2017 Nascar announced the arrival of stage racing, something that made fans say they were “finished with Nascar” for roughly the 12th time.  This also necessitated the institution of a brand-new flag—the “checkered green and white”—to display at the end of the first two stages, the first new flag added to Nascar in decades.  Going with Nascar’s usual plan to introduce as many new aspects to the sport as humanly possible at once, a few other flags were proposed and even designed, only to be tabled till the next time Brian France shows up at a race (so, Daytona in July).  Here’s a look:

COREY LAJOIE’S ABOUT TO SPIN FLAG: meant to be displayed once the flagman notices that the 83 car is starting to try and run far above its quality (and driver’s talent), this will keep the number of multi-car wrecks Mr. Sensitivity cases to a minimum.

GET BACK TO THE STUDIO MIKEY FLAG: going hand-in-hand with Nascar’s new ability to move up start times if weather requires it, this flag will cause Michael Waltrip to cut his “grid walk” short, saving fans, drivers, and visiting celebrities valuable minutes out of their lives.

MEANINGLESS XFINITY SERIES WIN FLAG: although Cup drivers are more limited than ever from ruining Xfinity Series races, this flag would’ve been used whenever one still managed to do so.  Reportedly there were also plans in the works to reduce these drivers’ share of the winner’s purse by simply charging them for “track time”.

FOOTBALL’S ON FLAG: intended for the sport’s later-season races, this flag would let those at the track know that the NFL’s early games had kicked off, thus allowing racers to know that nobody was watching, and that this would be a good time to fight, curse, or flip people off.

Uncle Max: Bristol Weekend Picks

Weekly picks from Spade Racing’s writer/webmaster/janitor Mike Mackler’s uncle.

Another Easter is in the books.  Its never been much of a holiday for me—I’m not that religious, in fact nobody in my family is except for my ex-wife.  So I usually wind up working to get some of that sweet sweet holiday pay.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt to get a few favors in for the boss.

Meanwhile, its also NBA playoff time.  I usually run a playoff pool with some guys I know from college and a few co-workers, but its getting harder to find pro-basketball fans these days.  I don’t get it—if the NBA is this crazy-hot sports media property, where are the fans?  Meanwhile I know at least two other Nascar fans (my nephew Mike and Jerry the store receiver), so why is THAT sport said to be “dying”?  Doesn’t make sense to me.  I’ll still watch just to see how my picks do, and to see what team Kevin Garnett is on this year.

Anyways, here’s my picks for the upcoming race weekend at Bristol (total wins in parenthesis):

Xfinity Series Fitzgerald Glider Kits 300 (2 wins): Erik Jones—with his boss not running, its hard to pick against his protege.

Cup Series Food City 500:  FAVORITE (1 win)—Kyle Busch—picking him again because hey—it’s Bristol, baby.  NEXT FAVORITE (1 win)—Kevin Harvick—AND there could be rain again this weekend.  DARK HORSE—Ricky Stenhouse Jr.—he always seems to run well there anyways.

Easter Weekend Plans

A true rarity comes to the Nascar world this weekend—time off.  With all three national touring series taking the Easter holiday off, here’s a look at what some of Nascar’s biggest stars will be doing with their down-time:

Denny Hamlin—Go through dozens of Facebook posts with “Look—its a Denny Easter Ham-lin!” tags and respond “hahaha, good one”.

Jimmie Johnson—See if “JimmieJohnsonSux.com” is up for purchase again.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.—Get momentarily annoyed that he’s having a slow start to the season, then realize he’s a millionaire doing what he loves with a knockout wife and go back to feeling happy.

Brad Keselowski—Go to a local bar, have guy at bar ask him what its like to drive 206mph, respond by asking guy at bar if we ever truly know what feeling is, since as human beings we interpret “feelings” differently, and thus may not be able to communicate said feelings to anyone but ourselves.

Kasey Kahne—Continue to update resume.

Darrell Waltrip—Resolve to grab Jeff Gordon more in the booth, since it seems to make for more dramatic broadcasts.

Jeff Gordon—Resolve that the next time Darrell Waltrip grabs him during a broadcast to punch his lights out.

Chase Elliott—Write “I will win a race by the end of the season” 100 times on the blackboard in his apartment.

Martin Truex Jr.—Collect four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, and anything with “7”s on them, but continue to blame everything on bad luck.

Paul Menard—Re-sharpen sideburns.

Alon Day—Go to the movies.

Uncle Max—Get called into work—hey, double-time pay is a cruel mistress.

Idiot Claims Jimmie Johnson’s Texas Win was Rigged

Longtime Nascar fan Willie Chester wasted little time going onto various message boards and chat rooms after today’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500, claiming that the win by Jimmie Johnson was fixed by Nascar itself.  Chester is also, according to simple logic, an idiot for making such spurious claims.

Chester claims to have "good info"
that this man is responsible for the 48's
unfair advantage

“Its a damn shame that Nascar gets away with stuff like this, giving another win to the 48 car!”, Chester was heard yelling to nobody in particular in his townhouse.  “Stuff like this happens every week and everybody just goes along with it—damn Nascar!”.  Chester continued to rant despite the fact that allowing Johnson to win benefits Nascar in no way, and in fact hurts the sport somewhat given Johnson’s lack of fan appeal.

“(Johnson) spun out on Friday to let the Hendrick guys get through tech, and now this!”, Chester posted on a Nascar message board, conveniently ignoring that he was agreeing with Kyle Busch, a driver he’s described as “a little snot” on more than one occasion.  “Then he flat-spots his tires and Nascar just let him replace them, can’t say I’m surprised by that!”, Chester used to finish his online screed, ignoring that such a change forced him to start from the back of the pack.

“Seven championships, all because of Nascar putting in the Chase system to a robot like Jimmie can do it”, Chester was seen typing on Facebook, completely ignoring that if Nascar wanted to awaken from its years-long slump, it would “fix” races so that more popular drivers would win.  “He’s not a real man like Richard Petty or Dale Earnhardt Sr.”, conveniently forgetting the irony of how fans of those eras bashed Petty and Earnhardt for manufacturer favoritism and Nascar arranging a ride for him, respectively.

Chester finished up an afternoon of tone-deaf complaining by posting on Twitter that, “There is no WAY I will be watching Nascar next weekend.”

Uncle Max: Texas Weekend Picks

Weekly picks from Spade Racing’s writer/webmaster/janitor Mike Mackler’s uncle.

Ladies and Germs, you are officially reading a piece from the TWO-TIME March Madness Pool winner!  That’s right, I won this year’s bracket challenge at work again, and that makes THREE straight years with a top-two finish.  I’m like the Kyle Larson of my current workplace!

You know, winning in sports gambling doesn’t come easy.  It takes hours of preparation, poring over all the information available, and learning which of the so-called “experts” is worth listening to—THEN, making your decision.  It’s not the kind of thing you can slack off on, like a bar trivia contest or a job search—it takes dedication.  Speaking of which, I hope you’re enjoying my picks so far this year to improve YOUR gambling experience—I gave up my spot in my fantasy baseball league to devote time to this undertaking.  Yeah, not having Players 2000 on the virtual field is a bit of a bummer, but at least I’m applying myself to Nascar now…oh, and possibly getting a few more Sundays off after “selling” my roster to my boss!

Anyways, here’s my picks for the upcoming race weekend at Texas (total wins in parenthesis):

Xfinity Series My Bariatric Solutions 300 (2 wins): Austin Dillon—He’ll even bring his own cowboy hat.

Cup Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 500:  FAVORITE (1 win)—Kyle Busch—a repeat winner shows he doesn’t need to run Xfinity—he just does so to annoy us.  NEXT FAVORITE—Jimmie Johnson—guessing its just about time for Jimmie to get a win, silence all the doubters, and refocus the criticism towards Kasey Kahne.  DARK HORSE—Erik Jones—could rookies shine bright deep in the heart of Texas?

Just In Time for Festival Season!

Exciting Race Startles Fans

Nascar fans worldwide were shocked today to witness something they hadn’t seen in what seemed like months—an exciting race.

“Wow, that was actually really good!”, said occasional race watcher Tina Jones.  “I’d stayed away from most of the races because of that stupid stage racing thing they put in, but you know what—it wasn’t that bad.  All-in-all, I’m glad I saw it today, reminds me why I became a fan in the first place!”

Numerous fans were seen on social media expressing their shock that Nascar could still put on an entertaining, competitive race in the modern era.

“Did U C the race today?  Awesome!”, said admitted Nascar novice Patrick Matthews on Twitter.  “Cars were beat n banging all over, close all day long! Gotta watch this stuff!”

Nascar has dealt with numerous PR black-eyes lately, from sagging tv ratings to an aging fan base filled with angry hardcore supporters.  However, it seems that the sport is making headway and might be working its way out of a years-long slump.

“Today’s race was an example of what Nascar is all about”, said Nascar chairman Brian France from his offices in Daytona Beach.  “This goes to show that we can provide an entertaining product to our stakeholders, viewers, and fans, so long as we’re able to do so.”

Experts unanimously agreed that said progress will be lost after next weekend’s race at Texas.