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?”