Uncle Max: Daytona Weekend Picks

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

Its a time of change in Nascar—changing networks (from Fox to NBC), going back to tracks for the first time all season, and probably about the 8th different guy to drive the 23 car this year.  Now WHY is that?  Who the heck starts a race team and figures, “hey, why don’t we put about a dozen different random guys in the car all year, THAT’LL make us successful!”

Speaking of which, I’ll be one of the many of my friends working the BBQ at my friend Jerry’s Fourth of July Cookout.  I don’t get a chance to bar-be-que as much as I’d like to (my apartment complex doesn’t allow them), but I’m more than willing to help out.  And here’s a word of advice—if someone buys beer-flavored brats and one of the guys at the party is allergic to beer, DON’T try to “burn off all the beer”—you’ll wind up with meat the consistency of Lincoln Logs.

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

Xfinity Series Coca-Cola Firecracker 250 (5 wins)—Justin Allgaier—at least any start-and-parkers can claim they thought it was a 15 lap race.

Cup Series Coke Zero 400:  FAVORITE (3 wins)—Martin Truex Jr.—the king of stages holds off any cinderellas of the restrictor plates.  NEXT FAVORITE (1 win)—Ryan Blaney—how cool would it be to see the 21 car back in Victory Lane in Daytona…well, with someone who actually has a future in racing this time.  DARK HORSE—Bubba Wallace—you just KNOW the 43 team is going to throw everything they have at this race.

Spade Racing Movie Previews: Summer Blockbuster Edition

The heat is on, you’ve got cabin fever, and there’s only one place to go—the movie theater.  That’s why Hollywood is pumping out its biggest movies of the year in the summertime.  Here’s a few coming out soon with a Nascar theme to them:

Baby Driver—William Byron comes to the Cup Series.

13 Minutes—Computer simulations show that, without restrictor plates, the average lap around Daytona or Talladega would be 13 minutes long—10 seconds to go around the track, followed by 12 minutes and 50 seconds of clean-up.

The Little Hours—Nascar’s devotion to airing on FS1 (instead of Fox Business Network) sees them run Truck Series races at 2am EST.

Spider-Man: Homecoming—Tony Stewart attempts to climb the catch fence again (five hours long).

A Ghost Story—The awkwardness of dealing with when Carl Edwards comes back to visit Joe Gibbs Racing.

Wish Upon—Elliott Sadler, Justin Allgaier, and Michael Annett all allow themselves to believe they have a shot at the 88 car in 2018.

Fox Places Darrell Waltrip Back Into Cryogenic Storage

With another year of Nascar on Fox in the books for the Cup Series, Fox Sports executives were seen completing the arduous annual process of placing color commentator Darrell Waltrip intro cryogenic storage for the rest of the year.

“Yep, its become like clockwork—go to Sonoma, do the road course, then put Ol’ DW in the freezer box”, a Fox employee told an outside media member who inquired as to why liquid nitrogen was being sprayed onto the Nascar Hall of Famer.  “This is actually the easier part—the hard part is making sure you have the blocks of dry-ice in just right for when we seal up the container—get it wrong and you wind up spending all of January looking for replacement fingers.”

Despite the process having been repeated after Fox’s portion of the broadcast season every year since 2001, Fox still put out a press release to allay any fears that Waltrip might be frozen against his will.

“We appreciate Darrell Waltrip for his incisive commentary on our Nascar on Fox team, covering drivers from Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Danica Patrick, and we figure that with the use of cryonics, he can continue to be a part of our broadcast team for years to come”, the statement said.  “The process is foolproof, his family is more than cooperative, and besides, its not like he has anything else to do, anyways.”

For his part, Waltrip seemed to be preoccupied as his core body temperature was lowered, wondering if his brother Michael really did make a drunk driving joke during the pre-race grid walk.