Uncle Max vs. Last Year’s Winners: New Hampshire

With a surprisingly slow race weekend upon us, I thought I’d take a look at where I stood a little past midway of this crazy year.

WORK: Since I’m “essential” things have been pretty much the usual for me.  Well, busier than usual, and a bit more overtime than usual, but usual nonetheless.  I can’t do my job from home so I’ve wound up developing a very specific taste in masks (my favorite are cloth ones with just a little bit of give in the elastic).

SOCIAL: There really IS no social life going on for anyone, is there?  All my fantasy leagues have bene cancelled—because who wants a baseball league for two months?—and our football draft might have to move 100% online for the first time ever.

ROMANTIC: Nothing doing, although at least I have a legitimate excuse this time.

GAMBLING: On the plus side, virtually no sports and casinos being closed means less of a chance to blow my hazard pay.

TRUCK SERIES Kansas 200 (3 wins)—off

XFINITY SERIES Kansas Lottery 250 (2 wins)—off

Sunday CUP SERIES Foxwoods Casino 301.  LAST YEAR’S WINNER (4 wins) Kevin Harvick.  FAVORITE: (2 win) Denny Hamlin—a way to make it up to Denny for not picking him last Thursday.  NEXT FAVORITE: (1 win) Martin Truex Jr.—home track.  DARK HORSE: (0 wins) Tyler Reddick—youth served in a shocker.

2020 Donruss Panini Nascar Cards Unboxing PACK 16

Continuing a tradition of limited esteem, Spade Racing bought, unboxed, and unpacked a sealed box of 2020 Donruss (Panini) Nascar trading cards.  Join us as we go through each eight-card pack to find the good, the bad, and the downright weird.

PACK 16—Three Ryans, Two Newmans, and a Young Man

Another pack with no legends, and—frankly, not much success barring Ryan Blaney’s “Contenders” card.  We also get the same exact photo of Ryan Newman rendered two different ways and the very young Sam Mayer looking unusually smug.

FIRST THING’S FIRST: There it is, folks—the classiest the Oscar Mayer logo will ever look.

SECOND LOOK: Bubba Wallace’s awesome Victory Junction scheme gets a closer look here.  So glad that World Wide Technology stepped up with their donation, lest the Petty charter go the way of RWR.

TO THE BACK: Well, of course Ryan Blaney has the brightest future of anyone at Team Penske—he’s the youngest one there who isn’t spinning cars around on a regular basis in the Xfinity Series.

FINAL SCORE: 1 DNQ out of 10

2020 Donruss Panini Nascar Cards Unboxing PACK 15

Continuing a tradition of limited esteem, Spade Racing bought, unboxed, and unpacked a sealed box of 2020 Donruss (Panini) Nascar trading cards.  Join us as we go through each eight-card pack to find the good, the bad, and the downright weird.

PACK 15—The Dream, The Rheem, and a Painful Scream

Its all modern (and mostly young) drivers in this pack.  Ryan Preece gets the “New Age” treatment here—remember when he fulfilled his dream by getting a Cup ride, then everyone moved on almost instantly to Matt DiBennedetto?  Shoulda held onto an Official Underdog of Nascar tag like Ryan Sieg.

FIRST THING’S FIRST: A great pic of one of my favorite annual paint schemes—the all-Pennzoil look that usually runs at Las Vegas.  Much better than the Pennzoil-Shell “Haha We Got You Sunoco” scheme.

SECOND LOOK: Christopher Bell’s Optic card could be worth holding onto since this is essentially his Rookie card.  Then again cards these days are barely worth the cardboard their printed on, so yeah.

TO THE BACK: This is being written right after it was revealed that Brett Moffitt broke both his legs in a motocross crash.  Thankfully the man from Grimes has a better fate than Frank Grimes.

FINAL SCORE: 6 stage points out of 10