I’ll get to “Concrete Carl” winning at Nashville in a second but first I want to touch on Kasey Kahne flipping his World of Outlaws 410 sprint car out of the track at Williams Grove speedway in Pennsylvania this past weekend. When Nascar gets an off weekend some drivers spend it leisurely lying around on a sandy beach somewhere sipping margarita’s and looking out at the blue water. Some are world travelers like Jeff Gordon who is somewhere in Europe this time. Kasey Kahne however is like Kenny Wallace, Tony Stewart and Kenny Schrader; they go looking for some dirt track action to fill their time. The World of Outlaws sprint car series, billed as the wildest show on dirt, didn’t disappoint the fans at Williams Grove Speedway this past weekend. During his heat race, Kasey Kahne got tangled up with his former driver Craig Dollanski in turn two and Kahne hit the wall and then flipped completely out of the track clearing a 20 foot tall catch fence. Kahn was uninjured but his sprint car was totaled.
I don’t know if Dollanski was just not hooked up or didn’t see Kasey but it looked to me that he just came up the track and pinched him into the wall. This incident has raised questions about whether or not highly paid athletes should have clauses in their contracts prohibiting activities outside of what they are being paid to do. I’m pretty sure that Ben Roethlisberger now has a clause in his contract that precludes him from riding motorcycles after he has had one if not two wrecks on them. So what do you think Rick Hendrick thought when he saw the video of his future superstar driver flipping a winged sprint car out of the ball park? I’m not sure what I would do if I was in that position, I mean if you clause the guy out of everything but what you are paying him for you take the chance of breaking his spirit so to speak. Do you let your horses run or to you reign them back some and protect your investment? On the other side of the coin you have the myriad of short tracks in this country that are still out there trying to stay afloat in a worsening economy. These tracks depend on the “Big Boys” showing up at their facilities from time to time so they can sell out the grandstands and pay the bills.
These local short tracks are where Nascar got its start. It is a tough decision to make and I’m not the one making it so I won’t pretend that I know what is going to happen when Kasey gets over to Hendrick Motorsports next season. If you see Kasey Kahne out at a local dirt track next year and he is actually climbing into a sprint car then you will have your answer. I’m not sure that there will be any reporters asking these questions when next season starts as a lot of time will have passed. As a fan of the sport of motor racing across the board I say let them do what they want on their off time. I still think that if Dale Earnhardt Junior would get in a dirt late model he would learn to drive a loose sprint cup car much better.
So we are on to Carl Edwards winning another Gibson guitar at the Nashville Super speedway this past weekend in the
Nationwide series federated Auto Parts 300. That has to be the best looking trophy in the entire racing world! I just love the work that Sam Bass does on those Gibson guitars. There was one other interloper in this race Saturday night and that was Brad Keselowski who finished 12th. I don’t get it with these guys still coming down to this lesser series and taking the purse home with them? Couldn’t they just let them have one weekend where a Nationwide regular driver could have won the race and taken the money home? I understand that there were contracts possibly made before Nascar handed down the new rule precluding anyone committed to another series from earning points here, so I hope that this is the last year that we see this. Kyle stayed home this weekend so why did the others decide to go? This in a way works just like the Kasey Kahne story doesn’t it? Are we to hamstring drivers form competing in any race that they want to run?
I don’t have all the answers and won’t act like I do, there is enough of that going around if you listen to the Nascar channel on Sirius/Xm radio. I swear some of you guys that call in on those shows need to engage your brain, if you have one, before you call in to those shows. Here lately I end up turning the channel after I hear “ Next up, Your calls till the end of the show”!
Did you see the light crowd at Nashville? They couldn’t sell out a 30,000-seat facility in a metropolis like Nashville? I never got the scoop on what they were asking for the tickets but I would bet it was still too much and I’ll bet the extreme heat had a lot of folks from the Nashville area watching from their easy chair in full A/C.
One more thing before I go, look for a post soon on the fact that Nascar has decided to take the truck and Nationwide series away from Lucas Oil Raceway Park outside of Indianapolis and move them both to the big track. Citing that they are not filling the track with enough fans is how I think it was described as the reasoning for the move. I have thoughts on that but that is for another day.
For the full field rundown on the weekend’s results head on over to Nascar.com
Stay safe
TW
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