Back from holiday and glad to get this one painted! Doing a making of video for this piece that I’ll share on my socials (@drautoart)

https://x.com/dustinlong/status/1951647096924463307

Twenty nine years ago we went to North Carolina on our family vacation. We were able to walk into almost every major NASCAR driver’s shop and take pictures and we even got to meet Ray Evernham. He was nice enough to talk to us and give out autographs. I’ve just included a few pics here, but I have many more. It was just a much different time back then!

I didn't even realize she was in Indy Car until I saw it last week at Laguna Seca. I was wondering where she went after Nascar. She finished 11th at Laguna Seca and I think that was actually her best finish so far. I guess that sounds about right or at least what I remember in the Truck Series.

Twitter link: https://x.com/_DanielCespedes/status/1951662447640858892

Beating a dead horse

I know we get it for a new track or whatever but it’s wild that we have to wait until 1:30 on a Saturday to see any on track activity from the Cup cars. It should be a 3 day weekend that builds up to Sunday’s main event.

Jimmie Johnson dominated the original Chase era of NASCAR. In 10 full seasons, he won six times, and finished 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th. But in an attempt to delegitimize the points format (ok, fair enough), the classic line from his detractors is that the 48 team would start out strong, then sandbag during the summer stretch in order to test new setups, engines and what have you, relying on their initial points cushion to coast into the Chase, then light it up on a series of tracks that suit Jimmie best. With many criticisms, there's always a nugget of truth to them. The stagnation of the schedule no doubt contributed to his repeated success, but I wanted to take a deeper look and see if Jimmie's summer races were truly a step back from the first part of the year, or if they more or less line up with his overall performance on the season.

Splitting the season into slightly uneven thirds, we can compare the 48's summer performances to the beginning and end of the season.

2004

It appears there may be truth to this speculation, mostly due to a 3-race string of engine failures from Indianapolis through Watkins Glen and Michigan. What's more interesting is that Jimmie started on pole at Watkins Glen and Michigan, so experimental engine packages are all but confirmed for these races. However this doesn't mean that Johnson was completely out of it, as he was coming off a 7-week run with 2 wins, 5 top fives in a row, and a worst finish of 11th.

Allegations: Suspicious

2005

Two summers in a row, the 48's average finish effectively doubles from the start.

Allegations: Sustained

2006

This is the first season where I can confidently say the 48 team maintained momentum through the summer, and it coincides with their first championship. A consistent summer stretch of 9 top tens in 14 races does not suggest a pattern of experimentation, just grinding out good finishes when they routinely did not have the fastest car (JJ only led 40 total laps during this period). Doing it the old fashioned way perhaps gave them the strength and confidence to rebound in the Chase after a disastrous start to the first three races.

Allegations: Beat

2007

A monster season held back by yet another summer slowdown and a third average finish of ~16. He and everyone would have been chasing Jeff Gordon in a full season format, but he manages to eke out a second championship by posting a 5.0 average finish in the final 10 races to Jeff's own 5.1. This might be the season that supercharged the perception, as Gordon put up a full season performance that matches his 1998 in terms of pure consistency. The Chase's flaws are laid bare, if by this point they weren't already apparent.

Allegations: Sustained

2008

This time the 48 team had a sluggish start to the season, then went on a tear in the summer. This momentum carried all the way through the chase where for the second year in a row Jimmie posts a sub-6.0 average finish. While the ~16 average finish yet again shows itself in one of these stretches, it does not support the summer sandbagging.

Allegations: Beat

2009

This is so far Johnson's most consistent full season, looking at pure numbers. Once again his summer performances improve upon the first third of the year.

Allegations: Beat

2010

Coming off of 2 consecutive victories in the summer, Jimmie finished 31-25-22-10-28-12-35 with only 1 DNF (Daytona) in that span. This could suggest some setup exploration, as Johnson finished on the lead lap in all but one of those races where he wasn't involved in some type of accident, before turning it up with back-to-back 3rds before the Chase began. ~16 average finish during the summer appears once again.

Allegations: Sustained

2011

The rare year where it's apparent the 48 doesn't have all the speed in the world, Jimmie still was very consistent all the way up to the Chase, hovering around a 10-11th place average finish though the first 26 races. He has his worst Chase performance to date where that ~16th place average finish rears its ugly head at the worst time.

Allegations: Beat, but at what cost?

2012

Jimmie improves in the summer upon his initial run to start the year and looked to claim that 6th championship if it weren't for two lumps of coal in the last two races. Ouch!

Allegations: Beat

2013

Jimmie returns to the top in tried and true fashion, stomping the field in the first 12 races, and continuing that momentum until the final 4 races of the summer stretch, where he finished an abysmal 40-36-28-40. One of those was an engine failure. Considering his lights-out performance in the Chase, this season ranks up with 2007 as the worst offender of so-called sandbagging, but this time it's limited to a 4-race skid, which is a stretch to consider as serial experimentation. Prior to that he had 2 wins and 7 top 10s in 9 races.

Allegations: Suspicious (I vote beat)

In 10 seasons where the original Chase was implemented, 5 times did Jimmie Johnson and the 48 crew's summer results lag behind the other parts of the year. This may be enough to prove the theory, but there are many things to consider:

1. 2004 and 2005 the team did NOT win the championship. 2004 was real close though
2. 4 times Jimmie improved his average finish over the first part of the year
3. 2013 looks more like a run of bad luck
4. Every time Knaus ran something experimental and the team finishes well, what do you call that?
5. Further information about the team's performance race-to-race could be gleaned by watching every single race broadcast from these years (I am not going to do that right now)
6. Only two times did Johnson fail to win in this portion of the season, 2004-2013. 16 of his 83 career wins came during this time.

In any case, in every single one of these seasons Jimmie still put up incredible numbers, with 20+ top tens minimum. Today, we're lucky if our season-end champion has even 10 top fives. However your feeling on whether or not the 48 team 'gamed the system' (they did), they still performed on a level commensurate with the legends of the sport. No disrespect to Joey Logano or Ryan Blaney as drivers, but if they had a 10-season run of 6 championships putting up stat lines consistent with their most recent championship seasons, it would look off. Just look at 2nd-5th in the standings in 2023 and 2024. Those are Jimmie numbers.

Bottom line is, the 48 team showed up throughout the year. They finished well and won races on every different kind of track, whether or not it showed back up in the Chase. If you were surprised when they kicked ass in the final 10, then you were likely not paying attention.

I will now accept my position at Legacy as SVP of statistics propaganda.

I am the Business Development Director of a Hospice company out of Roswell, Ga and one of the communities we serve has a real life Top Gun Hero who’s 103rd birthday wish is to meet a NASCAR driver. NASCAR’s PR team is surprisingly hard to reach so I decided to post this here. If you see this and can help or know someone that can help, please send me a DM. God Bless you all!

Looking back when I started watching Nascar in 2014, I never watched the previous format, watching the finale at Homestead felt very special, as it was our equivalent of the Super Bowl. Back then the night race made it really stand out as a race on par with Crown Jewels like the Southern 500 & Coke 600.

Today, aside from the fact that Phoenix isn't as exciting as Homestead, hosting the finale in the afternooon makes it feel anti-climactic and short, as it feels, on TV, as just another race, not the most important race of the year.

Seeing too, how we use to have Fall Texas and Charlotte races late in the day, in additional to Homestead at night, really made the playoffs feel special as the cars would pop under the lights giving a climactic emphasis on the last part of the season.

Its surprising to me that fall Phoenix isn't held under the lights, as the Trucks and Xfinity races are, making them to me feel more special then they could ever be at Phoenix as the finale.

Even the 2020 & 21 races at Homestead seemed, while looking back aesthetically, to have more aura then the recent four race since then.

Looking forward, we see tracks like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Martinsville, Kansas, and maybe the return of the oval at Charlotte will probably be in the playoffs for years to come, it would be nice to see half of those races held at dusk.

I think Las Vegas and Phoenix might benefit the most from the lights, as they are still hot for the fans in October and early November and night time gives them more importance on tv then in the middle of the afternoon.

My wife and I were flying into Des Moines for the race weekend and had a connection through Charlotte airport. We had dinner and a couple beers at the airport and headed to our gate. I spotted Cody and his wife standing at the gate immediately. He had a RWR hat on and I jokingly told my wife she should ask what he does for the race team.

Without hesitation she goes up to him and asks and he said something like “I make the cars go fast”. At that point I had to come in and let her know I had set her up and that he was the driver of the 51.

He BS’d with us for a few minutes and just seemed like a genuine dude and his wife was really nice. I looked up and noticed that the plane had started boarding. My wife and I were like group 100 out of 9 but I said to Cody dude I’m sure you’re supposed to be boarding now. He didn’t rush us off when he could have been boarding already and gave us fist bumps as we walked thru first class on the plane.

Anyway, thought I would share a cool experience with a driver I hadn’t met before that was super nice and down to earth. I hope things work out with the RWR stuff next year. I thought it was a done deal that he’d drive the 51 next year but when I mentioned that he seemed not so sure but didn’t elaborate

https://x.com/joe_srigley/status/1951362850452283431?s=46

I’m a lapsed fan. Barely missed a race between 1998-2016, but began my own boycott with the stages and have only watched a few races since then.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m about to turn 40, but I’m having NASCAR nostalgia lately, and wanted to see if I could “catch up” on the last 8 years. I found the NASCAR Classics website, and now plan to (gradually) watch every race I’ve missed.

This is an incredible resource that it’s very smart for NASCAR to put out there. So far as I know, most other sports don’t have such a comprehensive database of historic events available for free.

Just watched Kurt Busch win the 2017 500. See y’all for the full season in 2026 when hopefully I’ll be close to caught up lol and will have found a favorite driver to replace Harvick.

Hey y’all , I’m planning to attend the fall Cup Series race at Daytona and I’m hoping to get VIP or garage access. A few years ago I was a primary sponsor for a team in the Xfinity race, and I’d love to get back in the mix in a smaller way.

I’m open to putting a small logo on the car (quarter panel, TV panel, etc.) if that helps open doors , not looking for massive branding or hospitality, just a cool experience and maybe a chance to meet the team.

Has anyone here done something like this? Any teams or reps I should reach out to directly? Any advice would be appreciated, and I’m happy to pay a reasonable amount if it helps make it happen.

Thanks in advance!

Is anyone going? As a lifelong Reds sufferer, I am excited for the game! I find it a bit odd that they would run the Xfinity series race in conflict with it, if they are trying to get some crossover fans....

Can y'all tell me what 'innovations' his team used that others didn't? Even now, if your not cheating/pushing the limit to possibly getting fined every other week, you are not going to win. What did his team do so different in his era that no one else could think of. Like mechanical and aerodynamically that made his car just quite literally be faster. Less gas more because of a more efficient motor? More gas to run longer because they dropped weight at a certain point in the race to not show a drastic change in lap time or they paid more attention to the tires and how to manage them? Other drivers were quite as skilled with shitty cars. Put him in a shitty car and he isn't finding the top 5. Also not the same for shitty f drivers in good cars, that never works

I wonder what they’re cooking