On the Loose Side
A NASCAR BLOG BY Kenny Bruce
As seen from the media tour
Observations from Day One of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Media Tour presented by Lowe’s Motor Speedway:
• It will likely be some time before journalists and officials, not to mention team members, get used to the name changes surrounding the sport. Toughest to get right on first reference so far seems to be the Nationwide Series, which for the past 25 years had been known as the Busch Series. At least one team owner, a couple of drivers and no less than a dozen members of the media were heard correcting themselves after referring to the series by its former name on Monday.
NASCAR Chairman Brian France appeared to avoid that pitfall during his state of the sport speech at the sanctioning body’s research and development center, but had a tougher time deciding what to call the car previously known as the Car of Tomorrow.
“… It’s one of the reasons we sped up rolling out the Car of Tomorrow, Car of Today, the car, for now, for every event …,” France said in response to one reporter’s question.
• Few folks gave the Richard Childress Racing teams of Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton much of a chance at winning last year’s Chase. And early talk seems to point to pollsters dropping at least one of the three out of the preseason picks to make the 2008 Chase.
RCR did get all three in last season, a feat matched only by Hendrick Motorsports, and while Hendrick teams raised the bar with its three drivers finishing first, second and fifth, RCR drivers say they hope they have narrowed the gap during the offseason.
“If we haven’t closed it all the way, we’ve closed it some,” driver Kevin Harvick said “… I think we’ve made a lot of gains. Whether everybody else made the same gains or not, I don’t know.”
Teammate Jeff Burton acknowledged Hendrick’s strength, before quickly adding that “we’re not coming this year to take an ass-whipping.
“I’m not saying we’re going to beat them,” he said, “but we’re not here to run second. We’re not here to talk about how good Hendrick is, that’s not why we exist. We exist so people will talk about us. … We don’t have excuses. It’s time to get it done.”
Kenny Bruce
Kenny Bruce covered his first auto race in 1981 and, except for a brief four-year departure to work in drag racing, has been at it ever since. He joined NASCAR Scene in 2001.
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