Happy New Year, Now Let’s Race!

January 1, 2008

By Brian Watkins

Brian Watkins

For having the shortest off-season in professional sports it seems to take forever. With only 47 days until Daytona it still seems like a long time. This problem is compounded by my lack of interest in professional football -- leaving my Sunday afternoons with no excuse for sitting in front of the television. While this has been beneficial for my wife because things are actually getting accomplished around the house, the sense of accomplishment is often outweighed by a feeling that something is missing on Sunday. I’m almost to the point that I’m even missing “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity”… but not quite.

While Cup racing is on hold until February, many (Nextel) Sprint Cup drivers are passing the time by running in local races, smaller contests and exhibitions. Jamie McMurray recently ran in the World Karting Association's Sprint Championships during Kart Week in Daytona while Toyota’s newest addition, Tony Stewart continues to keep in championship shape by winning the USAC ‘Rumble in Fort Wayne’ midget feature (no word yet if he climbed the fence).

Many other drivers use similar series to occupy their time while waiting for the big show to kick-off again, passing time, keeping sharp and looking forward to the 50th running of the Daytona 500.

While this certainly keeps drivers busy, it doesn’t exactly keep me occupied. Many of the events are only televised locally or on Pay-Per-View and honestly, as much as I enjoy other types of racing, I prefer to see the full-sized version. Unfortunately there isn’t much of that going on right now.

The closest thing to NASCAR on my TV lately is my 3-year-old’s copy of Cars. He’s recently become re-addicted to the movie which has mandated it’s playing at least once a day somewhere in the house. It’s a cute movie with a great story line and a good message, and unlike more recent Disney phenomenon’s, so far none of its characters have been sending naked pictures of themselves around the internet.

As with any movie you’ve seen more than a dozen times, you begin looking a bit closer at the plot, the characters and the camera work. As I sat with my youngest to view Cars for the umpteenth time, I tried explaining to him just how unrealistic the movie was. Not the fact that the cars talked, or somehow built an entire world without the benefit of opposable thumbs (or even hands), but the fact that the entire premise of the movie: that a rookie driver, a retiring champion and a seasoned veteran somehow not only went into the championship race tied in points (a statistical impossibility) but also all crossed the finish line at exactly the same time.

To add to the problem, I explained, even if they’d all entered the race tied and ended the race tied, there are provisions in place for such events -- namely the driver with the most wins in the season would take the championship. As expected, he was disinterested in my analysis and went on watching his show while I continued pointing out the flaws in the racing side of the story -- from the lack of timely cautions to the fact that Lightning McQueen’s tires had tread for some inexplicable reason. Eventually he looked over at me put his finger to his lips and said “Shhhhhh!”.

I think he’s as ready for me to be watching NASCAR again, as I am.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web Insiderracingnews.com