January 28, 2009
By Larry Van Zandt
Hello again, gang.
Before I do anything else, there's just eleven words I want to say:
I want to see NASCAR run on the Daytona road course.
Okay, I said it, so we now return you to our regularly-scheduled programming...
For the first time in quite a few years, I again have the 'Speed' channel from my local broadband provider. Seeing as how I'm spending a lot of time scouring various racing (and not so racing) news outlets for story ideas, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and spring for the 'sports' package that gets me 'Speed'.....and 748 different Golf channels, 24-hours a day.
The Rolex 24 of Daytona wrapped up on Sunday, with David Donohue being the winner...in a Porsche. This is the first time I have seen any minute-to-minute coverage of a 24-hour race, so of course, I made my wife and children really happy by tying up the only TV in the house (with functioning cable, anyway...thank you, cable companies, for stiffing the American public, and requiring that there be cable boxes for every TV in the house now)....with me parked in front of it for several hours.
The race on Sunday isn't my first choice for a 24-hour race, that being the 24 Hours of LeMans. That is really the only race of that format that I'm interested in...the Grand American cars are just a little too weird to look at for my tastes, as they look like upside-down fiberglass bathtubs like you would find at the Home Depot, with 'undersea' windows, space frame, wheels and tires, and an engine all glued in from underneath.
In fact, I'm surprised that the Home Depot doesn't sponsor this series, but I think it would be bad press to see what these bathtubs look like right-side-up, if one of them flipped over...However, as the Rolex race unfolded...I really didn't want to leave the TV set, I was really that hooked. However, my devotion to watching the race might have gotten a little too carried away, as I caught myself asking my wife for a bedpan after I had been trying to avoid, for a few hours, the urgent need to drag myself off of the couch and make a mad dash to the restroom during a particularly exciting part of the race...
After the race finished in spectacular fashion, with Juan Pablo Montoya having absolutely nothing for the Porsche driven by David Donohue, exactly forty years after David's father, the legendary (and unfortunately late) Mark Donohue, won the same event, I switched the TV set off, and then dug myself out from the trash dumpster that was the family couch exactly 24 hours ago, with three tons of empty chip bags, paper plates, banana peels, pizza crusts, empty glasses, empty two-liter bottles, three Nerf-Dart guns, and a 25-pound deluxe copy of the 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' sitting on top of me, with this rubbish heap being the result of my nearly-two-day race-watching binge.
After scraping off almost two-days worth of food gunk stuck in my teeth, it first occurred to me that it might be entirely possible that I spent just a bit too much time watching this race, and after doing the 'rinse' cycle of brushing my teeth, seeing the popcorn kernels, entire slices of pepperoni, pork chop bones, and set of car keys that were dislodged from in between my molars and incisors, with all of that dental destruction now sitting in the sink, refusing to go down the drain (wait a minute, I've been looking for those keys for three weeks now...they went missing right after a particularly nice steak dinner), I then began to think about whether or not the excitement of this race would transfer to the NASCAR culmination of 'Speedweeks', the Daytona 500, a little over two weeks from now...
I am honestly hoping that it is a great race....but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
A lot of changes were made over the offseason...I mean, a LOT. It seems like half of the field either switched teams, switched sponsors, switched paint jobs, or switched psychic advisors.
Among the changes?
1. Mark Martin is now driving for the NASCAR Anti-Christ, Hendrick Motorsports. Okay, so maybe 'NASCAR' was too strong a word...
2. Dale Jr. now has multiple speakers inside his helmet, so when he starts bickering with Tony Eury Jr. during a race, the argument will be in 'Surround-Sound'.
3. Due to his having to meet sponsor obligations, Tony Stewart now has to wear that gigantic porcelain 'Burger King' helmet during the races where BK is the sponsor. The only problem is that they have to cut a hole in the roof to allow the helmet to fit...but this is also the perfect opportunity for BK to run a 'Bug Kill' helmet-cam during the race.
4. Instead of the 'Gopher-Cam' being used during the race (you know, the camera that's imbedded into the track surface, giving the viewer at home what it would look like to be a gopher in the track, looking up at the cars as they fly by), Fox Sports is unveiling the 'Half-wit kid that just ran into oncoming traffic to go chase a stupid basketball' camera, that lets the viewer at home see what it's like to dodge traffic that's going 190 mph, from about four feet off of the track surface. Of course, the 'Scolding Mother Soundtrack' will be playing in the background while the 'Halfwit-cam' is in operation, with the viewers at home being able to hear real-life audio of a mother screaming for her idiot child to get out of the street...
In addition to these changes, after watching the Rolex 24 hours of Daytona, I'm even more convinced that it would be even a better idea to see NASCAR run on the road course circuit there, at least for the later race date. The '500' gets a little monotonous after a while on the tri-oval, especially while watching almost the entire pack being artificially bunched up together for darn-near the entire race.
The first time I saw it, I thought it was a little exciting...but now? It's simply an unnecessary danger for the drivers.
See you next week...
If at first you don't succeed, call it the 'Car of Tomorrow'.
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.
You can contact Larry Van Zandt at