April 7, 2009
By Larry Van Zandt
Would Dale Jr. happen to have a stunt double around his pits somewhere?
Why do I ask?
After watching the Metaphors-For-All-Things-Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday…. I’m beginning to wonder if Dale Earnhardt Jr. shouldn’t call in a stunt double to actually drive the Amp Lack Of Energy #88 Chevy Impala-Nose-Cone-Only belonging to Hendrick Motorsports.
How do you blow by your own pit box? I understand that visibility is limited in the travesty-in-engineering Car of some Hideous Alternate Tomorrow, but one might think that you would at least get some kind of feel for where your pit is, after spending a wee bit of time going in and out of it during practice, and earlier in the race….maybe it’s time that we sneak his sister Kelley behind the wheel, since she’s been reported to be a better driver than Dale Jr….by Dale himself….
Of course, it’s possible that I’m being a bit harsh towards Dale Jr, as it appears that at the time Dale was cruising pit road, his pit crew was camped out on the pit box wall, reminiscing about the time they put a rabid wolverine into the car with Dale at the 2008 All-Star race….
“Do you remember when we put that rabid wolverine into the car? Man, that was hilarious!”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, heck, even the spotter could still hear Dale screaming, even with his radio turned off!”
“Man, we ought to do that again sometime….oh, hey, isn’t that Dale?....anyway, I wonder what we should do this year….”
(Dale drives by, looking for his pit box, while the pit crew continues to sit and gab with the NASCAR official)
At any rate, a 20th-place finish isn’t anything to write home about, considering Dale Jr. was looking a bit racy at times during the event. However, I’m wondering if some bizarre government cover up was occurring during the race, because at one point where Dale Jr. was running up towards the front, I could have sworn I saw a blurry image of Dale trying to hide behind the ‘Digger-cam’ image at a couple of points….sort of like that blurry, out-of-focus pic of Bigfoot that everyone swears is real.
Is someone else actually driving the car during the race?
Something else that makes me think that someone else was driving in place of Dale Jr, why else do in-car shots of ‘Dale’ with the mirror-tint on the inside of his helmet visor? I smell a conspiracy where there is none….
Now that you mention it, that may be what the problem was all along with Dale Jr’s driving; he has a visor with the mirror tint on the wrong side. That could explain all of the missed pit stops…or maybe he’s dyslexic, and he occasionally sees the pits on the right side of the car….At any rate, Dale Jr. is kind of running out of reasons for mistakes. He’s seriously one of my favorite drivers out there, but the only term I can come up with to explain what’s been going on during every race this season with the #88 Too Much Amp Energy Drink team borrows from the literary great, Sir Francis Bacon, I mean William Shakespeare:
Comedy of errors.
Speaking of someone else that’s currently experiencing their own NASCAR-version comedy of errors….this brings me to Kyle Busch.
Was anyone else laughing with glee after Kyle tried to punt John Andretti off of the track, and got a flat tire as a result? It’s not supposed to be a good thing to laugh at another’s misfortune…. But tragedy is when you slip on an icy sidewalk; comedy is when your neighbor does it.
He ends up being two laps down. And in an attempt to get some positions back, he drives like a hung-over sailor in a hurry to go get some Tylenol. And in the process, he bumps the other reluctant hero of this story (okay, REALLY reluctant), Dale Jr, right after the last restart, with Dale losing several spots.
Looking at the two drivers….I’m thinking both of these guys needs to step away from anything even remotely-racing-related for the next couple of days, and get it back together….
Oh, by the way, concerning last-week’s editorial, and my smacking around of General Motors? I’ve owned more than just two GM products….My extended family also has or still owns several more examples of the General’s ‘best’….and I’m the guy who has been, and will be stuck doing the repair work on all of these cars. Every car company has their absolute disasters in engineering, (NASCAR included) but from an auto-repair and an auto parts standpoint, General Motors has made me a lot more money than any other car company out there.
This is not to say I don’t like certain GM products….there are some GM cars I’d dearly enjoy owning. I love the body lines of the later third-generation Camaros and Firebirds….but I hate how poorly they are put together. I love the C5 and C6 generation of Corvette (1997-up)….a Corvette I actually fit into without my head hitting the roof, or my left arm being struck by the door panel whenever I try to shut the door. However, I can’t even get into a C4 Corvette, unless it’s a roadster or T-top with the top removed, and I still have problems with threading my size-13 feet in under the dash.
I had a lot of fun with my 1968 Chevy Impala Custom Coupe….and I’d love to have another one. My wife and I dated in that car, and with it being the only ‘old’ car in my high-school parking lot, I had no shortage of people who wanted to go for a cruise. But even this car had problems, first being that I couldn’t keep a front end under it, and I kept breaking window-regulator parts. The final straw for that car was being pulled over (cop thought I was someone else, he was very polite afterward, and even gave a ‘cool car’ comment to me before handing me back my license) was trying to get the driver’s door open to hand him my license and insurance; the window regulator had broken for the umpteenth time, and when I went to open the door for the police officer….the inside door handle broke off, forcing me to ask a jittery cop to ‘open the door for me’.
Would I still own one?
Of course.
The point I’m trying to make here, is that I’m not the only one with clear memories of GM products breaking at the oddest times. The General has really gone to extreme lengths to build an incredible lineup of cars and trucks over the last year or so….but the problem is that the piss-poor quality exhibited during the 1980’s and 1990’s have driven a lot of the GM-faithful away from the brand. There is no way in Arkansas that I would EVER recommend anyone buying a GM vehicle from the 1980’s; the only 1990’s GM vehicles I recommend to customers of mine is anything with the LS-series V8 in it….specifically the Corvette and 1999-up Chevy full-size trucks with the 5.3, 5.7, and 6.0 LS1 engines. This v8 is sooo good, I’m still having wistful thoughts about tossing one into my 1992 Ford Thunderbird I’m rebuilding and modifying.
Yes, a Chevy engine.
Into a Ford.
Sacrilege?
Yes.
However, I’m more interesting in putting the highest-quality engine into my hot-rod, and it taking up the least amount of space. The LS-series engines are efficient in that they don’t take up a lot of space. In addition, as weird as it sounds….they are cheap to modify. The cylinder heads are already excellent pieces in stock trim….whereas with the Ford equipment….their modern V8 comes in overhead-cam varieties, in 2-valve, 3-valve, or 4-valve configurations, are incredibly heavy for their displacement, the 4.6 DOHC engines are as large or larger than a Ford 460 big-block V8, with weights to match, and are hideously expensive to modify. Realistically speaking….there’s not much of a power difference between a seriously-built Ford pushrod V8, and one of their later overhead-cam offerings.
As I said….every American auto maker has its problems, and the ‘furrin’ car companies are also having some serious reliability issues. You couldn't pay me enough to own a modern Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Kia, and there's probably one or two I'm missing....
However, concerning American car companies, Ford is managing to go along just fine without Government intervention….oh, and concerning GM, if they should ever be able to pay back the Government for the money they have borrowed? I think Government has different ideas: Obama Wants to Control the Banks
GM isn't a bank....but you can kind of see where this is going.
See you next week.
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