The Daytona 200 is on SpeedTV tonight at 8 PM (Central).

Its no big secret that I don’t cover a lot of NASCAR on the corner.  Its not that I don’t enjoy racing, because I do. Give me a Saturday night at the local dirt track, or a day watching top fuel dragsters over the soap opera that has become NASCAR. When I saw this article, I decided today was a good day to post something about NASCAR.

NASCAR:  Mayfield Tested Positive For Meth

“We will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jeremy Mayfield did violate the NASCAR substance-abuse policy and tested positive for methamphetamines,” spokesman Ramsey Poston said.

Diehl argued in court that Mayfield has never shown any characteristics of a meth abuser, and if he used the drug at the levels NASCAR has suggested, Mayfield would be “either a walking zombie or he’s dead.

]]> http://www.ickscorner.com/2009/07/turning-left-on-meth/feed/ 0 http://www.ickscorner.com/2009/03/the-68th-daytona-200/ http://www.ickscorner.com/2009/03/the-68th-daytona-200/#comments Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:06:38 +0000 silent E http://www.ickscorner.com/?p=3214 Well I have to say, I’m still on the fence about last nights race. When they were racing it was good but the way the cautions were handled and the rolling start was borderline  BLECH. I’m also trying to figure out the disparity in the rules. Why was Buell/Harley allowed to campaign a bike whose displacement almost doubled that of the competition? I guess it’s really not that hard to figure out but if the engine configurations are the same, the same rules should apply for all manufacturers.  Instead of dumbing down the series to fit Buell, maybe Buell should hire some real engineers and produce a bike that can compete.

The start of the race, for a lack of a better word, SUCKED. This is the first rolling start of a motorcycle race in history, I think. They do use rolling RESTARTS but not at the intitial green flag. Bikes have traditionally started from a dead stop. This was a total NASCARification of this series. I will note that the Superbike and Supersport series still use the traditional method of starting.

Back to the race…… In the beginning, it was a 3 man show. Ben Bostrom and Josh Hayes on the Yamahas and Danny Eslick aboard the Buell. Now in my previous post, I gave the Buell until lap 14 before the imminent explosion. I was wrong…. It was something like 10 laps but surprisingly it wasn’t the engine, it was the bike itself. The fairings on Eslicks bike literally fell of the thing almost taking the radiator with it. Many of you may be scratching your head saying “Radiator???? On a Harley?????? C’mon!!!” I shat you not. The Buells have entered the 20th Century with a liquid cooled engine. This little fairing problem sent Elsick backwards but he ended up with a respectable 13th place finish considering the extended pit stop. The top finish for the Wisconsin based maunfacterer was Shawn Higbees 5th place.

During the coarse of the race we saw 2 or 3 full coarse cautions which seemingly sent the race officials into a panic. At one point they sent the race leader, Ben Bostrom, past the pace car throwing everybody into a dither. The error caused another 2 laps of paced action to allow for the entire field to pass the car and catch up to Bostrom. This was necessary because the bikes don’t use radios and sending the whole field was a better option than red flagging the race to reset.

The race ended up in a 5 lap sprint to the end after all of the cautions with Ben Bostrom taking the top of the podium and the usually consistent Josh Hayes crashing out of the 2nd spot with 2 laps to go handing the last 2 rostrum spots to Josh Herrin and Jason DeSlavo respectively.

Here’s the top 15:

A bright spot of the race. This was the first time a husband and wife competed in the same Daytona 200. Josh Hayes’ wife, Melissa Paris, finished 21st in her first professional race of her career. Well ahead of her husband who crashed out on the penultimate lap. Sorry guys….. No sexy pictures of Melissa…… Yet.

Tune in to The Speed Channel tonight at 7:30 CST to witness a little bit-o-history. The Daytona 200 under the lights for the first time ever.

Here’s the order of the first 10 on the grid:

You might want to take notice of the bike in the #2 position. You’ll notice that the engine displacement is included somewhere in the model of every bike. It kinda makes you wonder about the performance of the Harley engines used by Buell and the special rules put in place to make them sort of competitive. I give them about 14 laps tops then BOOM!!!!

I could be wrong…..

I’ll be the first to admit that I let Jason down a bit last year because my coverage tailed off a bit….. Okay it all but completely stopped half way through the year. C’mon!!! It was an election year.

Friday March 6th will mark the 67th running of the Daytona 200. What’s different this year? The race will be run on a Friday and will also be at night for the first time ever. Being a former racer I can say that I’m not sure if I’d like to run at night but I’ll remind myself that I’m a FORMER racer and leave it at that.

It’s going to be a GREAT season of bike racing.. I’ll be HERE to let you know how great it really is.

How’s that for another excuse… Oh yeah…. It’s football season and FOOTBALL TRUMPS ALL!!!!!!

Now for a quick WSBK update.

Ducati mounted Troy Bayliss won his 3rd championship and gave the Italian motorcycle manufacturer its 13th championship in 21 years of WSBK racing.

Amassing an insurmountable 410 total championship points with 1 weekend remaining, Bayliss claimed the number 1 plate over the hard charging and all around kewl dude, Nori Haga.

Next year should prove to be an interesting year as Ducati has announced the signing of Nori Haga to it’s 2009 WSBK team. NICE.

Congratulation to Troy and the Ducati Xerox Team.

(Yes… That is the coolest production bike on the planet.)

NEW HAVEN, Conn. —  Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Color of Money,” has died. He was 83.