Another majority snoozer race. I'm distinctly bored with Nextel's corporate presence, and every time I see one of the "legacy" commercials, I'm reminded of how the sport has changed heavily since I started going to Bristol in the mid-1980s.1 This is a bad thing, in my opinion. I'd prefer the good old days when names like Waltrip, Allison, and Earnhardt ruled the track.
Enh. On top of that, probably a third of the bloody seats had someone wearing red and black in them. Inasmuch as I loathe Dale Earnhardt, Jr., it's annoying to see the latest bandwagon driver with as much market penetration as he has. I thought it was bad with Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin fans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jeff Gordon fans in the mid-1990s, and then Tony Stewart fans in the late 1990s, but this takes the cake. None of the guys I like will ever be at risk for 'bandwagon' status, but that's just fine with me.
At any rate, I finally didn't have to have a seat cushion at the Winston Cup2 race, which is either a sign of my increased ability to tolerate aluminum seats or the fact that law school has padded my previously-lean posterior.
I was disappointed by the red flagging of the race at the end. I distinctly despise Kurt Busch, and I'm not in favor of him getting to win. I've hated Rusty Wallace since the Reagan Administration---spin Darrell Waltrip and die, punk---but I'd rather him win than that jug-eared Roush brat. Busch was managing to get great restarts, and it kept taking a while for Wallace to run him down. Naturally, if there's only two laps left in the race when the green flag comes back out, Busch can jump to a lead and be essentially safe from harm. Wallace needed a long green flag run where he could have gotten up to the brat and put the Sharpie Ford into the nearest retaining wall.
Alas, that's not the way it was meant to be by Mike Helton and the NASCAR bureaucracy.
On the bright side, I saw Bobby Allison, Ward Burton, Jeremy Mayfield, Sterling Marlin, and some other drivers who I can't recall at the moment. I got to listen to a brief conversation with Representative Richard C. Boucher (D-9th) of Virginia, and I saw Senator William Frist (R-TN), Senate Majority Leader, as he was speaking to Mike Helton, the head of NASCAR.
1 Yes, and I've got the hearing damage to prove it, I'd bet. Lawsuit for Larry Carrier, Bruton Smith, and the France family for not warning me!
2 I know it's not Winston Cup any more, but I learned "Winston Cup" back when they started calling it that, and I see no real need to change now.
Posted by Country Pundit at March 28, 2004 11:12 PM