Sept 9/08
Curling and Toad Licking Televised More in Canada than NASCAR

Richmond End of Chase Race Edition
Hear the audio version of last Monday's Doin Donuts show
By Lori Munro (LAM) and Dennis Michelsen (DMIC)
Back by popular demand the dynamic duo of Lori Munro and Dennis Michelsen will thrill and amaze you with their NASCAR wits and acumen every week! If you can't get enough of these nuts on the "Doin' Donuts" radio show every Monday night on RaceTalkRadio at 8pm ET, now you can check out "Doin' Donuts for the Hearing Impaired" every week in print too! Race fans can even join in the debate with our easy to use comments section. Strap in for a wild ride as LAM and DMIC crank it up every week! You might even hear your comments on the radio so join in the fun today!

The Hannah Effect
DMIC says…NASCAR made all the right moves dealing with Tropical Storm Hannah this weekend at Richmond International Raceway. Everyone says you can talk about the weather but you can't do anything about it, but NASCAR managed the mess in the best way they could! Listening to the weather forecasts and abandoning any hope of Saturday action on Friday saved a lot of race fans from having to venture out into the madness that would have been if they had held out hope. Since NASCAR knew Sunday racing would go head-to-head with opening day of the National Football League they hated the idea, but made the right decision this time around!

LAM says… What I don't understand is this whole idea around trying to stop viewers from changing the channel. If someone isn't a fan of stock car racing, then who cares about them! If they would prefer to watch lawn darts or chimpanzee luge, then so be it. I felt robbed this past weekend not getting a pair of Richmond night races televised. NASCAR could have held the races Sunday, Monday or Tuesday for all I care; I was geared up for Richmond under the lights so anything short of that was a disappointment. The reining NASCAR Champ was the only guy singing after the rain left Richmond.

The worst part of it all was that due to the rain delay, nobody in Canada got to see any NASCAR from Richmond because TSN didn't carry it in favor of showing the Inuit Soap Stone Carving playoffs. It sucks to be a fan of NASCAR in Canada. Unless of course you were at Barrie Speedway on Saturday night instead. Thanks Canadian Tire Series - you saved the weekend!!!!!

Anticlimactic End to Chase to Chase
DMIC says…Could we get any more hype on the Chase to the Chase for the Chase to the Chase to the Chase? Every week someone has shuffled in and somebody has shuffled out of the top twelve until the last week of the Chase. Will Clint Bowyer hang on to the last spot? Can Kasey Kahne or David Ragan nudge their way into the playoffs? Every NASCAR expert weighed in on this subject last week including the amazing psychic toad Bonzo with his gift of reading toad warts for the answer! We got more expert analysis on this great mystery of the planet than anything else in the sport and then we had no change on Sunday to the playoff lineup! The tenth through fourteenth place guys in the race were on suicide watch all week! How about those guys that performed so well that they didn't need to even show up at Richmond? Why are they ignored when they have been the class of the season? Just another example of why the Chase for the Championship is an Al-Queda plot to steal our souls!

LAM says… My soul was stolen years ago by an Amish man with a homemade camera so no matter what played out at Richmond, it mattered not to me. Dawning my agricultural pantaloons and pitchfork, I sought refuge in the solace of my barn while LIVE NASCAR racing was being carried on US only television. My own personal warts told me a long time ago that Jack on Black will Survive the Attack whereas a rookie with a presidential moniker and a 90 pound commercial dancer wannabe in a wonderbread firesuit with 3 drooling women in tow would NEVER… and I mean EVER… make their way past the black gate of hell known as the 07 RCR entry. Hype is just that… hype. To be able to sift the real racing from the chaff takes skill, wit and determination. Why people have to get all bent out of shape and over exaggerate the final race before the Chase is beyond me. FREAKS!

Richmond the Perfect Race Track
DMIC says… Usually if the drivers love a track the fans hate the racing there. (California Speedway is a prime example) Some tracks are beloved because of their tradition to the sport. (Darlington) Others are loved by all because of the event that a race there has become. (Bristol) But Richmond International Raceway might be the most perfect racetrack on the NASCAR beat! The fans love this place because the racing is fantastic with side-by-side and beating and banging short track excitement every race! The drivers love it because they do have places to race even when the tires get worn or the car is not handling well.

LAM says… That's nice...

Forgetting Oh Canada
DMIC says…This week I got a chance to discover the madness that is NASCAR race coverage in Canada! After a wonderful NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Barrie Speedway Saturday night I was looking forward to catching the Cup race on Sunday. But instead on the Canadian sports network we get Curling from Calgary! NASCAR flaps their gums about the need to expand the sport to the rest of the world but have forgotten our neighbors to the north in Canada. For years Canadians have flooded over the border to get their NASCAR fix. The last two years the Nationwide Series has ventured north of the border for a race in Montreal. So why can't the average Canadian count on weekly coverage of NASCAR? NASCAR needs to get ESPN and TSN (Canada's answer to ESPN) locked in a room and find an agreement that works to make sure Canadian NASCAR fans get their weekly fix! (Thank you goodbye)

LAM says… This saga isn't new to any Canadian. We get promises from The Sports Network and they're crushed continually. A new channel TSN2 was introduced to carry a bunch of additional sporting and NASCAR coverage but they forgot one little point; TSN2 isn't available to a large percentage of the viewing population, even those who have Canadian satellite dishes. Even if you wanted to pay for it, you still can't get it. There are now petitions and addresses for fans to write to their local cable and satellite providers to include TSN2 in their channel lineup.

I have no idea why it is so hard to get NASCAR coverage in Canada. It was easier when all we had were rabbit ears on old analog TV's and with just the right atmospheric conditions, you could get TV-skip from Buffalo or Detroit and watch Wide World of Sports. As much as things have changed, they've stayed the same for Canadian race fans. Now the IRL will be venturing on to a channel that carries Elk Hunting, Kayaking and living in the forest by eating only juniper berries. Simply unbelievable.

Are race fans that passive that they will just sit back and take this crap? Not me. Write TSN HERE

Can Anyone Buck the Big Four?
DMIC says…Since I am the self-proclaimed semi-professional statistician at RaceTalkRadio I can attest to the fact that the top four teams have always been dominant in NASCAR racing. The big change is that those four teams used to usually represent four drivers back in the day. Nowadays those four teams are Hendrick Motorsports, Roush-Fenway Racing, Richard Childress Racing, and Joe Gibbs Racing in no particular order. This year only the big four have reps in the Chase for the Championship. The big question is if we will see these four teams dominate the COT era of the sport. My guess is that from this day forward while we might see an occasional qualifier from outside the top four, there is only one team that might be able to join the club permanently. Only Stewart-Haas Racing will be able to crash the party every year if they develop the team correctly. This is bad news for the folks at GEM, DEI, Penske and others that will have to settle for the scraps every season.

LAM says… Being that I'm a Chevrolet admirer, I commend you on your selection of Stewart-Haas Racing. However, I also believe that since NASCAR is so bound and determined to pistol whip any slight horsepower advantage away from anyone who just might have one, even Stewart-Haas has a challenge on their hands. Dodge will have some new power soon and if these Cup cars actually get close enough to each other under the hood then I think its anyone's game. And I believe that was NASCAR's intention to start with when they implemented the COT. How close it all will be is pure speculation but even as I type this, we see a definite changing of the guard when it comes to what drivers are the golden boys (or wonder boys) of the sport. Times are a-changin and even Miss Cleo would have a hard time predicting whats next on the horizon. Don't count out the Dodge boys, but at the same time, don't count "in" those who traditionally run away with the show.

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