Truckeo » NASCAR

Obama don’t know nuthin’ ’bout NASCAR

Greg — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:44:08 +0000

You would think that a guy known for his intellect and his grasp of history, surrounded by handlers and researchers that are believed to be intelligent, could get a few facts straight when talking about one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) spectator sports in America.

You would be wrong.

Obama said:

“NASCAR is a uniquely American sport. Since its humble beginnings, when moonshiners raced on the sands of Daytona Beach during prohibition, it’s grown into a sport with tens of millions of fans here in America and around the world.”

Oops. That little bit about racing during prohibition. A few years decades off the mark. The 21st Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933. All of the devoted Constitutional scholars failed to notice that NASCAR wasn’t formed until 1948

As for the moonshiners, at least that part was true. Junior Johnson was convicted of moonshining after starting his racing carreer and returned to NASCAR after his prison sentence was up. He went on to win 50 times in just over 300 starts, an impressive record for any era.

Ford Trucks to come with Laser Beams

Greg — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:41:09 +0000

Reminiscent of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, the next generation of Ford vehicles will come equipped with laser beams to ignite that pesky gasoline that they will still insist on using. Researchers at Liverpool University have finally done something useful with all that grant money that they get and have figured out that laser beams can ignite a combustible mixture (this is new?) and have sold this undoubtedly patented idea to Ford, because GM and Chrysler were too broke and the European automakers are all selling diesel engines which don’t need anything besides compression to ignite.

I could have saved them all a lot of money on this idea. Simply go to Smokey Yunick’s website and purchase the man’s autobiography. In it you will learn all sorts of things about the early days of NASCAR, getting high in the jungles of Peru, getting laid at Indy and his experiments on replacing spark plugs with other flame sources.

From Smokey’s account of the Carrea Panamerica :

In Mexico City we work on car at the Hudson dealership. We can’t speak Spanish, but the dealer’s got a 15 or 16 year old son. A real nice guy and helper. He’s going with us as our interpreter. (Good idea as it turned out.) Gotta have a place to stay for five days. Taxi driver says “Go to Angel’s, best place in town” Angel’s is a big house, 15 bucks a day for room and three meals…free booze part of rent…free hookers and dirty movies all day and night…all for 15 bucks a day. Yes, it was all good… for a dose of the crabs…quite an interesting place.

Buy a Chevy Truck or NASCAR gets it!

Greg — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:55:51 +0000

It’s not just the employees and management getting a haircut on pay, so is the NASCAR portion of Chevy’s promotional budget. GM officials went down to Charlotte to break the bad news to the teams – Hendricks, Stewert Haas, Earnhardt Ganassi and Richard Childress are all getting their funding trimmed.

Now that the big money is drying up with the rest of the sponsors, we wonder what will happen?

Restrictions on testing, crews, cuts in prize money? Everyone starts racing actual stock cars?

All the teams claim they are still supportive of GM and still think that everyone is going to be fine. We have our doubts – but we don’t run a NASCAR team.

A commenter on 4wide.com remarked, “I wonder how Mr. Hendrick feels now after commenting that a GM bankruptcy would strengthen their racing relationship.”