Whose Shake Is This!!?

It’s Talladega, Baby!!!

It’s the race we’ve been waiting for!! The Aarons 499 from Talladega Superspeedway tees off tomorrow at Noon. Qualifying and all Satruday activities at Talladega have just been canceled as I write this up. The field is set by owner points and Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth start on the front row. But it really doesn’t matter much at ‘Dega who wins the pole. It more a matter of who survives the inevitable mayhem at the end. The spoiler seems to improve the racing at Texas, but ‘Dega will be it’s first real test. Can it keeps the cars out front taking off like goddamn fight-bombers? Can it break up the drafting parades a bit and allow for more passing?

Practice speeds at ‘Dega are not always a strong indicator either of success, since some of the back markers practice in qualifying trim in the hope of garnering some the start and park money. Mike Bliss, for example, notched 197.268 mph in the 2nd practice…the 3rd highest speed. Junior and Jeff Burton and Bad Brad Kesolowski had great practice runs. Burton topped the charts in the 2nd practice at a sizzling 199.467 mph and I’m still (sorta) hanging on to the Jeff Burton Bandwagon by the skin of my teeth. But truth be told, I’d rather see Junior win this one instead of Burton. And, as always, Kenseth for the win over anyone else.

But enough of these feeble words.

It’s Talladega, Baby!!

It’s Talladega, Baby!! And it my first semi-annual fan-service extravaganza. Jimmie Johnson comes into to Talladega with a 108 point lead on Matt Kenseth, but I’m not going to let that rain on our parade here. It’s Talladega, Baby!! And that means, TITS!!

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Silly Season is finally over. There is a less than a day to go…23 hours and change as I begin writing this, ’til the start of the Daytona 500. And as I write some of this, Danica Patrick’s quest to save NASCAR has begun in earnest with the Drive4COPD 300 Nationwide race at Daytona. But tomorrow, the green flag drops and 43 drivers tee it off at the Daytona 500.

However, the fairways looks a bit different than last year. Over the winter, Silly Season reared it’s silly head and some big names in NASCAR have for all intents and purposes disappeared forever. Sponsors like DeWalt, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam have fled the sport. Teams have merged and remerged and re-remerged as vastly different entities. It’s really been hard even for me to get my arms around all this and get up to speed for the 2010 season.

Most of the usual suspects are still around, but some of them have found themselves in suspicious circumstances…

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