Meandering among the Marbles!

Random thoughts and mutterings from Saturday afternoon of Talledage weekend!

NASCAR Nextel Sprint Cup-Talladega

• My driver David Gilliland made it into the race. Watching the Non-top 35 qualifications as a fan is almost as stressful as it has to be for the driver, crew chief and team owners.
  

• I enjoyed hearing MRN radio interview both David and his crew chief, Slugger Labbe, prior to the qualification run by the #71 TRG Chevy. MRN did a fabulous job on interviewing everyone on pit road, prior to each car hitting the track for their runs.
  

• There is no excuse, though, for the Fox/SpeedTV announcers to NOT interview ANY of the Go or Go Home drivers prior to their runs. When it takes a car almost a full minute to make their warm-up run, there is plenty of time to have a few words. Even worse, there was quite a bit of time for track clean-up, and the talking heads just kept yammering on about other tidbits that had already been mentioned. Is it any wonder why the cars in the back have trouble finding sponsors?
  

• Juan Pablo Montoya won the pole! One cannot help but wonder, with the Target Bulls-eye on that car, and with JPM's reputation with many of the drivers on the track, how that Bulls-eye will provide a 'Target' of Opportunity for those drivers!
  

• Dodge engines have been blowing up this weekend. Five Dodge cars will have to go to the back of the field on Sunday. With the advent of Chrysler's demise at the hands of the economy, it looks like this weekend is a sobering omen of 'what is to come.'
  

• Having my favorite driver outside of the Top 35, and struggling for sponsorship puts me in an uncomfortable spot. I am now having to hope for the bad runs, bad luck, or parts failure of several other cars or drivers or teams. My discomfort comes from being pretty sure that wishing bad luck on someone else gets returned to you!
  

• After watching Matt Kenseth rolling and bouncing around the track in the Nationwide race, I find myself thankful for the COT. There has been no car rolling, flipping and tumbling at a plate track since the COT first rolled out on those tracks in 2007. Indeed the only time a COT has tumbled was Michael McDowell, making a rookie mistake during qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway.
  

NASCAR Nationwide Race-Talladega

• Matt Kenseth joined the long list of drivers who have taken the Talledega Tumble. Always bad to see by fans and by family members, it seems that much worse when you know that Katie Kenseth is pregnant.
  

• Many fans want to point fingers at David Ragan for causing Kenseth's wreck. Even more fans point even longer digits in the direction of Kyle Busch for tapping Jason Allgeier. As a fan, I find it hard to judge those situations. The NASCAR drivers in the top series are driving 180+ mph, inches apart! I sometimes make errors in judgement going 55 mph, with car lengths between me and the cars around. While I don't wreck, I come danged close. At those speeds, the wreck is done before one can even form the thought that there is something happening, let alone reacting to it. Of course, the driver doing the tapping usually does not have any damage from this type of wreck.
  

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series-Kansas Speedway

• I find amusement in the Race Analysis SpeedTV pop-up being sponsored by World of Warcraft, and the Todd Bodine truck being sponsored by Ventrilo, a chat application used by WoW players! WoW has gone redneck? Who knew? (My WoW'ing spouse commented on how often the Ventrilo application crashes right before Bodine's Ventrilo entry crashed at lap 10. Amazing, he says!)
  

• Friday listeners to Sirius Speedway heard many callers berating the Kansas Speedway ticket office, refusing to sell any tickets to anyone wanting to view truck practice on Friday. They had customers with money in hand being turned away, with the claim, as heard on Sirius, that race fans MUST buy tickets for the whole weekend. While that is certainly their right, it certainly does not appear to be smart to alienate fans who MIGHT end up buying tickets for the rest of the weekend if allowed in on the slowest day, gate-wise, of the whole weekend. Perhaps the economy in Kansas is just fine! Or perhaps they are resting on their laurels, knowing they have an 'in' to a second date with the building of the new casino, sponsored in part by ISC.

Have a good evening, and let's hope the racing at Talladega is great on Sunday. And, let's hope for a safe race!

Three David's Battling NASCAR's Goliath

Three David's, all battling the Goliath of racing at NASCAR's pinnacle. David Ragan, David Reutimann, and David Gilliland. In their first year, they were all vilified by their more experienced peers, but are now earning respect in the garage. They all have some very strong similarities, going far beyond the common first names.



Family Legacy - Each David comes from a family rich in racing heritage.

• David Ragan's father, Ken, had 50 Cup race starts over a career spanning 8 years. His best finish was 11th at Talladega in 1984. He also managed 600 Racing, the Harrisburg plant that produces Legends, Bandoleros and Thunder Roadsters.
  

• David Gilliland's father Butch is also well-known on the short track, but his history is primarily West Coast. Winner of the 1997 Winston West Championship, Butch also raced 12 Craftsman Truck races and 10 Races at the Winston Cup level.
  

• David Reutimann's father is known to the world as Buzzie. Buzzie is shown as having only raced in one 'Grand National' race back in 1963, but that was a top ten finish! He is best known for his hard-charging style on the short tracks. There are four generations of racers in the Reutimann family.
  

The history of the David's:

• Ragan worked in the shop of Dash series driver Cam Strader, and also prepared the late model cars that he was to drive in 2002. Ragan worked countless hours preparing the cars that Strader would race to the 2001 series Championship.
  

• Gilliland grew up working on the cars owned by his father. Indeed, at the age of 20, Gilliland was awarded the Champion Crew Chief of the Year award after his father became the 1997 NASCAR Winston West Champion.
  

• Reutimann's whole family history is nothing but working on cars. Generations have raced out of the Zephryhills Florida garage, where the 4th generation is now hitting the tracks.
  

As much as they are similar, there are also some noticeable differences.

Age
Ragan is the youngster of the group. Born in 1985, he is certainly the youngest when stacked up to Reutimann' age of 38 and Gilliland's 32 years.

How they got started:

• After a handful of races in the upper levels, Ragan was able to snag a ride through Jack Roush's driver tests.

• After spending several competitive years in the late model series on the West Coast, Gilliland entered just a couple of truck races, and a limited Busch schedule, before he snatched the checkered flag at Kentucky, thereby catapulting him into the Robert Yates ride.

• Reutimann worked his way up from Late models, then drove a handful of Busch series races before driving for Darrell Waltrip in the Truck series. That most certainly opened the door into his ride for Darrell's brother Michael, where he is currently driving both the Nationwide and the Sprint Cup series.
  

Their current Cup rides:

• Ragan is driving the #6 car for Roush-Fenway Racing. He sits 17th in the points.

• Gilliland is driving in the newly rebuilt Yates Racing #38 ride, and is sitting 22nd in the points.

• Reutimann is driving the #44 car for Michael Waltrip Racing. He is currently at 27th in the points.

Crew Chiefs

• Ragan - 20 year veteran Jimmy Fennig

• Gilliland - 1st year Cup CC, one year in Busch as a Crew Chief, Cully Barraclough

• Reutimann - 11 year Cup veteran Ryan Pemberton

Equipment

• Ragan- state of the art from Roush-Fenway Racing
  

• Gilliland-struggled last year in equipment that was not drivable by even the likes of team mate Ricky Rudd. Now working the the equivalent of a start-up organization, running partly unsponsored. Yates Racing is buying cars and services from Roush-Fenway.
  

• Reutimann-struggling last year, not only in a start up team, but the first year for the Toyota first year attempt in NASCAR.

All three drivers are talented. All three are being noted as up and coming drivers. And all three have shown marked improvement in the last year. All three, eventually, will show that they can compete on equal footing with the Goliath's of NASCAR. It will be worth watching how their careers progress.