Ty’s Weblog

Gamespot has up a preview for NASCAR 09, which looks fairly encouraging.  I’ve skipped the last few versions, since they didn’t offer much of an improvement over the version I own.  This one looks like it might be a nice graphics upgrade, as well as some interesting game play.

That was an awesome race! The CoT changed things up, and made them very exciting. It was exciting race with an awesome ending. Hopefully it’s a sign of an exciting year to come. We have been looking forward to racing season starting back up, and we weren’t disappointed!

We’ve spent the last week absorbing all the content about Daytona that has been on the airwaves.  The 50th race was kind of a hard thing to live up to, with all the hype, but it was great and it’ll be remembered.

That’s the first time I’ve even seen a NASCAR race red flagged because of snow!

I came across this today. It’s a Top 10 list from The Late Show with David Letterman from December 2nd, 1999. It was read by Dale Jarrett, who had recently won the Winston Cup at the time.

NASCAR is back! The Daytona 500 was today, and we, of course, watched it. It was a so so race this year. The weather made things a little weird. I’m not a big fan of restrictor plate racing in any case. Xander was thrilled to have racing back though. We’re looking forward to California next weekend.

Starting in 2007, NASCAR television rights will be split between ABC/ESPN,TNT, and FOX/FX/Speed. This deal lasts through 2014.

Whew. ABC (or rather Disney) owns a lot of channels, so I expect the content to get spread around quite a bit.

Looks like FOX keeps the first part of the Season, and then ABC/ESPN and TNT get the second part. So not really much different than it is now, just replacing NBC with ABCs fleet of networks.

We had a visit from NASCAR here in Leesburg today.

Nextel had a car out at one of the wireless stores around here, so I took Xander out to check things out.

He, of course, loved it. They had a mock up of a Dale Jarrett car there. It had a video game inside it which Xander and I played once. My time on that entered me into a drawing for a trip to the Richard Petty Driving Experience, which would, of course, be awesome.

They had an actual car on display as well. I’m not an expert, but if that wasn’t a real car, it was an amazing mock up. I’d expect it has a cheap engine in it, but everything visible appears to be authentic to me. Xander loved walking around the car and asking me questions about different pieces and parts. He was just amazed by the whole thing.

To tell you the truth, so was I. The last time I remember being up close to a NASCAR car was when I was a kid. Terry Labonte was making an apperance at the Lowe’s in Fayetville. This was back when he drove the Piedmont Airlines car (another picture from a different year, since I can’t remember which year this happened), which is who my dad worked for at the time. So we headed out there to see it. I remember how excited I was at the time. It was a lot of fun to get to take Xander to see a car today.

I’ve added a gallery with the pictures I took.

NASCAR is back! What a great race. Even if two of my fantasy drivers blew engines. We all enjoyed watching the race, except Mira, who would have rather been watching Blue’s Clues.

Yea, race!

Our thoughts and prayers are with the extended Hendrick family.

AOL is letting members vote on the paint scheme for the 30 car in the Nov 11th race in Phoenix. You have to have a screenname to vote. All 3 of them look pretty sweet to me, but I like the one with the running man guy on the hood the best.

Starting next weekend Jeff Burton will be driving the 30 car. While I kinda hate it for Dave Blaney, who I’ve always liked, I’ve also always liked Jeff Burton. Hopefully the 30 team will be able to get some good finished out of this. He’s signed for a 3 year contract and is starting up next weekend, so they can get some time together before the full season next year. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do together.

The NASCAR site has up and brief interview with Dave Blaney, the current driver of the AOL sponsored 30 car.

NASCAR has finally decided to implement the green-white-checker policy into the Busch and Cup Series races.

It’s about time. I’ve enjoyed that aspect of the truck races since I started watching them last year, and the fans deserve to see a race finish with racing.

I’m not sure how I feel about doing it in the middle of the seaon, but I can live with it. It’s something I think they’ve needed for a while.

I’m very proud of Richmond International Raceway for providing a section of alcohol free seating at their track.

That makes it a lot easier for me to consider taking Xander to a race there.

RCR has announced that Dave Blaney will be taking over duties in the 30 car.

That’s nice. I was afraid for a while there we’d keep a driver a whole season.

I do like Dave Blaney though. He’s one of those underdog drivers I like to see do well whenever they are able to run a race. Maybe with a ride every week, he can make something from it.