Well, here we are at Martinsville, ready for a day of short track racing. We’re watching the pre-race. There’s Jeff Gordon. He’s getting friendly with some unidentified woman. Oh my God, that’s his wife Ingrid! SHE’S CHOPPED OFF HER HAIR!
Okay, okay. I’m back in control. I’ve just had too many shocks today. Jenson Button won this morning in F1’s season opener in Australia, and his teammate finished second. Not bad for a team that was put up for sale by Honda last year (1 win during their five or so year tenure) and not purchased until about three weeks ago. Their cars ran plain white, with no sponsors. I could not be happier for the Button. Ferrari is predictably protesting the win. I say 50/50 that it sticks, but it’s all good right now.
Back to NASCAR, I’ll give glancing mention to the Saturday Truck race. With the rain falling during the entire broadcast, the quickest vehicle I saw was a train going down the backstretch rail line. I’ve said before never/always watch rain delay NASCAR coverage. Any race coverage that starts with rain you can safely walk away from for at least two hours, if not entirely. Doesn’t matter if the drivers are in the cars, or driving pace laps or even caution/green laps. They’re not going to race any time soon. On the other hand, they usually have good conversations with the drivers while waiting out the weather. Unfortunately, Kyle Busch was the only driver there apparently worth talking to as far as Fox was concerned. At least he’s either matured a bit or gotten some TV interview etiquette lessons from Kurt, so it wasn’t terrible.
(Weather Caveat: I do remember a rainy Talledega Busch race from a few years ago. The think the broadcast went like five hours, but racing was tremendous in between showers and produced some of the best crash footage I’ve ever seen.)
Other than the bombshell of Ingrid’s radical new hairstyle, the pre-race went off well. In other words, no Digger. The guys seemed a lot more casual than last week, like the pressure was somehow off for hyping up the race.
Great interview with Rick Hendrick, if for no other reason than that involuntary grimace on the subject of Kyle Busch. I’m comfortable in saying the Mr. H doesn’t want him back, but I’m sure he didn’t want the kid to show him up so badly on the track after letting him go.
Good to see Dick Bergeron’s little revenge on Chris Myers. That was a long-time in coming. Also great to see that Marcos Ambrose spot. Interesting theory by Jeff Hammond, singling out that the loss of Darrien Grubb as the reason for Jr.’s lacking performance this year. I almost felt a bit sorry for Kyle Busch getting boo’ed in the driver introductions. He’s clearly hearing them.
It was a mostly bright, sunny day, with good TV pictures and a nearly full house. There was some dizzying race action on the little paper clip. Glad to see Jeff running up front. Boy, that is a great paint scheme. Yep, good-lookin’ car. I CAN’T BELIEVE INGRID CUT OFF ALL HER HAIR!
Ahem.
I noticed there were two different camera angles of Kenseth’s crew losing control of a tire on pit road. Perhaps Fox has learned its lesson after "Tiregate," where there was no video at Atlanta of a member of Menard’s crew supposedly rolling one of Marcos Ambrose’s tires away, causing a member of his crew to chase it into the infield.
The on-track battle for the lead was fierce. Denny Hamlin passed Jeff Gordon before halfway. Later in the race, Denny passed Jimmy, who had gotten out in front via a quick pit stop. Well, that was about it, until Jimmy knocked Denny out of the way to take the lead in the closing laps. Was Jimmy racing Denny dirty? (Say that line out loud.) Who cares? That move kept this race from becoming a rerun of nearly every other race this year; somebody gets out front and sails to a boring win. At least it livened things up. Classy comments from Denny afterwards. Oh, there’ll be some payback in the future anyway, count on that.
Jeff was not asked in the post race about his wife’s hair. I can’t believe this wasn’t the main story of the race. Fox totally fell down on this. They should have had constant updates on this Ingrid hair situation, at least as often as they did updates on Dale Jr.’s track position. Why not? She’s got about as much chance to win any given race as he does. I’m going to need time to get used to Ingrid’s new hairdo. To that end, I think they need to put her on camera a lot more.
Strange, that’s what I said last week.
J.
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