Tag: Richard Petty
Richard Petty Motorsports Gaining Ground
Posted Mar 09, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
By Terry Blount
ESPN.com
I went to see “Alice in Wonderland” on Saturday night. Surprisingly, that theme continued into Sunday afternoon with all the upside-down happenings in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta.
And I’m not just talking about Brad Keselowski’s car.
Richard Petty Motorsports had a Hendrick Motorsports kind of day. And the Hendrick boys had a race like the RPM guys experience all too often.
RPM placed three drivers in the top six: Kasey Kahne fourth, Paul Menard fifth and A.J. Allmendinger sixth, Allmendinger’s best finish in a non-restrictor-plate race.
Three in the top six didn’t happen once all last season for RPM, so this is an encouraging sign for the merger with Yates Racing and the new alignment with Ford.
“I think Richard Petty Motorsports is back,” Menard told reporters after the race.
“All of our cars were fast this weekend. It was a lot of fun out there today.”
CUP: Invincible? Let’s Talk 1967
Posted Mar 03, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
Mike Hembree – SpeedTV.com
There is great fear across the stock car racing landscape that a Californian named Jimmie Johnson is about to completely consume the sport and become such an obnoxiously invincible figure that he’ll win virtually every week.
Not to worry. The treetop level for “invincible” was set more than 40 years ago, and not even Johnson and his cyborg-like hordes at Hendrick Motorsportsare going to threaten it.
Imagine this: In 1967, his second championship season, Richard Petty won 27 races. And he won 10 of them IN A ROW, a remarkable achievement even during a period in which the competition occasionally was brittle.
That victory streak will remain a momentous part of NASCAR lore well past Johnson’s current mastery of the sport and Petty’s lifetime.
Safety measures have worked in NASCAR, but have they taken away an element of danger?
Posted Feb 15, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 14, 2010
DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. — It was here on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway that NASCAR’s seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash during the 2001 Daytona 500. In the years since, NASCAR has invested millions of dollars and untold engineering expertise in making its brand of stock-car racing safer.
Largely because of its radically redesigned racecar, more forgiving track walls and mandatory head-and-neck restraints, there hasn’t been a death in NASCAR’s top series since, though there have been plenty of wild crashes. Over the same time, growing ranks of race fans have groused that the racing has gotten boring.
As NASCAR officials search for ways to inject new life in what was the fastest-growing sport in America just a decade ago, some are privately wondering whether stock-car racing simply isn’t as compelling in the minds of fans now that the element of danger — or, at least, the perception of danger — has been removed.
No fan, of course, wants to see a racecar driver get killed or seriously injured. The mere suggestion that NASCAR loyalists come to see wrecks raises hackles.
Fans come to see the close competition, they’ll testify. They come to see Earnhardt’s son, known universally as “Junior,” beat the pants off Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. They come for the ear-splitting noise and raw speed.
