NASCAR, NHRA begin “real” season.
Friday, February 22nd, 2008By: Drew Hierwarter
It was noticed with great interest the number of commercial spots during the Daytona 500 telelcast last week that were paid for by the County of San Bernardino, California. For those of you who are not up on your California geography, San Bernardino County is where the venue for this week’s NASCAR festivities, California Speedway, is located. Given the hype employed by NASCAR you would be forgiven if you thought the speedway was in Los Angeles or even right smack in the middle of Hollywood. It’s not. On a good day the drive from downtown L.A. to the speedway would take you at least an hour. On a weekday afternoon, twice that. The city of San Bernardino is perhaps fifteen, maybe twenty minutes east of the track’s front entrance. Yours truly, having been in both cities, can attest that, given the choice between connecting NASCAR’s Southern California event with either Hollywood or San Bernardino, I too would choose the former. This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with San Bernardino, it’s a nice place to visit, but it just doesn’t have the cache of the more famous cities to the west. But isn’t it ironic that the county that actually hosts the racers and spectators, feels the need to advertise that fact while a city some sixty miles away gets a free ride.
Now that we are past the Daytona 500, the “real work” begins for all of the race teams. The “Auto Club 500″ at California Speedway marks the start of a four week stretch that will see the NASCAR Sprint Cup circus criss-cross the country from Southern California to Las Vegas, Atlanta, and then Bristol, before taking a weekend off for Easter. All of the personnel must travel back to their North Carolina home bases each week so the schedule is a tough one. It is especially hard on the drivers of those haulers who don’t have the luxury of flying back and forth. They must endure long days and nights traversing I-40 without being able to spend much time at all with their families. Once arriving in the Carolinas, the trucks must have all the equipment from the last race unloaded, everything cleaned, supplies re-stocked, and then the cars and equipment for the next race loaded up. And after the California race, all of this must be done in a very small window of a few hours so the trucks can be on their way to Las Vegas. This is why some of the larger teams employ two complete rigs per team so that trucks and drivers can leap frog each other from race to race. Coverage of the “Auto Club 500″ from California Speedway gets under way Sunday at 3:30 pm Eastern time so be sure to check your local listings.
The National Hot Rod Association will also be holding the second race of its season this weekend at Firebird Raceway outside Phoenix, Arizona. In Top Fuel, “Hot Rod” Fuller will be trying to continue his amazing 15 round winning streak at the desert track. This dates back to his Super Comp and Super Gas days. Fuller, driving the Cat sponsored Top Fuel car, is now teamed with veteran crew chief Lee Beard and is in his sophmore season in the class. Fuller won this event as a rookie last year and for some reason has always done well at this track.“It’s just one of those weird things you can’t explain,” Fuller said. “Why does the Army car win Indy just about every year? Why does [Larry] Dixon do so good (sic) at Englishtown? I hope we can keep our streak going and that we’re talking about winning Phoenix again a year from now.”
Billy Glidden, the son of retired Pro Stock legend, Bob Glidden, will unvail his new Mickey Thompson Performance Tire sponsored Pontiac GTO in Phoenix. The younger Glidden, a veteran of many years of racing on the outlaw and Pro-Mod circuit, is part of the race tire development program the company has been working on for several years. The team plans to enter five races with an eye towards expanding the program as the development of their new Pro Stock tire continues. It will be neat to see the name Gliddon on a Pro Stock entry list once again.
If you can’t be in Phoenix, you can catch all the action this Sunday evening on ESPN2.