By winning the STP 400 at Kansas Speedway on Sunday, Denny Hamlin became the second driver this season with more than one win. (Hamlin also won at Phoenix. Tony Stewart won in Las Vegas and Fontana.) With the current points system placing such an emphasis on winning, these two drivers may have already assured themselves a place in the Chase.

No, in the current climate, it’s not too early to be thinking about the Chase.

All three competing manufacturers in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series have won at least one race.

Hendrick Motor Sports and Richard Childress Racing are 0 for 8.

 Last October when Jimmie Johnson won at Kansas, was the last time a Hendrick Motor Sports car was in victory lane.

The fans who come to the races to see crashes have been bitterly disappointed lately. You have to go all the way back to the green-white-checkered, multi-car pile-up at Martinsville to see the last time crashing race cars brought out a yellow flag.

Since then there have been 602 laps run without anybody wrecking a race car. The drivers like that, the owners certainly like that, but a lot of fans don’t.

The Kansas race this weekend had only three caution periods for a total of 18 of the race’s 267 laps. That resulted in a record race speed of 144.122 mph.

Daytona holds the record so far for the most cautions flags at 10. Followed by 8 for Las Vegas, 7 for Phoenix and Martinsville, 5 for Bristol, 3 for Kansas, 2 for Texas, and only one caution flag period for Fontana.

If you’re an old school fan of the sport from way back it was great to see the 43 car in those STP colors again.

Speaking of the 43, it was driver Aric Almirola’s 43^rd start in the Sprint Cup Series. Unfortunately he finished 23^rd, 3 laps down.

Even though Richard Petty has 200 wins, not all of them were in a car numbered 43. The number 43 has now been passed by the 11 as the winningest car number in NASCAR history, 199 to 198.

Ned Jarrett, Parnelli Jones, Junior Johnson, Mario Andrettii, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, CaleYarbourough, Bobby Allison, A.J. Foyt, Darrell Waltrip, Bill Elliot, Geoff Bodine, and Denny Hamlin have all won races in a car with 11 on its flanks.

The next race is under the lights on Saturday night at Richmond.

Every year from 1965 until 2004 the one-mile speedway not far from the North Carolina town of Rockingham hosted what today is known as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. And except for the first and last year, NASCAR’s top series made a regular twice a year visit to the track that was built by local peach farmer L.G. DeWitt.

By the late 1990’s however, with NASCAR looking to expand into bigger and better venues, a sagging local economy began to take its toll on attendance. International Speedway Corporation (A wholly owned subsidiary of NASCAR) bought the track in 1999 and in 2004, cut the schedule to only one race per year. The track was then sold to Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports, Inc., which immediately closed the track and moved its NASCAR race to Texas Motor Speedway.

In 2007, former racer Andy Hillenburg bought the track at auction for $4.4 million with the dream of someday bringing Rockingham Speedway back to life as a NASCAR track.  After 78 Cup races, 42 Nationwide Series races, and eight years of rebuilding and running smaller events and talking with NASCAR almost from the moment he bought the place, Hillenburg’s dream has been realized and “The Rock” is back.

On Sunday, April 15^th, 2012, 27,500 race fans witnessed the first ever race of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Rockingham Speedway. To say that the event was a success is an understatement. The excitement at the track was visible in everybody from the fans, the local merchants, the city leaders, the folks working in the media center, the competitors and their crews, all the way down to the security guards at the various gates around the speedway grounds. Even track owner Hillenburg could be seen seemingly in a dozen different places at the same time greeting people, shaking hands, making sure everyone was having a good time.

“I’m very proud of our effort, the team effort,” Hillenburg said. “. . . but now I also feel confident in saying that if I get a second chance from NASCAR, I can do even better.”

Regular Sprint Cup driver Kasey Kahne couldn’t do any better as he was the winner of the inaugural Good Sam Roadside Assistance 200 presented by Cheerwine. Because Kahne was competing in the Nationwide and Cup Series races in Texas that same weekend, Turner Motorsports used Brad Sweet to practice and qualify the truck. Kahne flew to Rockingham after the Saturday night Cup race and, because of the necessary driver change, started the truck race from the back of the pack.

It took Kahne until the 155^th of the race’s 200 laps to get to the front and he ran from there to the checkers notching his fourth win in five starts in the truck series.

“This is probably the best weekend I’ve had in a long time . . . I ran three hard races this weekend, and everything’s clean — not a dent on ‘em. …” Kahne said, referring to the condition of all three race vehicles.

So, will “The Rock” see another truck race? Given the fact that everybody you talk to was pleased and excited about the way this weekend went, I wouldn’t bet against it, or Andy Hillenburg’s desire to keep the momentum going.

DILLON, SC (April 9, 2012) –A full moon hung over Dillon Motor Speedway as the Bassett brothers led the UARA-STARS field to the checkered in Saturday night’s Eggs-traordinary 150. Elder brother Ronnie took his second UARA win in a row followed by his younger brother Dillon, Scott Turlington, Josh Wright and Sunoco Pole winner Travis Swaim.

Ronnie Jr. and little brother Dillon battled for the top two positions during the last thirty-five laps of the race. The pair held on to the top two spots following two late-race, double-file restarts and a side-by-side fraternal battle during the last four circuits

“I had a blast racing with my brother during those last couple laps,” Ronnie Jr. said in victory lane. “To be his first year in this series, I’m very proud of him. I spun the tires on that last restart and I thought he might get me on the outside, but we were able to drive back around him with less than two to go. It’s just a testament to this team and what they do to these cars for us to come home one-two.”

Dillon fought his way from the ninth position, earning the Holley Performer of the Race Award for gaining the most positions in addition to his first Xtreme Trohies and More Rookie of the Race award.

“That was fun, but I really wish I could’ve beaten him,” said Dillon Bassett after congratulating his brother on the win. “He’s a great driver. He’s taught me everything I know and I keep learning from him everywhere we
go.” 

The Bassett family gathering did not take shape until the final half of the event. Sunoco Pole winner Travis Swaim and outside pole starter Scott Turlington jumped out to a straightaway lead on the field, battling amongst
themselves for the opening segments of the race. Swaim’s tires gave up first, causing him to relinquish the lead to Turlington, but the late race restarts were the downfall of both drivers.

“We weren’t saving anything,” said Turlington after the event. “We saved too much last race at Hickory and we didn’t want that to happen again. I knew when we got those late restarts, though, that the Bassetts were both
back there and coming, and they had more tire left than I did. We’ll figure this deal out though and be back at Rockingham trying to get a win.”

While those up front were jubilant, there were some heated tempers further back through the field under Saturday’s full moon. Jake Morris, who qualified fourth, broke a crankshaft during the opening pace laps and finished 25th. Once the race started, turn four became “calamity corner” as R.A. Brown got turned around twice (the latter of which ended his night).  Teammates Ben Rhodes and Clayton Pyne collided, and many other young drivers found themselves turned in the opposite direction to traffic at various times during the evening.  Joey Bryant who was making his first UARA run of the season was awarded the Pigwire Electrifying Move of the Race Award for dodging the bullet many times as his fellow competitors had their spins.

Ronnie Bassett, Jr. in victory lane.

Dillon Bassett finished 2nd and was named Rookie-of-the-Race

The next stop for the UARA-STARS will be next weekend at Rockingham Speedway Saturday April 14, 2012 as companion to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

Yes Virginia, there are empty seats at Bristol. It’s no longer a secret and there’s nothing to hide anymore. What people now want to talk about is why and it seems that everybody, from those in line at the concession stand to the guy sitting in his recliner at home who never goes to a race, has an opinion. Including me!

There are two reasons attendance has dropped off at Bristol, one is real and the other is perceived. The real one is the economy. The perceived one is the racing, or rather the lack of wrecking.

Bristol Motor Speedway is not exactly in the center of a large metropolitan area. Not even close. I don’t have exact population numbers, but the three cities of Bristol, Johnson City, and Kingsport, Tennessee that make up the “Tri-Cities” area aren’t quite Mayberry but they aren’t Charlotte or Atlanta either. Even when you include The Virginia Bristol and Abingdon, right up the road, you still don’t have a huge population center. The point here is that Bristol must rely on race fans coming from far and wide to fill all of those 160,000 seats. (Remember that number, 160,000!)

Now, here’s a news flash for you; those big motor homes and pickup trucks pulling fifth wheel trailers that used to completely cover the hills and campgrounds surrounding BMS are not exactly fuel mileage champs! Gasoline is $3.60 per gallon and up everywhere around the area and diesel is right at $4.00.

For a fans to come to Bristol from almost anywhere beyond the local area, the fuel to get there and get home again is a huge expense. As evidence of that you only have to look at the campgrounds around the track that are even emptier than the seats.

The local motels aren’t helping either. Although some have agreed to work with the speedway and lower race week rates, you still have some that are charging $150 - $200 per night for a room that would be $70 - $90 on any other night of the year.

Add in the cost of the tickets themselves and it’s not hard to spend $1,500 to $2,000 dollars for a race weekend at Bristol. It’s a simple fact that fewer folks are able to do that these days.

Next is the racing itself, or rather the lack of wrecking. Bristol used to be a one groove race track. You ran on the bottom and if you got out of line, you’d get shuffled back ten, fifteen, even twenty spots before you could get back in line again. The only way for one car to get past another was to push and shove and pretty much just knock the other car out of the way. That’s not racing, at least not to me anyway.

A few years ago they reconfigured the track and added progressive banking, i.e., the higher up the track you go, the steeper the banking gets. The result is that now two and three wide racing is possible. Cars can race side-by-side all over the track and all throughout the pack.

And yet some say it’s boring. What’s boring is watching cars slowly parade around the track behind a pace car while crews clean up the wrecks. Caution laps are boring. In 2005 the spring race had 14 caution flag periods for a total 115 laps! Twenty three per cent of the race, almost one quarter of the distance run at reduced speed. In 2006 it was 104 laps, 21 per cent.

This year they only ran 49 laps of caution, not quite ten per cent. What the fans saw instead was one stretch of 218 green flag laps with cars racing for position all over the place. They saw Matt Kenseth try to pass Brad Keselowski, the two battling for the lead lap after lap. Kenseth would gain a little at one end of the track and lose it at the other. He would get up to Keselowski’s quarter panel in one turn and have to drop back in another.

The fans that preferred seeing race cars get all beat up and wrecked over the real racing that we have now are gone. Those fans who liked endless laps run under yellow so they had time to get another beer are gone too. I say good riddance. What you have now at Bristol is racing and it’s good.

Remember earlier I mentioned the 160,000 seats that Bristol has. The official attendance figure for this year’s Food City 500 was 102,000. That means that 58,000 seats went unsold and, yes, that’s bad. But look at it this way; how many other tracks on the circuit would love to have 102,000 fans for a race?

The next race on the schedule is Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The track in Fontana is an hour’s drive from Los Angeles and smack in the middle of 22 million people! I promise you, the management there would be breaking out the champagne if they got 102,000 people to come the race next week. They’d be happy if they just got the 58,000 that didn’t come to Bristol!

So, yes Virginia, there are indeed empty seats at Bristol. But it’s understandable in today’s economy and things will improve. In the meantime, folks are still excited about coming to Bristol and you only had to talk to some of the fans in attendance this past weekend to get that.

Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Several weeks ago Penske Racing announced that they were severing their 10 year relationship with Dodge and, beginning with the 2013 NASCAR season, would be racing Ford products.

That leaves Robby Gordon as the only Dodge team in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

Dodge executives say they understand Roger Penske’s decision as being strictly a business one and are actively seeking another team.

Dodge Motorsports president Ralph Gilles has stated that there are several teams who have shown an interest in running the new Charger; “With the way our phone is ringing, I’m not too concerned,” Gilles said. “It’s been a pretty positive thing”.

However, Gilles also left open the possibility that Dodge would not be in NASCAR in the near future. “Based on the momentum we’ve developed, we don’t feel it’s going that way,” Gilles said, “We would love to stay if we can, but we have to figure it out. We’re actually investing in NASCAR more than ever. Some of this timing (of Penske’s announcement) was unfortunate. Some things Roger didn’t realize we were doing are coming to pass.”

All four of the manufacturers competing in NASCAR will debut a new car for the 2013 season. They have been working together with NASCAR since 2010 to develop a car that retains the parity that NASCAR wants with the individual brand identity that both the manufacturers and the fans want.

The new Ford Fusion was unveiled at Daytona, and this past weekend at Las Vegas, Dodge debuted the new Charger.

David Bailey is the senior manager for SRT Motorsports Engineering and he said; “We didn’t want to do it with just decals. We wanted a real identity, real features on the car that you see on the street car. After the design process started — and approximately 2,000 e-mails, and 600 drawings later — we’ve got a car that everyone knows is a Dodge Charger.”

So Dodge has a new racecar for the 2013 NASCAR season. It looks a lot more like a production Charger that you can buy than the current NASCAR Charger does. The only real question is; who will race it?

At approximately 1:00 pm on Sunday, February 26, the drivers were introduced to the fans, the color guard presented the nation’s colors, the invocation was given, and the National Anthem was performed.

The 54^th annual Daytona 500 was officially underway.

At exactly 12:55 AM on Tuesday, February 28^th, Matt Kenseth was the first racer under the checkered flag finally and officially bringing the 54^th Daytona 500 to a conclusion some 36 hours after it began.

In between those two events was rain, track drying, more rain, filling TV time with replays of earlier races, more rain, official announcements of rescheduled start times, more rain, watching weather radar, more rain, watching jet dryers circle the track, and then, after all that, when the green flag finally fell, (at 7:00 PM on Monday!) that’s when things got really strange.

After three months of car preparation and two weeks at the track, five-time champion Jimmy Johnson is wrecked just a few hundred yards into the second lap of the race.

Also damaged in the same wreck are the cars of defending race champion Trevor Bayne and media darling Danica Patrick. Both cars required extensive repairs in the garage and immediately threw out the TV broadcast’s planned story line.

The race then settled down, for the most part, and drivers just concentrated on saving their equipment to the end. Except for Jeff Gordon, apparently, whose engine expired in a huge fire ball. He blamed faulty gauges but it wouldn’t be the only fire of the night.

During a caution period with 40 laps still to go, Juan Pablo Montoya was trying to catch up to the pack after a pit stop. He was running down the back straight at a pretty good clip when something in the car’s suspension broke and sent the car careening into the back of a jet dryer truck. The impact not only destroyed Montoya’s car and the truck but also set 200 gallons of jet fuel ablaze!

The fire grew and spread down the banking being fed and intensified by the leaking fuel for several agonizing minutes before fire fighters could get the conflagration under control. No one was injured but the resulting clean up required a two hour red flag period.

During this time, with the entire field of race cars parked on the back stretch, it turned into a driver’s social hour with everybody just hanging out and telling stories and having all sorts of fun and frivolity.  Brad Keselowski was even tweeting to his fans with his smart phone! (He claims to have picked up more than 1,000 new “followers” during the red flag period!)

And speaking of the fans, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to those fans. You would expect that once the race was postponed to Monday that many of them would have to go home. Back to jobs and family and the reality of everyday life. Flights were booked, bags were packed, and motels were checked out of. But the stands were nearly full at the start of the race and, on TV at least, it appeared as if nobody left early even as the race dragged on past midnight. They are truly amazing!

So the race finally ended, going a few laps extra for a green-white-checkered finish. Kenseth got help from his Roush-Yates Racing teammate Gregg Biffle who held back the pushing Dale Earnhardt, Jr. by dragging his brakes for most of the last lap. Junior was finally able to get around Biffle after the fourth turn but too late to catch Kenseth who captured his second Daytona 500 trophy.

In a final piece of irony for the longest Daytona 500 weekend on record (the race has never been postponed before) many of the team’s planes could not leave Daytona after the race because the airport in Charlotte was socked in with fog and nothing could land.

They all got one more night in Daytona just for good measure!

NHRA Photo

The 49^th edition of the NHRA Winternationals got under way yesterday in Pomona, California under leaden skies and 15 time Funny Car champion John Force got his 34^th season underway with a victory.

It’s the sixth time Force has won the Winternationals, the 15^th time he has won at Pomona, and the 143th win of his amazing career.

At the age of 62 Force shows no signs of slowing down. And why should he. He has, arguably, the strongest team in the division. All four of the team’s cars are fully funded by major sponsors, crew by the best people in the business and driven by experienced drivers that are proven winners. Well, all but one of those drivers.

Force’s 23 year old daughter, Courtney, made her professional Funny Car debut at this event and she did her old dad proud by getting her very first round win against Bob Tasca. She was defeated in the second round by teammate Mike Neff who eventually go on to meet the boss in the final.

Even though Neff went quicker and faster in the final than Force (4.036 @ 316.82 to Force’s 4.080 @ 315.64), Force’s much better reaction of .067 to Neff’s .175 proved to be the difference.

Neff admitted that something distracted him on the starting line and he was, in his own words; “. . .dead late.”

The duo of Force and Neff were easily the class of the field as Neff’s 4.036 was low ET of the meet and his first round 316.97 mph in defeating Tony Pederegon was the top speed. John Force’s final round reaction time .067 was the best of the division.

In the other pro divisions, Spencer Massy defeated Steve Faria, Clay Millican, and 7 time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher before facing his Don Schumacher Racing teammate Antron Brown in the Top Fuel final. He beat Brown 3.750 to 3.794 in spite of Brown’s slightly better reaction time.

Over in Pro Stock it was Greg Anderson over the returning Jeg Coughlin in a squeaker, 6.549 to Coughlin’s 6.586.

So the 2012 NHRA season is no officially under way and now the teams all head down to Phoenix, Arizona for the second event next weekend.

Given the way he and the team performed in Pomona, for John Force, this could very well be the beginning of his unprecedented 16^th championship season.

Along with my coffee this morning came the news that Kurt Busch has been fired by Penske Racing. Unless you’ve been prospecting for gold in Bolivia over the last few weeks you know about Busch’s tirade directed at veteran ESPN reporter Dr. Jerry Punch while waiting to do a live interview at the season ending Homestead race.

His highly profane rant was captured by a fan with a cell phone video and almost immediately hit the internet like a tsunami. The initial result was a $50,000 fine from NASCAR and the obligatory public apologies from not only Busch himself, but also Penske Racing and sponsor Shell/Pennzoil.

This incident was really just the final straw after more than a few times Busch was verbally abusive to his team and his crew chief over the in-car radio during events. And several times this year he has lashed out at pit road reporters. These were all picked up by the television network and replayed after necessarily bleeping out the multiple obscenities. It had gotten bad enough that crew chief Steve Addington decided he didn’t need to put up with that anymore and announced several weeks ago that he would be leaving the team at the end of the season.

As recently as this past Thursday, when asked by reporters, Kurt Busch scoffed at the idea of his job being in jeopardy. Such was his arrogance.

And now the hammer has dropped and, as a result of a joint decision between Penske Racing and Shell/Pennzoil, Busch joins millions of regular Americans on the unemployment line.

There is still one more year on his contract which reportedly carries a $10 million/year base salary, but I imagine there’s a “naughty behavior” clause in there somewhere that will take care of it.

The question now is where will Busch go? The only way Busch will ever drive for Penske again is if he rents one of those big yellow trucks. He certainly can’t go back to Ford and Roush/Fenway. He burned that bridge a few years ago. There are no other Dodge teams, and all of the well funded Chevy teams are full up, thank you. Basically there’s no room at the inn for Kurt Busch.

And in this writer’s opinion, it’s about time. Busch’s arrogance clearly shows a lack of appreciation for the privileged lifestyle he has been afforded. And that lifestyle comes with a responsibility. The responsibility to realize that you are indeed blessed and that it could be lost at any time. And you owe something to the many people, sponsors, and yes, the media that helped you get there. There are very few people who get the opportunity to drive for top level teams in NASCAR’s elite division. And there are hundreds, maybe even thousands who would like to have the chance to drive at that level just once. All they need are the right breaks.

Kurt Busch got those breaks and then began to assume that he was above all that and now reality has finally kicked him in the butt. Maybe this time it will get his attention.

The finale of the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season will most likely be remembered as the most exciting and closest championship drive in the sport’s history!

In recent years it had become common for the points leading drivers to come into the final race with somewhat of a cushion. Needing only to finish in something like 15^th or better and the title was secure. The perfect example was Ricky Stenhouse in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday. So great was his point lead coming into the race that he only needed to finish better than 37^th! And that was taken care of when, early in the race, six cars dropped out leaving only 37 still on the track. Stenhouse couldn’t lose. In his five championship winning years, Jimmie Johnson never won the last race at Homestead-Miami Speedway because he never had to!

But things were very different on the Cup side at Homestead this year. After 35 races over a span of nine months, the two championship contending drivers, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart, were separated by a mere 3 points with Edwards holding that miniscule advantage. There was only one way for Stewart to secure his third championship; win the race. Nothing else would get the job done. If Stewart finished second and Carl Edwards was third, Edwards wins.

Tony Stewart; “We said all week — we just go out and win the race, we don’t have to worry about what he (Edwards) did, and that’s what we did.”

And win it he did, but it was not easy. Again and again he lost valuable track position and had to come from the back. There was the debris that punctured the grill screen and by his own admission, “. . .was a miracle . . .” that it didn’t hit the radiator. But the repairs needed put him back on the track in 40^th place. Then there were two slow pit stops and almost running out of fuel on a third that, once again, placed Stewart deep in the field for the restart.

All told he had to pass 118 cars to get to the lead for the final 30+ laps. He was especially aggressive on restarts, at one point passing six cars in just two laps. He admitted to scaring himself a couple of times.

For years the fans have been asking NASCAR to design a points system that places more emphasis on winning. And while consistency was still important, at the end of this race, both Edwards and Stewart were tied with 2403 points. The difference was Stewart’s five wins (all coming during the chase) to Edwards one. Winning was the tie-breaker and made all the difference in crowning this year’s champion!

Tony Stewart has won championships in just about every type of car he has ever driven. Sprint cars, midgets, Silver Crown Cars, Indy cars, and now three times at the pinnacle of the NASCAR world. Only Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon, have won more championships in NASCAR’s premier division.

The last owner/driver to win a championship was Alan Kulwicki who did it in 1992. Kyle Petty, speaking on SPEED’s “Victory Lane” TV show after the race said that, back in the day, an owner/driver was the norm, not the exception like it is today. He then said that, given the way the sport is now, Tony Stewart may be the last owner/driver champion ever!

Stewart is this generation’s A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti, men who can drive, and win, in a wide variety of types of cars and styles of racing and he summed up the year and the final race this way; “If this doesn’t go down as one of the greatest championship battles in history, I don’t know what will.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Has this been a great racing season, or what?  The championship runs in several series have been everything we hoped for.

After 35 races the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has come down to two drivers who are separated by just three points! For so many years we’ve seen potential champions come into the last race at Homestead needing only to finish fifteenth or better, or twentieth, or whatever. Then they cruise around, staying out of trouble and making sure they race just hard enough to stay ahead of whatever position they need to win the title. In the five years of Jimmie Johnson’s championship reign, he has only led a total of 38 laps in the final races at Homestead.

When Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards take the green flag at Homestead next weekend they know they will both have to race each other hard to win the title.  And even if Stewart wins the race but Edwards is second, like they were at Texas, Edwards is the champion. Neither driver can take it easy and just cruise into this deal.

Over on the NHRA side things were just as close and just as exciting. Three of the four professional championships had yet to be decided. (Jason Line clinched the Pro Stock title at the previous event in Las Vegas.) But even better, the two nitro categories, Funny Car and Top Fuel, came down to the semi-final round where both championship contenders faced each other in what amounted to a one race, winner take all!

In Funny Car, Matt Hagen won over Cruz Pedregon by 4.096 to a rapidly closing 4.113 from Pedregon. The Top Fuel race was even closer with Del Worsham just edging out Spencer Massey .008 of a second! That translated into mere inches at over 320 mph. It was the first professional title for both Worsham and Hagen.

If that wasn’t enough, both of the newly crowned champions went on to win the event in the final rounds, Hagen even doing it while setting the low E.T. of the meet!

Whew!

Well, the 2011 racing season isn’t totally complete yet. We still have one more NASCAR weekend and Formula 1 still has one more race coming up in Brazil. But we have certainly seen some great racing in all forms of the sport, and certainly some close championships.

Of course, there has also been controversy and tragedy, but overall, this has been one great year to be a race fan, and I’m already looking forward to 2012.