I'm glad they tried something to do something different.

Got people talking about the Bristol race again, although it didn't go perfectly.

i admit i thought it was going be a cluster f but after watching some vid on you tube didnt look bad

Sprint car racing has had this worked out forever. You don't run windshields, you use tear offs! Duh!

The boys in the booth were talking about the windshields. According to them, NASCAR had always required the cup cars to run full windshields on dirt back in the old days. I think most of the drivers would much rather have ran without the windshields. Probably would have been a better race if the drivers could have seen better. I think all the drivers were complaining about not being able to see, especially when the sun was starting to go down and they were trying to see through the mud and dirt covered windshields as they were driving into the setting sun.

How many laps did the trucks run? Sprint cars, of course, are a lot shorter races. Had the track been a dry slick they likely wouldn’t have had a problem other than dust...

NASCAR seems to have always been a stickler for a lot of the old rules that continue to be carried over, and over and over. Gravity re-fueling (cans), 5-lug nut wheels, 15" steel wheels all around, hinged hood and trunk lids (no Lift-Off-Hoods in NASCAR or lift off trunk lids) manual lift (floor) jack (no air lift jacking). Lug nut air (hose) guns, (not battery or electric) so you can get penalized for running over the hose and possibly injure someone with a flying air gun. Probably a few more such as push rod V8 engines,and no peanuts in the pits or car Now I know that windshields are still one of those carry overs too. Anything else?

I don't know how many laps the tracks ran, the track looked good at the start of the cup race. Probably within 15 laps, the 2 main grooves were already turning black from the rubber put down coming off the corners. At our old northern IL home clay track, when the groove was turning black, the track was pretty hard, and slick. By the end of the cup race, nearly all the corners and 1/2 way down the straights were black. The guys were pulling dirt track tires off after less then 50 laps that were almost as smooth as slicks.

During every stop, the track watered the top of the track and packed it in, but dust was an issue on each restart for a few laps, then it was pretty much just a hanging haze in the air. I suspect it was probably the dust cloud settling back onto the track when the racing stopped for 3-5 minutes until they got it all airborne again.

Speaking of sprintcars, did you see that long time Sammy Swindell car owner and TMC trucking owner Harold Annett passed away earlier this month? His son is Michael Annett.

Scroll down to Brad Doty's post on March 5th to see a clip of the funeral procession. That's going out in style.

NASCAR did allow several changes to the cars for the dirt race, but loosing the windshield wasn't one of them. Maybe for next year? Also, for next season the cup cars are suppose to go to the big center spindle nut instead of the 5 lug nuts, and I've heard of air lift jacks on the cars, but don't know if that's true. I believe they may also be forced fuel filling. Last year the cars all went to fuel injection.

As far as lift off hoods & trunk lids, NASCAR has too many crashes. There have already been departed hoods and trunk lid becoming flying objects in recent years even with the hinges and they are supposed to be tethered to the cars. I think a trunk lid came off a car last year and flew into the stands and injured several people. I wouldn't expect to see lift off body panels at all in NASCAR. You may be right about the push rod V8 engines too, I think every brand running has to use the same GM based heads, so the Ford and the Toyota engines are redesigned to run the GM based heads.

Wow, that is REALLY fitting!

In my case I was always more of a Kinser fan (who I posted above) than a Sammy fan, but I ALWAYS appreciated how immaculate Sammy kept his sprint car. You also see that on all the TMC equipment you see traveling the highways and interstates around here too. TMC obviously puts a LOT of effort into maintaining their image and their equipment.