Subway Fresh Fit 500- Phoenix, AZ, April 20, 2007

"Lapse O'Luxury" by Wes Freed. copyright. (click on image to see it LARGE )

+++Sorry for any typos or grammatical errors guys. It's late, I'm lazy & about half cross-eyed. Enjoy your Sundays "off", try not to "do something constructive", and just lay on the couch & drink beer all day!+++

It's kind of aggravating to see Jeff Gordon beat Tony Stewart. I can't get too emotional about it for some reason, guess I'm just relieved Jimmie Johnson didn't win, and it did turn out to be a pretty good race, overall. More aggravating for me, I think, is having too many options for my viewing and listening pleasure. Ten driver/spotter/crew channels on Sirius radio, five dedicated driver channels on Direct TV, and then FOX, of course. And then my perpetually Lupus-fogged brain to try to sort it all out.

But enough of that! There are kids starving the world over, it's shameful that I complain of such bounty at all!!

We heard Rousch was grousing after the race about the COT - or "The Wing Ding", as Mojo Nixon calls it, and it's lack of ability to pass. He claimed that other than Denny Hamlin, most everyone else had trouble passing. Or maybe he meant most everyone who wasn't a Chevy. I did notice that most everyone who started at or got stuck behind about 30 seemed to stay pretty well rooted in the exact same position for looooooooooooong stretches of time, and if they did move around, it wasn't by much.

Since I like a lot drivers that typically spend a fair amount of time in the back, I do a lot of banner-scanning for position , and it seems to me there's usually a great deal more switching of positions in the last 25 or so drivers. They may never make it to the front 25 at all, but they do tend to scoot around amongst themselves more. And God forbid that any of the stations that air races spend more time focusing on the other racing that goes on instead of showing us a minute solid of one single car zipping around by itself... Lord that's aggravating!! We all know there's all kinds of interesting stuff that goes on in the back, it would be nice to see more of it. Even if it was only a little box in the corner of the screen that they turn on now & then for a few minutes at a time. It'd be better'n' nuttin' .

Well, David Ragan did his best to spice things up for a little while anyway. (He certainly added a lot of spice to the Busch race!! ) We really, really want to like that kid. He seems like a good egg, and he has a wonderful Georgia accent that's so endearing. But Smoke was spot on with the "dart without feathers" comment. That poor kid is worse than Johnny Sauter and Robby Gordon put together. We were momentarily amused by his mayhem when Pee-Paw Schrader asked his spotter, "Who started that?". His spotter replied, "You're not gonna believe this, but... David Ragan."

Schrader dryly shot back, "Yeah, that's kinda what I was gettin' at...." . Y'all probably recall Ragan's run-in with Pee-Paw last year which took Schrader - who was having a pretty good day- out of the race. Most memorable because Ragan is the only driver we can recall that made Schrader mad enough to have a hissy fit. He claimed he was only trying to "help clean up the track and help the NASCAR officials" when he got grabbed a long stretch of pipe from his wrecked vehicle and aimed it for the passenger side of the Six car as it tooled around the track under caution.

Poor Pee-Paw, BOY!! I mean, you really have to try hard to get him riled up.

Anywhooziedooles, let s get on with the pre-race critique, shall we?

OUR NATIONS COLORS: were presented by The Luke Air Force Base Honor Guard.

THE INVOCATION: was given, as always at Phoenix, by the PIR Chaplain, Ken Bowers. Bowers was quick, to the point, and informed us yet again that everybody said "Amen".

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM was sung by Josh Kelley , who had a Virginia Tech "VT" emblem temporary tattoo on his arm. I thought Josh did a very nice job in that he sang the song very straight (the way we like it), and did virtually nothing that was remarkable. He had to do that 1/2 sing, 1/2 whisper thing for the really low notes, which many singers opt to do, and I was okay with that. I was all ready to give him 3 and 1/2 stars out of 4 until Cecil said, "He didn't do anything wrong, I just didn't like it that much." Which made me think, "Yeah, neither did I." I mean, 3 1/2 is a pretty high mark - that should be reserved for somebody who did a great version that really made you feel Patriotic but maybe the made a couple of little boo-boos. But Josh didn't quite nail it to the wall, and he didn't really turn me on either, so:

THREE STARS from Willard's Garage.

THE FLYOVER: was again four F-16s from the Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona.

THE COMMAND: Oh dear, dear, dear. What a crushing disappointment. I was all excited about the command, because I had heard the other day that Subway's not-fat spokesman, Jared Fogle, was going to give it. Last year Jared completely wowed us not once, but twice before the Martinsville race. One because he completely surprised us by giving one of the best, loudest, most enthusiastic commands we've ever heard, and Two because he and Subway plugged Subway, as well as thanked the fans and the track in a pre-taped commercial that ran just before the station cut back to the track for the actual command, which consisted only of the words "Gentlemen, start your engines."

As it should be. Almost without exception.


Signing off.

D.B.