Oh, Rain Delays

by Tammy

In a way, I'm grateful to the rain delay for the Daytona 500. On Sunday, I had to finish some last edits to my manuscript of Avoidable Contact and send it off to my editor (done!) before I could watch the race. Being on the west coast meant the race was supposed to start at 11 a.m.

Cue the rain, which meant I could get my work done and still watch some of the race.

Of course, the idea of a rain delay is laughable to a sportscar racing fan, right? Or a variety of other types of racing fans. When the rain hits, other cars put on rain tires and get on with it.

But I know, I get it. Ovals (never mind that sportscars race in the rain at the 24 Hours of Daytona, on the banked track) and rain don't mix. Fine, whatever.

So what do you do during a rain delay?

Twitter was lit up by a few memes during the break, like #replacemovietitlewithDanica, such as Smokey and the Danica, and #AirTitan (the track dryer), including #AirTitan considers Jurassic Park a petting zoo. But the biggest fun on social media was lighting up Fox News for tweeting that Jimmie Johnson had won the Daytona 500 ... because Fox Sports was showing a replay of the 2013 race, which Jimmie won.

Call that one #twitterfail.

So during the rain delay in my house, I did some laundry, wrote a blog, called my parents, and watched some old CSI: Miami (fun fact: Long Beach stands in for Miami in that show, just add wet pavement).

What did you all do?

Racing Year in Review

by Tammy

Simon and I are taking a blog hiatus for the end of the year (going dark for 2 weeks over the holidays), and when I return, it will be January 6, 2014. Leaving aside that I'm not prepared for the new year, at that point, we'll be less than two weeks to the 24 Hours of Daytona, the first race of the year and the first race of the TUSCC (the Tudor United Sports Car Championship). Big stuff.

So it's time to reflect on what I thought was significant about 2013. Chime in with your thoughts and anything I've missed....

• Daytona 24: I was embedded in a race team, and it was fabulous.
• Daytona 500: Danica on pole, which set a bar too high for her to meet the rest of the year. By the stats, I think she did well for a rookie, but of course, the Danica lovers or haters will believe what they believe, no matter what. We'll see if she improves in 2014.
• Long Beach Grand Prix: the introduction of Team Kate! And the start of the long good-bye to the American Le Mans Series (the merchandise trailer was absent from this race, for instance).
• Indy 500: Kanaan wins!
• Le Mans: the death of Allan Simonsen (which, as I noted in a blog post, eerily reflected a plot idea I'd hatched just the night before), the triumph of Audi. Leena Gade as a rock star.
• Baltimore GP: what a bus-wreck of accidents.
• IndyCar: A more contentious year between drivers and Race Control? The oval races were mostly uninteresting? Dario retires.
• Petit Le Mans: farewell to the ALMS. Hello to the Corvette Stingray. A great time had by all.
• Formula 1: a total snoozefest. I'm not sure I watched more than 10 laps of a single race.
• NASCAR: Jimmie wins 6. Danica receives hate mail. Smoke breaks a leg. 

What did I miss? What do you remember as being the most significant racing events of 2013? Overall a thumbs-up or thumbs-down?

Hey, while you're ending the year and prepping for 2014, make sure you're following me on Facebook and Twitter (@tkaehler and @katereilly28)!

Danica Does It

by Tammy (who's going to get all feminist on you)

I know, I know. You're going to tell me that pole position for a race as nutso and long as the Daytona 500 doesn't really matter. (Same as it didn't for the 24 Hours of Daytona.) I know. And you're going to tell me that being fast on the track alone doesn't much matter when it comes to driving with the pack in the race.

I know. And I DON'T CARE.

Because love her or hate her, respect her or not ... call it a fluke or a lucky collection of coincidences. There's still going to be a woman leading the field to the green flag next Sunday for the Daytona 500. For the first time ever in a NASCAR race.

Hip-hoo-freaking-ray!

I've been ambivalent over Danica's choices for a while (as if it's my right?), because plenty of them are ones I wouldn't make. That's fine; it's a fair country. I wondered, when some of my (male and female) friends asked, is she doing more harm to her cause than good by posing in bikinis and such. Should she not be doing that until she's, yanno, won more than one major race?

But something the excellent racing blogger Pressdog (he mostly likes open-wheel, but we're trying to convert him) said struck a chord with me: "she's playing by the rules of sponsorship/racing...." (Read his full post.)

Because that's the bottom line. As a racecar driver, you have to be good on the track and better off of it. And you use what you've got. Are we denigrating Dale Earnhardt Jr. for getting more attention because of his name? (I might sometimes, but by and large the fan base doesn't.) How about Carl Edwards for letting himself be used as a character in some NASCAR Harlequin novels? Then why denigrate Danica for trading on being female?

Use whatcha got.

Honestly, I want a female on pole in any racing series not to be an issue (hello, I'd like to see a female racing full-time in a sportscar series!) All I know is that I imagine this kind of conversation going on ...

Little girl racer: "I want to win pole for the Daytona 500."
Parent: "I don't know, no girl has ever done that."
Parent: "Why not? I've seen it done by another girl."

Even better would be, simply, "Why not? Of course you can." With no reference to gender at all.

Tweeting Racing

by Tammy

Last Friday I posted on the Poisoned Pen Press blog (which I share with 27 other authors) about two amazing social media byproducts of the Daytona 500 last week. The first was the speed with which Internet memes (mostly jokes) were propagated through Facebook and Twitter. The second was the revelation of Brad Keselowski tweeting from his car (and standing on the track) during the two-hour red flag. I won't repeat that discussion here (read it, if you're interested), except to repost my favorite Facebook joke image. But I have a few more thoughts on the whole Twitter thing.

First interesting point: Keselowski had a really good reason for having his phone with him. He'd been in a couple big wrecks in the last year, and in the second one, he had his phone with him, so he could text his parents on the way to the hospital to tell them, "ignore that fiery wreck on the television, I'm OK" or similar. And since he had the phone with him in case of emergency, well, why not entertain himself with it during a two-hour stoppage.

Second interesting point: how everyone in the racing world is freaking out about him using Twitter. ("Freaking out" = making a big deal of.) Loads and loads of people in the racing world have Twitter feeds, everyone from teams to drivers to television announcers. Maybe there are fewer in NASCAR? I don't really know. I do know that a bunch of IndyCar drivers are really, really active on it. But however much it was being used before Keselowski's "tweet heard round the world," suddenly the NASCAR world has woken up to the power Twitter has to send out a message. There are 120,000 more Twitter accounts (meaning people) who will now see what Brad Keselowski has to say because he gained that many followers last Monday night ... scratch that. I just checked his follower number, and if I remember correctly, he's now got about 170,000 more followers than he had at 7 p.m. last Monday.

I expect to see drivers and teams being a lot more active on Twitter after this. Which leads me to...

Third interesting point: Kevin Harvick saying he was going to keep his phone with him and load up on apps that might help him race, all in order to get the carrying of a cell phone in the car outlawed. So he doesn't have to keep up.

Harvick, you're sounding grouchy. No one's saying you have to keep up. The kids are always going to be more on top of new technology ... live with it.

Are any of you on Twitter, and do you follow the racing world? Who do you like? And do you think it'll get more popular now?

P.S. Follow me if you're there, and I'll follow you back: @tkaehler

Racing Interrupted

by Tammy

The big event of the weekend was to have been the Daytona 500. Instead it was rain.

The 500 is being run on Monday, because they were rained out, prompting plenty of sportsracing fans on Facebook to post many variations of the image on the right (I saw prototype and motorcycle pictures also, but of course, this was my favorite). See, sportscars race on road courses and in the rain. That's part of what makes it fun (and I think the drivers would mostly call it that).

I realize that cars can't race in the rain on ovals. I'm not saying they should. It's really just that the issue of being rained out calls ovals into question for me ... again.

We'll have to wait until Monday to see who wins the Daytona 500 this year. I doubt it'll be Danica (but these days, I wouldn't ever bet against Tony Stewart), but it will be interesting to see if she can hold her own with the big boys. She crashed hard in a preliminary race on Thursday, came back to take pole for the Nationwide race on Friday, then was bumped at the wrong spot during that race by her teammate. Someone pointed out that it's a lot easier to go fast alone on the track in a fast car (aka, her pole run) than it is to stay out of trouble in a pack of 43 cars for a full race. That's true. Watching the Nationwide race, I thought she looked like she was learning with every lap.

So we'll just see what she and the rest of the drivers can do. Once it stops raining. Or maybe we won't see, because we'll be at work and unable to watch.

What do you all think? Ovals? Worth it?

Here She Goes

by Tammy

In a wind-up worthy of the Indy 500 (which lasts most of a month), qualifying for next Sunday's Daytona 500 took place yesterday. I'm sure millions of NASCAR fans, desperate for some racing to follow on Sundays, breathed simultaneous sighs of relief. I'll admit, I followed the qualifying online, though I got my start-of-the-season fix a few weeks ago with the 24 Hours of Daytona.

To the media's credit, there have been plenty of story lines followed, including last year's winner, Trevor Bayne, needing to qualify on speed (only 43 cars can start, but 49 attempted to qualify), how last year's championship duelists (Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards) would fare (Edwards took the pole), how the new cars and engines would run, and ... oh yes, how that new girl would do.

Yep, Danica's finally starting her first full year in stock car racing. She'll compete in a few Sprint Cup races (NASCAR's top tier), and compete the full season in the Nationwide (second-tier) series. It's safe to say anticipation is high. It's also safe to say she'll be in the spotlight constantly, since she's driving for reigning champion Tony Stewart in Cup and media and fan darling Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in Nationwide. If you had to pick the three drivers the racing world most wants to drool over, it would be them. Every move will be scrutinized and dissected, all season.

Now, I know Simon's not a big fan of Danica's, but I also know that has mostly to do with Danica being over-hyped compared to her level of performance. I've gone back and forth on how I feel about her. I was a huge fan at the start, and teared up when she led the Indy 500 in 2005. But like Simon, I've waited for her on-track results to match the attention she's received (Dale Junior's another one we're waiting on for the same), and I lost some of my desire to root her on each weekend. But recently, I've read a few articles about her and interviews with her, and I have to say that the more I read (from people who've actually had conversations with her), the more I'm impressed. She seems smart and focused and determined, and that's brought me back to being a Danica fan, as she makes the move from open-wheel to stock cars. Basically, I'm optimistic that she'll live up to the hype this year.

Mind you, that's all going to be predicated on some real performance. But she did qualify 30th for the Daytona 500 (yes, she was locked into the field, but she qualified acceptably anyway). So we'll just see how she does in her first run with the big boys. I'll be rooting for her.

Oh, and Junior qualified third. We'll just see....