Cup/Trucks/ARCA @ Pocono + Nationwide @ Iowa

Fish88 · PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 11:33 pm

Horrible...

Tommy Vercetti · PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 11:36 pm

o hay look, a ford won

FHgrad99 · PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 11:37 pm

Glad to see a Ford finally win one this year. I'm sure Jack Roush is in the Mayo Clinic with a grin from ear to ear after today's race. Biffle's car was a rocket once he got the lead. I wasn't expecting Biffle to drive away from everybody like he did on two tires.

Memy Selfandi · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 12:53 am

Sadler didn't hit the '90 degree' wall that people saw. The replay has him going into a continuous section of wall with one bend.

From above, the angle isn't very sharp at all. The tire tracks behind Kurt Busch's appear to show he went nearly head-on into the wall.

It was a problem of bad luck with him hitting right in the corner. From the one shot they showed, it looked like a steeper angle than it was.

Again, he didn't hit the marshall access point like everyone is saying:

Toto87 wrote:

Brendan Kaczmarek · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:09 am

No one is saying he hit the marshal access point, he hit right at the bend where the wall juts out towards the oval. It's not a sharp angle, perhaps only 10 or 20 degrees, but it was just an unlucky spot to hit. People are criticizing the bend in the wall though, which is why I posted what I did on the last page - there's a reason it's there.

Cartman · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:21 am

Sadler's wreck reminded me of Jimmy Spencer getting on his lid at Dega in 1990, where CBS didn't have a single angle of the wreck. Unless Kurt started barrel-rolling down the backstretch, I can see no justifiable reason why all 7-8 cameras should immediately focus on that one single car.

I honestly hope that when the new TV contracts come up, ESPN gets a far lesser share, or none at all.

Tommy Vercetti · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:26 am

FOX to do first half and TNT the second half, tbh.

RaceBuddy active all season, imo.

Joe A · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:27 am

TNT the entire season, imo. FOX sucks.

Tommy Vercetti · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:42 am

Even better

Hank Hill · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:51 am

Apparently the MRN guy in turn 2 said that Sadler's car turned over on its side as it spun across the grass.

KK3869 · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:59 am

After their pitiful coverage from Somona this year and the Larry Mac magic trick a few years ago, TNT can take a hike as well.

TV just ain't as good as use to be.

Cartman · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 2:12 am

CBS imo

dr dog · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 2:19 am

Cartman wrote:

CBS imo

they had the best intro music

dennyk · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 2:48 am

It really seems like Pocono is a decade or two behind the times when it comes to track safety design. No catch fence on the outside wall around half the track, unpaved infields with armco-covered dirt banks on the inside, etc. As many bad crashes as we've seen where cars have almost gone over the wall or gone flipping through the grass, you'd think they'd have done something about it before now. Hopefully the upgrades they're making will fix this stuff.

Also, that's the first time in a long time I've seen an engine completely torn out of a car. That must have been one hell of an impact. Last one I remember doing that much damage was when Mike Harmon hit the gate at Bristol, and even then it took Johnny Sauter running into him to tear the engine block off the car completely. It's really good to see Sadler up and OK after that hit. At least they build the cars safe these days even if the track isn't really up to snuff.

codename_47 · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 3:18 am

Joey wrote:

TNT the entire season, imo. FOX sucks.

Well you might not like their presentation but they hardly ever miss stuff like was missed today.
It seems like they have about 10 more cameras at the tracks than the other guys who do it.
As far as covering the race goes, they're techincally the best, if you take out intros/publicity/hype/commentary etc.

(TBH I much prefer their commentary team too, at least they have a laugh with it...)

On Sadler, it seems no-one listened to the huge lecture Benny Parsons gave during the replays of Steve Park's flip there in 2002.

I think Bestwick criticised the guardrail layout and Benny said "the reason Steve Park walked away from that crash was because of that barrier that could give a little. If it was a concrete wall, then we'd have a completely different situation..."

I have no idea why the Earth mound was deemed necessary, Park's flip dissipated the energy of that crash much more than Green's the year after, which looked like it plain hurt, but either is still better than a full on concrete retaining wall.

zippy · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 3:46 am

rgordon wrote:

Apparently the MRN guy in turn 2 said that Sadler's car turned over on its side as it spun across the grass.

You can see his car on it's side spinning back across the grass from the rear view camera of Kurt's car.

Sunoco · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 4:03 am

Seriously, I'd prefer either Fox or TNT to ESPN. ESPN flat sucks. It's obvious they only had one or two cameras in that part of the track, and of course the camera zooms-in unnecessarily to Kurt Busch's car. ESPN seems to do that a lot, and it's a wonder they don't miss more accidents.

FastCat · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 6:45 am

TNT for the whole season because of RaceBuddy and the wide open coverage at Daytona. To top it off bring in Mike Joy or Allen Bestwick to be in the booth then everything would be good IMO.

FHgrad99 · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:13 am

Appearently it was AJ Allmendinger who couldn't get checked up in time and caused Sadler to wreck.

westracing01 · PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 3:03 pm

Brendan Kaczmarek wrote:

What people don't realize is that with the exception of two races every year, Pocono is a club racing track. They don't run test sessions for any other series, they haven't raced a professional series that isn't NASCAR since the early 90's, and the SCCA and NASA run club races there on a pretty regular basis. The cars that run there are not designed to professional standards like NASCAR cars. The SCCA, I think, had a driver killed at Pocono about 10 years ago after a hit into concrete. As far as they're concerned, armco is a Godsend to absorb the energy of the impact, as simply put, club racing cars aren't designed to withstand those sorts of impacts. People freaked out when Park flipped in 2002 because the armco collapsed and sent allowed the car to dig in... So they filled it in with earth and people made a big deal about Jeff Green's crash because the armco didn't give. Now people are making a big deal because the car hit a wall that's angled to protect corner marshals and emergency vehicles every other weekend during the year, and didn't give because it was filled in with earth, just like NASCAR wanted after Park's flip.

I guess now that the SAFER Barrier is becoming more common, they'll be able to either put the barrier in front of the armco or replace it with concrete and add the SAFER in front of that. You can't compromise the safety of the cars that aren't professionally built in favor of making it "feel better" for cars that are meant to take the impacts.

I agree with this. Crash was bad luck but this is what happens at the really fast tracks. Pocono has two straights where the cars routinely hit 200mph+ at the top end. When things go wrong at those spots on the track what do you expect is going to happen? With that said, I am not saying the track does not need improvements. I would think they could take a page from the Iowa playbook at remove the Armco barrier and replace it with just SAFER barrier. Mind you Iowa has no concrete wall behind the SAFER barrier. It was the first (and only that I know of) race track to be designed specifically to use the SAFER barrier as the only retaining wall. Such a design for the inside wall at Pocono would allow for the angles and layout of the access roads and interior road course to undergo minimal changes.

This babble about the track not having catch fence all the way around has nothing to do with this crash but yes, the track should probably have the fencing installed around the entire outside of the facility... Although I tend to think Kahne's June crash would've been worse had there been a real catch fence there to grab the car instead of the shrubbery which sort of swayed in the breeze and kept his car in the track.

Lastly, I am VEHEMENTLY opposed to paving any part of the grass on the infield. I'm tired of these race tracks making the infields a big parking lot.

TBK-Light.com

Cup/Trucks/ARCA @ Pocono + Nationwide @ Iowa

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