Monday, April 21, 2008

The Best Nascar race isn't...


...even in NASCAR's Top Series (The Sprint Cup). The best race is in the Nationwide Series (sort of a "Triple A" league to the Sprint Cup's "Major League" status). The race has been held for the last four years in Mexico City at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez -- a 2.5 mile road course.

This weekend's race had everything that is missing from too many nascar races: Great driving, a very tough track, competion so fierce that drivers were knocking each other off the track left and right, and exciting passing. The road course races are superior to the oval track races (due to a number of factors including road course specialist drivers going all out because they don't have a "second chance"), and add to it the festive atmosphere of Mexico City (with six Mexican drivers in the race) and you have a very fun time. This is the only race this year I've managed to watch start to finish without getting bored. The Nascar Sprint cup road races are great (Watkins Glen and Sonoma) but they are just 2 of several dozen races. Too bad. Looks like I'll be switching to indycar as my racing fandom time slot filler -now that the series is finally unified.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would love to go to Mexico for the race weekend. The Rolex series race the day before kicked ass. I did not like all of the full course cautions......This is a NASCAR Thing!!!!! Local Cautions is how it rolls in real road course racing. The race took too long due to the Cautions.. Too many F' ups on restarts. If a car is off the track, just put out a caution in that turn. Oh! Just to make an additional comment! Road Course Racing does not Red Flag for Rain! Get Rain Tires, a windshield wiper, a break light, and RACE!

My only other complaint was it was missing Robby Gordon. He got shafted this year on the Dakar race

I think we could have stock car racing on the Road Course at Indy and Pack the stands! Run NASCAR and IRL's feeder series (Firestone Indy Lights) on the same weekend. Better Idea !!! ....Run a NASCAR Enduro....... 12 hours of Indy.....Run the Cup Cars, Nationwide Cars, Trucks, Late Models all at the same time! (1st in class?)

-Jack