Morning Musings In The Midday Maybe: Getting All Emotional And Stuff

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Who really knows what’s in here. It’s the Morning Musings In The Midday Maybe.

Morning MusingsCue up the Sarah McLachlan, it’s gonna be a tear jerker.

Ok, wait, let’s not get that emotional now. But admittedly, it’s not the easiest thing to see our longtime colleague, road buddy, sounding board and best friend Travis Barrett pretty much walking away from the business of short track racing after this season.

The Consigliore has seen it all when it comes to short tracks, and even the big tracks, and much of what this reporter has seen across the board has come with The Consigliore riding shotgun.

From running into a burning building ala Tommy Gavin to dropping a fishing line into Lake Lloyd the night before the Daytona 500, and everything in between, we’ve seen a bunch.

T Barrett Daytona

Travis Barrett

Barrett has seen every side of the sport, from reporter, to independent web producer to public relations professional, he’s done it all besides run a team. And he’s done it all with a professionalism and class that few can match.

The pits and press boxes of New England short tracks, and tracks around the country for that matter, are losing a pretty great man.

— Ok, wiping away the tears and moving on.

Direct from the short track racing Drive for Self Entitlement program …

We’ll remove the names to protect the ignorant.

Was told by a local Modified racer this week, who has incidentally never even as much as sniffed a victory in a Modified, that he didn’t want to do an interview to promote an upcoming event.

He said he didn’t want to talk to this reporter because we never talked to him when he was racing in the local entry-level kids division and because we aren’t friends on Facebook.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

— What’s better, walking in from 15-degree weather into a room with a roaring fireplace or walking in from 95-degree weather into a roam with chilling air conditioning?

— NASCAR deserves some cheers and jeers for its streaming broadcast of the Whelen Southern Modified Tour event Thursday evening from Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Cheers because it was a quality production value for a live streaming online event. It gave fans their choice of multiple camera angles that were all easy to navigate. For an event that would likely never make national TV, fans of Modified racing were lucky to have it.

That said, they really need to work on the “soundtrack.”

Again, we won’t name names, we all know who they were. Just do a little bit of homework, just a little. The mistakes, from the start of the broadcast to the finish, came seemingly every minute. From opening up by calling it the “Southwest Modified Tour” to mispronouncing the name of the four-time series champion on every reference.

It took a very cool product and unfortunately made it look like NASCAR didn’t care.

— We can debate all day the merits and viability of the Outlaw Stock feature at the Waterford Speedbowl on Oct. 5.

Some called it an ugly wreckfest, others what used to be great about racing. We feel like in landed somewhere in the middle. But could the greatness of what happened that night – tight, aggressive, fender bending racing from start to finish – be replicated in a weekly division today? Probably not unfortunately, and that’s really too bad.

— If you don’t have access to Mike Serluca’s rants on Facebook, you’re missing out. And speaking of that, someone needs to get superfan/crew member Serluca and team owner Scott Fearn together as a traveling comedy duo for the offseason. I see sold out shows across Connecticut.

— There are kids today that want to grow up and be like Kenny Powers from Eastbound & Down. And we’re not saying that’s such a bad thing.

— A dozen fans injured earlier this week in an IndyCar crash rekindled many of the same debates that fired up in February when numerous fans were injured after a NASCAR Nationwide Series crash at Daytona International Speedway.

What’s scary is there is a segment of people out there that believe in the philosophy that racing is inherently dangerous and fans have to accept that risk too.

The fact is, no fan should ever go to a racetrack with the thought on their mind that it should just be accepted that they might get killed.

NS FacebookThe fact that people within the sport believe fans should be accepting that they might get hurt or die because of wrecks is a horrendous roadblock to any chance at helping grow the sport.

— The North-South Shootout returns for the 11th year Nov. 7-9 at Caraway Speedway in Sophia, N.C.

The event has had its up and downs over the years, just like Modified racing in general, but give the folks at Caraway credit, they’ve tried hard to help flourish the brand.

That said, it’s probably not easy on their marketing efforts when they have a Sprint Cup Series crew chief, very publicly, seemingly questioning their methods of properly taking care of teams financially after the event.

— A little late to the game on this one, but just to play devil’s advocate here. A lot of people seemed up in arms over the $100 fine for Woody Pitkat after he blew a donut on the infield at Stafford Motor Speedway on Sept. 29 after winning his first SK Modified championship.

Some people on Facebook even pointed to a commercial NASCAR produced showcasing the celebrations of drivers in the Sprint Cup Series. Yes, surely we could all find the NASCAR hypocrisy deal in many different instances across the landscape of the sport.

That said, we think at Stafford it was really a safety issue more than anything else.

And for those saying let him celebrate his championship, will you be the first ones to cry inconsistency with officiating next year when someone is allowed to get away with something everybody else gets in trouble for?

Stafford has been pretty consistent with “The Donut Rule” for many years. In the end, we think for what the day brought to him both with the hardware and emotionally, we’re sure Pitkat deep down had little issue with that $100 fine.

— It is kind of funny that Marty Reid can accidentally make a mistake about which lap a race is on and get fired but Darrell Waltrip can go on TV and say Danica Patrick is the face of NASCAR racing and people call him knowledgeable of the subject matter.

— Thankfully we lost the video on that first RaceDayCT Finale Weekend Twerking contest at the Waterford Speedbowl.

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Comments

  1. “– It is kind of funny that Marty Reid can accidentally make a mistake about which lap a race is on and get fired but Darrell Waltrip can go on TV and say Danica Patrick is the face of NASCAR racing and people call him knowledgeable of the subject matter.”

    I knew if I read far enough into this article I’d find something on which I agree with you! lol

  2. Another good rant Shawn!

    – I would love to see live streaming of the Mod tour. It could be fun!

    – The outlaw race was awesome! As a race fan that was one of the best finishes ever. Sid’s video was hard to tell who really won but I think Huchings won with Jay finishing 3rd. I’m a bit shocked that they did not add another outlaw race this sat at the bowl. Oh well.

    – It’s not cool when fans get hurt at a track when a car goes into the fence. But what can NASCAR or IRL do? Make the fence 30 feet high? Make the bars of the fence 5 inches thick? I’m sure in the future this problem will be fixed. But in-till someone invents something for stuff to not fly into the crowed, it’s going to happen like it or not.

    But I see this being works on now since they have the walls, the track and the cars very safe now. Right?

    – Kevin Manion the cheater can say whatever he wants. His words mean nothing to me, I will never forgive him and Ryan Newmen for cheating in a WMT race. They should be ashamed of them self’s.

    – Darrell Waltrip is a joke just like this kid brother.

    – Mark my words. At the end of 2016 Danica Patric will be out of a Sprint cup ride because of her constant finish of 30th or worse. She is not a driver. She is a model.

  3. I’d rather walk into a hot room after being in 20 degree weather. Just saying

    What is the RaceDayCT, we had a top five car all day, Toyota Camry going to do with themselves on Thursday nights now that the Thompson weekly shows are done? Thunder Road seems like a bit of a drive from CT. Although I’m sure Ken Squire and Tom Curley would love to have you up for a Thursday show. Who said Thursday racing doesn’t work???

  4. Mark,
    I’m sure we’ll find something. Who knows, changes might open the door for some additional coverage, maybe some visits to Wacky Wednesday shows at Waterford. We’ll have to see how everything plays out for 2014.

  5. Ken Squier, please pull off the track and take it back to the garage area….permanently.

  6. Another amusing article. The Mod race stream was a surprise and pleasure. I did end up muting it however. Wish they flew Matt Buckler down there to do the broadcast. He would have been a joy to listen to his racing comments. I 100% agree with the Waltrip/Danica comments. He is sickening to listen to week after week. You would think by now he would give up. Even Dale Jarrett promotes her when does well in practice. LOL. Look forward to your comments on Twitter.

  7. Someone who is old enough to drive a race car refused to talk to you because you are not friends on Facebook? Really?

  8. Deb Plummer says

    Thanks for giving homage to Travis, I agree he and his words will be missed by many.

  9. It’d probably be cheaper to go to Thunder Road then Waterford. TR, cheaper to get in, & you can bring in your own beverages, even including the money spent on gas to get there.

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