The only Cup-level NASCAR race won by a black driver was in 1963, and the race officials credited the win to a white driver anyway. They reversed it two years later, but never gave him a trophy - his family got one 20 years after he died.
If Bubba Wallace gets his first win tonight, with everything going on, racing a Black Lives Matter car, it would be one of the most incredible examples of breaking a color barrier in American sports history. He’s 250 to 1 to win, but he’s won on this track (Martinsville) in a truck series race…
The race is at 7pm. I haven’t watched a NASCAR race in years, but I might have to check this out. It’s also a short track, so there’s a lot of “rubbing” at short tracks… The odds someone tries to put him in the wall are pretty high, because I’m sure a lot of those guys hate the BLM movement.
A win for him tonight would be more jarring to the NASCAR world than Tiger winning The Masters in '97 was to the golf world.
Oh, and the 43 car is owned by and used to be driven by Richard Petty, probably the most accomplished driver in NASCAR history.
Almost got 5th before the end of the second stage, but not quite. He’s in 6th, we’ll see how this pit stop goes. I’m hoping he can change 4 tires and stay in the top 10, or at least top 12.
We also need no green flag stops, or we’re totally fucked.
Bubba Wallace started in 23rd, he’s up to 12th. They’re 41 laps in out of 500. Before the race, he called it the most important race of his life, which is a pretty big statement from a guy who’s raced in a few Daytona 500’s.
The paint scheme has gotten a decent amount of coverage in the broadcast.
Edit: 5 minutes later he’s now in 9th, lap 107. They just played a pre-race clip from his social media, in which he said he barely slept last night and he’s “racing to change the world.”
Wallace takes the lead out of the pits, taking only 2 tires instead of 4 with 14 laps left in stage 1. A gambling event has occurred!
Don’t know what the significance is of the stages, given that I don’t watch NASCAR anymore and haven’t in years. If they get a caution, he’s gambling that he can hold on in the top 5 or so on two tires for 14 laps.
Was it a pit stop under caution flag? If so, he may have taken two just to get a couple of yellow flag laps in the lead to get some more attention on his car and cause.
I was a Gordon fan from the start because he wasn’t a redneck, so I loved how triggered that made all of em.
Bubba holds onto 5th at the end of the stage, so the gamble pays off! I don’t know if he can run with Logano and Bowyer, who have been dominating so far, but aside from those two, he’s been the most impressive so far.
God damn it, his pit crew broke something in the car that’s going to slow down their pit stops all night - that’s what killed them on the last stop. It’s going to cost him 6-7 seconds on every pit stop. That could be it. Huge huge disadvantage to overcome.
Is there much variance among how these cars perform? In other words, if the drivers all had to switch cars before they started, would it make that much of a difference?
It’s basically 90% the car. If you put the worst driver in the best car they might be able to win. The best driver in the worst car would finish 5-10 laps behind or more.
When I used to watch, yes, in general… On a track like this maybe a little less so. But some of the bigger teams just have more money to pump into research and improvement, and they’ll have more cars to use so that they can have each one set up more specifically for the given type of track.
His pit crew broke a chain that helps them jack the car up quicker, so now instead of needing one pump on the jack to get the car up during the pit stop, they’re going to need 3-4 pumps. A normal pit stop is 12-13 seconds, his will be 19.
There’s also variance in pit crew quality, the top teams have the top guys, generally. He may lose 10 spots on every pit stop all night, you can’t win that way. Not sure if there’s anything they can do to compensate it.
There are definitely a few cars that have almost no chance. But among the good teams, the differences come down to how well the driver and crew can communicate to get the car set up properly and then make minor adjustments throughout the race to adjust to changing track conditions. And certain drivers are just very good at certain tracks. Like they can almost drive anything within reason and do ok at that track.
Yeah I’d agree with that. Certain teams tend to have more success at restrictor plate tracks, which are the high speed tracks like Daytona and Talladega, which comes down to a combination of better engines and beintrg able to do more research on everything that goes into it. That may have changed over the years, though, as more of the lower end teams caught up to the learning curve on restrictor plates.
