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.
I do know that a lot of racist fucks are about to watch a car with Black Lives Matter lead a NASCAR race!!!
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.
Son of a bitch, he’s in second, someone didn’t pit and FS1 in all its glory didn’t notice it. Yeah, it was under caution.
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.
Very bad pit stop drops him back to 15th, hate to see his pit crew let him down like that.
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.
In my hypothetical the drivers and crews stay together but get randomly assigned a car.
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.
Should someone excise this race talk into a separate thread?
Haha… the racecar rookies have yellow stripes on their cars.
I don’t think it’s going to go on much longer and derail or anything. IMO it’s fine to leave here unless it continues for a bunch more posts.
Meh, it’s a single event. It would be historic if he managed to win this thing.
Don’t see any point starting a separate thread. I’ll update at the end, or near the end if he’s in contention in case people want to watch the end. He’s back up to 8th but going to need a miracle to overcome this pit stop issue.
It looked like he smacked into someone or vice versa coming out of the pit during the last caution, not sure if that’s what you’re talking about or if the two are related, I’m watching with sound off. We should probably make another thread
