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halfmileblog · 3 days ago

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Offensive and Biased NASCAR Driver Summaries

Volume 2: Team Penske

Here there be flop kings. Drivers who suffer biblical levels of torment every Sunday. I firmly believe Roger is devising a plan to kill his drivers at all times.

#2: Austin Cindric Austin is too tall and probably a cryptid. I would hate to interact with him only because I'd break my neck looking up at him, but I'm also a firm believer that this man gives some of the best hugs in NASCAR. Just look at him!! I never thought I'd see the day that a grown ass man with a wreath of flowers would give me cuteness aggression, but I'm pretty sure he married that Talladega wreath. Probably the biggest sweetie in NASCAR.

#12: Ryan Blaney I refuse to insult any aspect of this man except for maybe his luck. Ryan is an irredeemable nerd (may he never change), an absolute angel, guilty of posting thirst traps (we forgive him), and just in general a dork. Hard to hate the driver who gets visited by an entire golf cart of Stormtroopers or hides behind his pit crew to avoid Waltrip pre-race. Congratulations on the (unofficially awarded) NASCARblr's Most Beloved Driver, Ryan!

#22: Joey Logano I'm actually not a huge fan of Joey, but I don't exactly hate him. He definitely runs as a contender for cutest smile on the grid, but will unfortunately never outdo Josh Berry. Not sure what it is about him that irritates me (I promise I'm not THAT petty over the time he spun Berry in pit lane, because I'd have to be Austin flipped-my-driver-into-a-wall Cindric's biggest hater) but there's definitely something. Cheers to Joey for going from the rookie who got slapped around for being a cocky bastard to being the guy who slaps around the cocky bastard rookies.

#yaplord supreme #extremely offensive and biased nascar driver summaries #austin cindric #ryan blaney #joey logano #my beloved #there's no bias in the room #none at all #this is really tame for what I actually want to say

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coimbrabertone · 2 months ago

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Quick Talladega Blog and an Announcement.

Yesterday was the Jack Links 500 at Talladega Superspeedway and it was a bit of a controversial race. That isn't particularly surprising for plate races in this day and age, but the controversial part of this one is that it wasn't the typical superspeedway race.

There was no big one.

Yup. Last fall at Talladega we broke a new record for the biggest wreck in NASCAR history with the twenty-eight-car pileup near the end of the race. This time though, the field kept it surprisingly clean, and...I'm relieved, honestly.

Now, that's not to say there weren't wrecks, there were a few.

The main ones where a miscommunication between Kyle Busch and the Fords coming to pitlane which led to Kyle Busch slamming into Brad Keselowski who then grazed Alex Bowman's car before bouncing back down and taking out Ryan Blaney's car.

Keselowski and Blaney were not able to get repaired, while Kyle Busch did and got back out.

Then, on the following restart, we had a wreck right away when the draft on the upper lane got a bit too powerful, leading to Denny Hamlin bumping into his teammate Christopher Bell coming off of turn two. The angle wasn't perfect though, so the big bump sent Christopher Bell down rather than forward. Bell collected Chris Buescher on the bottom and then both of them skid across the runoff before hitting the wall hard.

In the first couple races of the season, it seemed like the drivers with the B-surnames were the only ones winning. Now? Those B-surnames seemed like they were cursed.

If you count first names, Brad's another B-name!

Thankfully, all the drivers from both incidents seemed to be okay.

Thus, we settled into a superspeedway race that was remarkably clean for the rest of it. The only cautions in the rest of the race were the stage cautions.

BJ McLeod was the only other driver to retire from the race and that was down to an overheating issue rather than a wreck.

That's not to say that the entire field were on their best behavior. No, we saw a few sketchy blocks, in particular Ross Chastain after the final pitstop when he moved up to block the Toyotas and cut off their momentum before they could push to the front.

This turned it into a race between the Hendrick cars of Kyle Larson, William Byron, and Alex Bowman on one side, and the Fords of Austin Cindric and Ryan Preece on the other.

Cindric was down a teammate thanks to Blaney's crash earlier in the race, while his other teammate, Logano, went on an unhinged rant when Cindric couldn't push him to the stage two win. This is in spite of the fact that Logano got pushed out all alone and tried to come up in front of Cindric's line which killed its momentum, so both Cindric and the affiliated Wood Brothers Ford of Josh Berry had to go up just to avoid slamming into Joey and potentially causing a wreck.

So, with one teammate out and another pissed off, Cindric was on his own.

Same goes for Preece, because with the #6 of Keselowski and the #17 of Buescher involved in those stage one incidents, Preece's #60 was left alone flying the flag for RFK.

That's when the common manufacturer came in clutch though, because in those final laps, Preece managed to find a gap and moved into the upper lane, taking control of it. Cindric was in control of the bottom, Preece in control of the top.

The pace was too high to get a third or fourth lane going, Cindric and Preece played it smart and didn't let the Chevrolets behind push them too far up front - and they were trying,

Larson in particular was giving Cindric some big bumps trying to create the separation necessary. The idea was that Larson could push Cindric out ahead of the line enough that Cindric had no draft and no help, then Larson could snake the line around him while Cindric fell to the back of the field like a parachute.

Alternatively, Larson could try to push them both out ahead of both lanes, and then switch to the upper lane, leaving Cindric all alone way in front of the bottom lane. That leaves it up to the car third in lane - Logano, Cindric's pissed off teammate, coincidentally enough - to decide what to do with Cindric.

Either way, Cindric wasn't letting Larson do it to him and Preece wasn't letting Byron do it on the top.

Thus, the Chevrolets were stuck in place, the Fords were in control, and the field kept it together coming onto the final lap.

It was going to be between Cindric and Preece.

Larson was still trying to push Cindric out wide and that meant that the two of them were disconnected from Logano behind, and two cars wasn't enough to pull off the draft at Talladega.

It looked like things might be going Preece's way, but then Cindric got a saving grace.

Up ahead, Josh Berry and Kyle Busch were at the very end of the lead lap after a speeding penalty and that aforementioned wreck, but they were in the bottom lane. Thus, coming out of the trioval and towards the line at Talladega - which is offset towards turn one, a peculiar little detail of the track - Cindric had a draft from Kyle Busch to help him to the win.

It was just enough.

Cindric took his third career win and locked himself into the playoffs.

Cindric has had some rough days in Cup, and it's often been questioned as to whether or not he's good enough to drive the #2 car, which is supposed to be the flagship of Team Penske. That being said, nobody can deny that Austin is one of the best drivers on the superspeedways in the next gen era - something he proved by winning the very first next gen plate race, the 2022 Daytona 500 - and he's been in a position for a lot more than that.

That fall Talladega race last year? Cindric was in the lead when the field had to snake around a lapped car and the resulting momentum mismatch caused the 28-car pileup.

The Daytona 500 this year? Cindric qualified on a front row and then wound up winning his duel race this year. He was also fighting for the lead before that final lap wreck left him in the runoff with no help while William Byron shot into the lead outta nowhere.

The very next race at Atlanta? Cindric was again in contention with three to go when Kyle Larson misjudged a late block that ended up taking both Cindric and Byron out of the race.

I could go on, but the point is that Cindric is always in contention at these superspeedway races only for something to inevitably go wrong for him. It feels good to see that success finally turn into results.

I like Cindric, I'll admit that, but that's not the only reason I'm fine with how this race went.

Let's talk about some of the issues people have had.

The race was boring? I was honestly more relieved than anything that we didn't get a massive wreck for once on a plate track. I think it means a lot to get a clean race on these tracks every once in awhile and it shows that these races don't have to be a wreckfest.

Nobody could pass? Bubba Wallace went from twentieth to tenth after the last pitstop. I know that Larson or Byron couldn't do anything, but one: when has one car ever been able to pass a line of drafting cars singlehandedly? Two: like I said early, Cindric and Preece were doing a good job dragging the brake and preventing the Chevys from pushing them out clear.

It was a good defensive performance and that's part of the game. If it's impossible to defend from a pass, then passing doesn't mean anything. Defense has to be part of the equation.

This is the same reason people don't care for huge DRS zones on F1 tracks.

This car sucks? Sure, but what do you expect to happen? What do you think NASCAR is gonna say "okay fine, everybody, get your gen4s out there, we're rolling it back to 2005!" like...no. This is the car we got and we're stuck for it for the foreseeable future. Are you just going to be miserable for however much longer we have this car or are you gonna accept the races for what they are?

I'm not saying this era of NASCAR is perfect or that we should just accept whatever product NASCAR gives us, but responding to everything with "this car sucks, NASCAR sucks now" isn't exactly productive either.

Besides, whatever your idea of the perfect car was, whether it's the gen4 or the CoT, or gen6...I promise you that there were just as many people bitching about the car back then.

The only constant in NASCAR is that people are always going to be mad about something.

Alright, that concludes the Talladega portion of the blogpost, now for a bit of an announcement: I won't be posting a blogpost every Monday any longer. I know that kinda sucks to hear, but I started this blog because I wanted a place where I could yap about my thoughts on what is going on in motorsports and stuff I find interesting in the world of racing.

In doing that, I've produced some damn cool blogposts. There are ones I'm very happy about writing.

There are also plenty of blogposts that I feel are just filler. I needed something to yap about on a Monday, so I found something to talk about, regardless of whether or not I felt particularly passionate about it.

I don't wanna write filler blogs just because I feel like I have to put something out on a Monday.

So...I'm not going to.

I'll write blogposts when I have something to say. No set schedule, just writing when I truly want to and truly have something to say. I know that's probably not the most satisfying thing in the world, and I'm sorry about that, but I think this blog is going to be higher quality that way.

That doesn't mean I'll be gone from tumblr though. I'll still be around even when I don't have blogposts to write, and my asks are always open, so if there's something you want to hear my opinion on, just go ahead and ask! I don't bite.

So yeah, that's what you should expect from here on out.

And in true Ionáblog fashion, this whole thing turned out longer than I was expecting.

#motorsports #racing #nascar cup #nascar #penske #austin cindric #joey logano

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