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Brickyard 400 Fallout, Stewart And USAC, Audi Names New Line-Up

The fallout continues from Sunday’s debacle at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Allstate 400 at the Brickyard won by Jimmie Johnson is taking a beating in the media due to all the competition yellows for tires excessively wearing after ten laps. Yep, that’s 25 miles. The longest green flag period in Sunday’s race was 13 laps. Today, NASCAR apologized.

Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, told a national teleconference with media that NASCAR officials spoke to Goodyear officials again today. Pemberton said that NASCAR is continuing working on figuring out what happened and making sure it does not a repeat.

“I can’t say enough how sorry we are, and it’s our responsibility, being NASCAR, that we don’t go through this situation again,” Pemberton said Tuesday. “We’ve already got after it, and we’re moving forward with a plan to get ahead of the situation so we don’t go through this again.

“Once again, I think that it deserves to be said that the race didn’t come off like we had hoped. The fans didn’t get what they exactly wanted, and we’ll do everything in our power, and it won’t happen again, I can tell you that much.

“We’re going to put a lot of effort towards it and get a better plan moving forward.”

Several factors could have played into the situation, Pemberton said. He mentioned length of time since the Goodyear tested in April and the debut of the COT car at the Speedway. Also, Pemberton (and I assume Goodyear) is trying to determine the source or reason disintegrating tires created more of a fine powder on the track than in the past.

In my opinion the bottom line is this. It’s a joke that NASCAR is trying to control spending in a sport in which Hendrick Motorsports has a four car Cup team with a annual budget of $250 million dollars. They should have had an open test, whether it was April or after the Michigan race on a Monday or even on Thursday of race weekend as suggested by SPEED Channel’s Dave Despain. NASCAR better take a look at the product on the track instead worrying who is going to be the official peanut butter.

Regarding the telecast, NASCAR has always been a family sport, for many years they thought it was unacceptable for hard liquors such as Smirnoff or Jack Daniels to be on any car. Well, now during NASCAR commericial breaks we have overweight fellas putting jumper cable on his nipples to start cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecQnqW80zbU

Speaking of overweight guys (yes, I’m one of them), fellas, cut off t-shirts are not a good look at the track. Unless you have arms like Carl Edwards or LaDanian Tomlinson go back to sleeves.

USAC team owner Tony Stewart was fined $10,000 and His race team was placed on probation for the rest of the 2008 USAC racing season following an incident on pit road during Thursday night’s USAC National Midget race at O’Reilly Raceway Park (ORP) in Indianapolis.

Stewart was fined for violation of USAC competition rules 10.28 (Unsportsmanlike Conduct) and 10.32 (Conduct Detrimental to Racing) after his interaction with USAC race officials following an on-track incident involving one of his Midgets driven by Tracy Hines. Hines had scraped the wall and pitted for a tire change, but his car was not deemed ready to re-enter the race in time to rejoin the field for the restart.

Stewart released this statement earlier on Tuesday: “USAC immediately assessed the incident and it was determined that unacceptable behavior detrimental to the sport had occurred, and that the professionalism and the integrity of the series and its promoters had been severely compromised,” stated Jason Smith, Vice President of Racing Operations for USAC. “While we respect the passion of our teams in the spirit of competition, we regret this incident occurred and are dedicated to averting a recurrence in the future.”

“I apologize to USAC and their fans for my behavior last week at ORP. My own misinterpretation of USAC policies in place at the time led to confusion and elevated emotions,” Stewart said. “I’m very passionate about my race team and will stand up for them when I think something isn’t right. Obviously, I handled this particular situation the wrong way, and if I had to do it over again, it never would’ve happened.”

In addition to the fine and his race team being placed on probation through the 2008 season, Stewart will also pay for the costs of new radios and uniforms for USAC officials.

“Tony offered to go beyond the penalties USAC assessed him because he wanted to do something positive that would have specific impact for our officials,” said Kevin Miller, CEO and President of USAC. “While what took place at ORP last week was unfortunate, we applaud Tony’s commitment to bettering USAC and for providing additional equipment officials use week in and week out.”

If I was Stewart, I may had done the same thing, they should have let Hines return to the race. By the way, Stewart isn’t the first USAC legend to be worked up at a USAC official, here’s Jack Hewitt a few years back. *** Be warned this video has very graphic language ***

Audi released it’s new driver line-up, The Swiss racing driver Marcel F

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