By Staff
Well race fans the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup is about to begin. The final 10 races of the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Season will determine who the champion of stock car racing's elite will be.
After 26 races there are now only ten teams eligible to win the Cup and surprisingly defending Champion Tony Stewart is not one of them. Tony failed to finish well enough to secure a spot in the top ten and must simply be content with trying to win races and prepare for 2007.
In case you have not heard yet, the 10 drivers are Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Bush, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Jeff Burton and Kasey Kahne. The 400+ point difference between first place Kenseth and 10th place Kahne has been erased and is now only 40 points with a 5-point differential between all 10 drivers.
The series begins the final ten races in Loudon, N.H. on Sunday and Chase contender Kyle Bush is the returning champion having won there on July 16.
Normally in my weekly articles I write about the previous week's race, kind of a recap for those of you who don't have a chance to watch it on TV. This week it is kind of hard for me to do that for you.
Now, I sat through the entire race, in fact I had a great time with friends watching the race. The problem is that the television coverage was so bad that I can't tell you much about the race.
They spent so much of their broadcast time talking and focusing in on the Chase contenders that the race was merely a side topic. It was so bad at one point that TNT came back from a commercial break, ran only four laps of race coverage then went to another commercial break. To top that one off, when they returned from that break they ran only six more laps of racing before leaving again for commercials! Now I understand that there is a need for sponsors and therefore there are commercials. Television has always had them and I suspect always will.
I learned that 32 percent of the race had commercials and that is normal to most shows. I am upset because this barrage of commercials were mostly within the final 100 laps of the race, the point in the action where the moving and shaking really starts to happen.
They (TNT) were so involved with the Chase that they completely failed to mention that Dave Blaney finished fourth, his best career finish ever, or that Ken Schrader finished seventh, his highest finish of the year.
Get used to shoddy TV coverage race fans, it isn't going to get any better. What do you think will happen if a non-Chase contender wins one of the final 10 races?
Will the media ask him to slide his car over so the highest finishing Chase contender can join them?
Enjoy your weekend my friends and enjoy the racing action from New Hampshire.