As you’re reading this, I’m on the tail-end of my road trip to Michigan International Speedway for the Show Me The Carfax race weekend. I should be at the track in time for Nextel Cup qualifying which I might watch from the pits and spend the next two days there for the Nationwide and Nextel Cup Series races. I’ll have a full recap next week and I’ll be tweeting from the track every now and then. Anyway, since I’m going to be at the NASCAR weekend at MIS, I figured that I would make this edition of The Humanoids all about NASCAR.

Since I have a chance, here’s your obligatory Lowdown radio update. The latest segment on the show will be “The Worst of Music.” Jackie and I will find one new piece of music to declare as the worst of music. For example, the worst thing I’ve heard over the last few weeks would be Pitbull’s I Know You Want Me. It’s a mind-numbingly bad piece of music that makes Katy Perry listenable rather than just watchable. So this and “It Came From YouTube” are making for a cramped line-up as we creep up to the Season 3 Premiere on September 15th.

Mark Martin
The Kid has had a revival upon joining Hendrick Motorsports. He leads Sprint Cup in wins this season with four which is amazing for the oldest driver in the series who hasn’t won a race since 2005 and hasn’t run a full schedule since 2006. He also managed to score four pole positions which is impressive for an old man who hasn’t scored a pole since 2001. He currently sits 11th in the points, only 89 points above Kyle Busch who is the first man out of a Chase spot. But the reason I bring The Kid up is because he won the most recent Sprint Cup race at Michigan International Speedway. Sure, it was a fuel mileage race but that fact isn’t recorded in the books. I know we all remember that it was a fuel mileage race but take that out and he would have finished third which was still pretty respectable. I feel like that didn’t count then let’s use the Chicagoland race as an example. In that one, he led 195 of 267 laps and had to stave off a late race restart to win the race. But does this whole revival mean that he can win his first Sprint Cup title? Well, he’s in the best spot right now. If he can make the Chase, he’ll be the #1 seed based on having the most wins (assuming that no one will catch his four wins). But as Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards showed up last year, having a high seed doesn’t mean anything. You have to like Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson as the favourites to win the title. Still, would there be a better story than The Kid finally winning that elusive crown after being the runner-up four times?

Carl Edwards
Last year’s August Michigan winner has been running under the radar this season. Heading into last year’s 3M 400, Carl had won 4 race and win another 5, including at Michigan. This year, Cousin Carl hasn’t one a race. At least, not in the Sprint Cup Series. He has managed to find his way up to 6th in the points standings and 203 points up on 13th with four races to go. I think it’s safe to say he’s a lock and will have to suffer a monumental collapse to miss the Chase. Though I can sort of understand why his performance has dropped off. I want to say he’s dizzy from doing so many of his trademark backflips last season but that’s probably not it. In between filming Aflac, Subway, and Gillette commercials, Edwards has been running full-time in the Nationwide Series. While this probably helps him when the Cup and Nationwide Series are at the same track (like this weekend at Michigan), it likely hurts him when the two Series are separated. Edwards occasionally has to jet away from his Cup duties to take care of his Nationwide championship chase. Now, most seasons would see him with a healthy points lead. However, nobody expected Kyle Busch to have a season like he has been having.

Tony Stewart
The twice Sprint Cup Champion (though technically he won a Winston Cup and a Nextel Cup) is taking care of business this season. I don’t think anyone expected him to be struggling by any definition this season. However, I don’t think anyone expected his new team to go from struggling to make the Top 35 (as the Haas team did in 2008) to leading the Sprint Cup points in 2009. Fans of NASCAR know that Smoke usually doesn’t make his move in the standings until July but he’s been near the top since the Daytona 500. If anyone can end the three years of Jimmie Johnson domination/dreariness, it’s Smoke. By the way, stop listening to the media about the points. Smoke has clinched a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Follow the math here. Max points in a race is 195 while the minimum points is 34. That’s a difference of 161 or 644 over the final four races in the regular season. If Tony starts the next four races, he could finish 43rd in each and still make the Chase based on his 756 point lead over 13th. In fact, as long as Stewart takes the green flag once over the next four races, he will race in the Chase. You don’t need to be ESPN or NASCAR to figure that out.

Kyle Busch
There is one man in NASCAR that not only wears the black hat but also loves wearing it. It’s all those Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans (more on him in a minute) that started the hate on Shrub. Apparently that get together with Junior in May of 2008 while battling for the win in the late going of a race at Richmond will make you hated for all of eternity. Of course, if either Earnhardt Junior or Senior pulled the same trick, they would have been heroes. Though Busch could be hated because he’s different from most NASCAR drivers. He can win on any type of track. He hates to lose and I mean absolutely detests not winning a race. He plays to the crowd whether they love him or hate him. And he has more talent than half the field combined. Maybe taking up an offer from Toyota to test an F1 car pissed off the fans. Or maybe it’s because he drives one of them there furrin cars. Though it could be that the fans are bored of Kyle Busch. I’m not talking about the guitar smashing or dodging reporters or the occasional bump-and-run. I think people are tired of him winning everything. I call it the Schumacher Effect. People were bored of Michael Schumacher because he often dominated in F1. This year, Busch has won 11 races between the top three divisions of NASCAR (3 Cup, 6 Nationwide, 2 Trucks). He’s dominating the Nationwide Series, is contending for a Chase spot in the Cup Series and would be in contention in the Truck Series if he ran the whole season. Did I mention that he’s finished first or second in the last 10 Nationwide races? He’s a force to be reckoned with. Maybe not this season but his domination of the 2008 regular season was no fluke. Somewhere, Rick Hendrick is kicking himself for hiring Dale Jr. instead of keeping Busch.

Camping World Truck Series
Ever heard of the lowest rung of NASCAR’s three national touring series? Ever watch part of a NCWTS race? Well, if you haven’t, you don’t know what you’re missing. The trucks are considered to have the best racing in all of NASCAR. Where the Cup (and soon the Nationwide) Series has failed in designing a car that can provide close racing and lots of passing, the Truck Series has all of that in spades. If you want unpredictability, there have been 7 different race winners this season. You want record setting performances, Ron Hornaday has won the last five straight CWTS races which is a record for NASCAR’s national touring series. If you want to see the stars of the future, Greg Biffle, Kurt & Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, and David Reutimann are among a few of the drivers who have come through the CWTS en route to Sprint Cup. The reason that I bring up the Camping World Truck Series and not the Nationwide Series is that I would rather that they were running the CWTS than the NNS. The Trucks are the most fun racing that NASCAR produces and it’s a shame that it won’t be at Michigan. Instead, we have to wait until next Wednesday when the trucks roll into Thunder Valley and the Bristol Motor Speedway. That may not be the best racing the trucks will ever do but their two-wide beating and banging ought to be a hell of a time.

Chase For The Sprint Cup
I’m not sold on the idea of the Chase. Part of that because it was a knee-jerk reaction to Matt Kenseth winning the 2003 Winston Cup with one race remaining in the season thanks to his unparalleled consistency Maybe it’s because it doesn’t reward drivers who are the best over the course of the season and instead rewards drivers who are good at those last 10 tracks, like Jimmie Johnson. Though I could hate it because it’s essentially a gimmick to create a close title race when football season starts and NASCAR’s TV ratings start to slide. I will admit that the unpredictability of the title race down the stretch is exciting, though it’s slightly diminished because of the gimmicked points reset. Now this may come as a disappointment to NASCAR fans but the last two Formula One World Championships have been far more exciting than Sprint Cup Chases. Sure, only two were still contenders in 2008 but Lewis Hamilton’s last lap, last corner pass to win the title was the most exciting moment in motorsports going back a couple of years. I realize that F1 has a season that’s only half as long as Sprint Cup but when you can create that drama over a whole season that isn’t settle until the dying moments, you’ve found the right (pardon the pun) formula. It’s not like NASCAR needed to change the points system to create a close title race. For example, from 1975, when the current points system was implemented, to 2003, the last year before the Chase Era, the championship winning margin was less than 50 points on 12 occasions, or 41% of seasons. The Chase may have gone down to the final race each of the last five years but there hasn’t been much drama. The winning margin has been less than 50 points only twice, or 40% of Chase playoffs. I know I’m grabbing at straws with these stats (but that’s all statistics is) but it has to make you think that the Chase isn’t the be all and end all of racing.

ESPN
While being live at the race track means that I’ll have a bit of a challenge keeping up with the action and I won’t have any replays if I miss something, at least I won’t be watching ESPN. Jerry Punch has a tendency to either get lost or sound like he’s asleep while calling the race. Andy Petree and Dale Jarrett aren’t too bad. Alan Bestwick should be doing play-by-play but does a good job stealing the show with Rusty Wallace and an infinitely improved since 2007 Brad Daugherty. Hell, I even think that Marty Reid (IRL commentator extraordinaire) sounds competent working with Jarrett and Petree instead of Scott Goodyear. That doesn’t solve other problems with the telecast. The pit reporters don’t sound like reporters but like they’re either fans with microphones or they don’t know what to ask. The cameras focus on certain popular drivers rather than the good racing. They are fond of playing car radio broadcasts over top of one another without telling you who they’re from to grate on your ear drums. The coverage that ESPN puts on makes me long for the coverage that TNT gave us. It was a well-oiled machine with great commentary, pit reporters, and studio crew all working in sync to make a great product. Hell, they even had live online video and bonus coverage. Like I said, though, I don’t have to be subjected to the ESPN abomination this weekend. I should be getting the MRN radio broadcast of the race over the public address system. It’ll be nice to have a one week reprieve.

The Clock
If there’s something that most racing fans would agree about is that the length of races are getting to the long side. So what I did was put together a handy Excel spreadsheet to determine if the races are too long. When I tried to figure out if the race was too long based on its set distance, I used a race time of three hours as ideal. That just seems like the right length of time for a NASCAR race. I know that there aren’t many people that would want to bake under the hot sun for much longer than that. As a proxy for the green flag average speed, I used the fastest lap less 10 MPH. It’s a bit arbitrary but hopefully it makes a good enough proxy. Anyway, anything where the ideal average speed to finish in three hours is within 10 MPH of the fastest speed is in the danger area. Any ideal average speed that is within 5 MPH should require a change in distance. In the danger area is Martinsville and Darlington. I’m willing to give Darlington a pass because the Southern 500 is a historic NASCAR Cup event. Martinsville is also in that danger area but won’t get the benefit of the doubt from me. As historic as Martinsville is, the 500 lap race is just too long. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of action happening. The bump-and-run is an acceptable NASCAR passing practice but can produce a mind-numbing number of cautions and does anyone want to see a race with something like one-fifth distance run under the yellow flag. By cutting 100 laps off that race, we’re cutting 100 laps off the mid-race lull were everyone rides around for the sprint to the finish. Pocono absolutely needs to be shortened. The races will never be short and will quite often be dull despite it being one of my favourite tracks. I know that the folks at Pocono don’t want to hear it but they have to reduce the race length by 100 miles if they want people to watch it from start to finish.

Rain
For two straight weeks, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has found itself victimized by Mother Nature. The Pocono and Watkins Glen races had their scheduled starts postponed until Monday after rain on Sunday afternoon. The Cup Series has been plagued by rain this season. The season opening Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 have all been shortened by rain. Meanwhile, the Coke 600 (again), Pennsylvania 500, and Heluva Dips at the Glen were all forced to be run on Monday because of rain. That’s five of 22 events that have been affected by rain, or 23% of events. Six times if you count Tony Stewart’s Prelude to the Dream charity race of Sprint Cup stars at Eldora Raceway which was postponed. Formula One, which can run in the rain and is a lot more interesting if it does rain, has only has 2 of 10 races affected by rain. Why do I bring that up? Because NASCAR has rain tires but won’t use them on the Cup cars. Sprint Cup teams should be ready to run in the rain as opposed to the fiasco that the Nationwide race at Montreal became. Sprint Cup drivers in the rain would make for a hell of a better show than in the dry. That and the fact that I’m sure NASCAR would prefer to have only 2 rain affected races while F1 would rather have it rain 5 times.