First thought upon entering the grounds of Bristol Motor Speedway this morning: Wow this is small. The Green-White-Checkered is used to Superspeedways not these little half-mile tracks and thus didn’t realize we’d driven past the actual speedway and back into the no-man’s-land which surrounds it. The infield is so tiny it only fits all the haulers because they’re squeezed in close together. On the track itself, every little incident is magnified at Bristol. You race fans know what that means for the racing. It’ll be fun. At least for most people:
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Yellow Flag: Jimmie Johnson is not one of those people. He was in a jovial mood this morning as he told us about a little mental trick he’s trying to play on himself: “I’ve studied video, I have worked with engineers I’ve driven many laps in my head and I’ve started the whole process of convincing myself I love this track. My outlook is I love this place and I cannot wait to get on the track.”
Don’t believe him? You shouldn’t. Johnson absolutely can’t figure out Bristol Motor Speedway. He’s never won here and has only two top-five finishes. Last year Johnson had three goals as far as race track wins. He wanted to win at Bristol, Watkins Glen and Sonoma. None of that happened.
Green Flag: One of the Green-White-Checkered’s twitter followers (check us out at osnascar) pondered this question – “Why’s Biff jumping off his boat before Bristol?” Great question. NASCAR drivers don’t generally have clauses in their contracts forbidding them from doing dangerous non-NASCAR activities, the way other professional athletes do. But maybe they should. Not that jumping off a boat, which Greg Biffle did en route to bruising his ribs, is typically what you’d call a dangerous activity…
White Flag: Biffle’s explanation of what exactly he did deserves it’s own flag: “Me and a couple buddies went out fishing on Tuesday night and we were just messing around in our cove right there and we came back to the dock. I jumped over to the dock and the boat was kind of drifting out a little bit. One guy had the front corner and I said, ‘I’m gonna jump back over and grab a rope and then jump back again.’ It was about 11:30, so there was a little bit of dew in the air and the platform must have been wet, and when I jumped over it just shot my foot out from underneath me. It turned me around backwards and put me right on my side and on my back on the edge of the boat. It’s not a normal boat. It’s got a sharp edge on it because it has a platform on the front, so it’s just one of those freak, stupid accidents.”
Checkered Flag: So far the consensus among NASCAR’s top drivers seems to be that Formula One’s new system in which the series champion will be the driver who wins the most races wouldn’t work in NASCAR. Some called it ridiculous and others were a little more muted. Interestingly, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch both opposed the change, too. Busch could have had a chance to win the championship late last season if a wins-only structure were in place. But he still didn’t like the idea: “A championship should be built on your bad days, how good do you make your bad days?”
