This weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway near Charlotte, North Carolina, NASCAR holds their version of an All-Star event. The only real similarity to some of the other major sports all-star events is that it is an exhibition event. Drivers will not get any points this Saturday, but that’s where any comparison ends.
Unlike the NBA, NFL, or Baseball All-Star weekend, these players actually care about what happens on the field, or in this case, the track. Baseball attempted to make their game more interesting by having the game determine what league gets home field advantage in the World Series. Yeah, about 8 percent of the participating players care about that.
We’ll all reflect on those classic baseball calls, “The league the wins the All-Star game and will now be hosting the World Series in 3 months”, simply riveting. This was done only as an after thought following the disaster in Milwaukee when baseball’s mid-summer classic ended in a classic 7-7 tie. The NBA and MLB can’t get its main stars to even compete in some of the all-star festivities and in the Pro Bowl, football players only go at 80 percent speed. But what should the fans expect, it’s a mere exhibition.
How about if you offered $1 million to the winner? Might that change the grand scheme of things and the competitive nature of the event? You bet it would! Players have clauses in the contracts that give them bonuses for making an all-star team, but nothing for how they perform. It’s got to be an exciting feeling for the 22 drivers involved in this weeks NASCAR Nextel All Star Challenge knowing that if they cross the finish line after 90 laps, they’ll pocket $1 million, which is almost twice as much more money than any races other than the Daytona 500. That excitement and “dash for the cash” makes it the premier sporting all-star event, at least in this person’s opinion.
The main race breaks up into three segments. The first stage is 40 laps then they break for 10 minutes, invert a few cars, and then start the second segment consisting of 30 laps. The final segment is a 20-lap dash.
Picking a driver to win is just as tough as all the other races, but your chances of getting a bad beat are reduced because there are no clunkers involved in this race. They are the best of the best and based on a few things, you can narrow it down to a handful of drivers that are going to be tough to beat.
Micah Roberts cleaned up the track last week with his post-qualifying analysis in his top-five finish prediction, with winners weekly. Right now, all Gold Members can get his valuable insight plus the winning selections for FREE. Click here to get all of the picks and analysis!
Indy 500 Qualifying
Following the qualifying session on Sunday, Tony Kanaan (10/1) is the pole sitter and a strong bet to win the race. This race will be one of the more competitive Indy 500’s because of all the quality teams led by Kanaan team Andretti-Green.
Thus far after all the practice sessions and Qualifying, I’ll stick with the Rahal-Letterman team of Danica Patrick (10/1), Vitor Meira (14/1), and last years Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice (15/1). Rice still has to qualify next week because of accident he was in during practice, but he should be okay for the race.
Some are dismissing Patrick as a possible candidate because she’s a woman and the best a woman has ever done at Indy is ninth. However, this is the best car a woman has ever drove and she proved it by being consistently fast every day of practice. If she ended up winning the race, it would be the biggest feat accomplished by a woman in Sports history. Being a woman will not be what wins or loses this race for her, it will be more about how much she can deal with the spotlight and her lack of experience. So far she is doing an exemplary job of handling all the demands. I hope she does it.
We’ll have a final Indy preview next week.
