Every year I tell them how great the Saturday night race at Bristol is. And every year I can’t see it.
It’s hard work being a sportswriter type guy, people. They pull you in many different directions. And even though I love watching racing at Bristol more than any other track on the Nextel Cup circuit, and even though the night races are clearly superior to the daytime events, for something like For the fourth year in a row, I’ll have to find out what happened in Bristol via someone’s sports pager at 2am
You see, this is the weekend that my oldest fantasy football league holds its draft. Every year, on the last weekend of August (not intentionally; it just works that way), we congregate in a different city for a weekend of guy stuff: drinking beer, smoking cigars, swimming, talking sports, and sitting around around a current of air. table for five hours trying to decide between Charles Rogers and Mike Williams. It really is the one weekend of the year where I can honestly say that one of my other geekeries completely outshines my NASCAR geekery.
This year, we’re headed to Austin, Texas, my former home of five years, where people really care about racing (well, a little more than in Massachusetts, anyway). Well, driving from the Austin airport, I’m almost certain to see a dozen “Dale Earnhardt Jr.” bumper stickers, and air fresheners “#6” and little cartoons of Calvin peeing in #24. However, when the green flag flies in Bristol this Saturday night, it will do so without me once again. I’ll probably be playing poker, half in the bag, basically wondering how my picks (see below) are doing on the Sharpie 500. If I mention such an interest, though, I’m guaranteed to have empty beer cans thrown at me. me (the fantasy footballers I congregate with sigh and shake their heads at auto races).
So oh oh one of these years I’m going to see the actual night race at Bristol. Not in 2006, but someday. Someone write me a letter and tell me how it went.
Last Week: In last week’s column, I bragged that I had officially had the smallest winning week in my history as a picker. Do. Then the guys hit the track at Michigan and I actually put together an even lesser winning week. I picked the race winner, Matt Kenseth, who got to +825. Unfortunately, I lost my head-to-head pick (stupid Greg Biffle) which wiped out all but a small portion of my winnings. For the record, it was a win, but it was a win that earned us exactly 0.04 of a unit. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, I guess (just like the .06 units we made two weeks ago). But let’s go for something bigger this weekend at the legendary Bristol night race, okay? By the way, for the season, I still have a profit of 14.6 units.
Note: The odds for the following picks will be updated late Friday or early Saturday, at which time I’ll also make the head-to-head pick for the week (ie when the online books post their odds).
Take Kurt Busch (+511), 1/6 unit. It’s not an exciting bet, because Busch is the undisputed favorite for Bristol every time the Smokeless Set comes here. But in a lackluster first season driving the #2 for Penske, Busch was still able to come here in the spring and record a dramatic come-from-behind win, his fifth win in the last nine Bristol events. You might be thinking that weevil Busch is unlikely to be able to pull off a sweep at this track, but you only have to go back to 2003 to find a season in which he did exactly that. Also in favor of this bet is the fact that Busch is nearly out of the Chase for the Championship, so he can afford to go all out and try to win this at his best track.
Take Matt Kenseth (+775), 1/6 unit. Last week’s winner at Michigan is a model of consistency at Bristol. He won this event last season and finished third here in the spring. In all, Kenseth has eight top-10 finishes here in the last nine Bristol events. He also won earlier this year at Dover, which is a good indication that his setup at Bristol could be close to the right; experts refer to Dover as a “Great Bristol” because both have tight, high-banked turns that require high torque.
Take Kevin Harvick (+828), 1/6 unit. The trend here is to think about taking Jeff Gordon (+757), because Gordon was mugged here this spring quite a bit — he was leading Kenseth, but Milwaukee Matt snuck up behind him, hit his bumper, and went in front, whereupon Gordon jumped out of his car (wearing a gorgeous pink driver’s outfit) and pushed Kenseth for the nation to see. But I’m taking Harvick instead; he’s a huge threat to win his first points title this year, and he probably had the second-best car (after Busch) here in the spring. Like Kenseth, Harvick is a paragon of Bristol consistency (say, five times faster): He has seven top-10 finishes here in the last nine events, including a win last spring, two seconds, two-thirds and one. bedroom. If he can steer clear of mechanical issues (and the RCR cars showed a slight chink in their armor when Jeff Burton (+1971) and Clint Bowyer (+1169 as part of the field) blew up at Michigan last weekend), he’ll be late head. Still, I say Harvick has a great run on this, short track specialist that he is.