Throughout the week you can send us your best questions, jokes, rants and just plain miscellaneous thoughts to happyhourmailbag@yahoo.com or @NickBromberg.We'll post them here, have a good time and everyone's happy.
A little non-NASCAR for a second. Looks like F1 wants to do standing restarts in 2015. Yeah, I realize that restarts don't happen all that often in Formula 1, but what the heck?
Standing starts are great for the beginning of the race, and they're going to be incredibly enjoyable for restarts. I'm not complaining about the potential entertainment, it just looks like a blantant attempt for more excitement.
Onto the fun.
Assuming Kyle Busch never wins a championship, who do you think would go down as the best driver to never win a title? Kyle Busch or Mark Martin? - Paul
You have to say Kyle Busch, simply because of all of the wins, right? He already has Mark Martin's record for Nationwide Series victories and on his current pace if his NASCAR career spans 25 years, he'll have over 260 wins in each of NASCAR's three series. Sure, his 200+ wins may not be the same as Richard Petty's 200 wins, but if Busch gets to 300, that's in a class by itself.
But that being said, if Busch gets to 300, he has a Sprint Cup title, right? The highest he's ever finished in the Cup Series standings is fourth while Martin has finished second five times. Do those five second place finish override Busch's hundreds of wins if he doesn't have five second-place finishes and never wins a title? Because of the Chase format (especially the new one), I don't think so. But it'd be an interesting debate.
Ultimately, Busch is going to win one. I'll be utterly stunned if he doesn't.
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@NickBromberg Do you think NASCAR will ever have a road course in the Chase or will "politics" always get in the way?
? Chris Nulty (@RealChrisNulty) June 26, 2014 Yes, I think NASCAR does, because I think the schedule eventually gets overhauled. I don't think that overhaul will be next year or maybe even the year after, but after messing with the Chase so many times, the schedule has to be fiddled with as well. Especially if interest continues to stagnate or trend downward.
What road course will it be? That's an incredibly intriguing question. How would a race at the Circuit of the Americas sound? Great, right? Yeah, but politics may get in the way of that one. Texas Motor Speedway would be none too happy with having a Cup race within 500 miles of its radius and there's the whole "F1 at COTA on the same weekend as Cup at TMS in 2014" thing.
And you know what I think would be an incredibly fun idea? What about adding a roval to the Cup schedule? Many cup ovals have infield road courses and you could race at a track with an existing date without having to do any date-swapping. Would that make things logistically tough for the normal infield operations? Yes. Would it be a worthy experiment? In my eyes, definitely.
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.@NickBromberg 42 Cup cars, big deal or no? Rainy results, enough to let Cup Series try it? Teams u want to see do Colombian goal dances.
? Brian Cullather (@Briancullather) June 26, 2014 By itself, the lack of a full field doesn't really change anything for me as I wrote yesterday. It's a symptom of a problem in NASCAR's top three series for sure, but that problem is there whether or not there's 43 cars entered at Kentucky. However, is the symptom a big enough problem for outrage? It's certainly not impacting the racing that people are going to see Saturday night.
For the second question, I don't think so. It'd be a pretty radical departure for NASCAR to strap on rain tires to the Cup cars after the strong reluctance to do so at this point.
And as far as the dancing goes? This is easy. If you haven't seen the Colombian goal dances, you can click here and here for them. And I'm picking Stewart-Haas Racing. Tony Stewart getting his groove on would be hilarious, Kevin Harvick would have to smile, the intrigue of Kurt Busch's rhythym would be tantalizing and there's Danica Patrick, who'd be liable to bring her puppy out to dance with her. Let's make this happen, SHR.
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Can you tell me if there are 43 drivers on the track or just 1 I believe all drivers should be given some air time - I get tired of hearing about the one and only Jimmy and I believe a lot of others feel the same. It is getting to where the MUTE button is used quite often ? wish they would change their broadcast and give more time to the other drivers. - Judy
While I get how fans of teams who don't win races or run at the front regularly can get frustrated at the attention paid to drivers at the front of the field, asking for equitable time is a pipe dream. It's basically the NASCAR version of primetime games on national television in all other sports. There's a reason that the bigger-market teams and most successful teams are put in those games. They attract the most eyeballs. Are you good and/or popular? You're going to get covered more than everyone else It's that simple.
