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see you at 1pm next Sunday in Kansas for the Hollywood Casino 400.
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Friday, October 19, 2012
12:30pm-2:00pm (L) NASCAR Sprint Cup Practice Kansas SPEED
2:00pm-3:30pm (L) Nationwide Practice Kansas ESPN2
3:30pm-5:00pm (L) Nationwide Final Practice Kansas ESPN2
5:00pm-6:30pm (L) NASCAR Sprint Cup Qualifying Kansas ESPN2
Saturday, October 20, 2012
11:00am-12:00pm (L) NASCAR Practice Kansas ESPN2
12:00pm-1:30pm (L) Nationwide Qualifying Kansas SPEED
1:30pm-3:00pm (L) NASCAR Sprint Cup Final Practice Kansas SPEED
3:00pm-3:30pm (L) -Pre-Race Nationwide Series Kansas ESPN (Also on TSN2)
3:30pm-6:30pm (L) -Race Nationwide Series Kansas ESPN (Also on TSN2)
Sunday, October 21, 2012
1:00pm-2:00pm (L) -Pre-Race NASCAR Sprint Cup Kansas ESPN (Also oN TSN)
2:00pm-5:30pm (L) -Race NASCAR Sprint Cup Kansas ESPN (Also oN TSN)
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Friday, October 19, 2012
ARCA Racing Series
8:30pm-10:30pm (L) ARCA Racing Series Kansas SPEED
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Here's some bikes for ya Feetz
Saturday, October 20, 2012
1:45am (L) MotoGP Qualifying Malaysia SPEED2
Sunday, October 21, 2012
4:00am-5:00am (L) MotoGP World Championship Malaysia SPEED
Saturday, October 20, 2012
10:00pm-1:30am (L) AMA Supercross - Monster Energy Cup Las Vegas SPEED
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Saturday, October 20, 2012
11:30am (L) American Le Mans Series Road Atlanta ESPN3 (Also on ABC 10/21 at 1:00pm)
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Hamlin crashes in Kansas test
No. 11 driver evaluated twice at track's care center after hitting wall in Turn 1
KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Denny Hamlin didn't have to visit the infield care center after he steered his banged-up race car back to the garage area following a hard hit in testing at Kansas Speedway. But upon the recommendation of a Sprint Cup official, he did -- all in the wake of two recent concussions suffered by NASCAR's most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., the first of which occurred at the same 1.5-mile track.
Hamlin admitted to some dizziness after a hit early in Thursday's second day of testing at the resurfaced Kansas track, where his car clipped the Turn 1 wall at approximately 202 mph, shot down to the apron and turned back up into the wall after the driver overcorrected. He was checked out at the care center after the accident, then told to come back again after an hour for reevaluation -- after which he was cleared to participate in the remainder of the event weekend.
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I was honest with [the track medical staff] and said I was a little dizzy. They said, 'well, come back in an hour and we'll make sure you're OK.' A lot of it was my car wasn't going to be ready for an hour anyway, so it just made sense to come back...
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-- DENNY HAMLIN
"It was hard enough that you want to get checked out," Hamlin said. "I felt the need just to make sure I was OK. I don't want to be endangering myself or anyone else on the track. They seem to think I'm fine, I feel like I'm good, so we're just going to move on with our day."
The crash ruined what was Hamlin's primary car for Sunday's Cup event, which begins the second half of a Chase in which the Joe Gibbs Racing driver stands 15 points behind leader Brad Keselowski. The vehicle was the same one that Hamlin used four weeks ago at New Hampshire, where he led 193 laps in a dominant victory. Now he turns to his backup, which was the car he raced in the Chase opener at Chicagoland, where he was running fourth until running out of fuel on the final lap and finishing 16th.
"I was very optimistic about what we had going for us," said Hamlin, whose third lap on the track Thursday placed him second-fastest on the speed chart. "But like [crew chief] Darian [Grubb] said, we don't have any backup cars. There's no such thing. All of our backups are primaries that have raced somewhere else. I think our Chicago car, he said, is basically the sister to it -- so we should be fine."
Hamlin's accident occurred on the same track where Earnhardt Jr. crashed in a tire test in late August. Although he didn't admit it publicly at the time, Earnhardt suffered a concussion in that incident, and sustained another six weeks later in a crash on the final lap of the race at Talladega. Dizziness and headaches after that latter accident led him to consult a neurosurgeon, and Kansas marks the second of at least two Cup races he's sitting out while waiting for symptoms to clear.
Drivers are required to visit the care center if their vehicles are disabled on the race track. Thursday Hamlin drove his wrecked No. 11 back to the garage area, and said two Cup officials who were looking over the Toyota advised him to get checked out.
"Can't remember it happening before," Hamlin said. "But honestly, the severity of it, and the speeds we were running, it probably was a wise thing to do anyway."
The accident occurred during the second day of open testing on a track that was resurfaced over the summer. Regan Smith -- driving the No. 88 in relief of Earnhardt -- turned the fastest lap of the session at 186.143 mph, which was quicker than the fastest lap turned Wednesday, 184.900 by Greg Biffle. Both speeds easily eclipsed the track record of 180.856 set in 2005 by Matt Kenseth -- a mark that's almost certain to fall in Cup qualifying on Friday. Tony Stewart lost an engine Thursday, but it was not the one the reigning series champion planned to use in competition this weekend.
Hamlin's top speed was 12th-fastest of the day. His crash was hard enough that Clint Bowyer, who was running behind Hamlin at the time of the accident, took note.
"I was pulling on the race track and I saw him," Bowyer said. "He was sideways way, way early and I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and then I saw him get on the apron and he was in trouble, man. He hit hard -- real hard."
In the care center, Hamlin admitted to doctors that he felt some dizziness after the crash. He told reporters that it's not usual for him to feel sore, or for his jaw to feel stiff from clenching, after a hit of that magnitude. "But this was the first time I really kind of got dizzy," he said. Even so, he said he felt better than a 2008 crash at Talladega where he blew a tire, suffered what he called a slight concussion, and ended up in the hospital getting an MRI.
"This one, I feel much better," he said. The feeling Thursday was "just bell rung," he added. "Just typical hard hit, ring-your-bell type thing. You get jarred around, you feel a little out of it for a second. But everything came back."
Hamlin said he was honest with doctors in the care center about how he felt after the crash.
"The medical staff can't do their job unless I can tell them what's going on," he said. "They might as well not be here if I was going to tell stories and give a false sense of security to them. I'm honest with them. I knew that I was fine. I just had my bell rung, and let them do their jobs from there on out. Their job was to assess, say let's come back and look at you in an hour, and then we'll clear you. That's what they did."
The one-hour wait period was also a first for him, Hamlin said, although follow-up with care center personnel is not.
"They reevaluate with me [after] each wreck, through text messages to ask how you're doing and everything," he said. "But, simply because of the speed of the impact, I think that they were just trying to be safe in asking me how I felt. I was honest with them and said I was a little dizzy. They said, 'well, come back in an hour and we'll make sure you're OK.' A lot of it was my car wasn't going to be ready for an hour anyway, so it just made sense to come back and make sure we're all good."
Even so, Hamlin admitted he probably wouldn't have gone to the care center on his own, had officials not suggested he do so. Earnhardt's recent admission has raised awareness of concussions throughout the sport, even though drivers still seem reticent to pull themselves out of the car if they're not feeling right. Earnhardt himself confessed to competing at less than 100 percent for a few weeks after his first concussion.
"I don't know if you're going to have drivers voluntarily step out of the car," Hamlin said. "That will be the continued challenge of it. No matter how you feel or anything like that, you're not going to want to step out of your car. I think that [Earnhardt] was generally worried for himself and knew how he felt. He made the decision evidently to pull himself out. I don't think drivers will treat it any different. I think they'll do the same things they've been doing.
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KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- It was the same purple, yellow and green grandstand; the same outlet mall and casino beyond the same 1.5-mile oval; the same strong wind whipping in from the same prairie. It was Kansas Speedway, all right -- the same name painted along the inside wall and on a sign rotating at the top of the scoring tower. But from a driver's perspective, everything about the track seemed different.
Cars on NASCAR's Sprint Cup circuit circled the facility Wednesday in a test that marked the first time a full field had taken to the track since a resurfacing that was completed in late summer. Although rain cut the scheduled four-hour session in half, competitors still got a healthy dose of a venue that's been repaved and had variable banking added in the turns since the last time the sport's premier series raced here in April.
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[Kansas] went from being abrasive and wearing the tires out, to smooth and super-fast ... If anything, [the times] get faster. It's basically like going to a whole new race track.
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-- JEFF GORDON
"This track went from being abrasive and wearing the tires out, to smooth and super-fast, and the times just don't fall off," Jeff Gordon said. "If anything, they get faster. It's basically like going to a whole new race track."
A total of 47 cars took part in Wednesday's abbreviated session, with Greg Biffle turning the fastest lap of 184.900 mph. That means the current track record of 180.856 mph, which was set by Matt Kenseth in October of 2005, will almost certainly fall in qualifying on Friday. Teams were also allowed to each bring one 2013 model car, and four did -- Michael Waltrip Racing with Brian Vickers behind the wheel, Wood Brothers with Trevor Bayne, Penske Racing with Parker Kligerman and Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing with Josh Wise.
Teams are slated to test four more hours on the surface beginning at 8:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, before practice for the race weekend begins on Friday.
"We're having fun out there, going really fast and having a lot of grip and testing and trying a lot of new things," said Gordon, who won the inaugural race here in 2001. "That part of it is very interesting and fun. Once we get into the race weekend, it will be a whole new ballgame."
Although just 12 years old, the freeze-thaw cycle in a region with very hot summers and very cold winters took its toll on Kansas' original ribbon of asphalt, and in extreme cases caused the layers of pavement to buckle and slide down the surface of the track. Crews were forced to patch small holes even during the track's most recent NASCAR weekend. In an attempt to rubber-in the new surface, a vehicle that drags tires has been employed around the clock since the repaving was complete, with former and current drivers Randy LaJoie, David Green, Brian Keselowski, Steve Grissom and Brad Noffsinger making laps to try to work in multiple grooves.
That tactic was used with some success at Phoenix, another recently-resurfaced facility that, like Kansas, is owned by International Speedway Corp. Given the variable banking, computer modeling suggests that the highest line around the race track -- which is banked at 20 degrees -- is also the fastest way around.
But maybe not this weekend.
"It would take a couple of people blowing tires and cleaning it off first, because nobody's going to want to go up there," Bayne said. "I know today, a half a tire up the race track more than everybody else was running was too much. I think we're kind of locked in for now."
That should change as the new surface ages.
"It will take a couple of years, but you would think the middle and top lanes are going to come in and probably be better than the bottom eventually as the track wears in," Joey Logano said. "I think it would be really cool -- it would be similar to Homestead, where you can run about anywhere you want. It's just going to take a little bit of time slowly moving the groove up and rubbering it in. But I think for now, where you see most cars is where the fastest line is going to be."
Gordon said the current line is "a groove and a foot," although he believes the third and fourth turns might widen out before Sunday's event. Any attempts at widening the racing groove were hampered by rain that fell much of Wednesday, forcing drivers to essentially start from scratch. "The track was as green as green could be," said Sprint Cup director John Darby. "For every driver in the garage, it was literally their first shot out there with those kinds of conditions."
Which NASCAR hopes will change with still three more days of on-track activity left before the main event.
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[This tire is] all in, and then it's all out. There's no forgiveness. And that's the hardest to drive.
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-- GREG BIFFLE
"With what we've got in front of us here, with a full day of testing [Thursday] with both Cup and Nationwide cars, and all the practices that lead up to the events Saturday and Sunday, it'll widen out," Darby said. "Is that going to be by tomorrow at 1 o'clock, or Saturday at noon? I don't know that. The more [cars] that are out, the more rubber that's put down. It's a natural thing that happens."
There were no accidents Wednesday, although Darby said a few cars finished with stripes on their sides. Kansas is where Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered the first of two concussions that have sidelined the sport's most popular driver for at least two weeks. Earnhardt, who visited a concussion specialist in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, crashed here during a Goodyear tire test in late August, and suffered another concussion in a crash six weeks later on the final lap at Talladega. Regan Smith, who also piloted the No. 88 car last weekend at Charlotte, is once again driving it this week -- though Earnhardt's name remains scrawled atop the vehicle's right-side window opening.
Unlike NASCAR's most recent event week on a repaved track, Michigan in June, there were no indications of tire issues. That race was also preceded by two days of testing, but blistering of the rubber during those sessions prompted a change to a harder compound less than 48 hours before the event. Teams at Kansas are using the same compound that was employed during the Michigan race, and the combination of hard rubber and fresh asphalt promises to make for some interesting situations this week.
"This tire has all the grip in the world, and then it has none," Biffle said. "... It's all in, and then it's all out. There's no forgiveness. And that's the hardest to drive. If a car slides around a lot, you can at least control it. But here? You're like, 'whew, thank God -- that was almost a backup [car].' It's that treacherous, kind of. They start chattering, and it's gone."
Biffle hoped the tire falloff would improve as the weekend went on. Regardless, that hard tire plus a tight groove might heighten the potential for more crashes, Gordon said, which could unquestionably raise the stakes at the midway point of a championship Chase where the top three drivers are separated by just 15 points. Teams have one more day of testing, and two days of practice to try and get a better handle on the new Kansas before the green drops for real.
"That's the nice thing about coming here on a Wednesday," Gordon said. "By Sunday, that [groove] should get just get wider and wider, and better and better."
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Earnhardt Jr. visits concussion expert in Pittsburgh
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s treatment for concussion symptoms led him to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, where NASCAR's most popular driver met with a concussion expert at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Collins is one of the nation's leading experts in the field of concussion treatment and rehabilitation. He and Dr. Mark Lovell developed the ImPACT test, which is the most widely-used concussion evaluation tool. The diagnostic test is used by many National Football League teams, all franchises in the National Hockey League, and several racing organizations to provide baseline testing and potential diagnosis for athletes.
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Rick Hendrick confirms to ESPN that Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be back in the No. 88 Chevrolet at Martinsville. And all of Junior Nation said, "Amen!"
Cole Whitt, David Stremme and Josh Wise failed to qualify for the event.
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Lap 3 Aric Almirola blows past Kasey Kahne for second place in Turn 1, and by the time the lap is over, Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman have also gotten around Kahne.
Lap 1 GREEN FL&G: The race gets under way at 2:23 p.m. ET. Mark Martin clears for the lead coming off Turn 2. Behind him, Clint Bowyer gets way loose, forcing the field to scramble around him.
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Lap 5 Aric Almirola is feisty in the opening laps. He's working on Mark Martin for the lead!
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Lap 8 It's always coooooooool to see the number 43 at the top of the leaderboard!
Lap 7 Aric Almirola passes Mark Martin for the lead on the backstretch.
Lap 6 Mark Martin and Aric Almirola lead third-place Kyle Busch by a few car lengths.
