The Keybored Blog

[Archived_Latinxassassin]

I failed epicly.

[DysLabs]

I failed epicly.

Indeed.

[When]

cool

[Qwertygiy]

Post #18 9/30/12

It makes me sad that nobody ever remembers this song... (Note that eveen the official video is pretty shabby and only has around 20,000 views despite the song being about 4 years old now.)



It's another one of those "half-fits" to my story. Some parts match, some are meaningless. To be really honest, though, it matches more the second section, which is nowhere near being written, than the currently written bit.

[DysLabs]

"eveen"

I infected you.

[Qwertygiy]

Post #19 9/6/12

The site may be dying, but it shall live on forever in my story, in a way.

The newestly-introduced character's original name was William DiZimm, a Briton from shortly after the Roman period.

[Qwertygiy]

Post #20 10/7/12

Talladega Motor Speedway is well known and feared in the racing world. It's so big and fast it's one of only two tracks in NASCAR where they actually have to stick a piece called a "restrictor plate" into the engine to keep the cars from going unsafely fast. And as it falls in the middle of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, whoever can survive gets a huge boost in the points.

There are several phenomenon unique to restrictor plate races. One is the Pack. While it's not unusual for cars to remain grouped loosely together on most tracks, usually if someone has a really good car they can drive away, or if someone has a not-so-good car, fall behind. But at Talladega, the cars remain grouped together very tightly, often three, even four wide, nose to tail, shuffling in and out and swapping around rather quickly. A driver can go from first to fortieth back to first in a matter of just a few laps.



The reason they can stay so close together is the Draft. The way air flows over the cars means that the lead cars break up the air, which becomes turbulent, making it easier for the cars behind to move through it. If you ever find yourself behind a semi-tractor-trailer on the highway with the windows open, you'll know this effect firsthand.



A special type of draft is the Tandem. Two cars hooked bumper to bumper can go several miles per hour faster than a lone car or a pack. However, after several races where everyone drove tandem the entire way, NASCAR made changes to the cars, and now drivers can only push for a couple of laps before their engine begins to overheat and blow steam.



And finally, the biggest, scariest thing about restrictor plate races: the Big One. Almost invariably, at some point during each race, sometimes multiple times, one car will wobble or get turned, bounce off another car... and mayhem ensues.



That last image is from just a few hours ago. Let me back up to what lead to that mess, and what made me so frustrated about it. (Hint: It involves the car that you can only see the underside of.)

For most of the day, the drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup had kept it remarkably clean. There had been one caution early on, when rookie Cole Whitt in the #33 got turned from the high lane into Carl Edwards' #99 in the low lane, and also damaging the #20 of Joey Logano. After that, things went very smoothly. Matt Kenseth's #17 got turned sideways out of the lead by teammate Greg Biffle in the #16 on lap 42 while tandem drafting, but he did an incredible job of keeping the car from spinning out, and managed to stay with the pack. A round of green-flag pitstops for tires and fuel went perfectly for most, though Trevor Bayne, Kyle Busch, and then-leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. all had speeding penalties.

Yes, you can get speeding penalties in NASCAR. In order to minimize the risk to the pit crew members, there's a speed limit on pit road. Too fast and you have to come back around next lap and slowly drive through pit road again. This put all three drivers a lap down, as everyone else mixed it up for the lead.

Kurt Busch, in his last race in the #51 car, eventually took the lead, and was doing smoothly until he ran out of fuel. Kasey Kahne in the #5 ran out at the same time, suggesting that their pit crews had either miscalculated fuel mileage (NASCAR cars don't have fuel gages, so the teams have to do some fancy math) or not filled the fuel tanks all the way. Kahne avoided wrecking, but Kurt was being pushed by the #1 of Jamie McMurray, and so slid into the inside wall.



After that, they kept things clean for a while longer -- though Greg Biffle made a save comparable to Kenseth's from 2nd, and while Dale Jr. (who got his lap back on a caution for junk on the track) pushed Jeff Gordon's #24 towards the lead with his #88, Gordon got loose and also made a nice save. But although there were still more than 20 laps to go, the intensity was rising.

To make things even more interesting, that debris caution fell at exactly the distance away from the finish that most drivers thought they could make it on one tank of fuel. Jimmie Johnson's crew chief informed him that they would run out of gas somewhere between Turn 4 on the last lap and Turn 1 following the checkered flag.

With about 5 laps to go, all the shoving and pushing finally reached the breaking point. Kevin Harvick in the #29 was pushing Jamie McMurray's #1 (who had been one of the few that stayed out front leading all day) at the start-finish line with only about 6 laps to go. Everyone pits, except Clint Bowyer (#15), Matt Kenseth (#17), Kevin Harvick (#29), Trevor Bayne (#21), Tony Stewart (#14), Regan Smith (#78), Aric Almirola (#43), Michael Waltrip (#55), Terry Labonte (#32), Kasey Kahne (#5) and David Ragan (#34). Out of all those, only two would cross the finish line.



NASCAR has a system for trying to make the race end under the green flag. It's called "green-white-checkered", in the order that those colors of flags are waved. First, the caution (yellow flag) is finished up, allowing everyone to get back in line. Second, the green flag waves, allowing everyone to get back racing. After one lap, the white flag is waved. If another wreck happens before the white flag waves, they try it again, up to 3 times, but after the white flag, the next flag ends the race. Checkers, or wreckers.

In the second to last lap here at Talladega, Clint Bowyer had the lead. Matt Kenseth restarted outside of him. On the backstretch, they collided, sending Bowyer off track, but miraculously neither wrecked. The contact, however, allowed Tony Stewart to get a run by on the outside, and he took the lead as the white flag waved. As the field roared along 4-wide, 7-deep behind him, he managed to hold back Kenseth. On the backstretch, Micheal Waltrip got into a tandem draft with Casey Mears in the #13. Tony hesitated an instant too long to move down the track from in front of Kenseth to in front of Mikey, and by the time he got there, the #55 was already in position.



The Big One.





As points leader Brad Keselowski made it through the crash with only a slight tap to the rear but almost nobody else did, there are really only three people now in contention to win the championship. If Tony had held on to first place, he would have been only a few points out of the lead, and almost everyone else would have made some large gains as well.

It's so frustrating to watch my favorite driver come so close to putting himself back in the title hunt, only to watch him go flying through the air for at least a quarter mile on his side on top of the rest of the pack.

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