Penske bus  

I was told it was not a good week inside the walls of Team Penske. Many of them didn't know anything until hearing about the scandal when the rest of us did. I asked a few questions but I could tell my bud really didn't feel like talking about it. He was crewing on a 305 down here in the Carolinas. The driver didn't help when he told the guy I know to make sure the Push-To-Pass was disconnected before hot laps.

The IndyCar race was interesting, the track is gorgeous. Lots of unforced errors. The guy I know told me some time back that Scotty Mac is the coolest guy of all their drivers. He also said Power is a bit of an odd duck.

Dover was interesting at times but was your typical Dover race. Seems like these new Cup cars would have dirty air problems racing around a high school football field track. Hearing week in and week out about track position and dirty air isn't a recipe for good racing.

I was at Sumter in SC with the Carolina 305 group. 14 sprints. They had 20 the night before at Carolina but lost a handful thru contact, broken engines, etc. 15 years ago I gave Sumter just a couple of years before it was sold off and the land was developed. It was a dump with poorly run shows that ran very late. We've ran features there after midnight in years past. But things are happening there now. The bought all the metal stands from the defunct Oglethorpe Raceway in GA and they're going up a section at a time. Replacing the original stands that are probably 60 years old and in bad condition. The track used to be one of the darkest tracks we raced at but they brought in all new LED lighting last year so now it's a very well lit track. They had problems with holes on Saturday but they laid down new clay over the Winter. It's probably been decades since this track got new clay. No dust. The place is still very rough but it's much better than it was when I was there last. Oh yeah, the sprint car feature was over at 9:20 and we were heading home before 10:30. Under the old management team we'd be staging for heats around 9:30 and it would be well past midnight before we got out of there. And the crowd was massive. Sumter is on the rebound in a big way.