Forget the Patriots/Jags game. That's amateur hour. The real excitement is starting in a few minutes, as the first-ever broadcast of the final night of the 22nd annual Chili Bowl, the world's largest midget car race. The top drivers in the open-wheel world are part of the 270+ car contingent. Some NASCAR drivers are there too. Guys you might have heard of like Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne (Stewart is in fact the defending champion).
I'll be here all night, drinking some MGDs and watching as we progress through the night from the "I" feature all the way through "A" main. Needless to say, we'll be here a while.
Do yourself a favor and don't have the NFL shoved down your throat! Order the Chili Bowl on your PPV (you have another half-hour before the broadcast proper starts) and come back here and comment as I blog.
Pre-race - And you're looking live at Tulsa, Oklahoma! Man, that's a lot of people on the telecast. Glad to see that they have actual open wheel guys doing the broadcast. The "Prelude to the Dream" was great, but having the usual Fox NASCAR guys doing the call was a mixed bag - yeah, fans know who they are, and they know the drivers. But they needed someone with short track experience.
If you are curious, here is the line-up for tonight's racing: twin C mains, a B main and then the final A main. Here is who is locked into the various races based on the results of the past week of racing.
I know he is only 16, but somebody needs to Cole Witt how to put some bend into the bill of his cap when he does an interview. When you look like Opie Cunningham to begin with, the dorky, straight bill isn't a big help.
And I doubt he "waved" at Tony Stewart when he passed him for the final transfer spot. Although Tony might have "waved" his middle finger at Cole.
If anyone is curious, Tony Stewart can take a provisional as the defending champion if he doesn't qualify through the preliminary races tonight.
The first C main (like every race from here on out) is stacked. I'm very happy to see Randy "The Hurricane" Hannigan starting fourth - he's a racer from Northern California that I've watched a good portion of my life going to races in the Central Valley. I think of him as more of a sprint car guy, so it's good to see him doing well here.
The driver of "local" interest to me in the other C is Stan Yockey. That actually shocks me a little bit - he's been getting better racing in California in sprint cars, but this is a huge step up in class, and even making it to the C-main is a big achievement.
In case you are curious, here's Yockey getting slammed into at a race in Central California by Ronnie Day at the end of last season, suffering wrist and arm injuries. These guys are tough.
It's now 40 minutes into the broadcast, and still no racing yet. I know there were a lot of highlights to get through, but this is getting ridiculous.
Finally, racing...
C-Main No. 1: First race, first corner...and first flip. Welcome the short track racing on dirt.
Way to miss the crash with two of the five guys in transfer spots, because you're interviewing Crusty French Grimes. Especially since they were the two guys you were spending all of the first part of the race highlighting AND that you had your two in-car cameras in. This does not bode well for the coverage.
Also: Crash Gladys looks about as hot as the Tulsa Hooters Girls - 6 out of 10.
UPDATE: So Kruseman jumped the start and got shuffled to the back? Nice that Shane Stewart had to tell us this instead of one of the 28 people on the coverage team...
C-Main No. 2: And the coverage madness continues. Here's a hint: Joey Saldana is in the yellow Kasey Kahne team car. How hard is this to figure out? My favorite moment: "It might be Ricky Stenhouse Jr. - we'll have to get a better shot to see." This is said as we have a close-up shot of the car from head-on, where you can see "Stenhouse Jr." on the top.
Why the hell was McCarl racing so hard for the lead when he and Jones both had a transfer? Odd.
On the the B-main. So pumped to see Ron Shuman racing again.
B-Main No. 1: Shoe! Shoe! Shoe! They need to be making more of this - Ron Shuman hasn't raced in 10 years, and he's in the A-main. And Buckwalter got totally plowed into - again, thanks to the coverage team for not picking that up until after the fact.
And having seen him at the Oval Nationals in December...Brady Bacon is going to be good...real good.
B-Main No. 2: Brad Sweet got screwed. Pure and simple. And how can they not know who transfered out of the first B-main still? Amateur hour...
Pre A-Main BS: I think heading to the hammered fans in the cheap seats wasn't the best idea. Although why am I not surprised that the fat chick is a big fan of Brady Bacon?
A-Main: Ugh. You hate to see a kid's first Chili Bowl end before it even starts. But like they said on the broadcast, that can happen to anyone. Hell, I saw it happen to Dave Darland at the Oval Nationals this year - except he snap-rolled about five or six times instead of just hitting the wall.
My pick to win? Brad Kunz.
...and that didn't last long. Stupid Terry McCarl...no wonder they all hate him in Knoxville.
I can't express how happy I was to see Damion Gardner win. Beyond the fact that he's a Southern California guy, he's one of the most exciting drivers I've seen in a long time. Which is precisely why I didn't think he would win. Usually, his "excitement" leads to one big screw-up, and with 50 laps and a lot of traffic, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And I almost got it, too. His bicycle on that one restart was about as close as you can get to flip a car without actually doing it. That was his race-ending mistake...but somehow, he saved the car and kept going. Then things broke his way: the track never slicked off, he got enough yellow flags to stay out of traffic (where bad things usually happen to overly aggressive drivers) and Dave Darland held up Shane Cottle (who I think would have caught Damion and made it very interesting if he could have passed Darland for second).
So, that's the end of the 2008 Chili Bowl. I hope that anyone who was watching it tonight enjoyed it. And if this was your first time watching a short-track, open wheel race, I hope you liked it enough to visit your local track once the season starts and check it out live - TV is great, but like hockey, it really is a different experience in person.
