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Rowdy, the Kyle Busch Story Part Two

Going back to the question from before, during some of the incidents that went through Kyle’s head we as an audience were finally able to hear when he talk about certain situations. When he and Dale Earnhardt Jr. got into it at Richmond in 2008, we were able to know that he ended up getting loose below him instead of just turning him. Also in 2011 at Darlington we know that Kyle did not appreciate when Kevin Harvick purposely throttled up into Kyle in turn 3 and 4, so later down the front straightaway Kyle turned left right into Harvick, spinning him out. Dale Earnhardt Jr. said “I believe that Kyle deserved the criticism, because to not criticize him would be to enable him,” when speaking about Kyle’s passion for the sport. Along with the situation in 2011, another time occurred later that year with Ron Hornaday Jr. at Texas Motor Speedway. Kyle said, “What are we doing? If it was 5 laps to go I get it, but 15 laps into the race. All I saw was red, I saw the back of his truck and I am going to f*cking crash you right now.” This was what was going through his head at that moment in the race. Going into the last race of the season, battling for the championship Kyle thought, “We shouldn’t be here, we are playing with house money.” This shows Kyle was not even in the right mindset to go and win the championship, because just 8 months ago he could not even walk. Something that made me think about was, why were these people used? Were they bias towards Kyle? My thoughts on these questions were, these people were used because they all know about the sport of Nascar and everything that it has to do with. Many of the people that were interviewed during the documentary were former Nascar drivers like Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and his brother Kurt Busch. I believe the only people that were bias towards Kyle was his brother and wife Samantha. My final thoughts on the documentary was that I learned that many of the actions that Kyle did, he did for a reason that at the time I did not know why until seeing what was going through his head in the moment. This documentary helped me learn more about the mind of Kyle through his biggest and lowest times. Kyle had lots of people with him, but also lots of people against him when trying to come back from injury during the 2015 season. He pushed through lots of hard times when all it took was his complete all to finish something in his career. This documentary makes me think, did he ever think he was done with racing completely?

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Rowdy, the Kyle Busch Story Part One

What goes through drivers minds when they are thinking about racing? How do they feel about each other?  Do they really remember every time someone did something bad to them? The documentary starts off with Kyle Busch being involved in an accident at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Florida on February 21, 2015. Right after we see the small clips of the day that happened, we are immediately taken to when Kyle was 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. There he started his racing career in Legends cars driving against his brother Kurt Busch. They say Kyle got his first start in Nascar at Lucas Oil Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1999in a truck, when he was only 16 and 3 months old. He later got to start in the Busch series now known as the Xfinity series, the level right below the top racing series in Nascar with Hendrick Motorsports. After finishing 2nd in the Busch series he was promoted to the Nextel cup series, the highest level in Nascar. After his rookie season in 2005, he got his first win and he won the rookie of the year award. After three seasons at Hendrick Motorsports Kyle was kicked out of his ride and went to Joe Gibbs Racing after Dale Earnhardt took his ride at Hendrick. In 2008 Kyle started to drive the #18 at Joe Gibbs. At Richmond International Speedway Kyle gets into an incident with Dale Earnhardt Jr. where Kyle ends up wrecking Dale a few months after he took Kyle’s spot at Hendrick. Then we start to learn about the different racing fights and incidents that Kyle has gotten into over the years. We follow Kyle through the 2015 season as he won 5 times during the regular season, and now going into the last race for the championship he has a chance to win the championship. Later on we are taken to 2019, at Homestead International Speedway. Kyle is battling for his second cup series championship. After battling during the race all day he was able to lead 119 laps and the most important one, the last one. He won the 2019 cup series championship after completely all the races.

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The "Big One" Strikes Again

Nascar visited another one of its six super speedway style races this season, and as always it ended up its classic wreck, The Big One. The Big One is known for causing multiple driver's days to come to an early end after being involved in it. At super speedway tracks the Big One tends to claim around 10-20 drivers race. This week's Big One involved some big name drivers like, Kevin Harvick, Ross Chastain, Chris Buescher, and Josh Berry. Hopefully the next time Nascar visits another super speedway the professionals can keep the cars straight.

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Library Scavenger Hunt

After being able to find a book similar to the one I chose I was able to gain more knowledge and information about my preliminary research topic. I did some research while I was on the Rohrbach library page for any Nascar related books and or eBooks that are available and relate to what exactly I would like to know. I learned from my physical book from library that Nascar is the second most popular spectator sport in the United States right behind professional American football (NFL). While reading my online books of Real NASCAR : white lightning, red clay, and Big Bill France by Daniel S Pierce and Nascar 75 Years by Motorbooks Inc. I learned a lot about the history of Nascar and how it was first created. Raymond Parks was a moonshining kid that would work for his uncle during the day then go do moonshine runs at night to make extra money. Parks good friend and mechanic Red Vogt was the first man to help work on his cars. Parks then had his cousins Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay drive his cars. After his cousin Lloyd was killed and his other cousin Roy was caught for moonshining Parks had no one to race his cars until he found an older racer who had recently just come out of the war and had a limp from an accident while on a mission, Red Byron. Later throughout the years a guy named Bill France who promoted the first stock car races had made his own league by the name of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing or formally known as NASCAR which was created on December 14th, 1947. I found that keywords like racing, and Nascar really helped the easiest to find what I was looking for. Some sources like IndyCar and Formula 1 got in my way when trying to find information about racing in the 1970s ad 1980s. The library system was in fact decently difficult when finding information about Nascar using the congress system because the library did not have many books referring to Nascar or its history. I will try to find more ways to find information about Nascar on the library's online access because the library lacks in Nascar books. I am going to try and find more books online that I can buy online to further my knowledge of Nascar.

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Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch is a current Nascar driver that first started racing in the truck series in 2001 at IRP speedway. He most recently just won the Pala Casino 400 in the Nascar Cup Series race at Auto Club Speedway. According to Racing Reference (RacingReference.com) Kyle Busch now holds the record for most consecutive winning seasons with now 19 seasons in a row.

After Kyle Busch won his 61st Cup Serie race many people believe he is going to win upwards of 4 to 5 wins this season which he has not achieved since 2019. Fox Sports (FoxSports.com) said that they believe Kyle Busch is a true Championship contender that can really put up a fight. Some people are even saying "you should be scared", after Busch won the race at Auto Club Speedway on February 26. Although Busch won his first race with his new team of RCR, but you do have to remember there is still 34 more races this year and anything could from now until November when Nascar is crowning their new champion. If Kyle can win 16 more races until his retirement he has the chance to catch one of the greats, Dale Earnhardt. Currently Busch sits in 9th in the all time wins list for the Cup Series. Hopefully Busch is able to reach the great feat of tying Dale Earnhardt's 76 wins by the time his career comes to a close, but we will just have to wait and see.

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Nascar Hall of Fame

In 2018 I was able to go to the Nascar Hall of Fame. It was great to see all the historic vehicles from Nascar's past. There were cars from the top drivers in Nascar like Darrell Waltrip, Jimmie Johnson, and Kyle Busch.

Here is a picture I took at the Nascar Hall of Fame. This road of cars is known as Glory Road. In this picture you can see drivers like 5-time champ #24 Jeff Gordon and both 7-time champs, #3 Dale Earnhardt and #48 Jimmie Johnson. There are many other big drivers in this picture like #3 Mike Skinner in the black Goodwrench truck and #11 Bill Elliott the father of current Nascar driver Chase Elliott.

Above is another picture I took while at the Nascar Hall of Fame. This was a special hood made for former Cup Series driver Matt Kenseth. Kenseth drove this car to victory in his second to last race with Joe Gibbs Racing. After Kenseth won the race his car was brought to the Nascar Hall of Fame and this specialty hood was made for the 5 years (2013-2017) that he spent at JGR. Each picture on the hood is from victory lane after every race he won with JGR.

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Busch vs. Logano

I have noticed along with lots of other drivers and fans in Nascar that lots of drivers have become “two-faced” according to Kyle Busch when talking about fellow competitor Joey Logano. Busch went on to say on SiriusXM radio, “it’s really unfortunate to be raced by guys who are so two-faced.” He also went on to say, “We were in the TV booth earlier in the night together and when we were all done with that he was like ‘hey man, good luck tonight.’ I’m like ‘OK, great. Thanks. Yeah … whatever,’ and then lo and behold, there you go, he wrecks me. Don’t even talk to me if you’re gonna be that kind of a–hole on the race track.”(source)

Lots of people have said in Nascar’s 75-year history many drivers were considered two-faced and many people saw it as normal and others felt as though others were disrespected when people did that, but it all comes down to everyone having their own opinion. Personally I have noticed Logano be two-faced countless times and most of the time he later regretted it, because someone in the end repaid the favor back to him.

Logano went on SiriusXM days later and said, “am I sorry? Yes, I am. Am I two-faced? Yes, I am.”(source) So clearly Logano does not deny it, but yet he owns it and owns up to wrecking Busch early in the second stage of the LA Coliseum race. Logano goes on to also say “…I have a switch that I flip when it is time to go racing…”, and as well as “Luckily, I know how to shut that off when I get out of the race car and in Kyle’s words, ‘I’m not a complete a-hole all the time.’ That’s better than being an a-hole 100% of the time. At least it’s only when I’m in the race car.” This whole debate just seems like an opinion-based topic that will probably be settled off the track, but if it does not get resolved off the track, I see some fun racing between these two in the future.

I completely agree with Busch when saying Logano is "two-faced", but I would also say if you are going to racing against people you should either always be a nice guy on and off the track or a mean/aggressive guy on and off the track. I do not think you should be all buddy buddy with someone before a race then flat out wreck them in the race. You should just be one or the other all the time not nice then mean. That's why I have a problem with Joey Logano.

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I also enjoy football as much as Nascar, but they both have more similarities than differences. They both involve putting the athlete's safety first instead of the action filled sport. Recently I have noticed that Nascar was having trouble with driver's safety. Along with Nascar the NFL has been having trouble coping with major player injuries that are occurring way too often. I agree with you that the NFL needs to focus more on player safety rather than the actual playing of the game. These types of injuries that have happened in the past few years needs to be addressed and fixed.

Introduction

Injuries and player safety has been at the forefront of NFL news for the past few years. And as stated by Wire Feed, "Not enough is understood about the long-term relationship between brain health, concussion history and sports." Knowing this has resulted in a rise of athletic health research, leading to new technology and rules to better protect the players throughout the game. In my blog I hope to cover most aspects of player safety, including both injuries and rules. Also, I would like to dedicate time to exploring the criticism that the NFL has faced over some safety controversies. In its long running history, the league has always been involved in some sort of drama relating to the health of players.

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Now, discovering all of the efforts that the NFL goes to to keep players safe is going to be an informative, but not everyone has a big interest in it. Therefore, this blog will focus on how the posts are being perceived, so that I can create an engaged audience that may not realize that they find athlete's safety interesting. Not only do I want this blog to be engaging, but I also want it to be one of the most informative of its kind. There may not be many NFL safety blogs, but I still want to make sure that my posts are more detailed than others like it.

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To find this informative, I will try to use the most reputable and accurate sources possible. In conclusion, this page will serve as a trustworthy site that you can go to whenever you want to learn about NFL safety. Whether you are a veteran sports fan, or don't know a single rule of football, there will be something interesting for everyone.

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NASCAR: The Pinnacle of Racing

NASCAR is a fast-paced racing series that travels all throughout the United States and parts of Canada. When people think about NASCAR they think of rednecks, the south, and making left turns. Although NASCAR may have all those ideologies there is much more to it than just a "redneck sport." Nascar all started with Henry Ford in 1901 with his creation of his very car, the 1901 Ford Model T. NASCAR is for anyone that likes strategy mixed with chaos. I am mainly going to be talking about what is going on in NASCAR and all the little stories that are circulating around the garage.

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Other situations I will cover is what the drivers must be thinking about heading into the qualifying sessions coming up on February 16th. There is a lot of media attention between Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain, especially after last season when they got into each other countless times usually resulting in one of them wrecking or spinning out. There is also a lot of buzz going on when talking about Darrell “Bubba” Wallace and Austin Dillion after Dillion spun Wallace out during the Clash at the Coliseum on February 5th.

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In Ken Willis’ article (article) he says “They have done the sensible and safe thing and outlawed Ross Chastain's go-for-broke, desperation, 'Hail Melon,' last-lap maneuver he used at Martinsville on Oct. 30 to blast his way into the Cup Series playoff finale.” This seems like the right move for NASCAR to outlaw this action, because although it did get a lot of people talking about NASCAR, everyone that is involved with NASCAR saw that the move would probably hurt the sport.

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Personally I believe it was a great move and he did what he had to do to make it to the final race of the year to have a chance at the championship, but he also made NASCAR look not as serious as it would like to towards other individuals that do not watch NASCAR every week.