Monthly Archives: September 2021

A Good Time for a First Win; And a Glimpse at INDYCAR’s Future

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contribution Editor

(NASCAR)—Win when it really counts.

Denny Hamlin, winless this year, picks up his first victory in the first of NASCAR’s ten playoff races and becomes the first driver to lock in a place in the next round.  Hamlin held off a banzai charge off the last turn by pre-race favorite Kyle Larson to win the Southern 500 at Darlington.

For most of the event, it was a two-man race between the drivers who finished 1-2 in regular season points.  They combined to lead 302 of the race’s 367 laps.  Larson, who challenged Hamlin for most of the last stage of the race launched an all-out run for the lead on the last turn, scraping the wall as he tried to get outside of Hamlin, finished two-tenths of a second short of his sixth win of the year.  Ross Chastain was third, his best finish of the year. Martin Truex Jr., and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five.

Hamlin, who finished in the top five in half of this year’s races—including four thirds and a second—automatically qualifies for the round of 12 that will go on for the championship after the next two races.  Larson still leads in points, however, thanks to bonus points he piled up for victories, stage wins, and being the top points driver after the regular season.

Harvick and Tyler Reddick remain the only playoff drivers without a checkered flag this year.

The next playoff race will be at Richmond next Saturday night.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR resumes racing next Sunday afternoon on the road circuit at Portland, the first of the three races that will close out its season.  The last three races promise to be a shootout between Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou, and Josef Newgarden.  O’Ward took over the points lead from Palou three weeks ago at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis and Newgarden put himself in the championship picture by winning the race there.  The three are separated by 22 points.

Six-time champion Scott Dixon is lurking in fourth, only 43 back.

This has been a year of emergence for INDYCAR’s young drivers as the series looks at changes coming in the next couple of years.

We spent some time with INDYCAR President Jay Frye after the INDYCAR/NASCAR tripleheader at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month, talking about this year, next year, and the new engines coming in 2022—–and what might or might not be in the more distant future.

Frye is a Mizzou graduate (marketing/education), a former Tiger football player (tight end/offensive tackle)and Rock Island Illinois native who says he learned to drive by driving a truck for the family-owned garbage trucking company. Before joining INDYCAR, Frye was with NASCAR, where he was named by ESPN the 2008 NASCAR Executive of the Year.

We started by discussing the weekend tripleheader of two NASCAR races and an INDYCAR race on the IMS road course

AUDIO:frye edited 2021 indy

Donald Davidson was the Speedway historian for more than 50 years before his retirement last year.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has become the first Dutch driver in the 71-year history of F1 to win the Dutch Grand Prix.

His seventeenth career victory breaks a record he had shared with British great Sterling Moss for the driver with the most victories, but no F1 championship. That, however, could change this year.

Verstappen picked up his seventh win of the year, finishing twenty seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton and taking the points lead from the seven-time champion.  Verstappen is now up by three.  He barely beat Hamilton for the pole but Hamilton had nothing for him during the race.

Hamilton teammate Valterri Bottas was third and afterwards announced that he was going to be the number one driver for Alfa Romeo next year.  Taking his place on the Mercedes roster will be George Russell, who has driven this year for the Williams team, which uses Mercedes engines. His success in F1 feeder series championships has positioned him to take the place of Bottas, who has been second-banana to Hamilton, who has described him as the best teammate he’s ever had.

 

 

The Virtue of Waiting 

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(Patience seems in short supply sometimes.  We want this pandemic to be over, now. We want a new TV set, now.  Or a new video game. We want rain, now; peace, now; money, now.  We listen too seriously to those who promise to fix complicated problems with simple solutions, now.  But Dr. Frank Crane urges patience because—-)

Old Father Time knows more than anybody.

He solves more problems than all the brains in the world.

More hard knots are unloosed, more tangled questions are answered, more deadlocks are unfastened by Time than by any other agency.

In the theological disputes that once raged in Christendom neither side routed the other; Time routed them both by showing that the whole subject did not matter.

After the contemporaries had had their say, Time crowned Homer, Dante, Wagner, Shakespeare, Whitman, Emerson.

Almost any judgment can be appealed, but from the decision of Time there is no appeal.

Do not force issues with your children. Learn to wait. Be patient. Time will bring things to pass that no immediate power can accomplish.

Do not create a crisis with your husband, your wife. Wait. See what Time will do.

Time has a thousand resources, abounds in unexpected expedients.

Time brings a change in point of view, in temper, in state of mind which no contention can.

When you teach, make allowance for Time. What the child cannot possibly understand now, he can grasp easily a year from now.

When you have a difficult business affair to settle, give it Time, put it away and see how it will ferment, sleep on it, give it as many days as you can. It will often settle itself.

If you would produce a story, a play, a book, or an essay, write it out, then lay it aside and let it simmer, forget it a while, then take it out and write it over.

Time is the best critic, the shrewdest adviser, the frankest friend.

If you are positive you want to marry a certain person, let Time have his word. Nowhere is Time’s advice more needed. Today we may be sure, but listen to a few tomorrows.

You are born and you will die whenever fate decides; you have nothing to do with those fatal two things; but in marriage, the third fatality, you have Time. Take it.

Do not decide your beliefs and convictions suddenly. Hang up the reasons to cure. You come to permanent ideas not only by reasoning, but quite as much by growth.

Do not hobble your whole life by the immature certainties of youth. Give yourself room to change, for you must change, if you are to develop.

“Learn to labor and—to wait!”

Moderates-in-waiting

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President Trump heard something a few days ago that he hadn’t heard before. He was booed by an audience he had called to hear his latest, uh, whatever.

Boos at a Trump rally?

Who else was listening?

Who else in the Republican Party was listening?

Maybe we’re reading too much into the event. But there have been, all along, questions about how tight Donald Trump’s grip on the party will remain the longer he is out of office.

It’s doubtful many people left the rally and left Trump because he suggested it might be a good idea for people to get their COVID shots.  It was only a tepid endorsement but it was the first time he had encouraged his followers to do what he had secretly done before leaving the White House.

Boos.  At a Trump rally.

And on this quiet street, these thoughts quietly began to emerge.

The competition for Roy Blunt’s to-be vacated Senate seat has drawn several Republican early entrants, the biggest names of which seem determined to prove they are the most like Trump. They are betting Trump will be the dominant force in the 2022 elections that he claims he will be.

But there are some other Republicans who are holding their counsel.  And it might be wise for them to do so. August, 2022 is a long ways away, politically. The world can take a lot of turns in the next twelve months.

But beside that there’s the issue of mathematics.

Let’s go back to the 2016 presidential primaries. We wrote just before Missouri’s primary that year that earlier state primary voters “seem to favor ANYBODY BUT” Trump with the ABT vote through Super Tuesday that year looking like this:

Iowa   76% Anybody But Trump

New Hampshire  65

South Carolina  67

Nevada  54

Alabama  57

Alaska  66

Arkansas  67

Georgia  61

Massachusetts  50 (although in the total vote, he lost by about 20,000 out of 631,413 cast)

Minnesota  79

Oklahoma  72

Tennessee  61

Texas  73

Vermont  67

Virginia  65

Kansas  77

Kentucky  64

Louisiana  59

Maine  67

Hawaii  58

Idaho  72

Michigan  64

Mississippi  53

Trump had cracked the 40% support level only six times in 22 opportunities up to that time. By the time of the Missouri vote, only four GOP candidates remained in the running.  Eight candidates on the ballot had dropped out but their names could not be removed.  In 2016, Trump got 40.84% of the Missouri votes.  Ted Cruz got 40.63 (and he did not ask for a recount).  John Kasich and Marco Rubio combined for 16.2%.  The rest was scattered among the withdrawn candidates or for “uncommitted.”   The fact is that in Missouri, as in the other states, the majority opposed Trump.

We now have five big-name candidates trying to convince voters they have the shortest political umbilical cords linking them to the former president.

Might there be a moderate Republican or two just quietly watching the internecine warfare among the COTs (Children of Trump)?  And might we see a moderate Republican candidate step forward about the first of the year who can win the Republican primary with 35% of the vote while the five (so far) COTs divide the 40%—assuming Trump still has a solid-enough 40% following in the party by then?

COTs go 25-20-10-5-5% and the moderate polls 35% and moves on to November.

Memo to the COTs in the aftermath of the Alabama boos:  Be nervous. Somebody not like you might be lurking.  And one person who looks good to the 60% can beat the five of the 40.

Or maybe we’re just reading too much into that rally the other day.