It’s a great day at Phoenix International Raceway for The Profit on CNBC 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race. It’s mostly sunny with a slight breeze and mid-sixties weather.
Olio means a collage or mixture of things, so this is my olio.
The Budweiser Clydesdales were a popular inclusion to the opening ceremonies as they did a ceremonial lap. It took four huge red trailers to transport them.
With the new rules regarding ride height on the 2014 Cup cars, after the cars left Tech they were pushed out the Pit Lane access road, where they all were checked by NASCAR officials for their ride height.
Saturday night KYLE BUSCH won the NASCAR Nationwide race, which gave him 22nd NNS Perfect Race Ratings, and 27 overall NASCAR such ratings. NASCAR has a complicated set of algorithms and loop data to gather, collate and produce statistics which can determine when a NASCAR driver in any of the top tier series runs a perfect race. NASCAR has a dedicated computer for this data acquisition and utilizes an automated system. A perfect score is 150.0.
NASCAR has acquired data going back to February 2005 when MARK MARTIN became the first driver to attain the goal at Auto Club Speedway.
The types of data collected include: average start, average mid race, average finish, average position, pass diff, green passes, quality passes, percentage of quality passes, number of fastest laps, laps in top 15, percentage of laps in top 15, laps led, and percentage of laps led,
Currently JIMMIE JOHNSON/No.48 Chevrolet has the highest ranking for the last nine years at PIR with a score of 116.7 with 18 races. Kyle Busch is in eighth position with 97.4 with 18 races.
In Driver Introductions, my tin ear detected that DALE EARNHARDT Jr/No.88 Chevrolet received the largest and loudest cheers. Several others got better than average reactions, such as DANICA PATRICK/No.10 Go Daddy Chevrolet. Kyle Busch got a loud reaction, but it was as much jeers and boos as cheers – which bothers not a whit.