Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t see the last episode yet….
Ok, first I realize it is a reality show and that they edit a lot of footage, so how you come off is based upon how they decide to edit you. I have never met Jr Johnson, but he sounds like he is a really funny guy and I think the crew obviously enjoyed having him around. But I think that his lack of door to door race craft absolutely killed him. I watched the replay of him making his pass that pushed Brady off a few times and while he was faster than Brady and Brady did leave the door open, Jr. was going into the turn hot and did lock his brakes prior to hitting Brady. I felt bad for him, but he looked (is it real or Memorex?) as if he had a bad habit of banging his way around to make passes. Maybe he has future in NASCAR. I wish him luck in the future and while he was upset, it looks like he handled getting his car taken away from him with class.
Danan’s wreck looked really bad. It is something that is making me really think hard about the cage in my 914. That looked like a good cage in that car and yet I think that if someone had been in the passenger seat, it may have killed them as that side was collapsed when that side took that hard hit on the top. I think that Danan was very luck to come out of that alive let alone with little or no injuries. It also seemed totally manufactured that he just “showed up” at the ceremony at the very end.
I felt bad for Mike Skeen as his car was a casualty of the Danan wreck. With him not winning the entire thing and with the realization that they edited the entire thing together after the conclusion, I think the focused on Mike for two reasons throughout the entire show. (1) He is really good and he probably would have won if he didn’t have bad luck and (2) They wanted him to get some good press because he ultimately fell short due to mechanical issue. It is also nice in a way to see that they didn’t manufacture a way to keep him in the race since other good drivers fell out due to mechanical issues. I think they enjoyed showing his “race face” (“Angry” Skeen vs. mild mannered “Nice” Skeen in the garage) from the in-car camera. It’s probably a case of when you are either racing or having sex that you don’t want to see the expression on your own face.
I thought that James Hunt was going to win and I felt bad for Chris Prey after his Dad blew the mandatory pit stop. Oh, that pit stop was total BS and 100% for drama as they stopped that race a number of times. So there was no need to check lug nuts, but rather it was just another “NASCAR yellow” moment. Ultimately it looks like Chris just put pressure on James and Chris drove a smart race and eventually won when James went off while in 1st. Apparently (from BMW thread) at times Chris had huge leads, but it was erased a number of times due to yellows.
The NASCAR yellows and multitude of restarts was insane. It totally had the feeling of “let’s keep doing this until the people we want up front are running up front”. Either that, or they wanted to keep the pack tight for TV. Rolling restarts, 2 car side by side standing starts, 4 (5?) car side by side restarts. I am surprised they didn’t include a Le Mans style jump in your car, start it up and go style of restart.
I wasn’t impressed with the Pontiacs. Granted they beat on them hard, but the intercooler seemed to be a huge weak spot. How many people had to drop out just because they lost boost due to cracked or broken intercooler and/or hose issues? Also from reading the BMW forum thread it sounds like everyone hated the brakes. The cars apparently have a strong front bias. This was compounded with pad selection and then they disable ABS. Result? Lots of locking up going into turns and hitting people. I really enjoyed the one episode where that team was caught modifying their pads to remove material. Now THAT is real racing F1/NASCAR style. What is that quote? “It’s not cheating if you’re not caught” or something like that.
Overall, I think there was a lot of stuff about the show I didn’t like. You never knew who the drivers were until the end. More time spent getting to know people and less things like the bogus drug sniffing dogs at the beginning. Consistent usage of rules and penalties would be good. It had this feeling like they were always making it up as they go. This is the second season. You would hope that next year they would have a good playbook. During an episode you never really knew who was leading. They may mention who was in the lead at time, but always focused on who was at the tail and about to get booted off the island.
But with all of the ugly warts, I found it was about the only thing I have made time to watch in TV recently because behind all of the bad editing, manufactured drama, etc, there was a bunch of guys and gals who were doing the best that they could to win and I think that part of the show was real and entertaining to watch.
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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.comMoney can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.
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