2012 NASCAR Preseason Media Tour: Cleaning Out The Notebook

During the Hendrick Motorsports stop on the recently completed NASCAR Sprint Media tour, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sat at his assigned station and fielded questions for roughly 45 minutes.

Print, internet and TV reporters cycled through, making queries on a variety of topics – and we had a tape recorder running the whole time.

Brad Keselowski was asked during last week’s NASCAR Sprint Media Tour whether he felt Penske Racing’s two-car team was at any disadvantage to the larger three- and four-car teams.

Here’s Keselowski’s response, which we found pretty interesting:

Steve Addington speaks softly and smiles often, but he’s far from the sensitive type. In fact, the new crew chief for Tony Stewart might just have the thickest skin in NASCAR.

Who else could go from being yelled at by Kyle Busch to being excoriated by Kurt Busch to signing up to be a potential punching bag for Stewart?

I have a buddy – an unemployed buddy – who keeps going on job interviews and is repeatedly told he’s a “finalist” for various positions. But when it comes time for companies to make the actual hire, my friend keeps getting passed up and, thus, is still jobless.

For much of the offseason, David Ragan seemed to find himself in that same position. Ragan’s No. 6 team at Roush Fenway Racing effectively folded due to lack of sponsorship after the season was over, and Roush didn’t have any other gigs for Ragan.

Kyle Busch has long said he wants to reach 200 NASCAR national series victories before he retires – a goal that will become more challenging since the driver has cut back his racing schedule for 2012.

Busch will not race in the Camping World Truck Series this season after driving in 16 events last year – and winning six of them – and will reduce his Nationwide Series schedule by a handful of races (from 20 to approximately 15).

This season, for the first time since 1982, NASCAR will not hold a race at Indiana’s Lucas Oil Raceway (the track formerly known as Indianapolis Raceway Park).

LOR, a short track which often provided some of the best racing of the season in the Nationwide and Camping World Truck series, joins a list that includes Memphis, Nashville, Gateway, Milwaukee, Mansfield and Pike’s Peak as “standalone” venues which have disappeared from the NASCAR calendar over the past few years.

When a driver’s wife getting pregnant is the biggest revelation of a four-day press event, you know there wasn’t much news.

Kevin Harvick’s surprise announcement Wednesday night that he and wife DeLana are expecting their first child in July was the top news on the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour, which concluded Thursday afternoon.

I often find myself in the position of defending NASCAR when non-fans label racing as a redneck sport that appeals only to Southerners.

“It’s not like that anymore!” I’ll say in protest. “If you have an open mind, you’ll like it.”

Here are a few notes from the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour we haven’t talked about yet:

• Kevin Harvick’s wife, DeLana is 14 weeks pregnant and expecting the couple’s first child in July, the driver told reporters at the Richard Childress Racing stop on Wednesday night.

After being released from Red Bull in 2010, Scott Speed spent most of last season without a NASCAR ride. He mostly start-and-parked for Whitney Motorsports and Max Q Motorsports and figured he’d probably have to do the same in 2012.

But racing has a funny way of giving second chances sometimes, and Speed believes he may have found a team to help resurrect his career.

Technology is a crazy thing, and so it came to be that during an interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on Wednesday, we were interrupted by a live Facebook broadcast.

As it turned out, Hendrick Motorsports was live-streaming all of its Media Day activities right on its Facebook page. This included roving reporter Sean Pragano, who had a camera crew with him.

Nationwide had a cool idea for its NASCAR Media Tour stop on Tuesday night: In order for the media to get to know the drivers and their personalities a little better, why not make the press event fun?

Elliott Sadler hosted a David Letterman-style talk show (his guests were other drivers), complete with a funny top 10 list. Travis Pastrana performed a “Stupid Human Trick” (eating an entire raw egg). And five drivers took on a team of media members (including me) in a game of Family Feud.

Surprisingly, Mark Martin said he hasn’t been asked for his advice too much lately when it comes to teaching young drivers about the etiquette of racing and how to handle conflicts.

But if one of them did ask, the new Michael Waltrip Racing driver told reporters during the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour what his response would be.

Once NASCAR realized the so-called “COT” car was basically a dud in the eyes of fans who desired different manufacturers to have different looks, planning began on a new Sprint Cup Series car for 2013.

The Cup car will use the same chassis as the current one (as does the new Nationwide Series car), but the body will be dramatically different.

Martin Truex Jr. knows it will take a trip to Victory Lane in order to keep sponsor Napa – and perhaps in order to keep his job at Michael Waltrip Racing.

Truex enters the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season faced with increased pressure to perform, in perhaps a now-or-never situation with a contract that expires at the end of the year.

Side-by-side commercials are continuing to gain momentum in the NASCAR TV world.

NASCAR on FOX is “absolutely” interested in expanding the amount of time it airs side-by-side commercials with live action coverage during a race, lead race producer Barry Landis said Monday night.

Denny Hamlin grew frustrated with the organizational structure at Joe Gibbs Racing last season because he felt former crew chief Mike Ford “had his hands tied” and couldn’t make the changes Hamlin wanted.

That revelation was part of yet another honest Hamlin interview session, this one coming during Monday’s NASCAR Sprint Media Tour.

If Kyle Busch could take back his intentional wreck of Ron Hornaday at November’s Camping World Truck Series race at Texas, he would do so without hesitation.

“I would have liked that it never have happened,” Busch said Monday during the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour. “If I could, I would take it back.”

As Tony Stewart’s season suddenly turned around during last season’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, so did his relationship with the media.

Stewart went from lashing out at reporters prior to NASCAR’s Chase cutoff at Richmond to being both accessible and friendly by season’s end.

Danica Patrick’s 10-race NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule for this season will include the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend.

That means for the first time since Patrick came into the national spotlight, the Indianapolis 500 won’t include the GoDaddy Girl.