Johnson Shows He's Ready For the Chase

By Rick Bradham

Jimmie Johnson showed that he is ready for the 2008 Chase. Winning from the pole and leading 228 of 250 laps, Johnson dominated the Pepsi 250 here Saturday night in his Chevrolet.

With his victory, Johnson moves up one spot in the points standings into third and secured his position in the Chase. Johnson is trying to match NASCAR legend Cale Yarbrough as the only other driver to win three Cup championships. Johnson's win tonight is also his 36th career victory and breaks a tie he had with Mark Martin at 17th in all-time career victories.

All attention this year has been focused on Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards as they have won a combined 14 of 25 races. Johnson has now won three races. Perhaps Busch and Edwards should be concerned with the two-time champion as it appears that Johnson is getting warmed up for the Chase. They should also remember that Johnson won four of the ten races in the Chase last year. The first 26 races will get you in the Chase but it's the last ten that gets you the Championship.

Johnson showed that he had the dominate car all night with only Ford driver Greg Biffle close to him at the end. Behind Biffle, Denny Hamlin finished third in a Toyota. Fourth place went to Kevin Harvick in a Chevrolet and fifth went to Ford driver Matt Kenseth.

Carl Edwards drove his Ford to sixth place with his nemesis Kyle Busch behind him in the Toyota for seventh. Busch continues to lead the series with Edwards in second place. With Johnson moving up to third, his teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. slipped to fourth place. Jeff Burton remains in fifth place in series points. These five drivers have all now qualified for the Chase.

The remaining seven spots are still open with one race to go, next week in Richmond. Biffle moved up one spot into sixth and Harvick moved up one spot to seventh. Tony Stewart slipped two spots to eighth after finishing 22nd tonight. Kenseth moved up one spot to ninth while Jeff Gordon moved down one spot to tenth with his 15th place finish tonight. Denny Hamlin remains in 11th with Clint Bowyer holding onto the 12th and final qualifying position. David Ragan remains in 13th only 17 points behind Bowyer and Kasey Kahne remains in 14th only 48 points behind Bowyer.

Only one race to go before the Chase begins, and this is where your season can begin or end. Watch for plenty of action and risk taking moves next weekend.

More articles about NASCAR can be found at http://www.speedweekly.net

The best way to watch NASCAR on television can be found at http://www.watchautoracing.com

What is Drifting?

By Chip Szalewski

When I tell someone that I race and drift or that I'm a drifter, I usually get a confused look. People ask me, what is drifting? So let me start by explaining the sport of drifting!

Drifting as a sport originally started in the hills of Japan. Kids would race up and down the mountain roads or touges. Soon they would start to slide the car sideways around the corners to show off and to keep their engines rpms up. This technique of controlling the cars over-steer (over-steer is a handling issue that results when the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle) soon started to catch on and it's popularity grew. The artistry displayed by these early drifter and those to follow helped coin the term "Corner Artists" for the amazing way they could attack a corner and turn movement and tire smoke into an art form.

As a result of the excitement and growing fan base of this new sport D1 Gran Prix was formed in Japan as an organized form of racing that's sole purpose was to challenge the drivers to one on one heats on a technical section of a track. The driver are scored on speed of entry into the corners, angle of attack, racing line, distance between your opponent, and style.

The success of D1GP has lead to several other circuits starting around the world such as NOPI Drift, Formula Drift, and several other country specific circuits.

Drifting as a sport truly is a fan based sport. In no other motor sport can the winner be determined by the crowd. This aspect of the sport really drew me to this form of racing. Drifting can almost be compared to gladiatorial games in a sense that the crowd has such an impact on the outcome.

During a drift competition only two cars will compete during a run or race. The race is set up like this: two cars will line up side to side to each other on a section of the track known as the scoring section. One car will be the leader and the other will be the follower and they will compete against each other in the the five points categories, speed of entry, angle of attack, racing line, distance between opponent, and style. After the two cars have made their drift run through the scoring section they will repeat this same thing, only the leader and follower will switch roles.

Now if the two drivers were so closely matched in their skills of slide the crowd can call for a "One more time". Which is a sort of sudden death round in which if either driver makes a mistake they will automatically loose (more on how a competition is ran in my upcoming post "Drift Competitions, How They Work").

So to sum up drifting as a motorsport: it's tire smoke and cars on the razor's edge of control, mixed with a nonstop adrenalin rush and a crowd on the edges of their seats, garnished with some of the most skilled corner artist in the world.

http://Drift-Diaries.com is a chronicle where I show you my rise in the drifting community. I will teach you how you can compete, get exposure and eventually make it big as a drifter.

Hi My name is Chip, or Speed as a lot of people know me and I am a soon to be professional drifter, interested in helping you learn to drift and build your skills.

See you at the track!

http://Drift-Diaries.com

Motor Sports Helmet Cameras For in Car Racing

By Nicole Douglas

If you're a hard core motor sports racer, and feel the need for speed, you probably want to own a video recorder system to record your time at the track. If you're looking to make professional DVD quality video or simple short clips for the web from your race at the track , this article can help point you in the right direction and set you up with a quality in car camera system to suit your requirements. You can easily record what has up to now been unavailable to you. Many in car video camera systems offer a quick viewing feature. The Suv Cams are equipped with a 2.2 inch TFT high resolution LCD screen display. Suv Cams have the options of many lengths of the camera cable, so you can extend your recording space accordingly. Using helmet cameras that use secured digital high capacity card will ensure you will record the highest quality resolution and receive extended recording. The higher quality Suv Cams produce continuous recording so you can loop your time at the track and never miss a moment.

A compact video camera system can be used on on board vehicles of any kind, mounted anywhere, and even on the outside of a race car. These systems are so compact, they are comparable to the size of a cellular phone. With the LCD screen you will be able to select a file to play and press a button to play the recorded file. With frame by frame playback, you never miss the exact moment in the video you want to see.

The SD card recording media protects your data from loss in body worn or highly actively uses. The recorded data can be played on Windows Media Player or other software without the need for dedicated software. These systems will use up to 4 GB SD cards, and have with the 4 GB card a recording time up to two hours with low resolution. To get the best DVD quality footage, you will want to use a DVR or camcorder based helmet camera, which are high resolution. You can Record at any moment with a touch of a button using a DVR helmet cam system. DVR style helmet camera systems offer DVD quality recording and features such as, remote control recording.

Useful links: Helmet Cam Videos on www.video.google.com

Author Nicole Douglas

Nicole is an avid sports enthusiast who enjoys recording all the great times she has with her helmet cameras. Save your time and energy searching the internet looking for bullet cameras and take a look at my recommendations.

https://www.actionvideocams.com/ELMO_SUV-Cam_II.html

The Indianapolis 500

By Brenda Williams

One of the largest single-day sporting event in history is the Indy 500. The running of the Indy 500 has been going on since 1911. The 93rd running of the race will take place in May of 2009, making it the 64th consecutive year without interruption. Other names of the race throughout history have been the International 500-Mile Sweepstakes (twice), the International 300-Mile Sweepstakes and the Liberty Sweepstakes. The race has been carried on television and radio. It debuted on radio in 1952 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. The firs time the race was televised from start to finish was in 1986 by ABC.

The race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was built in 1909. Its first track was a gravel and tar track which was then changed to all brick and then pavement. The first Indy 500 took place on May 30, 1911. The venue currently holds approximately 400,000 people. The first race was seen by just over 80,000 people who paid $1 for admission. The first race included Ray Harroun, the inventor of the rear view mirror. The race was originally an open event which meant that anyone could race in the event if they wished to do so. Now the race is by invitation only. Drivers must qualify for participating in the event.

When the race was an open event the qualifying procedure entailed the admission fee and maintained a certain speed was allowed to join the field. The order of start was determined at random, by determining who handed in their signup forms first. Now the qualifying, since it is by invitation only, is a little tougher. The current speed-based qualifying was started in 1915 and the field was limited to 33 entries, which is still the case for today's race. The qualifying process today consists of a four-lap distance and it was introduced in the year 1933.

With each race comes traditions at the Indy 500 from year to year. The most popular tradition, and most popular words in sports aside from "Play Ball," is "Gentlemen, start your engines!" Other traditions include the detonation of an explosive to signal the opening of the arena's gates at 6am on the day of the race, "Taps" is played to symbolize the remembrance of Memorial Day along with a flyover, "God Bless America" is performed by Florence Henderson and "The Star-Spangled Banner" is performed by a different popular artist each year.

There have been a multitude of accidents during the running of the Indy 500 and a handful of deaths involving drivers, crew, spectators and driving mechanics (which haven't been used since the early years of the race). The last death during the Indy 500 was in 1973 when Swede Savage died on July 2nd in a hospital from injuries suffered in the race. Some believe that Savage might have died do to contaminated blood from a transfusion. Savage was the 14th driver to die either at the race or after the race to due injuries from an accident or from heat exhaustion.

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