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Welcome to the Calamity Corner Podcast, your destination for NASCAR analysis, motorsports discussion, race recaps, driver stories, and fan perspectives from across the racing world. Hosted by James and a guest featured every week, each episode dives into the biggest moments from NASCAR Cup Series action, breaking down race results, championship battles, driver performances, controversies, and the stories shaping the sport.
Subscribe and follow Calamity Corner Podcast for weekly NASCAR coverage, motorsports commentary, and everything happening on and off the track.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hello, guys, and welcome back to Calamity Corner. This is James once again back with episode 11. I know I haven't had an episode in a couple weeks, but we are back and we have so much racing to talk about. But before we get into that, I want to introduce my guest,
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mr. Noah Patnow, one of my best friends. How are you doing, Noah? I'm doing good, bud. How are you? I'm doing good, doing good. So before we get into
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North Wilkesboro and Indianapolis,
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I guess my question for you will be: How did you get your start as a NASCAR fan?
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So unironically, I feel like to most motorsport fans, it actually started when I was very young. I used to watch the Cars franchise a lot when I was a kid, and that made me immediately interested in Cars. But I would have to say my first race that I watched was the
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first New Hampshire race in 2010.
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That was the first race I was that I watched as a kid, and sporadically through the early 2010s, I would watch it and be interested in it. But it took until about late 2014 when the playoffs began. Unironically, that I would really get into NASCAR. Yeah. All right. So, who was your favorite driver growing up?
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I,
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for a while when I first started watching, there was multiple different drivers. I led Kyle Busch, I liked Carl Edwards, but I really gravitated towards Jeff Gordon.
Unknown Speaker 1:34
He just always reminded me, weirdly enough, of Lightning McQueen enough to where that was the reason why I loved him so much. But then in 2015, I went to my first NASCAR race in person, the playoff race in New Hampshire, and I met Harvick in person, and I asked him a really interesting question about how
Unknown Speaker 1:54
how do the crew how do the crew members do what they do in such a short period of time for layman's terms? Yeah, and he complimented me on it, and he actually came back in his fire suit, patted me on the back, and said, "Great question, kid. You're going to be going places. And
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from then on, I've always just been a Harvick fan since. Because as a kid, who wouldn't be a Harvick fan after after that?
Unknown Speaker 2:17
As a kid, we see these people as our heroes, and to see them almost be human-like in a sense, it's just an insane thing to say. Yeah, because
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the things that they're able to do on the track, whether that's passing multiple cars at 190 miles an hour,
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being in those hot cars for three, four hours at a time, because these guys, they don't have air conditioning.
Unknown Speaker 2:44
Sometimes they have a suit that will pump cold air, and if that breaks, which it usually does, they're stuck with hot air or no hot water. Excuse me, and that's just a very uncomfortable experience. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I got you. It's like being in a sauna.
Unknown Speaker 3:03
Yeah, exactly. All right. So since we got Noah introduced, we are now gonna get into a little bit of North Wilkesboro.
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So this race was two weeks ago,
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and then
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Joey Agano
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dominated.
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Some would say he even took the field to the woodshed. I saw that on Twitter, and I thought that was pretty funny. What are your thoughts about Logano's dominating win?
Unknown Speaker 3:33
In some sense, I don't think we should be shocked. Logano has proven time and time and time again that on these flat short tracks, New Hampshire, Phoenix, North Willokes, bro,
Unknown Speaker 3:45
that we have seen that Logano can put him up and put him down. He has been the best driver in recent years at these flat short tracks. So I'm not completely shocked that he went out there and took him to the woodshed, like you just
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said. That's right. All right. So besides, besides Logano winning, there wasn't really much action
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during stage one. I remember Kyle Larson; he was coming out of his pit box, and Connor Zillich was coming into his pit box, and the two made contact.
Unknown Speaker 4:19
What I saw from that accident is Silicon's race was ruined. He never
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came like he was multiple laps down.
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For Larson, he had damage for a little bit. He was able to sustain it until the end of stage one, until he could come down, and Cliff Daniels and his team can fix the car. And what I saw, they really did fix the car from data, from the data standpoint. They were running top 10, top five lap times.
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But unfortunately for mr. Larson, his teammate Alex Bowman decided to do a move that you never do in stock car racing, and that is.
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Go to pit road from the top lane. What are your thoughts about that, Noah?
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I mean,
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I'm gonna put it out there. I am not the biggest Alex Bowman fan. I'm I'm just gonna say it out there. Not because it's just he's just never been a driver that I've really been fond of, and I think that move perfectly inscribes how his season has gone, and most of it honestly has been out of his control. I mean, he was he got vertigo at the beginning of the year. He was been he was really sick. He missed six races, yeah, and then and then he's just struggled from then. And a lot of that you can't really put the blame on Bowman, but this is the incident that you can absolutely put your blame on Bowman. I have no idea what he was thinking, hitting from the top lane. The only fathomable idea that I could have had was the crew chief on the pit box at the last minute told him to pit, and he tried to make it, and then he unfortunately not only messed up his teammates, but he also messed up Tyler Reddick as well, who was fighting for the regular season championship at this point, and that really,
Unknown Speaker 6:06
really kind of ruined his race as well. Yeah, well, I hate to break your heart, bud, but NASCAR isn't calling it the regular season championship anymore. They're getting rid of the trophy at Daytona. They're getting rid of everything. So basically, whoever finishes first in points after the regular season is just gonna be called the first seed for the chase.
Unknown Speaker 6:28
I, I, it's just you know sometimes like the lingo just stays around, hence why I still call Xfinity O'Reilly or no, that's true. I do it too. I do it too, but yeah, like you said, not only was Larson trapped multiple laps down because of his teammate, but so were the other two Hendrick Motorsports drivers, William Byron
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and Chase Elliott. Chase Elliott, I feel like is probably the biggest Elliot showed real promise early in the race. He had top five speed. He was, yeah, and was cooking. He was cooking, and from what I saw from the data, I saw that he was very like a top two car. I would say, like, if he was given the opportunity,
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we will never know because I guess it is is what it is. But maybe he could have went up there and battled Logano a little bit. But you know, we'll never know.
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Okay,
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so something else I wanted to get into during North Wilkesboro
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was Shane Van Gitsbergen. We talk about him a lot on here,
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and he just keeps impressing on the Ovals.
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He got another top five.
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He is up to 15th in points with a 57 point buffer on the cutoff line.
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Do you think Shane Van Gizburgen makes the chase with four races to go?
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Honestly, it's. I'm gonna say it as it's more probable at this point in time than improbable.
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I think over the next couple of weeks, you have obviously Daytona. That's a wild card, but we have seen time and time again that Shane Van Gisbergen can perform on a super speedway.
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He had a sixth place at the Spring Atlanta race earlier this year, and he ran fairly well.
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Then you have New Hampshire, which is the race prior to Daytona and last year, I was at the race, and before he got into it with Brad Keselowski, he was literally a top five car the entire race.
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Yeah,
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so whether that's track house
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putting all their eggs in his basket,
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or him actually committing to getting better as an NASCAR driver on the Ovals because that is the majority of the schedule. I think both things can be true because we're kind of seeing that decline with Ross Chastain after the years he had in like the first two years of the next gen car,
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and then last year he won the Coke 600 and just like that speed just has never been seen again from Ross. I think at least in Ross's perspective, I think SVG is where he's supposed to be. I think right around the cutoff line. I think that's probably about as best as that car is going to get. Yeah, I think Ross Chastain actually is is actually performing at this time where that car should more more times than lot. I just think he had such a horrible start to the season that that has really affected him up to this point. Because we have seen over the summer he has been gradually getting better. No, he has not been the Ross Chastain prior to his win of the Coke 600, but he has shown speed at points in time.
Unknown Speaker 9:42
But it's not the race-winning speed that we've seen. You know what I mean? I think that also comes down to that everyone now understands how the next gen works, and where the first three seasons of the next gen were just complete trial and error and utter chaos. Of course, and piggyback.
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Backing off of that, I feel like you come to these normal intermediate tracks, the short tracks. You always see,
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let's see, you always see Gibbs, Hendrick pops in and out when they feel like it. Unfortunately for me,
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you see 2311. Now you're seeing Spire, and on the spire point, we will talk about in the next episode. So that will be interesting to talk about. But now we will be getting into the chase cutoff implications. So with this dominating win, Joey Logano
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pretty much I would say
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cemented his place in the chase. Would you agree with that?
Unknown Speaker 10:43
I think with the upcoming tracks on the schedule, with it being a bunch of flat short tracks, I think that this was the shot in the arm, especially last the last prior race at Atlanta, yeah, where that was the shot in the arm that the 22 team needed to at least qualify for the chase. Do I think he's going to have a run like Tony Stewart? No, but I think that he's gonna he's gonna be a a top 10 contender by year's end, for sure. So there's a joke around the NASCAR community, and that's even near Logano. So since you guys don't really know about this, even near Logano
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is when
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is when it haunts us. It haunts us for real. So it's when Joey Logano, whether in an even year, whether that's 2024 and he won the championship, 2026 this year, or even 2022 and he won the championship once again, he wakes up and decides, oh yeah, I'm a three-time champion.
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I'm a great NASCAR driver, and I'm gonna go kick everyone's butt on the track. And in
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odd years like last year, he's nowhere to be seen.
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And still runs top 10 in points.
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Well, he drives for Penske, so I hope he would at least be top 10 in points.
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All right, so we're gonna get into some overall thoughts from North Wilkesboro. So,
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what I thought, I thought the racing
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was okay. I mean, we did see a passing
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because
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the with the worn out surface. Wait, actually, never mind. They just redid the surface. My bad. But like with the new short track package, you get more horsepower.
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They take the diffuser away. You get less downforce. So in turn, we get tire wear.
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And with tire wear, you get passing because you have to save your stuff, and some drivers are better at it than others. We've mentioned this before. Now, what did you think about the race, Noah?
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I thought the racing was actually really good, and I think that compared to a lot of people online who said that North Willisburg didn't have good racing,
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I thought the racing was actually really good, and the reason why I say that is not because it was a long green flag run, but mostly because you could pass pretty much anywhere on the track, into the corner, in the middle of the corner. There were three distinct lanes during that race that you could run, and we saw Hamlin run the high line. We saw Brisco up against the wall. We saw Logano running the middle earlier in the race. We saw Ty Gibbs wrapping the white line around three and four most of the night. I mean, that's exactly what we want NASCAR to be. Not every race is going to be
Unknown Speaker 13:32
the 2024 Kansas race or the 22 Coke 600, and I think that with the next gen having such so many really good races like that, I think it really does take away a couple of these races where nothing really happens, but you can still have good racing. Yeah, because as
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a fan, from a fan's perspective, I just don't want to watch a wreck fest. You know, where they they start the race. Yeah, they start the race. We get a little run, like 1015, laps. We get a caution because
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the another debate online is NASCAR takes their sweet time during cautions,
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and this has been brought up again across the entire NASCAR community about whether NASCAR needs to shorten the length of races, whether races are just too long,
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and I feel like they don't need to shorten like the mileage of races. Like I feel like 400 miles are fine, but like both things can be true. Like cautions are just too long.
Unknown Speaker 14:37
Like while I will piggyback off of it, I also disagree in a sense. I think there are certain ways that you can shorten the races. The number one being get rid of the stage cautions and just keep the points after the certain laps. Like that's that would be the first thing I would do. Yeah, I'm not saying to shorten the races lengths. Like I love racing. Like I want longer races, but you know I want.
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I think there should be longer races. I don't think there should cut any more mileage. I think that a lot of the issue with today's racing is the fact that it is too short. Yeah, I mean, one of NASCAR NASCAR's always had three four hour races since forever. Yeah, like that's kind of NASCAR's thing. Yeah, because
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go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 15:19
I think that you know,
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I think a lot of it also comes down to is schedule diversity.
Unknown Speaker 15:26
Ever since the COVID pandemic, we have had a drastic change in track diversity, and I think now, you know, back in the early 2000s, was a 500 mile Pocono race sometimes a bore? Yes, yes, it was, but I think now with everything being as diverse as it is, I think you could get a 500 mile Pocono race again, and it still be entertaining. And a lot of that also comes down to the car, the different drivers, the aging of the surfaces. There are so many different factors that go into it that it really you can really have an opinion, and none of it can be ever be wrong. Yeah, so
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going based off of math because math never
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lies. So for the stage cautions, NASCAR takes about 15 minutes per stage caution, and if you lower that down to what one lap, one cool down lap for the caution. If they're gonna keep stopping the car for the caution, you pit,
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then you get the choose, and then you restart. That'll be what five minutes, and that'll be really cutting it down because I feel like they're just wasting time under caution. Yeah, and they just get really too comfortable, just going around. Now I'm always just thinking to myself, like, why are we not going green? Like the track is some of it. Some of it is safety reasons, obviously. Like you have a piece of debris on the backstretch that wind blows in because a lot of these races it gets windy. Yeah, like in Nashville when Nash car didn't clear it up, and they took their sweet time, and it cost Kyle Larson a top five finish.
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I think the best way to do this is to get rid of the stage cautions and let them run green. I think a lot of the issue does stem down to the fact that there's three different three different races that you have to play for. Yeah. So I think if you get rid of the stage cautions. You get rid of a lot of the issues that are going on. Yes. Now NASCAR did get rid of the stage cautions on a road course, if you do remember.
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And William Byron, I think it was right. William Byron dominated. Yeah, that one Watkins Glen race. Yeah, William Byron dominated that race. NASCAR didn't like it and was like, okay, we're gonna put the stage cautions back. We're gonna make y'all. Well, that has nothing really to do with the stage cautions themselves. That's just the road course package being awful at the time. I think both things can be true.
Unknown Speaker 17:53
I I think it stems more down to the road course package being awful because there was not a single caution outside of I think one. I think there was one caution that race. Well, yeah, but you don't. The same thing, and the same thing with the Indy Roval, where Michael McDowell put, you know, one. There was one caution for Justin Haley, and then it went green to the end. Exactly. I think. I think. Go ahead, my bad. I think. I think it takes more than just the stage cautions. I think that was more so like the on track product was just not very good. Yeah, but don't you think that plays into strategy a little bit too?
Unknown Speaker 18:26
I mean, I would much rather have the strategy of you have from point A to point B, and that's the race. I like the stage points as like an additional strategy point, but I think the fact of slowing the cars down and doing all that under caution that completely kills the strategy because all the crew chiefs really do now is just all right. We're gonna split the stage in half. We're split the stage in thirds, and we're gonna call it a day.
Unknown Speaker 18:46
Yeah, because it just feels like what's the term I'm looking for? It just feels like water down, watered down. It just feels like a sprint. It doesn't feel like a marathon. Like I feel like an NASCAR race should be. You know what I'm saying, all right. So we're gonna get into now
Unknown Speaker 19:05
the last couple points for this episode. We're gonna talk about Ford.
Unknown Speaker 19:10
So Ford is on the up and coming in the past couple weeks, like we've seen with Logano's
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dominating performance.
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Let's see.
Unknown Speaker 19:34
I think something that we've seen from the Fords recently is a lot of track variance.
Unknown Speaker 19:40
Like I said earlier, North Willocks Bro is really good for the Penske cars. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 19:45
RFK Racing has arguably been the best Ford team all around all season long. Yeah. I've noticed that even they have gotten a little bit better as time goes on. We've seen Brad Keselowski, who started the year off really well, kind of had a fall off.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
During the early parts of the summer, now starting to come back,
Unknown Speaker 20:03
but mostly it's really been mostly the Penske cars. Exactly. Obviously, Atlanta-that's a track where Penske and the Fords are going to dominate. Blaney dominated there already. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 20:14
Ryan Blaney had a really good run at Sonoma. I never really considered Blaney be a road course racer, but he ran really well at Sonoma
Unknown Speaker 20:21
back then North Willisboro, obviously the Fords and Logano they did really well.
Unknown Speaker 20:28
Like I said, you have Iowa coming up. That's another short track. Ford's probably going to do pretty well there. Of course. You have Richmond where Buscher's won there. Logano's won there. They've all run really well. That's a little bit more even in my opinion, but I could definitely see them going either way. New Hampshire, that's going to be Penske dominance. I have Logano winning that race, and then Daytona is another Ford track where
Unknown Speaker 20:51
the the Penske cars and the RFK cars they're going to do well on the super speedways, anyways. Yeah, because I feel like the Fords' their package allows them to draft better.
Unknown Speaker 21:01
Aerodynamically, they look really great. They're very square in the front and the back, and I feel like that's very important for.
Unknown Speaker 21:10
Well, they don't really bump draft anymore, but
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they don't bump draft. They run through each other.
Unknown Speaker 21:16
I digress, but yeah, like you
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said. So for Ford, they coming off. Well, they were coming off back-to-back wins at Atlanta and in North Wilkesboro.
Unknown Speaker 21:28
Both of their drivers led most of that race. They won the race,
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and I feel like Penske.
Unknown Speaker 21:38
Maybe just like the beginning of the year is like a feel out for them because they could afford to be mid. Let's just say it what it is because yeah, they won't have much competition on the cutoff line like we're seeing now.
Unknown Speaker 21:53
Yeah, because
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Syndrick is up there too. He's above the cut line. Logano's above the cut line, and of course, Brian Blaney now is fighting for the number one seed in chase. I almost said regular season championship. I had to correct myself,
Unknown Speaker 22:11
but yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 22:14
that's good for Ford. Will they continue this
Unknown Speaker 22:18
for the three short tracks that we have coming up? Probably.
Unknown Speaker 22:22
Brian. Blaney. He has a pass win at Iowa. Logano, like you said, very good at the flat short tracks. I feel like Penske in the next gen car overall has put a lot of resources into that package because of the championship race that was at Phoenix for the first
Unknown Speaker 22:43
three years, four years, four years of the next gen car, but it's not going to be any more. So we will see how that plays out for them later into the chase. But now we will start talking a little bit
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about
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what's going on with Kyle Larson, man?
Unknown Speaker 23:05
Um, how how honest do you want me to be? You can be as honest as you want to be.
Unknown Speaker 23:11
I think, I think genuinely and honesty, he's just in a slump, and I all great drivers have gone through slump. Jimmie Johnson, towards the end of his career, he went through a slump. Kyle Busch, during points of his career, he went through a slump. Jeff Gordon, all great drivers go through a slump, and I think that this past month or so has been Kyle Larson's slump. And even even prior to that, he was running top five, top 10. So I'm not overly concerned with the five car,
Unknown Speaker 23:39
especially with how that entire team is running in general, they are not championship contenders. They're just not. They're gonna run well. I'm not worried about that, but they're not championship contenders. Yeah. All right. So, my thoughts as a Kyle Larson fan, it hurts. It really does hurt to see him struggle.
Unknown Speaker 24:01
So the past four weeks, he's had an incident on track, which has deterred his finishing position.
Unknown Speaker 24:09
It felt like in June, when he had a finishing position of 3.5, that you know what? Maybe the five team is finally waking up
Unknown Speaker 24:17
right on time, right? But nope.
Unknown Speaker 24:20
July comes around. He doesn't have a finish better than 15th.
Unknown Speaker 24:25
He had three outside the top 30 finishes in three. It feels like
Unknown Speaker 24:31
we've seen this from Larson before in 2017 when he was cooking. He got to the round of eight and he didn't finish a race in the round of eight, yeah, which two of them were in of his own fault. He had two engine failures, and then what was it, Talladega? And then Talladega, Talladega, Talladega for double parent reason. That's just what it is.
Unknown Speaker 24:55
But yeah, it seems like we get into a pattern with Larson, whether that's good or bad.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
It's very ying and yang. Weirdly enough, he's always in the middle. Yeah, he'll have he'll have a month where he's the best driver in the world, and then we'll have another month where he can't finish a lap in the top 30. Yeah, and then on Twitter and Instagram, every time he has an accident, and I'm gonna point this out for all of the haters because this makes me so mad.
Unknown Speaker 25:22
The best driver in the world comments need to stop because he didn't. Because it's clearly Max Verstappen.
Unknown Speaker 25:30
That's not my point, and it's not. That is my point, and I'm going to be pushing agendas.
Unknown Speaker 25:35
Clearly, Max Verstappen's a better driver right now.
Unknown Speaker 25:40
Absolutely no. Did you see what he did recently? He just got a p2 in that crap box
Unknown Speaker 25:48
from what a late dive a dive bomb the Danny Rick special. He gets Danny Rick's number and now he's dive bombing like the goat.
Unknown Speaker 25:58
I don't know, man. I mean, he's gonna he's gonna go to McLaren next year and cook Landon Nourse. We're we're getting we're getting a little bit too far off the point. We're getting too far off the point.
Unknown Speaker 26:09
But yeah, like I said, the trolling with Larson every time he has an accident. Oh, that's the best driver in the world. Every time I watch NASCAR, it's this guy in the wall like
Unknown Speaker 26:21
that, needs to stop. Runs up against the wall. What do you expect?
Unknown Speaker 26:25
Because that's where the speed is. You can ask Kyle Busch.
Unknown Speaker 26:29
Exactly. It's where is the speed? Is of course the driver's gonna get in the wall. You're up against
Unknown Speaker 26:35
it. All right, everybody. That will do it for episode 11 of Calamity Corner. Once again, I'm James, and it's been great having Noah on. Noah, thank you so much for coming on, and we will see you guys anytime, anytime, of course. And we will see you guys on the next episode.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai