Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie

Live blog the Daytona 500 with Steve and Charlie

Stop by OnPitRow.com Sunday during the 50th Daytona 500 and join us for some live blogging action. We did a live blog during the 2007 NASCAR Awards Show and had a blast.

After watching New Car action with only half-sized fields for the three races so far, I can’t wait to see the forty three survivors go at it in anger. The Coveritlive software allows us to bring in tons of content but we need your input.

Last time we likened the spirit of the live blog to the old Mystery Science Theatre 3000 except it will be the Pit Crew - Steve, BethAnne and Charlie instead of Joel, Crow and Tom Servo. I hope you can join us for awhile. The blog will start at about 3:15 pm ET Sunday.

There is a reminder box at the top of the Bench Racing blog page where you can leave your email address and set up an automatic reminder for the event.

Photo Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

We've moved the home of Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie to the new OnPitRow.com site.  We'll continue to post over here for awhile, but please check out the new site and change your bookmarks. Thanks.

New NASCAR Sports Blog Index likes Bench Racing

The Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog has been recognized as the fourth most influential NASCAR blog by the folks at Sports Media Challenge in their all new NASCAR Sports Blog Index™ (SBI).   The full press release is here. Pretty cool stuff.

The only trouble is, they got the link wrong in the announcement. I have emailed them and hopefully they will get it corrected.

Remember, we have moved this blog to our new OnPitRow.com family of sites.  Please change your links.

Thanks

Steve and Charlie

The votes are in--OPeRs have been awarded

ON PIT ROW's OPeR awards were held on Tuesday, December 11, 2007.

Some surprise winners received their first OPeR while others, including SPEED-TV, continued on a win streak.  Jeff Gordon was shut out of an OPeR for the first time in memory. Here are the results as voted on by the ON PIT ROW staff:

Best and worst driver:

Best driver award goes to Jimmy Johnson for his late season drive to the championship.
Worst driver award goes to the transport driver that got caught trying to sneak his girlfriend into the race track and being snagged by NASCAR and his bride.

Best and worst crew chief:

Best crew chief is awarded to Chad Knaus for making all the right decisions when it counted most.
Worst crew chief is David Hyder for his ill fated attempt to add rocket power to the Michael Waltrip stable.

Best and worst owner:

Best owner OPeR goes to Rick Hendrick for not only providing the best equipment to the best teams but also bringing in the biggest name in the sport for 2008.
Worst owner goes to, hands down, Bobby Ginn for promises not kept and his ability to "big time" a major sport.

Best and worst team:

Best team is a given.  I said the #24 and #48 garage as a combo.  Charlie lobbied for just the #48 team for obvious reasons. I finally succumbed.
Worst team was the #10 team with Scott Riggs at the helm most of the year.  This was a team with high hopes on a team that was on a roll in 2006.  Expectations were not met.

Best and worst post race interview:

Best interview goes to Matt Kenseth as he was able to talk to reporters while teammate Carl Edwards was trying to clean his clock.
Worst post race interview was actually no interview at all.  Kyle Busch wins for his "walk away" as Junior was getting into Kyle's wrecked car.   Foreshadowing at its finest.

Worst attempt at "adjusting the the rules":

NASCAR's insistence on not doing anything about the ridiculous Top 35 rule gets the OPeR for sheer stupidity.

Best Jr. High School-like Drama:

The entire Dale Earnhardt Jr. saga played out like the best he said-she said drama of all time.  The parties that be, played the public for all they were worth with the multiple press conferences and the never ending speculation in regards to numbers and sponsors.  The whole thing played out like an episode of Hanna Montana.

Best and worst Radio/TV personality:

The best TV personality for 2007 was the newcomer--Kyle Petty.  Kyle was glib, refreshing and willing to give true insight into what drivers are thinking.  We can't wait to hear more from Kyle in 2008.
Bill Weber wins the worst Media Personality award for his lack of personality.

Best and worst Nascar Network:

SPEED-TV wins again.  They consistently put on a great show.  Their pre and post race shows are the best.  Combine those shows with the qualifying and race coverage of the Craftsman Truck Series and ARCA and you have a winner.
ABC/ESPN was the big loser.  Again great expectations from fans and NASCAR were not met on any level.  They need to step up and get it done in 2008.

Best guest to appear ON PIT ROW:

This was the hardest award to give because of all the great people who have made ON PIT ROW so much fun to do.  Charlie took Lloyd Moore; the oldest living NASCAR and ARCA winner.  I took Jeff Hammond from the sheer number of times that Jeff made time for us.  Not only is he always entertaining, but there were several times that Jeff went above and beyond to get to a phone to be on the show.  Special honorable mentions go to Lee Spencer from Fox Sports and to David Poole from Sirius and the Charlotte Observer.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Fickies / Getty Images for NASCAR)

Revenge of the Awards Show

The NASCAR Awards show was actually not as lame as I expected.  It was still good for some laughs though.

If you joined us for the Live Blog tonight, I thank you and apologize to you.  We had technical difficulties (almost felt like a live radio show) at about the 10:45 pm mark and eventually had to shut the Live Blog down.  It was fun while it lasted and the folks at Cover It Live were great to work with.  I'm pretty sure that the problem was on my end and we are looking forward to live blogging again soon.

Again, thanks to everybody.

UPDATE: Cover It Live got to the bottom of our problem and it was, not surprisingly, caused on our end. These guys are fantastic to work with - especially for someone as digitally challenged as me. Their software is so easy to use that I just got a little lazy naming an image file. Here's Keith from CIL's explanation to me:

The problem was the title of one of the images you stored in your media library had a “ in the title.  The software normally catches those kinds of unacceptable characters and doesn’t let you save them.  Except on that one darn line I guess we missed our quality assurance test.  The “ believe it or not, made the software freak out and stop talking to the database (that’s why with banks they don’t let you use funny characters in your username).

 

Anyway, it’s fixed.  First time that’s ever happened.  Sorry it was on your shift.  Appreciate your support to us with your readers.  We’re putting in the fix in the morning so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

Stay tuned.  I just wish that I could come up with a name for our live blogs - maybe OPR 3000.  Nah.

Live Blog - NASCAR Awards Show

Watching NASCAR's year end awards banquet and show from the Waldorf in New York City is, to me, a painful experience.  But doing what I do, I feel compelled to watch it. That's kind of funny actually because I don't always feel compelled to watch the races.  Anyway, since I have to do this, I was hoping that some of you would join me in my pain. 

Steve and our producer/photographer Beth Anne have promised - under threat of me making their email addresses public on MySpace - to show up at some point and I have dropped pleading hints around the NASCAR blogosphere as well. 

So with the help of this great Cover it Live software we'll try our best to resurrect Joel, Tom Servo, Betsy and Crow of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fame and totally de-construct NASCAR's most ludicrous night.