“I’ve held off whipping up on nascar.com a long time. After all (I’ll admit) they are my main source of daily NASCAR news.

Having used the site 1000’s of times, I’m pretty adept at finding the things I want. Each year though, they cram more marketing fluff into the site.

Track Pass is major bloat.

PLEASE. If I want to listen and watch your video, I will click the play button. Ok? Don’t make me jump up and search for the ’stop’ button. Or, make me stop my tunes by turning off my audio everytime I come to the front page. Please nascar.com do a little reading about video on websites. Please.

Then there is your navigation bar. Your roadmap to the places I want to go. Could you fit any more choices on it? They have a whopping 13 main categories in their navigation bar.

Wireless? Travel? Lifestyle? Auto Service? Members Club?

Where do these links even take you? I don’t know and not even in the name of research am I gonna find out. I’m not sure if they keep adding more advertising because they are making so much. Or, are they increasing the advertising because they are trying to make something. Either way, without a major redesign, they will eventually lose me.

There are other racing resources out there. I just haven’t become endeared to them yet. As far as intelligent analysis goes I will always hold Marc of Full Throttle up as the ‘most intelligent guy in NASCAR blogging’. I’ll post a link to him a day just to promote him. He is informed, articulate and opinionated.

Two other groups with big dreams that I admire are the Katinger’s, et al over at Fast Machines and Bram & CJ at Backstretch Motorsports. Both groups are doing a good job at covering the racing circuits. But, for now, they are not the full deal. But I’ve got my fingers crossed for them.

I’ve got one more beef with nascar.com that I’ll hold off on for now. It is a graphics intensive post as well. I’ll let these build up in your cache before laying more out.

What say you?”

As usual, this time of year, I am fretting over when the heck nascar.com and espn.com are going to start their fantasy racing games.

I’ve played the Ultimate Fantasy League at nascar.com for about 4 years now. It’s an alright game. The main excitement of this game is the team draft that takes place before the season starts. Real-time bidding against 5 other players for the 4 drivers that will fill your roster. From then on out it’s simply keeping your best 3 drivers on your active roster. Maybe switching things up at certain tracks. You go against another players team for total points each week. You get a win or a loss. End of the year, whoever has the most wins…wins.

My favorite fantasy racing game is Stock Car Challenge over at espn.com. It’s the salary cap principle of buying a team of 5 drivers with your $100.00. Just like company stock, their value goes up or down depending on their performance. There is strategy to this game which makes it much more fun.

Both of these games are free to play. Two years ago I swore off fantasy games because I’d get so worked up when my team crashed out. Last year went well. I hope this year is the same.

Hopefully, the Fantasy NASCAR will be a useful resource for myself and others this year.

Anybody have any other free fantasy racing games they like to play?

“Me? It’s definitely seeing the #2 Miller Lite car being piloted by Kurt Busch, and the #26 (the car formerly know as #97) Irwin Tools / Crown Royal ride with Jamie McMurray behind the wheel. Hey, I’m kinda old…I excite easily.

I’ve got high hopes for my favorite Dale Jarrett. And, it will be interesting to see what Bobby, Mikey & Schrader do in their new rides.

What about y’all?”

“I caught Roush Racing: Driver X tonight on Discovery Channel. I think it was on last season also, right? So, I guess I’m a little behind the curve.

Driver X is ‘American Idol’ for racing. Pick your favorite driver and root along at home as Jack Roush et al searches for the next great driving sensation (not sure why, since they’ll have fewer teams). Anyways, I’ve read that Roush has been doing this since 1985. They affectionately call it ‘The Roush Racing Gong Show’.

Starting with almost 2,000 drivers, they narrow it down to just a handful. Tonight’s episode had (I think) 9 drivers racing around Darlington Raceway in Craftsman Truck Series trucks. Carl Edwards & Greg Biffle were the Roush drivers helping out.

It was a pretty interesting show. I think I was most amazed at the operation that Jack Roush has built. The track rental, the trucks, the crews, the tires, the time. Big bucks.

I would love to see Jack Roush in the Sprint / Nextel commercial talking about ‘Sticking it to the man.’ That’s some funny stuff.”

“The Ultimate Fantasy NASCAR Database has just had the results from the 2003 season added to it. This brings the total race data to 108 races (2003 through 2005) that can be twisted and tweaked in many interesting ways.

About half of the database queries are functional right now. I think I’ll focus my attention on getting the remaining queries working before harvesting more results data. All of them are listed on the main Fantasy NASCAR database page.

If anyone has ideas on different statistic questions you would like to know, in addition to the ones on the main page, please let me know. Just write your ideas in the comments section.”

“Though some bloggers kept the race talk going over the short off-season, my thoughts were elsewhere. But, like a campfire that easily fans into flame early the next morning, so is the excitement of the 2006 season heating up my interest once again.

The first flare up was seeing Kurt Busch and the Blue Deuce. That was pretty cool. Anybody else in Rusty’s ride, especially a guy like Busch (who garners equal amounts of like and dislike from me), is nothing short of monumental.

The second flare up is Mikey Waltrip not racing for Bill Davis Racing as planned in the new #55, but rather his newly formed co-ownership team with Jasper. The pull that Waltrip has to bring NAPA, Best Western & Domino’s pizza with him wherever he goes is also amazing.”