So maybe I was wrong about Talladega being boring. Perhaps I just turned on the TV at the right time, but it was a fantastic result. There is no limit to the amount of times that I can watch Carl's wreck. On a personal note, the truck and nationwide races held more joy than the cup race, as two of my friends got their first wins. My friend Seth has been the race engineer on the #6 busch car for like 3 years, and finally got his first win at Talladega. Then, Mike Skinner closed the deal in Kansas in the truck race, and my friend Jay got his first win as race engineer too. I never got close to victory lane when I was working for Robby, so I have to live vicariously through their stories I guess.

Obviously one of the big buzz words after the Talladega race is "safety". There is a lot of chatter about how to make the cars and the catch fences safer for drivers and for fans, and there are always ways to make improvements. From the team engineers perspective, most of the safety stuff is out of your hands. The walls and fences are designed for the tracks, and NASCAR mandates all of the steel tubing thickness and the roll cage configuration of the car. So there is little to do to design any more safety into the cars. In F1, the engineers are tasked with designing the main car structures, and the burden of safety is taken on by the enginneering staff.

The installation of sensors for testing was really the only time the NASCAR team engineer is faced with decisions for safety. For example, if the data engineer installs the throttle sensor incorrectly, the throttle can stick open and cause a massive wreck. Also, things like tire temperature sensors that can rub and cut a tire need a good bit of care during installation so they don't cause any problems. It is not hard to get right with a little bit of common sense. The worst thing that I ever did was I had a ride height laser, which is the size of a candy bar and weighs 6oz., fall off of RG's car during Daytona testing and knocked a hole in Sterling Marlins nose. It did not cause any major damage, and no one was hurt, but it could have been big if it managed to cut a tire or something. Needless to say, we installed those better after that mishap.

Off to Richmond this week, and sadly, I will not be watching it as I have a wedding to go with. I like the layout of Richmond, and it's nice that they do a Saturday night show. This week will be an impound race, but that will not cause the teams any trouble. At Talladega you can throw the kitchen sink at the car to put down a good qualy lap and screw up the car for the race. Short track race and qualy setups are not too terribly different, so it will not trip anyone up.

I will go for a win for the 11 as he has been good on the shorter tracks this year. Hendrick seems to dominate this track, so I would expect the 24 and 48 to be in the mix. I will tip the 6 for a top 10. He ran good here last year, and he and the team will be bouyed by 2 good results last week. I will go for a 21st place for the 7 car. They need a decent run and I think they will turn it around here.