Lee USA 2004

 

4/28/04

Nice to have the BNS season underway finally. As usual with the early season date, we froze our keisters off all day but at least it didn’t rain on us. Now we have to wait four weeks before we can do it all over again. I’m really looking forward to the Thompson race this year, as I’ve never been there before. The BNS race there always has been scheduled on the same weekend as the Oxford 250 until this season and I haven’t been able to convince myself to miss the 250 since I have been to each one of them since the inaugural in 1974.

I noticed a few things at Lee USA. The great thing about attending all of these races at all of these different tracks is that I can learn something new at every one.

I noticed that the beer in New Hampshire has suddenly become cold. Not just at NHIS but all over. I actually had a couple cold ones at the track! This is a huge step in the right direction for the state of New Hampshire. Now if we could just get them to remove that silly saying on their license plate about living free. There is nothing any more free about living in New Hampshire than there is about living in any other state.

I noticed that cold, damp weather equals half-full grandstands. Too bad to see that, but everyone must have been sitting at home watching the race live on HDNet.

I really hope that someone else noticed some of this stuff and it wasn’t just me. Did anyone else notice that Kip Stockwell had a nice new clean body on his car? Niiccceee!

Did anyone else notice that John Cerbone appeared to have Kip’s old body on his car? It looked as though it fell off the truck on the way to the track too. I hope no one fell off with it because they must have been painting it on the way to the track.

Did anyone else notice that Brad Leighton was in top form before he received the "did you or didn’t you try to pit and change you mind" penalty? I spoke with Brad before the race and asked about his schedule. He is planning to run the first three races of the season then not run again until NHIS. We’ll see what happens if Brad is way up front in points after that third race!

Was I the only one that nearly got killed crossing the track by the Pro Stock winner on his victory lap? I’m glad he had his eyes wide open.

Did anyone else notice that Barney McRae had a beautiful new yellow paint job on the Chevy? Did you also notice that yellow must be Barney’s bad luck color, as he spun it on lap number one? Live TV will make different people do different things.

Did you notice that Dave Dion got the pole? Very Cool!

Did anyone else notice that even though we were ready to race at about 4:30 and it looked a bit like bad weather was coming in, we still waited until 5:30 for a green flag? I told you that live TV makes odd things happen, didn’t I?

Was anyone else listening to the MRN broadcast at about the time our race was getting started to hear that the Talladega Cup race was finishing controversially under caution? Did any of you that heard that, think "déjà vu" when our race ended? Green, White, Checker? No Green, White, Checker? Did the yellow come out before the leader took the white flag?

I didn’t notice, did you?

As always, send Questions, Comments, Hate Mail, and Indecent Proposals to, Fish c/o Busch North Scene or e-mail them to fishy@gwi.net