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NASCAR Penalizes No. 18 TeamPosted on 6/13/2011 at 7:02 PM - LinkDAYTONA BEACH, Fla. ¡ª Joe Gibbs Racing, driver Kyle Busch and crew chief Dave Rogers were penalized by NASCAR Monday afternoon. The sanctioning body penalized the No. 18 team in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as a result of rule infractions discovered during post-race inspection Sunday at Pocono Raceway. The No. 18 car was found to be in violation of Sections 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing); 12-4-J (any determination by NASCAR officials that race equipment used in the event does not conform to NASCAR rules); and 20-12.8.1B (body height requirements ¨C car failed to meet the minimum front car heights) of the 2011 NASCAR rule book. As a result, crew chief Dave Rogers has been fined $25,000, while owner Joe Gibbs and driver Kyle Busch have been penalized with the loss of six championship owner and six championship driver points, respectively. Busch drove his Toyota to a third-place finish in Sunday¡¯s 5-Hour Energy 500 at the 2.5-mile race track. End Of An Era: NSSN Ceasing PublicationPosted on 6/13/2011 at 7:00 PM - LinkAll good things come to an end. And so is the case for America¡¯s Motorsports Authority, National Speed Sport News. After more than 76 years, the publication, which was first published as National Auto Racing News on Aug. 16, 1934, has printed its last issue, dated ¡ª March 23, 2011. While hundreds of other newspapers came and went during the past three-quarters of a century, NSSN continued to ride the support of its readers and advertisers in producing the most thorough weekly racing publication on the market. But economic times have been tight and the newspaper business has suffered at the hands of high production costs and modern technology, which provides information to readers instantly. ¡°This is one of the saddest days of my life,¡± said National Speed Sport News Publisher Corinne Economaki. ¡°The sluggish economy has made it too difficult to continue publication and no matter how I try to make the numbers work ¡ª and believe me I have tried ¡ª it is just not feasible to keep the business going. ¡°For 76 years, since August 1934 when my father Chris sold copies of the first issue at Ho-Ho-Kus Speedway in northern New Jersey, to today, as I oversee the very last copy printed, this paper has been an integral part of my family,¡± Corinne Economaki said. Through the years National Speed Sport News was the industry leader in covering motorsports, much of it thanks to Chris Economaki, 90, who sold the first issue of NSSN at Ho-Ho-Kus Speedway in New Jersey, and began writing for the publication soon after that and became editor in 1950. Economaki saw the publication through its glory days, launching a career on television and taking his newspaper into thousands of homes across America. In a time when there was no Internet and very little racing was on television or radio, National Speed Sport News thrived. When National Speed Sport News began its run, there were no seat belts, drivers wore leather helmets and the flathead Ford V8 was one of the most common racing engines. Today, safety is the utmost concern and HANS and other safety devices are all the rage. Fuel-injected engines are everywhere. Not only has technology changed what fans see at the race track, it changed how NSSN gathered the news. In the early years most news arrived at the NSSN office by mail or telephone. Later the telecopier and the fax machine played key roles. Both were replaced by the computer modem and later by e-mail. NSSN was printed by linotype, but later changed to phototypesetting and finally went completely digital in 2002. But after enduring all these changes, a familiar friend will no longer appear at the mailboxes of its loyal readers. NationalSpeedSportNews.com, the online version of the newspaper, will continue to be updated with daily news, giving Internet savvy readers the opportunity to keep up with some of the same news they enjoyed every week. But as far as the newspaper goes, it¡¯s the end of an era. National Speed Sport News was racingPosted on 6/13/2011 at 6:59 PM - LinkWhen weekly racing papers were fans' main source of news, a veteran driver once said he could read any one of them cover to cover in 15 minutes, "except Speed Sport. I can spend two hours with it, and still not read everything that's interesting."
There was that much substantive content in the National Speed Sport News. Hardly did a wheel turn on any North American track, or in any major event worldwide, without at least a few paragraphs of coverage in Speed Sport.
Today is Wednesday, an important day of the week for many race fans, going back nearly 77 years. The latest edition of Speed Sport is out.
It is the last.
Speed Sport will be printed no more. It died today, with the edition dated March 23, 2011, after a lengthy battle with changing times.
Born during the Great Depression, it survived myriad wars and recessions, but could not survive this economy and this slow death knell of newspapers in general.
In its prime it wasn't fancy, just authoritative. From Indy to Le Mans to Monaco to Daytona to every Podunk track in America, from the dirt modifieds of Upstate New York to the sprint cars of Southern California, you knew where you could find coverage.
If the Sporting News was "Baseball's Bible," then Speed Sport was auto racing's Bible, Koran, Torah, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
It was Speed Sport that scooped the nation on a young bull Texan named A.J. Foyt, splashing him on its cover in 1956, two years before he arrived at Indy.
Editor Chris Economaki's column was a one-stop briefing on everything from tidbits of racers' personal lives to imminent business ventures in the sport. "From the Editor's Notebook" alone attracted its own audience, for Economaki was far and away the best known -- and simply the best -- auto-racing journalist in the world.
He had spanned the globe with ABC's "Wide World of Sports," asking the tough questions, nose to nose, of Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, the Unsers, the Andrettis, Fred Lorenzen, Junior Johnson, Richard Petty. Then he'd gone to CBS Sports for the early years of live, flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500.
In the 1970s, to a 20-something daily newspaper writer wandering wide-eyed through the garages of Daytona, Sebring and Indy, Economaki was a walking titan, a legendary sight to behold.
Yet quickly he befriended me, showed me the ropes, became a mentor. His judgments were not always flattering, but were always educational. Most of all, he epitomized objectivity.
For all his decades of motorsports TV stardom, Economaki wanted to be introduced first and foremost as "the editor of the National Speed Sport News." It was his proudest achievement.
Growing up, he had lived within earshot of a racetrack in New Jersey, and "the sound of the racing cars was a siren song to a boy," he once told me.
Naturally, when some entrepreneurs turned what had been a weekly racing section in the Bergen (N.J.) Herald into a separate publication called the National Auto Racing News, the 14-year-old Economaki jumped at the chance to hawk the paper at Ho-Ho-Kus Speedway in New Jersey.
That was in August of 1934 and the kid netted a $2 profit from his sales. Ahh, his life was set: There was big money to be made off his passion for auto racing.
In 1936 he was given his own column, and he wrote it for three-quarters of a century. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the publication's name was changed to the National Speed Sport News. In 1950, Economaki was made editor.
He issued a statement Tuesday calling this "one of the saddest days of my life." At 90, he doesn't get out to the races anymore and isn't up to doing interviews, even with the journalists who are so grateful for his mentoring -- there are so many of us that there aren't enough hours in this awful day for him to talk to all of us on the phone.
While other racing papers were being bought up by the big publishing corporations, Economaki and then his daughter, Corinne Economaki, published Speed Sport independently.
In his statement he cited the "sluggish economy," but the public abandonment of printed paper, held in the hands, is what has led advertisers away from newspapers in general.
He concluded that "no matter how I try to make the numbers work -- and believe me I have tried -- it is just not feasible to keep the business going."
If Speed Sport couldn't make it, then the death knell of all newspapers everywhere grows louder, deafening. For decades Economaki's paper was as cost-effective as they come. He got the news in from correspondents who worked for little money and a lot of love. So frugal were his payouts that some photographers dubbed him "Chris Economical."
But that's how he was able to get all the news out and keep his paper afloat.
The publication's online version, NationalSpeedSportNews.com, will continue. But its long-term future appears uncertain.
The heartrending thing is, the printed copy all of us could buy and hold in our hands, at every Podunk track in America and at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and educate ourselves about racing from childhood on, is no more. National Speed Sport News was racingPosted on 6/13/2011 at 6:59 PM - Link. When weekly racing papers were fans' main source of news, a veteran driver once said he could read any one of them cover to cover in 15 minutes, "except Speed Sport. I can spend two hours with it, and still not read everything that's interesting."
There was that much substantive content in the National Speed Sport News. Hardly did a wheel turn on any North American track, or in any major event worldwide, without at least a few paragraphs of coverage in Speed Sport.
Today is Wednesday, an important day of the week for many race fans, going back nearly 77 years. The latest edition of Speed Sport is out.
It is the last.
Speed Sport will be printed no more. It died today, with the edition dated March 23, 2011, after a lengthy battle with changing times.
Born during the Great Depression, it survived myriad wars and recessions, but could not survive this economy and this slow death knell of newspapers in general.
In its prime it wasn't fancy, just authoritative. From Indy to Le Mans to Monaco to Daytona to every Podunk track in America, from the dirt modifieds of Upstate New York to the sprint cars of Southern California, you knew where you could find coverage.
If the Sporting News was "Baseball's Bible," then Speed Sport was auto racing's Bible, Koran, Torah, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
It was Speed Sport that scooped the nation on a young bull Texan named A.J. Foyt, splashing him on its cover in 1956, two years before he arrived at Indy.
Editor Chris Economaki's column was a one-stop briefing on everything from tidbits of racers' personal lives to imminent business ventures in the sport. "From the Editor's Notebook" alone attracted its own audience, for Economaki was far and away the best known -- and simply the best -- auto-racing journalist in the world.
He had spanned the globe with ABC's "Wide World of Sports," asking the tough questions, nose to nose, of Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, the Unsers, the Andrettis, Fred Lorenzen, Junior Johnson, Richard Petty. Then he'd gone to CBS Sports for the early years of live, flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500.
In the 1970s, to a 20-something daily newspaper writer wandering wide-eyed through the garages of Daytona, Sebring and Indy, Economaki was a walking titan, a legendary sight to behold.
Yet quickly he befriended me, showed me the ropes, became a mentor. His judgments were not always flattering, but were always educational. Most of all, he epitomized objectivity.
For all his decades of motorsports TV stardom, Economaki wanted to be introduced first and foremost as "the editor of the National Speed Sport News." It was his proudest achievement.
Growing up, he had lived within earshot of a racetrack in New Jersey, and "the sound of the racing cars was a siren song to a boy," he once told me.
Naturally, when some entrepreneurs turned what had been a weekly racing section in the Bergen (N.J.) Herald into a separate publication called the National Auto Racing News, the 14-year-old Economaki jumped at the chance to hawk the paper at Ho-Ho-Kus Speedway in New Jersey.
That was in August of 1934 and the kid netted a $2 profit from his sales. Ahh, his life was set: There was big money to be made off his passion for auto racing.
In 1936 he was given his own column, and he wrote it for three-quarters of a century. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the publication's name was changed to the National Speed Sport News. In 1950, Economaki was made editor.
He issued a statement Tuesday calling this "one of the saddest days of my life." At 90, he doesn't get out to the races anymore and isn't up to doing interviews, even with the journalists who are so grateful for his mentoring -- there are so many of us that there aren't enough hours in this awful day for him to talk to all of us on the phone.
While other racing papers were being bought up by the big publishing corporations, Economaki and then his daughter, Corinne Economaki, published Speed Sport independently.
In his statement he cited the "sluggish economy," but the public abandonment of printed paper, held in the hands, is what has led advertisers away from newspapers in general.
He concluded that "no matter how I try to make the numbers work -- and believe me I have tried -- it is just not feasible to keep the business going."
If Speed Sport couldn't make it, then the death knell of all newspapers everywhere grows louder, deafening. For decades Economaki's paper was as cost-effective as they come. He got the news in from correspondents who worked for little money and a lot of love. So frugal were his payouts that some photographers dubbed him "Chris Economical."
But that's how he was able to get all the news out and keep his paper afloat.
The publication's online version, NationalSpeedSportNews.com, will continue. But its long-term future appears uncertain.
The heartrending thing is, the printed copy all of us could buy and hold in our hands, at every Podunk track in America and at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and educate ourselves about racing from childhood on, is no more. Goddard made early television appearances in AustraliaPosted on 6/12/2011 at 5:39 PM - Link
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