Jeffrey Earnhardt, grandson of “The Intimidator” Dale Earnhardt and nephew of “Not As Intimidating But He’s In Jeans Commercials” Dale Earnhardt, Jr., races on the Rolex Sports Car Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Starting this Tuesday, he’s pulling a Bo Jackson and becoming a two-sport athlete: Jeffrey (or as I like to call him, “Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.*”) is fighting at Fight Lab 25 in Charlotte, N.C. as an amateur, going up against bantamweight competitor Chris Faison.

We’re about to have an Earnhardt in MMA. Why, you ask? Because people don’t think driving is a real sport. Jeff is hoping to validate the athleticism of stock car racing by being athletic in a way that has nothing to do with stock cars or racing. No, really!

“A lot of people don’t see race car athletes as true athletes … They don’t think we’re capable of doing anything other than sitting in a car and driving in a circle. A lot of people don’t understand the reality of it. This is an opportunity to prove to people that race car drivers are athletes. It’s a lot harder than people realize. Hopefully this MMA fight will help people realize that, and that we can hold our own as athletes.” (via MMA Fighting)

I’m sure there are accountants out there that do CrossFit and could rip my arms off, that doesn’t mean accounting is a sport. And hey, just because fighting is a sport doesn’t mean everyone who does it is an athlete. I’m a blogger and I could probably knock out Bob Sapp.

Regardless of his intent, I’ll be watching. I’m pretty excited for a guy who smiles like that to enter the world of punching.

Whenever I get low on The American Spirit, I can always count on Fark and the fine men and other men of ESPN NASCAR to dip said spirit in flour, deep fry it and shove it down my throat. In fact, that’s happened so many times now that my ass has expanded exponentially, and, having lost the ability to stand, I now require a broader seat upon which to rest my shame.

Good news, everyone!

Dover International Speedway in Delaware is hoping to make race fans’ experience a little more comfortable by widening seats in the track’s outdoor grandstands.

The speedway announced Thursday that the process of increasing seats from 18 inches to 22 inches will start next year and will be complete by 2014.

Denis McGlynn, president and CEO of Dover Motorsports, says the widening comes in response to fans’ suggestions. The change will reduce the capacity of the speedway from 140,000 to 113,000.

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of vegan options at Dover International Speedway.

Before this post becomes too much of a fat wank, there are other explanations … namely, a 30,000 seat downshift helps compensate for declining attendance figures and make the track look more full, and the reality that even slimmer fans could use more leg room, especially when they’re wearing scanners or Jncos or enormous belt buckles. I just love that they’re widening the seats because of “fans’ suggestions”, like some 600 pound lady spent 40 minutes writing “wider seats” on a comment card before passing out and having the wind pick it up and carry it to the suggestion box. If I went to the speedway my suggestions would be “obstacles” and possibly “make it so the cars shoot turtle shells at each other”.

In today’s hottest “NASCAR driver might not have a great perspective on the world” news, driver Kasey Kahne offended every single human woman on Twitter when he saw a lady breastfeeding her child at the grocery store and jumped on the Internet to complain about it.

At first you’re like, “maybe he just turned out of the dog food aisle and suddenly there was a tit”, which is reasonably jarring.

But then … no, he was disgusted by it. He was disgusted by what he saw your body doing.

Yeah, you stupid bitch, how is he supposed to buy saltines and Mountain Dew and whatever else it is NASCAR drivers eat now? Unfortunately the expository tweet between the two was deleted, but if you need to know exactly what transported him from Kroger to Barf’s Burgers:

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I’m not much of a rally car racing fan, as I’m more into drifting my Civic while I wear a sleeveless mesh shirt and listen to P.O.D., but one thing I do love is a good car crash. In this case, the crash in question occurred during a recent Mont Blanc race, as a French driver lost control of his car, sending himself and his navigator off the side of a cliff. Thankfully, there was a camera inside the car to show us the glorious results.

At the end of the video, you can hear one of them ask the other, “Ca vas?” That means, “Are you OK?” And the other guy probably responded something like: “Je pooped mes pantalons.”

Video after the jump…

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Just when you thought NASCAR was about to die, they do something pretty interesting. Trevor Bayne, who turned 20 just one day before the Daytona 500, won that race in a green-white-checker overtime finish. Bayne’s win gives the sport an unlikely hero and another top-flight star heading into the Sprint Cup Series schedule.

Bayne, making only his second Sprint Cup start, drove a near mistake-free race in a fast car but also benefited from attrition on a day in which Daytona 500 records were set for lead changes (74), different leaders (22) and caution flags (16) and matched for most caution laps (60).

By the time Bayne led the leaders to the line on a second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, most of the favorites were either in the garage or had damaged race cars – the blame going, in part, to the risky two-car draft hookups that were made possible on Daytona’s $20 million new pavement.

–Tampa Trib.

So that “racing three-wide” stuff was either a really good or really bad idea, depending on how much you like guys winning races in only their second Sprint Cup start ever. Bayne was just ten years old when Dale Earnhardt was involved in a fatal crash in Daytona a decade ago, and he’s the sports newest star…at least until IBM creates a computer that can race with the best. It can’t do any worse than Danica Patrick.

Complete Daytona 500 Results: Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember the classic racing video game Wipeout? Me neither, but these German kids do, and they built what might be the greatest carboard homage to pixelated playtime ever: a scale cardboard replica of the entire racetrack. Why is it that the Germans never seem to have enough to do with themselves?

But if the replica isn’t impressive enough, there’s the cabinet that serves as the cockpit that controls a camera equipped car through the course. Apparently Germans have no computers to design these games for themselves, but instead must develop these concepts on a real life scale. I hope they do Dig Dug next. That seems like a better conduit for Darwinism to happen. Read the rest of this entry »