Well it is that time of season again, the last 2 races before the chase is decided. I am going to highlight the AA and both AA series contenders

AAA-1
The final 2 spots should come down to 4 drivers. They are seperated by only 57 points, although someone could make a huge jump from further back and pass someone here, or someone ahead could fall back that is very unlikely to happen

Aflac and darthclay both sit in the last 2 spots at the moment. they are 35 points behind the 10th place driver so they could move up some. In 13th is SimonDeVerde who is 55 points out and WhiskeyWagon who is 57 points out. They both have some work to do but they are close enough to bump darthclay or aflac out

AA-2
really this is down to 2 drivers.
in 11th is Figuemou and he has a 73 point lead over 12th place flanders, but sitting only 25 points back in 13th is DJV2448. Figuemou is probably in but the other two are gonna be down to the last lap

AA-1
Now this is the best contest of the group. From spot 8 to spot 14 the drivers are seperated by only 43 points!!!! and 15th place rogfons is still barely in the hunt 80 points back.
JG24
9) darthclay2000 -9
10) Cheesebeau -19
11) Szycha -20
12) Nascar24 88 -27
13) Alan Snyder -39 (-12 from chase)
14) JD Newsome -43 (-16 from chase)

7 drivers…. 5 spots remaining…2 disappointed drivers!!!!

So who is gonna make the magic final 12 in each division? Well we will have the answer to that Tuesday night right after the final lap is run.

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Well this is going to be a short post. I am going to look at the team challenge and the AAA series at a quick glance over the first 12 races. In AAA a surprise statistic comes from Kashvinder Mann who has won the most races with 3 of the 12 races yet sits outside of the magic 12 chase members. Defending Champion Kevin Minnelli has only 1 win so far yet is sitting in striking range in 14th position.

There are 3 first year AAA drivers currently sitting in the 12 chase positions startint with timtellean in 3rd place, Speed Demon holds 7th, and tnhick is in 9th, young guns are holding their own so far.

For teams in AAA Y&F currently sits with 4 of the top 12 drivers, Bupp Enterprises has 2 while no other team holds more then 1 of these coveted spots.

In the team challenge X2X is in the lead but they have not owned the challenge in dominating fashion, both TimReeve and Henderson have held the top spot so far. And in a surprise Bupp Enterprises finds themselves in the top 3 well within striking distance to overthrow X2X.

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Written by Tim Reeve
Team Partnerships, good or bad?

A hot issue in the Nasrac garage the last few weeks has been about Teams Partnering together in an effort to become better teams. Some people think its a great thing and others think it is ruining the game.

An Initial deal came together for a TR Motorsports, Redline Motorsports partnership. The thing was that TR Motorsports was already partnered with the top dog in Nasrac X2X Motorsports. Well if that wasn’t enough Redline was partnered with Bailey Motorsports. 4 Teams tied together? Perhaps a little extreme, but then another deal was in the works to partner Bailey and 1Up Motorsports together. Basically creating a 5 team partnership, leaving only Bupp Enterprises, Henderson Racing, Y & F Motorsports, and Fast Furious Motorsports on their own. Overkill Perhaps.

Well we went out and asked members of the Nasrac community their opinion on the issue.

There were several people that didn’t like the idea of more than two teams working together such as “I can agree with and understand 2 teams working together to try and get better, but when you start talking about megateams with 3,4 or 5 teams working together it becomes unfair and loses alot of the fun from the game.” from 1Up Motorsports member Darthclay. Other drivers such as Y&F owner Yoops, bluecutlasshotrod, and BE owner Phillip Bupp agreed with Darthclay.

An Independent, Whiskey Wagon said, “Team partnerships puts the independent drivers in a situation where they may have to at least join a race team if they want to try and stay competitive. Not sure that’s good for the game. It would also seem to take out a lot of the individual strategy and aspect of the game. I’m all for race teams themselves as it mirrors NASCAR but, I think team partnerships has the strong potential of creating to large a gap in competition.” Which raises a valid point, the more the teams work together the more the independent drivers fall behind. The Independents may be forced to join teams anyway since as in AAA it gets more competitive each season, there was no independent in the chase last season unless you count NASRAC creator Kevin Minnelli who has no team connections but has the best understanding of the game.

The Main supporters of the Partnerships are those who were involved in the deal, Tim Reeve and Giants02122. Giants was a big supporter because as he said, “For my team, we have great drivers, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t seem to have the handle on the game that teams like X2X, Y&F and a few others have. So for us any chance that I get to improve our teams chances at figuring out better setups, is something I look forward to.“ These deals gave Bailey/Redline a great chance to help get some valuable setup info to help them improve as a team.

The TR Motorsports reason for partnering up was not obvious to anyone because they were already partnered with #1 X2X. “The stuff we are running in AAA at X2X doesnt work as well in AA and A, I felt that by doing a deal with another team that was running in the lower divisions would help us get our AA and A programs better. The AAA stuff is great, but I can’t give all of that out to just anyone either. I help get my team on target with the stuff were running at X2X but we don’t want it getting out like some of our older stuff did and we begin to fall behind at X2X like last season. So at TRM I felt I needed a good way to help develop better setups. The deal with Redline/Bailey and having a 4 team partnership did seem a little extreme to me but they were together and owner by the same person and both struggling somewhat. When I found out about the 1Up deal I told Giants we couldn’t have 5 teams working together it was just too many. In the end he chose to go with 1Up and I stick with just my team and some help from X2X.” TR Motorsports owner Tim Reeve.

In the end the overall consensus seems to be that two teams working together to get better is acceptable, maybe even three. However when we get into these mega 4-5 team partnerships that is not such a good idea for the game or anyone really.

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