Chicageaux

1 hour ago, coborjobs2010 said:

Here are some tidbits regarding the Texans updates:

 

Penciling in dumpster fire for April 2024

A little late, but Austin Hill is staying with RCR on a multi-year extension. He'll return to XFINITY in the 21 full-time again next year.

That will end the Hill to Kaulig rumors that sprung up over the last month.

1 hour ago, solvetica said:

https://twitter.com/GatorsFB/status/1691457485998358529

 

Edit: Is sharing Twitter links / images not working now?

My favorite part of these is how they shoe-horned the military salute with the BFBS.

Bob Pockrass tweeted out that Front Row has exercised their options on both McDowell and Gilliland for Cup next year. Team was interested in a third cup for Zane Smith, but in the end they decided they didn't want to start over with another rookie. Zane Smith is free to look elsewhere.
 

11 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

So apparently there’s conflicting reports about Gragson being fired. LMC is saying now that they haven’t parted ways with Noah.

Most likely a formality as far as hashing out contract details + sponsorships that Noah brought to the team (Wendy's).

Bianchi doesn't make things up and is pretty well respected in the garage. He's on record saying that he doesn't report on anything unless he's 99% confident in his sources.

9 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

If I had a nickel for every time a driver of the 42 was fired for doing something racially inappropriate…

You'd have 10 cents, but that's 10 more cents than you should have.

Legacy Motorsports and Noah Gragson have parted ways, according to Jordan Bianchi. Mike Rockenfeller will be in the 42 for Indy Road Course and Watkins Glen.
 

1 hour ago, DCarp1231 said:

RFK has the most underrated paint schemes in Cup Series

They really do!

I could take or leave Keselowski as a driver, but he has turned things around at RFK. As someone who grew up watching NASCAR and then got out of it in the early 2010s, I was shocked when I got back into it a few years ago and Roush was only fielding two cars. I'm glad to see them bringing consistency to both teams and hope they continue to find future success. I would really like to see them field an XFINITY team again.

18 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

This image was posted on Reddit. Sounds like the Bengals are trying to ditch the color rush jerseys in favor of their new away jerseys to pair with the white helmets.

Noah Gragson has been suspended indefinitely by Legacy Motorsports, likely the fallout of Noah liking an insensitive meme on social media. 

Josh Berry will be in the 42 this weekend.
 

1 hour ago, DCarp1231 said:

I just struggle to see how Wood Brothers Racing is even a viable race team anymore. Why Burton continues to pilot the 21 is beyond me. 
 

They’re sitting at 99 wins. Are they waiting around for that special one? If so, Burton ain’t the guy. Either find a proven ford driver, fully merge with Penske or another ford team, or close up shop.

 

For such an iconic team, they’re bottom of the barrel and have been for quite some time.

I completely agree with you. It's a lot more fun when the 21 Wood Brothers car is a wild card. I think Burton's saving grace for himself is that DEX Imaging partnership. The Ford pipeline is just not that great. Right now, the only full-time Ford guys in XFINITY are the Stewart-Haas guys. Even Burton was part of the TDR program before making the jump over to Penske. I was holding out hope that Penske would try to buy out Zane Smith from Front Row because I think he'd be a great fit for the 21 team. Maybe Custer? But to your point, with the Penske partnership, they're getting fourth best equipment and crew & if the driver isn't excelling, they're just not going to overcome that.

Niece Motorsports has announced that Shane Van Gisbergen will be racing for them next weekend at IRP.

I think Gragson being out is more to do with Toyota than it does with Legacy themselves. Gragson was previously in the Toyota pipeline, driving for KBM and a few JGR XFINITY starts. Not sure what exactly happened, if he wasn't specifically a TDR, but he made the jump to JRM in 2019. It also doesn't help that he's had a pretty public feud with Ty Gibbs. My guess is Toyota wants Nemechek in Cup and Legacy is the fall back if Truex doesn't retire.

I heard SVG is a GM guy, so I don't see him going to SHR. I could see it being Kaulig and Gisbergen can learn a lot from Allmendinger before he decides to hang it up.

What's interesting is the DBC guys mentioned that there's going to be two seats open for JRM next year. We know Berry is one of them. The rumor was Brandon Jones was out after one year, but supposedly he is returning. So that leads to it being either Mayer or Allgaier 

Jordan Bianchi tweeted out the rumors that he's hearing in regards to the 2024 season

They include:

- MTJ status is still up in the air for 2024
- If he doesn't return, John Hunter Nemechek is the contigency plan
- Denny will be back with JGR in 2024, just a matter of when the deal is done
- Hocevar has been linked to several Cup and XFinity teams. He's favored to replace Ty Dillon in the 77 Spire Chevy
- SHR sources believe there's a good chance that Almirola retires

-McDowell and Zane Smith are rumor to replace him, but if Smithfield leaves as sponsor, they most likely will go with a driver that brings funding

- Kaulig has 4 different candidates to take over the 31 with Austin Hill being the favorite

- Hill has multiple offers and is 50/50 on whether he will move to Cup or stay in Xfinity for another year.

-  Harrison Burton is expected to return to the 21

- SVG is believed to be coming the NASCAR full-time in 2024, Trackhouse and at least one other team are favored to get him

- Legacy could be replacing Gragson with Nemechek next year

- He gets into Gragson's underperformance not being his fault i.e. rookie, struggling team. But, he mentions sometimes the driver and team just don't mesh well.
 

On 7/26/2023 at 10:00 AM, DCarp1231 said:

Rumor has it that Brandon Jones is reverting back to JGR at the conclusion of this season.

 

Not surprising, but puzzling considering how certain JGR drivers treated Jones last year.
 

Now JRM may have two open rides for next season. The 8 & 9.

And it sounds like Hocevar might be jumping XFINITY and going straight to Cup.

14 minutes ago, GrayJ12 said:

I see some parallels between Kes and Haley; both have a great ability on superspeedways, and Haley has shown that he can contend on road courses as well (just like Kes in his prime).

He's still so young too! Only 24 years old.

20 minutes ago, GrayJ12 said:

As for the Haley move to RWR (as I have his car as my profile picture)...

I can see why people are seeing this move as a downgrade; RWR is one of the backmarker teams, but I feel like them signing Haley will be a move in the right direction. This means that they can focus on one driver full-time (ideally they would just field one team for Justin), and he brings some good experiences; he's great at superspeedways and has shown that he can hold his own. The RFK alliance will help things as well, and I hope that RFK will put some of their staff over at RWR to help things and to strengthen the alliance.

I really want this to work for Justin.

I like Justin a lot and he's the reason I find myself rooting for the Kaulig guys. He has specifically said that Keselowski was part of his negotiations so I think the alliance between the two will be pretty strong. I wonder if Keselowski is thinking long-term and wants Haley in the Ford camp sooner than later.

My biggest issue with Hamlin is not owning what he did & if roles were reversed, he'd be causing such an outcry.

He clearly drove Larson up the track, made contact, and forced Larson into the wall. If you want to use the argument that Larson races others just the same, that's fine, but at least own up to what you did. Even his teammate called him out on the move. I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt when he first got out of the car and said he never touched Larson, gave him room, and Larson wrecked himself. But to go into the media center and double-down is just bizarre to me. Of course, people are going to tune into his podcast so maybe he's playing 3d chess out here.

14 minutes ago, monkeypower said:

 

My mistake for using screen printed for all. 

 

There isn't a high end version of the Jets new throwbacks (yet?), but the cheaper (Nike Game) of the two options says screen print while the next step up one (Nike Limited) says heat sealed.

 

There are Nike Limiteds of the old template that are stitched and are cheaper than the new heat sealed Limited.

Yep, Nike has removed the stitched names and numbers for the limited jerseys. And increased the price from $160 to $175

Here's a review confirming the heat press: 

20 hours ago, Needschat said:

 

But it comes down to what the boss says. Not Amy. Not Mr. H. But Kelley LOL 

I'd be pretty surprised if they don't go with Hocevar. 

11 minutes ago, NH4 said:

You’re right that they look like the Packers because it was supposed to emulate Green Bay’s uniforms. ND and Wisconsin were supposed to play at Lambeau in 2020 but covid cancelled it. They just reused the uniforms and “Under Armour” spoke it to match Chicago as much as they could

Yep, that's what @Carolingian Steamroller said originally and I never put two & two together. I appreciate his explanation and examples! Don't want to continue to derail this thread, so back to the regular scheduled programming 

16 hours ago, Carolingian Steamroller said:

I've never seen the Chicago Flag stripes alluded to in that manner. The proportions are way off to begin with: the outer gold stripes are much wider that the inner section whereas on the flag the blue stripes are much narrower compared to the inner white portion.

 

I think Occam's razor applies just compare the two pictures taken in the same stadium less than a month apart:

 

I think it's far more likely that the 2022 Shamerock series uniforms were intended to evoke Chicago generally and the Bears specifically.

While gold is heavily associated with Las Vegas, look at the Prairie style details on the shamrock patch and how the rounded numbers evoke the Bears' rounded numbers in shape and proportion:











It resembles the Art Deco styling on the Bulls City Edition around the same time (different company but evoking a similar feeling about the city).

Until your post, I never actually realized how much the 2021 jerseys looked like the Packers. Clearly, their video explaining the uniforms is just their own version of "Nike speak," or in this case, "Under Armour speak." Watching the video and looking at your comparisons, the 2021 Chicago connection just seems shoe-horned in there.

9 minutes ago, Carolingian Steamroller said:

I always thought it was funny that they designed those Packer-style Shamrock Series uniforms for when the game was scheduled to be played in Lambeau Field but they had to reschedule because of COVID and it wound up in Soldier Field in Chicago, home of the Bears.

I thought the 2021 game was always planned for Solider Field and it was the 2020 game at Lambeau that got rescheduled to 2026.

They even put out a video explaining the Chicago connections for the uniform:
 

19 hours ago, dont care said:

Yea my mind is boggled that they decided to do a Sunday night race, that’s what caused most of this. Saturday night race no issues, can easily finish in the morning. Sunday night race takes that ability away completely.

I think we're far removed from Saturday night racing because the TV networks don't see any value in them. The ratings just aren't there.

Last year, Nashville's race was scheduled for a day race and it was blistering heat. The rain came in and pushed the start time to the evening & everyone was for it. That's the main reason why both Nashville and Atlanta were night races this year. 

38 minutes ago, dont care said:

Not as impressive as you are making it sound. If it was H pattern shifter sure but these are sequential shifters so it’s just pulling and throwing. Also Jimmie is well past his prime, his last 2-3 years full time are evident of that, add in 2 more seasons racing in other series isn’t helping.

Denny Hamlin was blown away by it and thought it was impressive, so I'll stand by my opinion.

I just wasn't expecting Jimmie to have an average finish of 35th in 3 races despite being out of his prime. Maybe he's washed up, but the car has a lot to do with it as well. It's not easy to drive as stated by numerous drivers last year.