--(Cont'd From Front Page)-- This past Saturday evening we watched as the boys suited up and belted themselves in for the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series night race in Chicago.

Mother Nature tried to keep us away, but as the local weather man told us, the rain would clear out just in time for the race and he was correct, the track was dry and ready to go at just about 7:15 p.m.

Excitement filled the air and we all got ready to be a part of history as the cars began to pull off of pit road, line up and get ready to show their stuff under the lights.

However… something just wasn’t quite up to expectations. At least in the eyes of many fans it wasn’t. I have gotten to where I hate the word “boring”. That word just can’t be associated with NASCAR in my opinion. Slow maybe, not too exciting maybe, but boring? I don’t think so.

Boring to me is when things are so dull you can’t stifle the yawns even if you want to. Boring is sitting in a statistics class with a professor that has the personality of a door knob and shares the lesson like he’s reading the phone book. Nope, boring just isn’t the right word to describe a race in NASCAR that didn’t quite light everyone’s fire.

So what was the deal? Aside from the lack of excitement until the last two laps, it was a pretty laid back couple of hours. The announcers even started trading barbs back and forth and laughing at silly remarks they’d make.

The thing about NASCAR is we’ve come to expect certain things while the guys are out on the tracks driving their guts out. We figure we’ll see at least one or two bump and run discussions, a friendly shove resulting in a wreck without injuries but full of finger pointing. When we don’t get any of these, we say it was “boring”. I think what we really might be saying is that the excitement that we expected to see just didn’t happen.

As fans, the plan to attend a race starts months, sometimes years before we actually get there. We may live close by or have to travel hundreds of miles to finally get there. We may end up flying, driving, or even renting an RV so we can all pile in together.

No matter how we get there, we plan it down to every detail. We know how much we can spend on souvenirs, hotels, parking, and food. We book the hotel, make the plane reservations and all the while, we count down the days until we’ll be sitting right there in the grandstands, cheering for the driver we’ve followed loyally for who knows how long. We read up on all the stats and records, we memorize the history of our driver and his successes, hoping we’ll get to see him add a new chapter to the record books.

Then, when we finally get there and sit in the seat we’ve been dreaming of for months, we have a whole slew of expectations in our mind, and can’t wait to see them all happen.

Not fair to the sport? Fans don’t do fair, they know what they like, how they like it and that’s what they want to see when they get there. So when a race turns out to be what some consider as mediocre, not full of the sliding and bumping, the occasional temper flair and gesture through the windows, the wreck that takes out a few of the “bad boys”…if none of this kind of thing happens, we fans feel like we missed out on something we had anticipated for a long, long time.

Sounds a little wacky huh? Not really…look what happens if a boxer knocks out his opponent in the first round, people feel cheated. It doesn’t matter that the winner has to be one of the best out there to accomplish that feat; the fans didn’t get to see what they thought they paid for.

On Saturday, we watched a very talented and amazing driver win the race, Kyle Busch. We also looked at each other wondering how in the heck this guy did it again; he’s having an amazing year. But before we got to the end of the race, we watched him practically run away from the field for a while…prompting yawns and ho hum’s from many fans.

At the end there was the threat of Jimmy Johnson snagging the trophy, but nope, Kyle got it…again. That’s not boring, that’s talent. We may not like it, or think it’s the way the race should have played out, but it was all we got.

And there is nothing wrong with what we watched, nothing at all. Every guy out there ran with as much determination and focus as the next guy. The fact that we didn’t see much more than a motor blowing up had nothing to do with the talent on the track; it was just the way it happened. Boring? Nope…just different. It was a long race, trying the patience and tolerance of both the fans and the drivers. Driver’s wanted to know how many more laps there were, fans wanted to know how much longer it would go before something “exciting” would happen. None of them walked away feeling totally satisfied with this one, except for Kyle Busch.

Maybe a bit of time off for both the fans and the folks that provide this entertainment is just what we all need. A bit of time to reflect and get ourselves refocused and pumped up for the next race might work for us all. Sometimes our own expectations are what leave us feeling disappointed.

For me? No matter how uneventful a race may seem, I’d rather be watching it than doing anything else. After all, I am and always will be, a racing fan.

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