The Unnamed Racer's Blog - January 25th - "The Experiment"

During the 2010 season, SCARTS sophomore Aniro will delve his thoughts into the SCARTS league, the drivers, and the Turbo Sliders world, as well as the state of things in NASCAR and the drivers in it. Note that the opinions are of me and not of the other racers of SCARTS or the Turbo Sliders community. This is simply an informal, yet interesting look at things from a racer's point of view.

January 25th, 2009
#1 - "The Experiment"

This, my friends, is just a little experiment that I am working on for 2010. You can consider this a weekly or bi-weekly column or blog of sorts that I want to do for the upcoming season. Let me know what you guys think at the bottom.

For those of you rookies (past, current, and future), let me intro myself. The name's Aniro (for those of you that don't know, it means "brave warrior" in some dead language, and it's pronounced "ah-nai-row" so get it right!). I'm 18 years old, formerly of Chicago, but now living in Iowa City, IA, USA and going to school in the University of Iowa. I'm looking at sports journalism as a future for me, perhaps motor journalism? As for the wolf thing, well, I'm into creative writing as well, which explains the double major in both Journalism and Creative Writing, crazy, eh? If you want to know more, talk to me some other time! But enough with the intros, let's get started!

I was looking through some old posts here in the forums of SCARTS, and then my mind clicked something random regarding TeamSpeak and my wallet. Now I'm thinking about looking into purchasing a server for SCARTS for 2010, and I'm not sure what I want to go with right now, or how I will get the cash to set up a subscription for a 9-12 month subscription (a job, perhaps?), but it's a thought that just came to my mind. I've been thinking that if it is financially feasible, then getting a 9-12 month subscription would be very fundamental for the future of SCARTS. I will look into it further and see if it'll happen.

I was also looking at the old TS post that Burnout did last season over at Turbo Sliders.com, and we weren't getting any favorable reviews at all among the European racers. I say that last season, despite all of the drama, rivalry, lag, and overall crap that happened, that it was still awesome, and I say that they're wrong. Mouse, Dede, and Jurgen, among others posted on there are missing out on an awesome series, and Scorpio made quite a few valid points on how NASCAR is so much better than F1, it was funny. (For the record, I follow pretty much most major racing series in real life, but admittedly, NASCAR has kept me coming back, despite the recent vanilla-ness that has come up in the past few years.)

I've raced in some of the other servers like G-POR F1 and Punaball and all of that other stuff, but I usually find myself quitting in the middle of a cup tournament. Whereas I can say that SCARTS has gotten me close to the small, yet awesome community surrounding it. Burnout, Lexx, and Scorpio sure did their best to convince Les Européens (five stars for French humor!) otherwise, but they know nothing about the mechanical beauty that is NASCAR, while they unknowingly bore themselves to death in the scandals of F1 (I have found myself watching less and less of it since a certain Spanish idiot won two championships in a row back in '05 and '06). I guess this is the reason that NASCAR doesn't race in many road courses?

2010 signups have just begun, and I like the new format for signups that Burnout has instilled. Of course it means I don't get to sign up until after the '09 Chasers do, but it opens up the playing field for more rookies. We most likely won't have to worry about running out of cars to race with (considering there are at least 40 full-time teams in Cup and Nationwide, and at least 20 or 30 in Trucks).

Now I am a little concerned about the pace of progress that has been going on in 2010, especially DerekE's grounding, which really sucks. Yes, I've been there, and I'm sure it was for something stupid that he probably didn't do. I'm not going to go the "blame DerekE" route that I've done in the past because I've moved on from that crap. I'm just pointing out that he's an invaluable asset to the SCARTS league and that it kinda sucks that he can't help us out for the Full Throttle cars for this year.

Now as far as NASCAR goes, I see 2010 to be yet another year of changes. I see that Mr. Brian "Power-Hungry" France has eased up on the leashes on the drivers. Heh, I say that it's about time! NASCAR has sort of been losing the fans and the cash that comes from us fans in recent years because of the sucky economy and the lack of excitement overall. Now I'm not going to say that there hasn't been any excitement in recent memory, but the new car and the drivers attitude has sort of pushed NASCAR back a few years...

BUT ALL IS NOT LOST! You can thank the following for bringing NASCAR back into some glory:

• Danica Patrick! (racing in ARCA and in the Nationwide Series part-time this year for JR Motorsports)
  
• Bigger restrictor plates at Daytona (we'll see how long this lasts!)
  
• The return of the rear spoiler! (starting as early as Martinsville, and getting positive reviews)
  
• Letting the drivers just be drivers! (perhaps we'll see Brad Keselowski's a$$ get handed to him for real this year?)
  
• And.....er....crap! I can't think of other things....but I'll edit this post to fit whatever I missed!
  

I can gladly say that despite Jimmie Johnson winning 4 championships in a row, and despite the EXTREME need (in my opinion) to dethrone Team 48 this year, that I am looking forward to 2010!

Now for my closing...Black and Gold, and Rawr!

-Aniro

Very nice Aniro.

Now for a progress update, I assure you guys I'm working my butt off in my spare time to get this going on time. It has already been delayed until late February but that is due to the low amount of car paints available to use. Walls have already been tested and forum work was completed VERY EARLY on to allow me time to finish up the meat and potatoes for 2010. Yes progress is slow, but I'm pacing myself.

PROGRESS UPDATE:
-Car logos still under creation. FT is nearly done, Phenom and Truck will be done soon. Not a top priority.
-Tracks being converted with SAFER walls and decal upgrades (I want to host a handling test sometime soon of all the tracks we run, small 20 lap races to test them out. Maybe a mini Cup for fun???)
-Scorpio, Phenom car making progress???? You also can do Trucks. Cup IF DerekE fails to send more cars by February 1st. I need you fully focused on this Scorpio, no buts. I will post a list of EVERY CAR I want to see done. IDC if you don't want to make some, if I request a particular car, I'd like to see it done.

Lol Aniro, I remember when I attempted to do a blog. I bet you'll be better! Good luck my friend~

Thanks, Burn! I just felt like I needed to contribute to something for this season, and this was the best idea that i could think of.