2004 Season
 Red Zone Racing, March 2004Originally the league was to begin on April 25 at Talladega, however the site building went way ahead of schedule, so we moved up the start date and had our first "pre-season" race on March 28, 2004 at Bristol. The points wouldn't count, but we would get the feel of how everything would work. That first race had 21 teams in the field and the now defunct team Ryno Racing won. The initial scores were very low, many teams having negative numbers. Therefore, the President decided to tweak the points system, cutting back the penalty points. The following week we went live, with the points counting. We also had an additional team joining making 22 teams total. Trapt Racing won the first race of the season with Wilson MotorSports coming in 2nd and Armchair Racing, Inc. 3rd. The first race went well however, 4 teams from the previous week decided not to submit their picks so only 18 cars were in the field. Out of those 22 original teams, only 14 remained until the end of the season. It only took 2 weeks before a problem occurred. Following the race results at Martinsville, an error was discovered in scoring Jeff Gordon. Originally Team Echo Racing was thought to have won the race, but after the re-count with 5 points added to Jeff Gordon's score, the win went to the President's team, Intimidator Racing. In the third week of the season Wilson MotorSports won at Talladega and assumed the league lead from Trapt Racing. He would hold the lead for several weeks until Jerry Jones Racing finally took it from him and would hold it for the entire season. The next two weeks were won by Jerry Jones Racing at California Speedway and Old Time Racing at Richmond. On May 22nd the league would have its first All-Star race for the Nextel All-Star Challenge at Lowe's MotorSpeedway. Since the league had just started everyone was eligible for the event. A different race format was used with everyone predicting the top 10. The scores were pretty close, but the first All-Star event was won by Jerry Jones Racing. The following weeks went by with races won by NASCAR Fan Racing, Inc. who won 2 races in a row in only her 2nd and 3rd starts. Ron Racing won his first race of the season at Pocono and Jerry Jones Racing won again at Michigan. After Michigan the salaries were re-aligned for the first time altering many people's strategies. The next 11 races were won by 9 different first timers. The only 2 teams to repeat were Ron Racing and NASCAR Fan Racing, Inc. For the final 10 races and the first Chase for the Championship, the salaries were changed again. Jerry Jones Racing was still leading the standings. June Bug Racing won his 2nd race followed by the first wins for Bump And Go Racing and Legacy Racing. Dodge Boys Racing won his 2nd and 3rd races of the season, and June Bug Racing won his 3rd race too. Pitbull Racing, Intimidator Racing and Syracuse Alpine Racing each won their second races of the season at Atlanta, Phoenix and Darlington. The final race of the season was won by Kay's Racing Team and Jerry Jones Racing became the league's first champion. Throughout its first season the league saw many new additions, rules changes and revisions. The League Stats and Record page was introduced several weeks in. The Message Board went under a transformation. The League Entry and weekly submission page had a couple different incarnations. There were changes to teams not submitting their picks. Originally they were not even in the field and were docked 15 points. Later it was changed that they would be in the field but would be docked 5 points the first week, then 10 points the 2nd week and 20 points the 3rd week. Later the points were raised to 10, 20 and 30. The exact pick tiebreaker was instituted halfway through the season. Originally the win would just go to the team higher in the standings until the driver rank was instituted. A little more than halfway through the season, the President decided to switch servers to allow the league to grow. Originally the league was using Geocities, but switched over to Hostingu.com, a better webservice. The new site was built between June-August, but wouldn't open until the conclusion of the 2004 season. Many teams came and went throughout the first season. We started with 21 teams and ended with 24. The most teams we had at one point were 31. Not bad for a first year league. Here is a list of all the teams:
A number of teams didn't quite make it to the end, here are a list of them in alphabetical order. Note: pre-season starts count here.
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 17 Feb 2004 |
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