Talk:1998 Pepsi 400/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Harrias (talk · contribs) 15:05, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

A quick glance over this article satisfies me that it certainly doesn't meet the quick fail criteria, so I'll start a more detailed review now. Harrias ^talk 15:05, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

July delay

• "thousands of people were forced to evacuate" – This seems to leave a little ambiguity: would it be cleared to state that "thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes"?
  • Changed to "evacuate the area"
• "north-south thoroughfare" Should "north–south" take an en-dash?
  •  Done

Practice and qualifying

• ".. the last car to be locked into the field on the first day of qualifying." This is a little jargonny, is there a better way of phrasing this? Something like ".. the last car to guarantee entry to the race on the first day of qualifying." (Okay, it sounds appalling, but hopefully you get what I mean!)
  • Changed to "the last car to qualify for the race on the first day of time trials" - does that work?
• "Second round qualifying was held during the afternoon on Friday, October 16; the fastest car in second round qualifying, placing 26th on the starting grid.." Perhaps to avoid repitition of "Second round qualifying" you could change the later bit to something like "the fastest car in that session, placing".
  •  Done
• "Kenny Wallace and Rich Bickle also ran fast enough" – It might sound silly, but I'm not sure "ran" is an encyclopaedic term for driving!
  • Actually, it is. The term as used is (for example) "ran a lap at [time]". I've changed the wording of the sentence, though, does it look better now?
• "and qualifying following suffering injuries" – Not keen on all those "ing"s: it might be best to replace "following" with "after".
  • Changed to "having suffered injuries"
• "Ricky Craven practiced and qualified his No. 36 Pontiac." – A little confused about this sentence: what is so important about this that it warrants inclusion?
  • It's always noteworthy when one driver qualifies another's car; it's non-standard procedure, and it requires that the driver who actually starts the race start from the back of the field even if the subsitute driver had qualified on the pole (...which happened in 1989 at Martinsville Speedway, Dale Earnhardt (!) got stranded in South Carolina due to Hurricane Hugo, Jimmy Hensley qualified his car...and won the pole!).
    • Ahhhh! I see now. The problem is that the "his" in this sentence appears to refer to Craven, so I read the sentence effectively as "Ricky Craven practiced and qualified Ricky Craven's No. 36 Pontiac." – I definitely think this needs to be made clearer: maybe ""Ricky Craven practiced and qualified Irvan's No. 36 Pontiac." ? Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Gah, there was a period there where there should have been a semicolon. I've clarified it now I hope! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:09, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• "Johnny Benson's car suffered a hood failure" – Link Hood (vehicle) as it isn't a globally used term.
  •  Done (and "bonnet" is such a better word, isn't it?)
    • I don't know, I think on a car I would have a hood than a bonnet! Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Race

• "Ernie Irvan dropped to the rear of the field prior to the start of the race, due to a driver change following qualifying." – To clarify, does this mean that someone else raced in Irvan's place?
  • No, it means Ricky Craven qualified the car that Irvan raced - I've tried to clarify the sentence, hopefully it's not too redundant to the section above now (while still being informative for those who clicked straight to this section).
    • The previous section obviously makes this clear to me now; I think that as long as this is clear in the qualification section, it isn't necessary to have the extra clarification. Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Link pit stop on first use.
  •  Done
• Are there any more details on what caused the crash on lap 32? Also, I assume this was what caused Bodine and Stricklin to retire, if so it might be worth mentioning.
  • I've added a bit more here.
• The sentence at the start of the second paragraph is very long, with four commas and a semi-colon. It would be better split into two I think.
  • "I've never yet met a semicolon that could be trusted."  Done
• "he continued to pace the field" – I'm not sure, but I think this is probably too jargonny, and would be worth explaining for the lay person.

Results

• The tables require some work to be accessible: follow the guidelines in MOS:DTT to include row and column scopes. I think the tables would also benefit from being sortable.
  • Row and column scopes added. I'm not sure sortability is desirable; the majority of important paramaters (position, time, and speed for qualifying; position, laps completed, and points for the race) will all produce the same results.
    • I can live with that. Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

References

• The referencing is generally very good. I would like to see a consistent date format; at the moment you use YYYY-MM-DD for retrieval dates and Month DD, YYYY for publication dates. Ideally, just one of these would be used for both.
  • Well, that's how I've always formatted references; the intent is that it prevents any confusion between a publication date and a retrieval date at a glance. I can still fix it though if it's an issue. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 15:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • No problem. Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Similarly, you tend to use (City, ST) for locations, but occasionally use (City, State). And for some reason in Ref #19 and #21 the location isn't in brackets.
  • Fixed the city, state thing. The brackets/no brackets can't be fixed unfortunatly - it's hard-coded in the template coding. {{Cite news}} puts the location in brackets; {{cite web}} doesn't.
    • Hmmm, never noticed that before. Someone should probably bring that up somewhere. Oh well, someone else can do it sometime! Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Reference #1, #2 and #13 use "NASCAR.com. Turner Sports." but Reference #9 is just "NASCAR."
  • Fixed.

All in all this is a pretty good article. It seems a little sparse on detail, but I know first-hand that finding information on sporting events before the internet was widespread is difficult, so that isn't an issue. A little more detail would be nice in the race section if possible, but no worries if not. Is there any scope for a "Post race" section? For example, was the 1999 Pepsi 400 a night race, and did night superspeedway races become common at all? Is it worth mentioning that the race winner Gordon went on to win the championship in this section (this is currently mentioned in the lead, and then not thereafter, a bit of a no-no.) Harrias ^talk 15:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Added a bit at the end regarding the championship and the race.

Thanks for the review - I'll dig in to fix it up this afternoon or tomorrow. I'll see what I can do about the suggested post-race thing, but to answer the questions here, every summer race at Daytona (it's currently the Coke Zero 400, but us old-timey fans shaking our canes at the whippersnappers on the lawn still call it Firecracker 400 ) has been run at night (and in July) since, but the only other started-at-night superspeedway race was the 2012 Daytona 500. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 18:07, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

• All fixed up, I hope, per the above. Thanks again for the review! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 15:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Good work, speedily done; just one point remaining about Craven / Irvan in qualifying, then we should be sorted. Harrias ^talk 20:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • And I believe I've fixed that up now. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:09, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Thanks, all passed now, well done! Harrias ^talk 06:28, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
        • Thanks! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:07, 5 July 2012 (UTC)