by Mike Maruska
6/1/2008
I just finished watching Days of Thunder, and despite knowing almost everything that would happen, I still found it more enteraining than Sunday’s Best Buy 400 at Dover. Officially the race had 17 green flag lead changes. In reality it was a three car race with most lead changes (9) only occurring during green flag pit stops. Essentially Kyle Busch’s pit crew beat Carl Edwards’ and Greg Biffle’s. By lap 160 Jeff Gordon made his way into fifth place and the top five never changed again. One point to make was that the lack of excitement didn’t have very much to do with the lack of lead lap cars, it was simply a race with long green flag runs and not much passing. There were times when cars would ride nose to tail for 20 or 30 laps with neither able to pull away. Busch summed up the lack of excitement this way,
“It wasn’t I guess all that exciting. You know, that’s a product of what we’ve got going on here. We’re working on trying to make our cars go as fast as they can. The faster we make them go, the more aero-dependent they’re going to be. The more you put out on the racetrack, the more the air is going to get screwed up. You know, we’re all fighting for space. We’re all fighting for air. We’re all fighting for everything. Sorry it wasn’t exciting.”
It’s not Busch’s fault the race was boring, nor is it the teams’ fault. With the CoT still in its infancy, there will continue to be snoozers like we saw at Dover. It’s not pretty to watch, but expect more of the same as teams, Goodyear and NASCAR all get a grasp on the car.
The one nugget of excitement came on lap 19 when several top cars collected after Elliott Sadler and David Gilliland made contact. First Tony Stewart, then Denny Hamlin and finally Bill Elliott and Scott Riggs all took turns diving on the hog pile in turn 2. As you might expect, the reactions were varied. First Stewart:
“I take 100% responsibility — it’s my fault for being even anywhere close to Elliott (Sadler). If I’m within a half a lap of him, I expect that to happen. It’s my fault — I’m the one that hit him. When I hit him it caused all the guys behind us to wreck. So it’s my fault.”
Obviously there is still some residual ill-will from Stewart for the wreck at Darlington. Stewart has had wrecks in three of the last five races, and last week had a win snuffed out by a flat tire. Common sense says Stewart will rebound during the summer months, but he had similar problems in 2006 and failed to make the Chase. It’s definitely something to watch.
Meanwhile teammate Denny Hamlin received a lot of heat for plowing into the wreck late. It did appear that other drivers managed to slow down in less time than Hamlin, but Elliott and Riggs were even further behind Hamlin and still couldn’t stop in time.
“It’s so tight off of turn two right there. I feel bad for Elliott (Sadler). I came piling in there way late. I had the 43 (Bobby Labonte) right on my bumper trying not to get hit from him. When I heard wreck off turn two I immediately was on the brakes. It’s just these cars don’t stop as well as they had in the past. Luckily, I wasn’t the last one. It looked like guys even behind me piled in there. It’s just part of the race track.”
While I find it a little easy to blame the track and the heavier car, something obviously caused problems for numerous cars in the accident. After his incident last weekend in the Nationwide race, Hamlin is probably not a popular driver with many fans, but it’s not really fair either.
Other Notes
Nice runs by Dave Blaney, Travis Kvapil and Juan Pablo Montoya. All scored top 12’s. Meanwhile Sam Hornish Jr finished 19th to return to the top 35. The finish was his second top 20 and moved him all the way to 33rd in the owners standings. Meanwhile thanks to a steep 150 point penalty earlier this week and a bad wreck on Sunday, Scott Riggs and the #66 car fell outside the top 35. With the other Haas car missing another race, things are getting tough in a hurry for Haas-CNC.
Fox did a good job this year with their NASCAR coverage (although I could have passed on the letter grades feature today). Now it’s on to TNT. At least Kyle Petty will keep things fresh.