by Mike Maruska
5/4/2008
Junior fans, be honest. If it was anyone other than Kyle Busch, would you be so upset right now? Would Busch’s wreck with Junior in the closing laps have been such a big deal? Well, probably since it involved the biggest star in NASCAR, but it’s hardly fair to Busch. It was a racing incident plain and simple. It wasn’t any different than Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick at Bristol earlier this year or hundreds of similar wrecks resulting from hard racing over the years.
In light of a tense situation, Busch did have one of the best quotes of the night after the race,
I don’t know why they[ the fans] were telling me I was number one, I was in second place. Clint Bowyer got the lead from me — they were all confused I guess, too many old (Dale Earnhardt) Jr. Budweisers.
Burnouts
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Denny Hamlin had the NASCAR equivalent of pitching a no hitter, only to cough it up on a home run in the bottom of the ninth. Actually, getting a flat tire after leading 381 of 382 laps was like watching your center fielder turn a single into an inside-the-park homerun.
It’s tough to say. I mean, you can’t whine about it. It wasn’t meant to be. God didn’t want me to win today, and there’s a better time for us to win, evidently. Today is just not our day.
Hamlin had 1 green flag pass all night, which is usually a bad thing, except when there is no one else but lapped cars to pass.
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The top ten cars stayed essentially the same all night long. Part of the reason was because a lot of decent cars got caught up in an eleven car pileup. Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Juan Pablo Montoya and others all got collected after Patrick Carpentier was sent spinning. Jamie McMurray suffered minor damage in that crash, so he went back for seconds later in the race. Somehow Jeff Burton snaked through with minor damage and went on to finish 11th. The way the track clogged so quickly reminded me of another short track Big One from the 2005 Bristol race.
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Speaking of Kenseth, he now sits in 22nd place in the standings, 204 points outside of 12th place. In 2005 he was 21st after the Richmond race, but thanks to a furious summer rally he made the Chase. The good news is Kenseth typically runs well at the next three tracks, Darlington, Charlotte and Dover. There is a lot of time left.
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What was Michael Waltrip thinking when he continued bumping Casey Mears under caution? Mears was running one lap down in 16th. There was no way Mears meant to wreck Waltrip. For the loveable image Waltrip likes to project, it’s interesting how many times a year he gets called to the NASCAR hauler.
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The top 35 fight rages on. Dave Blaney’s 18th place finish (and best run of 2008) put some pressure on 35th place Sam Hornish Jr. 32nd place David Reutimann is only 10 points ahead of Hornish, with Waltrip and Regan Smith sandwiched in between. With the unfriendly confines of Darlington up next, the positions at the back of the field could change quickly.
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