The NASCAR weekend saw a first time owner-driver serve notice that he may be the next Sprint Cup champion, a new restart rule that worked really well and, oh yes, Kyle misbehaved again. With that thought in mind let’s start with:
HOORAH to Tony Stewart who absolutely earns this week’s making chicken salad out of chicken do do title. As the series’ points leader Stewart was scheduled to start the Pocono 500 on the pole because mother nature rained out qualifying. Then on Saturday he crashed his car during practice, had to roll out a back up car and started the race at the tail end of the field.
In days gone by driver Tony Stewart would have been seething. But owner-driver Stewart remained calm and expressed complete confidence in his team to provide him another good car. He was correct in that assessment. Stewart went from the back of the pack to the top 15 in less than 20 laps. By lap 37 he cracked the top ten.
That leads to another HOORAH for crew chief Darrien Grubb and the Stewart Haas Racing crew whose performance was flawless. This is especially true of the final pit stop that placed their driver solidly in the lead. It was also Grubb who calmly coached his driver through a critical fuel shortage. Although Stewart said over the radio “I hate racing like this” he listened, went into low speed fuel conservation mode and scored his first official points win as an owner-driver.
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Yet another HOORAH and a side order of chicken salad goes out to Stewart Haas Racing crew members working on Ryan Newman’s team. An early race electrical problem found them having to change a spark plug wire as well as the distributor cap. In a prime example of what organization can accomplish, the team made quick work to fix the problem and their driver roared through the field and netted a fifth place finish. It was a most impressive day for Stewart Haas Racing.
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HOORAH for the new double file restart rule. NASCAR’s new policy of lining up lead lap cars two by two at the front of the pack seemed to work really well. It added another level of excitement to the restarts and it looked stunning on television. Pocono, with its massive width, was the perfect track to launch the new procedure.
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Following Sunday’s Sprint Cup race it was likely that many members of the “Junior Nation” were again yelling WAZZUP with the #88 team? Perhaps they were expecting too much too soon from the new combination of driver Dale Earnhardt Jr and Lance McGrew. Once again we were treated to live camera shots of Earnhardt over shooting his pit stall. TNT Network broadcaster Kyle Petty probably put it best when he said “let’s be honest, we’ve seen this before-lots of times.” Making the situation worse was the fact that Junior parked the car too close to the pit wall and that made things extremely difficult for the crew to change the left side tires. The huge loss of track position was followed by adjustments on the car that just didn’t work. The car was often sideways coming off of the turns. That, in turn, led to a disappointing 27th place finish.
Meanwhile the girl friend, a T shirt wearing card carrying member of the “Junior Nation”, sat in front of the television and sadly shook her head. But from that came a really great line when she suggested that “maybe Junior needs to visit Jeremy Mayfield’s doctor to be tested for Attention Deficit Disorder.”
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WAZZUP with Denny Hamlin’s fuel disorder? The start of the race was delayed when Hamlin’s engine began to sputter. He refired the car and ran a couple of laps when it happened again this time bringing out the caution flag. It had to be the height of frustration for a driver who was heavily favored to win this race. He was able to return to the track and managed to finish 38th. He also lost five positions in the potential 12 man line up for the Sprint Cup Chase For The Championship. Hamlin is now ranked 12th just one point ahead of Mark Martin.
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