It’s just a little too obvious and easy to quote famous lines from that classic Judy Garland film like “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.“when referring to last weekend’s NASCAR action at the Kansas Speedway although some of the Chase teams were “following the yellow brick road.”. It also occurs to me that, if stretched far enough, the line “fly my little monkeys fly” might also work. But we’re not going to do that here.
Instead we need to examine how a good, late in the race call from pit road “smoked” the competition and how a disputed pit road call cost a driver big time. We also need to ponder the astronomical odds of a broken oil pump belt and how a budding young super star proved to us that rolling a race car is really no big deal. With those thoughts in mind let’s begin with:
HOORAH to Tony Stewart. “Smoke” collected his fourth win of the season after winning Sunday’s Price Chopper 400. It was also Stewart’s 37th career Sprint Cup win which places him in a tie for 18th with the legendary Bobby Issac on the all time winner’s list. More importantly, it re establishes Stewart as a major player for winning his third championship. This win couldn’t have come at a better time. This team has been in a bit of struggle lately and Sunday’s win marked their first top five finish since the Watkins Glen race held back in early August.
Stewart will be the first to give credit where it’s due and that leads to a HOORAH to crew chief Darrien Grubb. It was Grubb who called for two tires only during the final pit stop of the race. The crew did an outstanding job and got their driver out of the pits first. That in turn led to the access of clean air on the nose of Stewart’s Chevrolet a difference maker towards winning the race.
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HOORAH to Jeff Gordon for reactivating his “drive for five” championship campaign with a solid second place finish. This is another team who seriously needed a good Chase run. A HOORAH also goes out to crew chief Steve LeTarte for making some great calls on adjustments that helped put his car and driver at the front of the pack. Chief among those calls was the decision to put four tires on the car during the final stop. That allowed Gordon to become a late in the race contender for the win.
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The first WAZZUP of the week goes to Greg Biffle for disputing a tire call during the final stop of the race. Biffle and company was having a terrific, and badly needed, run at Kansas and led the most laps of the race.
While approaching their final stop, crew chief Greg Erwin called for two tires in order to maintain good track position. The call was immediately disputed by Biffle who wanted four tires for better grip during the final run of the race. Biffle was so adamant that he actually held up four fingers, while driving down pit road, to insure that everyone understood exactly what he wanted.
The results was Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne got off of pit road ahead of him and, despite the four new tires, Biffle couldn’t race his way to the lead again. On the positive side he did manage a third place finish that the team needed very badly. You also have to give the driver credit for “manning up” when he later said “it was probably the wrong thing to do.”
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HOORAH to the Chase contenders for adding another level of excitement to this championship run. Nine Chase drivers finished in the top ten at Kansas, the most ever in Chase history.Now we have at least eight, of the original 12 man line up, still in contention for the title heading into next Sunday’s race in California. The Kansas event also marked the 20th consecutive Chase event that was won by a Chase driver.
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WAZZUP with more bad luck for Dale Earnhardt Jr? Once again the members of the Junior Nation felt like someone had ripped their hearts right out of their chests. There were high hopes for the #88 team after they qualified on the outside of the front row. The Junior Nation was deliriously happy when their driver led 41 laps of the race and looked like a strong contender for the win.
But it all unraveled on pit road with a lug nut problem on the left rear tire that forced a return trip for repairs. It also put Earnhardt a lap down. What followed next was just more rounds of the same bad luck that has plagued this team all season long. During the course of a second green flag stop the caution flag came out and it cost the team a second lap.
