Kyle Busch won the truck race. Congrats to Alex Tagliani on a great Xfinity series run. It stinks that Regan Smith resorted to the chrome horn to take the checkered flag. It was a very disappointing finish of the race for me. I hope he reaps what he sowed, because that was lowdown.
Rest in peace Buddy Baker. You are missed.
From the pre-race chatter the teams are concerned with the engine life with this rules package – the same package used at the Brickyard. It’s a low down-force, high drag package and in the draft seems to cause the rpms to rise near 10,000 putting strain on the engine. Mr. Hendrick said they have some great engine builders, but they’re concerned about the engines in this race. The drivers say it makes the cars very loose and a car beside you can easily take the air off and suck you around.
It’s a blue sky partly cloudy day in Brooklyn, Michigan.
NASCAR ruled the teams must install a right-side NACA duct on the cars for this race in order to get some air blowing on the driver due to the heat of the day and the heat build up in the car from the drag package. It’s 86 degrees air temp and Biffle’s car was displaying temps around 125 degrees during the week.
Timmy Hill’s car laid down fluid during the parade laps. He never went completely up onto the track, but the clean-up trucks had to go into action delaying the start of the race.
David Ragan spins in turn 2 of the first lap as Matt Kenseth led them to the green flag bringing out the first caution.
Caution on lap 10 of 200 for debris. A plastic drain pan fell out of Timmy Hill’s car to bring out the caution.
Competition caution is out on lap 20 of 200.
Austin Dillon stayed out on the caution so he’s leading.
Jimmie is coming in for an unscheduled pit stop on lap 48 of 200 for a flat right rear tire.
Caution is out on lap 72 of 200 for debris. Drivers made green flag pit stops between laps 50 and 62.
Green flag stops are underway on lap 103 of 200.
This is looking – at this early stage, 11 laps past midway – like another boring fuel mileage race.
Caution on lap 121 of 200 for debris.
Caution is out on the restart on lap 126 of 200 for a spin by Clint Bowyer. Bowyer takes it to pit road, then back to the garage.
Caution is out on 136 for a spin by Tony Stewart onto pit road. Smoke drives through pit road which is closed because the caution came out. Kasey Kahne gets the lucky dog, so he should be back on the lead lap.
Carl Edwards was trying to save fuel on the pace laps, turned the car off it wouldn’t restart, so he dropped down and turned the battery on and off, it restarted, but NASCAR told him he didn’t maintain pace car speed, so he had to instead restart where the car re-fired.
They restart on lap 142 of 200.
Personally as a person who used to love this race, I’d like to put my vote in for NASCAR’s experiment (rules package changes) being a failure.
I have been astounded at how NASCAR has managed to turn a race that used to be one of my favorites into one of the most boring. I should be used to it by now – they’ve done that several times over the years, but I guess I’m an optimist.
Green flag pit stops are underway on lap 163 of 200.
On lap 182 Jimmie spins out in turn four bringing out the caution. David Ragan gets the Lucky God. Looks like Jimmies splitter it shoved up onto the front of the car on the right side which hit the grass pretty hard during the spin and there’s a little damage on the front right corner.
I’ve been listening to the radio broadcast on one of our local news-talk stations instead of the television audio since before pre-race festivities. I have the television on so I can see the race (because it often sounds a lot more exciting than it looks in my experience), but I can’t handle another bad call. Yesterday I was subjected to the usual nightmare of Michael Waltrip and Phil Parsons competing in the “I can yell about nothing louder and more often than you” contest. That was followed by the nightmare of Leigh Diffey and Dale Jarrett babbling their way through the Xfinity race. Dale Jarrett consistently demonstrates why I don’t believe he should be in the Hall of Fame by always applauding unsportsmanlike behaviour on track. Of course he completely backed Regan Smith’s move, though I just don’t believe he would be okay with someone disrespecting him like that.
Kenseth wins.
That was stultifyingly boring. Congrats to Martin Truex Jr on a top five finish. Finally he had a finish representative of how he ran.
In NASCAR news this week:
- Buddy Baker R.I.P..
- No Chase Rule Changes.
- NASCAR confiscates Team Penske’s splitters.
- NASCAR adds cooling measure for Michigan cars.
- Family believes Tony Stewart lost his temper in fatal crash.
- Earnhardt Jr. moved by gift from fan.
- Pressure Builds for Biffle.
- Jeff Gordon: From Sprint Cars to Sprint Cup.
- ISC Partners with DraftKings.