Yesterday’s Nationwide Race was the usual Charlotte snoozefest with KyBu winning and Kasey placing second. KyBu basically ran away with the race.
Congrats to Tony Kanaan on FINALLY winning the Indianapolis 500!!! This is the 12th year he’s run it and he finally won! The race ended under caution, but he took over the lead on the restart and was able to finish in front.
Denny won the pole. The first eight drivers all broke the track record. This Gen6 car is fast.
The race got off to a typical slow start – slow as in boring. This race is an endurance race for drivers and fans alike, since the drivers all seem to conserve equipment, energy, and excitement until the last 50 laps of a 400 lap race.
Around lap 127 an overhead camera driver cable fell onto the grandstand then onto the track. 10 people in the grandstands were injured, seven with cuts, and three were transported to a local hospital. None of the injuries appeared to be life threatening. The race was red flagged due to cars receiving damage from running over the cable. The teams were all allowed 15 minutes to work on their cars – like the pit stop in the All-Star Race due to the issue. Then the race resumed with normal rules only to have a later red flag condition due to one of the wrecks.
The moon looked full over Charlotte Motor Speedway. Eventually the full moon began to take its tool as both KyBu and BooBoo blew up on the same lap. Dale Jr.’s issue resulted in a wreck. Throughout the race lots of cars wrecked and/or were collected also including Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Danica Patrick, Marcos Ambrose, Bobby Labonte, Ricky Stenhouse, Dave Blaney, It (Brad Keselowski), Jamie McMurray, Paul Menard, JPM, Mark Martin, Travis Kvapil, ‘mr. awesome’ Greg Biffle, and others. Some retired for the evening and others limped around. Jimmie was in the limp around category and a piece falling off his car was the source of the last caution with 16 laps to go.
Kasey led most of the race then the entire field pitted with sixteen laps to go. Kasey was the only car to stay out. Kevin Harvick passed Kasey to win the race.
Kurt Busch came back from a dead battery to a third place finish and was less than pleased to say the least. He didn’t explode, but he was obviously steaming. Kasey was so disappointed. Logano started 31st and finished fifth. Denny finished fourth. He looks whipped and in a lot of pain. He’s looked like that the whole weekend. He’s been looking like he’s zombiefied with pain. I hope it will all be worth it in the future when he’s unable to play with his kids the way he’d like because of the damage he suffered from racing instead of recuperating.
In NASCAR news this week:
1. The 2014 Hall of Fame Inductees were announced on Wednesday. FINALLY Tim Flock and Fireball Roberts were inducted along with Jack Ingram and Maurice Petty. For reasons beyond my comprehension Dale Jarrett was added to this class and received the nomination. I felt it was far too early for his inclusion in the voting and absolutely appalled that he entered before some of the greats from the history of NASCAR.
2. Brian France had a chat with the press and addressed various topics including Bruton’s threat to move the Charlotte 600 to Las Vegas, driver response to the Denny Hamlin fine and other stuff.
3. Paul Menard re-upped with RCR. While RC seems to be putting all of his future eggs in his grandsons’ baskets apparently since Paul Menard can bring the money now, he can stay. Its just kinda sad that his improvement is most likely limited due to neglect from his team owner in favor of the Dillon brothers. Menard seemed to be improving before the Dillons seem to take over all of Richard Childress’ attention. It feels like he’s going to run the company into the ground depending on Frankenstein and Ty to be the next Dale Earnhardt and Dale Jr. It’s rather sad.