{"id":567,"date":"2012-08-05T22:54:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T02:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/?p=567"},"modified":"2012-08-05T22:54:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T02:54:02","slug":"nascar-2012-week-21-pocono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/2012\/08\/nascar-2012-week-21-pocono\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR 2012 Week 21 Pocono"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>After a tremendous rainstorm the track is dry and we are underway in Pocono. JPM (who won the pole) – Juan Pablo Montoya – and Denny Hamlin lead the field to green under partly sunny skies. More rain is off to the west so when this race will end is a big question mark for the field. Of course all of the rubber was washed off the track. There will be a competition caution at lap 20.<\/p>\n

There’s a much discussed rule change this week with the change of an inch of the sideskirts. That should take away some downforce therefore requiring a change in the setups. Also the track was newly paved for the last race, and has since had a lot of laps laid on it. So now the new pavement is starting to show ‘character’ also resulting in a change of the setup.<\/p>\n

Dale Jr has taken the lead from Denny Hamlin on lap 11. On lap 15 Kasey Kahne has taken second place from Denny Hamlin. Hendrick power is on display early in the race. Biffle and Kenseth are heading forwarding through the field. Jimmie is in seventh behind Montoya. He passes Montoya for sixth on lap 16 after starting in 10th.<\/p>\n

Kyle Busch has brought out the caution on lap 18\/19 by hitting the wall. He lost the left rear tire. He was in tenth at the time. He said something broke before he got to the wall. He says he’s taking it straight to the garage.<\/p>\n

This will serve as both the accident and competition caution.<\/p>\n

There were 22 speeding on pit road penalties in the June race. Let’s see if that particular issue has been resolved. Quite a few two tire changes on this stop. Dale Jr is the first off pit road. JPM is second and gained five spots.<\/p>\n

There were some cars that didn’t pit on this caution – Jamie Mc, Bradley K, Mark Martin – so they’re up front.<\/p>\n

Bradley K takes the lead from Jamie Mc on lap 25. Kyle said he blew thru a brake rotor and then a caliper went after that. He’s dejected – says the way their year has been going even with wins it won’t really matter.<\/p>\n

Bradkey K went in for pit stops and Dale Jr became the leader as Jimmie takes over second from Kenseth on lap 36.<\/p>\n

Biffle and Kasey are battling for fourth, Kenseth is in third, Carl is in seventh and Jeff Gordon is in ninth on lap 38 of 160.<\/p>\n

Jimmie passes Dale Jr for the lead at the end of lap 39.<\/p>\n

No speeding penalties on the first round of pit stops.<\/p>\n

Dale Jr has no third and no fourth gears right now on lap 50. Stevie says they’re going to change the transmission and has sent Jr directly to the garage.<\/p>\n

Dale Jr finally breaks his trend of finishing on the lead lap as they go to the garage to change out the transmission. Carl’s crew chief asked him to make sure he has the front brake blowers on. He does. Chad said there was a lot of brake dust, but not worrying. Earlier in the race Carl mentioned that his oil temperature was high. During the first pit stop he hit Martin Truex’s car. Carl’s had one thing after another but is still in the top ten so far.<\/p>\n

Weather is on the radar and has the ESPN announce team wondering how much longer the race will continue. It needs to get to lap 80 to be official. Bradley K is pitting on a different strategy. Jeff Gordon is moving up to fifth on lap 66. He’s followed closely by Carl Edwards.<\/p>\n

Dale Jr is back on the track on lap 70, 18 laps down. Jimmie continues to lead the race as cars continue to trickle onto pit road making green flag pit stops. Kasey is worried about his transmission and said after eight laps its gets hard to shift.<\/p>\n

KyBu was pegged for speeding on the pit lane, but he hasn’t come in to serve his penalty and is getting black flagged. He brought it in before they gave him the black flag with the white stripe meaning they are scoring him anymore. KyBu is 23 laps down.<\/p>\n

They’ve told Greg Biffle they don’t think the rain will be here until about lap 100. Jimmie has come in on lap 77 for his pit stop.<\/p>\n

Kasey is having a problem with the tire change on the right front. They lowered the car, Kasey rolled it back, they jacked it up and continued the stop.<\/p>\n

As we approach the halfway point Jimmie is back in the lead followed by Kenseth, Bradley K, Kurt Busch and Biff. Commercial break.<\/p>\n

Caution is out for Kurt Busch hitting the wall hard on lap 86. The clouds thicken and Bestwick says there’s a big blob of rain on the radar. Mark Martin came in for a pit stop on the caution. Bradley K stayed out. They’d been working the same pit strategy up to this point.<\/p>\n

On the restart on lap 91 Jimmie got loose and wiggled, Jimmie lost spots, Kenseth came across the track and got hit by the 11. Gordon takes the lead as the clouds get thicker and darker on lap. Kasey is in second.<\/p>\n

Biffle is pissed about where he’s going to end up. They’re saying 20, 48, 16 for 13th, 14th, and fifteenth position. He thought Jimmie was going to stay where he was while NASCAR was working it out. The skies are dark and threatening as NASCAR continues to try to clean up the track and figure out where everybody should be after the wreck. Kenseth said the 48 took him out and he doesn’t know why. He couldn’t see Jimmie’s car get loose as we could on the replay. Basically the same thing that happened last week at Indianapolis which lead to Jimmie leading the race.<\/p>\n

Kasey has a flat tire, but they think it is going to rain before the race restarts. Kasey is currently in second. Biffle is 15th right behind Jimmie Johnson.<\/p>\n

Keselowski can go another to lap 102 or 103 before he runs out of gas. Kasey is going along on the flat tire. Gordon is leading. Problems with the cars in two and three but each are betting on the rain starting before they get going again. Some of the drivers are saying its raining now on the headsets. There are drops on some of the cameras. Now we can see the drops falling in front of the 24 pit box.<\/p>\n

On lap 99 they’re bringing the cars down to pit lane and wrapping them up. A crew chief on the radio said its going to be a good soaking. There’s some lightning reported in the area so the cameramen who cover pit road have been sent under cover.<\/p>\n

The track is under a severe thunderstorm warning now. The storm rages in the background of Andy Petree, Dale Jarrett and Allen Bestwick.<\/p>\n

NASCAR has just made the race official according to Bestwick. Jeff Gordon wins as the storm continues. There was a buzz and the broadcast from the booth went green then dark. The picture flashed back and we went to commercial break. Sheets of rain roam across the track. Because of the lightning they’re hardwiring cameras for the indoor victory lane, because someone has to hold the antennas for their usual cameras which is a bad idea right now.<\/p>\n

Kasey Kahne has come to the studio. He finished in second with his flat tire. He’s in the studio with Nicole and the gang.<\/p>\n

They’ve got a victory lane going inside. Jeff is drinking a beer it appears. Ella was standing beside Jeff. He picked her up, gave her a kiss and Ingrid walked over holding Leo and gave Jeff a kiss, as did Leo. Now Jeff is saying don’t count us out. It’s Gustafson’s birthday today and Jeff’s birthday was yesterday. He turned 41. Right now Kasey has the first wildcard spot and Gordon has the second wildcard spot.<\/p>\n

Next week: Watkins Glen<\/h3>\n

GO 48!!!!<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a tremendous rainstorm the track is dry and we are underway in Pocono. JPM (who won the pole) – Juan Pablo Montoya – and Denny Hamlin lead the field to green under partly sunny skies. More rain is off to the west so when this race will end is a big question mark for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “NASCAR 2012 Week 21 Pocono”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briari.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}