• Home
• Blog
• Podcast
• Forum
• Racing On TV
• Speed Shop
• Archives
• About Us

Subscribe

• Channels:
• Formula 1
• IRL
• NASCAR
• Motorcycles
• NHRA

Zipadelli & Logano steal Cup win at New Hampshire

Greg Zipadelli rolled the dice and called a perfect weather-race to bring Joey Logano in first today at the rain shortened Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.   The win is rookie’s first in Sprint Cup compeition.

Everything went Logano’s way in an odd sort of way.  Logano had some early problems that put him out of sequence, a turn of events that may have assisted in his win.  Logano actually was the cause of the nine of eleven total caution periods in the race when he had a tire failure.  Ed Hinton of ESPN.com points out that Logano was the fortunate recipient of the Lucky Dog not once, but twice.    But the tire failure actually put the Home Depot team on an alternate strategy that played out perfectly under the conditions.

RACE NOTES

Jeff Gordon falls short
Gordon ran up front all day, and probably would have won the race had the rain held off for another five or six laps. Lady Luck didn’t shine down on Jeff today.

Tony Stewart’s strong run
The Stewart-Haas team really has the #14 car hooked up, and Tony was the fastest car on the track for a lot of the race. He ended up snake bitten by his former crew chief, but still a good day for Tony.

Dale Jr.’s strong run doesn’t show in the results
Dale Jr. didn’t look to have car to win, but he could have easily finished in the top 5 if the weather hadn’t broken up the party. Dale and the team have to figure out how to do better on restarts.

Was the big wreck Kyle’s Bush’s fault?
Kyle Bush made another friend in Martin Truex Jr. today when contact between the two created a huge accident that took out multiple cars. The question is, “Was it Kyle’s fault?” Truex sure thought so. From my seat, it looked like a pretty dumb move on Kyle’s part to stick his nose in a hole between two cars just before the entrance of turn 1.

LINKS

ESPN: Logano scores unlikely win at Loudon

SI:  Rain gives teenager Joey Logano first Cup win

Dirtmeister Kahne gets first NASCAR road course win

Anyone who ever witnessed Kasey Kahne run a winged sprint car on dirt knew that they were watching a future star in big time racing.  I personally saw Kahne win the Dirt Cup at Skagit Speedway two years in a row, a race that draw all the best winged 410’s on the west coast to northwest Washinton.  But for a guy that is so at home in the dirt, Kasey Kahne sure put out quite a performance on Sunday at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma.

Kahne held off Tony Stewart to win a veritable crashfest on the natural terrain roadcourse.   A couple of drivers that were especially “crashy” on Sunday were Robby Gordon and Kyle Busch.  I lost track of exactly how many incidents these two were involved in, but it was more than a couple.

The win for Kahne is his first under the Petty Enterprises banner, and it was nice to see the King celebrating in Victory Lane again. 

USA Today has more:  Kahne, Petty brew up winning Sprint Cup combination

Mark Martin best at saving fuel at Michigan

Mark Martin has again made Dale Jr. look bad, and won yet another Sprint Cup race in 2009.  The old dude won a fuel mileage race at Michigan International (image that) today, beating his out-of-fuel teammate Jimmy Johnson and an out-of-fuel Greg Biffle in the closing laps. 

The media has called the finish “exciting”.

I’m not sure how exciting the racing was.  Michigan’s 400 miler is always a race to save fuel & Martin showed that he’s the Yoda of fuel saving.

Martin said, “I always come up short in these fuel-mileage races,” said Martin, whose victory was his third of the year. “But I saw the pace they wanted to run at the start and I began saving gas from the third lap.”

So from lap 3 to 200, Martin was saving fuel?   Can you feel the excitement?

The Detroit Free Press has more on the fuel saving festivities.

Freep.com: Mark Martin wins at MIS after leaders run out of gas

The budget cuts will continue until morale improves

You knew this was coming.  GM is considering cuts to their NASCAR program.  I guess they figured out, after 15 years of failure, that the “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” philosophy isn’t really working for them.

Here’s the AP Story at ESPN.com:

GM to pare support of NASCAR teams
Associated Press

BROOKLYN, Mich. — General Motors is planning to cut back on its support of NASCAR teams in all of the sanctioning body’s professional series.

Chevrolet spokesman Terry Rhadigan says GM, which is reorganizing through bankruptcy, is discussing what he described as incremental cutbacks in support. He says cuts will be made soon and that the discussions are “indeed NASCAR-wide.”

Read the rest of the AP article

Roush-Fenway always a favorite at Michigan

The Sprint Cup series heads into the Irish Hills of Michigan this weekend, and that means one thing: Roush-Fenway has about a fifty-fifty chance of winning this weekend

Tom Jensen of Speed TV wrote today:

Every year since 2002, Roush-Fenway Racing has won at least one NASCAR Sprint Cup race at the 2-mile MIS oval, with drivers Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards each posting two wins here during that period.

MIS is Roush’s home track and a place where his team is awfully tough to beat. In last year’s LifeLock 400, Roush placed four cars in the top 10, although the team lost a fuel-mileage race to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who hasn’t won since. In the August 2008 MIS event, Edwards won the race as Roush took a whopping four of the top five positions.

Read the rest of the article here.

Ryan Newman gives Stewart-Haas first Cup pole at the 600

Ryan Newman did what he does best, putting his car on pole for the Coca-Cola 600. The Rocket’s 43rd pole position was the first for the Stewart-Haas team.

With Kyle Bush, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Jimmy Johnson rounding out the top five, there were few suprises in the first few rows.   Junior starts deep in the field from the 27th spot.

It is exciting to In this 600 miler, the starting spot is not really of much importance.  Be sure to drink a lot of Coca-Cola to stay awake for all 400 laps (unless you are a Jeff Gordon or Junior fan and prefer to imbibe in a Pepsi or Amp energy drink).  But seriously, I want to see a show of hands: Who can watch all of this race without falling asleep at least once?  After drinking a sixer of Corona and eating way too much BBQ on Sunday afternoon, only the strongest survive.

————

Here’s a full report from GM Racing:

CHEVY PRESS NOTES - CHARLOTTE QUALIFYING
Concord, NC - Ryan Newman behind the wheel of his No. 39 U.S. Army Impala SS will lead the field to the green flag for the 50th running of the Coca Cola 600 Sunday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway (LMS).

The 28.651-second/188.475 m.p.h. lap landed Newman the 44th pole of his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career and his eighth pole at LMS.

Five Team Chevy drivers captured four of the top-five and five of the top-10 starting spots for the season’s longest race. Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Impala SS, will roll off third in the 43-car field for the 400-lap/600-mile race.

Mark Martin, No. 5 CARQUEST/Kellogg’s Impala SS, will start fourth with Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Impala SS, starting fifth.
Read more

Busch Earns 15th Career Win at Richmond on 24th Birthday

From Joe Gibbs Racing release:

Birthday + Victory Great ‘Combo’ at Richmond

What kind of birthday present do you get for the man who has everything? For crew chief Steve Addington and the rest of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) team, the solution was simple. They got their man — Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 Combos Toyota — a victory on his 24th birthday in Saturday night’s Crown Royal 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.

With the win, Busch became only the second driver in Sprint Cup history to celebrate a victory on his birthday, a feat first accomplished by Cale Yarborough — twice. Yarborough won on his March 27 birthday at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway in 1977 and at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1983.

Read more

Vickers on pole for Richmond

Brian Vickers will bring the field to green after posting fast time and taking the pole position for the Crown Royal presents the Russell Friedman 400 at Richmond International Raceway. Vickers turned in a lap of 172.131 mph, edging out Jeff Gordon and Denny Hamlin for the top spot.

Mark Martin is quick again this weekend in Richmond, and will start seventh in the 43 car field.  Carl Edwards, returning after a horrific crash at Talladega involving ‘Dega winner Brad Keselowski, struggled in qualifying and will start 37th.  Keselowski will not compete at Richmond due to the limited schedule run by his James Finch-owned racing team.

Read more

Keselowski scores first Cup win at ‘Dega, seven fans injured in Edwards crash

Brad Keselowski ran like a freight train (almost literally) to the front of the field to win his first race in NASCAR Sprint Cup on Sunday, surviving a race that was full of crashes and burning race cars. In the end, Keselowski got the checkers, while Carl Edwards got his Ford wadded up in the catch fence on the last lap.

The story behind the last lap crash involves the ever more infamous rule that forbids NASCAR drivers from crossing below the yellow line at the bottom of the track without being penalized. Keselowski trailed Edwards going into the final lap on Sunday, and when Edwards tried a last second block on a charging Keselowski, all hell broke loose as the young gun held his car in bounds.

Here’s the video in case you haven’t seen it 200 times on TV yet.

Read more

Talladega Starting Grid - Montoya leads the field to green

Juan Pablo Montoya captured his first NASCAR pole of 2009 on Saturday when he qualified for the Aaron’s 499 at Talledega Speedway. His speed of 188.171 mph was posted in the #42 Earnhardt-Ganassi Chevrolet.

Sam Hornish Jr. turned in an impressive performance in qualifying. He will start third in the Penske car. The top Toyota powered qualifier was rookie, Scott Speed, who qualified eight with a lap of 187.841 mph.

POS 	CAR 	DRIVER 	        MAKE 	SPONSOR 	        SPEED 	TIME 	BEHIND
1	42	Juan Montoya	Chevy	Tums Dual Action 	188.171	50.890	Leader
2	16	Greg Biffle	Ford	3M 	                188.141	50.898	-0.008
3	1	M. Truex Jr.	Chevy	Bass Pro Shops/Tracker 	187.971	50.944	-0.054
4	77	S. Hornish Jr.	Dodge	Penske Truck Rental/AAA 187.953	50.949	-0.059
5	33	Clint Bowyer	Chevy	BB&T 	                187.919	50.958	-0.068
6	78	Regan Smith	Chevy	Furniture Row 	187.897	50.964	-0.074
7	5	Mark Martin	Chevy	Carquest / Kellogg's 	187.861	50.974	-0.084
8	82	Scott Speed*	Toyota	Red Bull         	187.824	50.984	-0.094
9	09	Brad Keselowski	Chevy	Miccosukee Resrt/Gaming 187.687	51.021	-0.131
10	6	David Ragan	Ford	UPS 	                187.640	51.034	-0.144

Read more