Double Clutchin’-The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly From Sonoma
Written by Rocky Kitts · June 23, 2008
First off, let me be cranky for a minute and although I’m probably in the minority here, I like baseball inside a diamond, football on a 100-yard field (or 120 counting the end-zones, if you want to be picky), and I prefer NASCAR races to be held on an oval track. I’m not a big fan of road races in the NASCAR circuit because they’re just too different from the other races that the drivers usually run, and to me it’s the equivalent of watching people trying to walk on a hockey rink without ice skates. Many of the drivers have no clue how to race a road course; and more so, many of them do not have the desire to learn how (I’m talking to you Junior, with a hearty yell at Matt Kenseth too), and are just happy to survive until the finish line. That’s just my opinion, and you’re all free to disagree, as that is your God-given right. Now that my shameless rant is out of the way, there is still much to talk about after Sonoma, so let’s get started with the G, B, and U:
The Good:
Yeah, those rumors that Kyle Busch was tired and was ripe for the taking? File those rumors next to old Weekly World News articles about the Yeti; because Busch was anything but tired Sunday, as he dominated the Sonoma track by leading 78 of the race’s 112 laps. Busch shut the door every time that someone got close, was explosive off of restarts, and dominated the race so thoroughly that some other drivers were quick to point out that it wasn’t the car that won this race; it was the driver. Jeff Gordon was one of those drivers, saying of Busch’s win:
“I’m kind of shocked,” said Gordon, a five-time Infineon winner who fought handling problems early in the race. “He [Busch] went by me at the beginning, and his car looked about as bad as mine was. It was sliding all over the place.
“To get the car up front and being able to maintain that position — if you can keep the car on the racetrack, you get credit from me. If he can win here, he’s probably going to think he can win anywhere — and maybe he can.” (NASCAR.com)
Busch needed a strong showing at Sonoma to get back momentum and to quell some discord among his team about his possibly running too many different races. No doubt about it, with his performance Sunday, Busch silenced many critics who might have thought that Superman had indeed began to slip. He’s not going anywhere folks, and as I predicted earlier this season, he’s starting to develop a fan base as he was cheered loudly after his win. Now, whether that has to do more with proximity to his home (Busch is from Las Vegas) or the fans beginning to move in Busch’s direction remains to be seen. One thing that didn’t change though, Busch still doesn’t know how to win in silence. When he was asked about the Stewart, Harvick, McMurray crash, Busch was not able to resist taking a shot at Harvick, saying:
“I guess Harvick got into (Jamie) McMurray, who got into (Tony) Stewart,” Busch said of the accident. “Everybody makes mistakes sometimes, but when Harvick comes up to me and runs his mouth like (he did) at Michigan, he sort of stuck it right back in his mouth here this weekend. So that was good to see.” (MercuryNew.com)
One thing about it, as long as Busch keeps winning, he’ll keep talking, and that’s good for the newspapers and the Internet, but it may get Busch into a bad situation later in the year when he’s possibly driving for a championship and other drivers like possibly Harvick, may have nothing to lose. It’s something to keep an eye on.
The Bad:
More bad luck for Smoke. Tony Stewart had a car that could have possibly challenged Busch in the final laps, but after Jamie McMurray was clipped by a wheel-hopping Kevin Harvick, Stewart didn’t see McMurray coming until he had already been hit. Although Stewart was able to recover enough to snare a tenth-place finish; the accident took him out of contention for the win that his team needs. The good news for Stewart is that he’s holding onto eleventh in the points, but I doubt that Stewart is happy with just holding onto the next-to-last points spot.
Jonathan Ingram listed this item in his MMCC column and it’s worth an inclusion in the bad column here too; as the so-called hired gun road racers at Sonoma were really underwhelming on Sunday. Scott Pruitt=38th, Ron Fellows=29th, and Boris Said=41st. Even some drivers who normally run great at road races were mediocre like Robbie Gordon who finished a disappointing 36th. Outside of Montoya’s sixth place, (yes I know Gordon and Stewart are good road racers, but those guys could race go-carts up flights of stairs and be competitive), most of the drivers who were expected to really show their road racing chops, got a one-way ticket to the second half of the field.
The Ugly:
Maybe this one should be in the good instead of the ugly, because it means that for the first time in a long while I am not forced to say nice things about Kasey Kahne. After an impressive run the last several weeks, the Earth’s gravitational pull reached out and yanked Kahne back to reality and a 33rd place finish. Maybe I’m a little hard on the guy, but everyone has to have that one driver to poke fun of don’t they?
Another thing that I’ve got to list in the ugly was the number of crashes. I’m your typical NASCAR fan, in that over the years I have almost become desensitized to the number of wrecks and crashes that take place in the sport, Most of the time I think that we all watch with a little bit of naivete, and that we assume that drivers are always going to walk away from the area of destruction unscathed. Well, maybe it was because of what happened to Scott Kalitta Saturday, but I cringed a little every time that it looked like there was going to be a big pile-up, and I honestly held my breath on replays of David Reutimann hitting the tire wall, as those sudden, quick-stop crashes seem to be the ones that often have very serious results.
That’s it for this week’s installment of the G, B, and Ugly; back to normal racing next week at New Hampshire.
Rocky Kitts can be reached at wwwthreestrikesandout(@) yahoo.com. Unless it’s negative. In that case don’t bother me. (Joke). You can send it, I just won’t read it.
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