NASCAR BLOG

Kurt Busch has made it a long way this season. Right now, he’s 3rd in the lineups of drivers in terms of the points that they’ve scored this season. His younger brother, the one that people know of, Kyle Busch, has been much more able in previous years, but he’s sitting quite a bit further down this season so far. It’s still early, but that’s where we’re at. It’s going to be an exciting year for these two, as the fraternal fight takes place on the top of the leaderboard. It’s getting to be a big year, now that the season is really underway. We’re going on to the next set of races in the next few weeks, and it’s going to be very fun.

Sunday’s Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, was an exciting affair. More interesting, Matt Kenseth won his second race in a row. This is shaping up to be his best year, with a great pit crew working for him to make his stops finish very quickly. It’s absolutely great to watch a new guy taking the field. Jeff Gordon came in 2nd in the race, not losing by a lot. One of the bigger stories of the day is Greg Biffle, who stopped on an air hose during his last pit stop, and ended up coming in fourth in the race. He said that he should be fired for making such a fundamental mistake. Anyway, the NASCAR season is now well underway and it’s been fun thusfar!

That didn’t take long. Tony Stewart is well known to have a temper like an angry ground squirrel in late spring without a mate. Last week, just before the Daytona 500, his team lost both of its cars during the last practice. One of them blew a back tire, and he is convinced that it is Goodyear’s fault. He was so angry about it that he started to yell at everyone and anyone around him. He thinks that the tires they supplied were faulty from the start, but that’s not exactly clear. It sounds like sour grapes to me. But nevertheless, he’s going to be angry about losing his cars and I can understand that, especially when you’re as competitive as he is. Ah well, next time.

Yesterday, I’m sure you were able to see the Daytona 500 yesterday, where Matt Kenseth was the winner. He hasn’t won much since 2003, when he won the series. But he’s hardly even competed in the Daytona 500 in the intervening time, but it’s going to be a lot of fun to see him competing for the rest of the Sprint Cup this year. The race yesterday was shortened, so if you tuned in to see the end of it, you may have been rather surprised to see no race at all. There was such a downpour that they decided it would be safer to stop the race after 152 laps, whereas the normal length is 200 laps. Kenseth himself was quite gratified to have won, because he has been having trouble even showing up sometimes the last few years. And now here he is!

The Daytona Lineup has been finalized. It is full of many of the typical names at this point. There don’t seem to be many surprises for this race. But still, the typical names are also the great racers. Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Burton are all in the lineup and it’s going to be an exciting race this time. The race is coming up very soon and we’re going to see a great time. We wish them all the best and hope that they are all safe in the race. Good luck!

There are some preliminary Spring Cup power rankings on the ESPN site now. Carl Edwards is surprisingly at the top of the list this year. Why isn’t Jimmie Johnson at the top? After all, he’s been way ahead all of last year. He’s playing for a four-peat. Apparently, that’s the reason why he’s not at the top: because the 4-peat has never been done before. Greg Biffle is at #3, Kevin Harvick is #4, and Jeff Gordon is #5. It’s going to be an interesting series of races if it’s these 5 racers going head-to-head and being close to winning each time. It all gets started soon!

The Time Trials for Daytona are beginning. They have to whittle the teams and cars down a little bit so that they don’t have a too crowded field on the track later in the month. You can watch many of these practice races on SPEED television network and on FOX. It should be really exciting to check out these different races. Take a look at the full schedule so you know when to watch!

The Daytona 500 is only 12 days away. This is one of the biggest races in the whole year and you can easily get into NASCAR just by seeing it. Most of the races so far this season have been just a kind of warmup for Daytona and for the rest of the upcoming races. The season isn’t quite in full gear, but it’s only a few more weeks. Are you excited? Do you have any choices of winners yet? I know there will be some great ones and the field may be a little smaller than usual because of the economy and sponsorship being down the way it is. But let me know who you think is going to win it this time around. I’ll be interested to hear what you think!