NASCAR BLOG

The Kentucky Speedway has been hoping for a Sprint Cup race for awhile now and they’re back in court to contest the ruling by NASCAR that they shouldn’t get one of the races. They claim that it’s a question of noncompetitive behavior and NASCAR shouldn’t simply be able to say which speedway gets one and which one doesn’t. The league meanwhile says that the case is just a question of them being too speedy about the whole thing. We should be looking at it as a case of someone wanting something and not being able to have it. I certainly don’t know which is right, but I can see both sides. Kentucky does seem like it should have a Sprint Cup race, but there are only so many to go around at any time. We’ll be watching this case, which is already in the Appeals phase, and see what’s decided. If Nascar loses, then there will probably be a lot of other speedways that will enter in similar judgements.

When Jimmie Johnson wins, it’s not a big surprise anymore. After all, he was dominant last year. Yesterday, he won the Allstate 400, which was held at the Brickyard, the location of the Indy 500. But the drama belonged to another player. Juan Pablo Montoya was way ahead earlier in the race. He was running away with the race, leading everyone practically by full laps. But then he was flagged for speeding during a pit stop and dropped back by a lot. He ended up with an 11th place win, instead of a first place. He was completely unhinged afterwards, screaming into his radio that he wasn’t speeding. The team chief tried to relax him a little bit, but it didn’t work. He earned less at the end of the day and didn’t rise much in the Sprint Cup standings either. Better luck next time.

Tony Stewart is one of the best racers in the country right now and has won quite a few races in the last few months. Sometimes people make it sound like he’s just a blowhard without any real talent, just a lot of talk. But those critics are actually wrong. He is a really talented racer with a proven history of winning. He will be looking to win again at Indianapolis’s Brickyard during the Allstate 400 this weekend. He has won several times there. If he does win, it will no doubt give him a big bump in his quest for the Sprint Cup, which is awarded towards the end of this year. He is, I believe, already in the lead, so it will be very interesting to see if he keeps that up or if another racer or two find a way to challenge him effectively.

I guess it was only a month ago that I wrote about Danica Patrick and some of the rumors that she might be headed to Nascar at some point in the near future. Perhaps this is her people putting feelers out to see what kinds of things might be possible. She hasn’t had all that much success in the Indy Car racing world and part of the issue is that she doesn’t focus so much on the racing, because she has endorsement deals and publicity. Way back, she was the biggest thing in racing. It could happen again, although Nascar has trouble investing the right amount of resources into women drivers. Obviously, if she has the right talent and good equipment, she could race as well as anyone else. But it’s never completely clear that the league would be willing to put enough into her to get things to work out right. It remains to be seen anyway.

It has gotten very complicated since we talked about it several weeks ago: the Jeremy Mayfield case. I think the last time we talked about it, he was filing a court order to get an injunction to stop his suspension from Nascar for testing positive for some drug that might be meth. He said that he was either completely clean or some light OTC thing for a headache. Surprising as it might seem, it got more complicated after that. The judge lifted his suspension. Just a few days later he was tested again, and tested positive. Then his stepmother came out and said that he was using meth. Then he gave a news conference in which he accused her of killing his dad, which will be investigated by a North Carolina medical examiner soon. And then he compared the Nascar brass to Al Capone. And then he asked to be readmitted. Really. I would be unable to make this up, guys! This can’t get less complicated, because there will be further responses and suspensions.

The Nascar world has fallen silent this week. It is an off week for the Sprint Cup, leaving us in silent position for the moment. We’re looking forward to hearing these teams roar around the track for the rest of the year, but it’s good to take a look at what’s gone on so far to take stock of where we are. Get it? “Stock” cars. Nevermind.

Anyway, about halfway through the season, we can see that Tony Stewart is winning the Sprint Cup at the moment, with Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin rounding out top 5. Obviously, this is only the beginning, and Tony Stewart wasn’t leading until very recently. We’ll be seeing which of these players will be able to pull out a couple strong wins and actually take the Cup this year. But at this point, it’s still anyone’s game!

Kyle Busch is still upset about the dangerous ending that he had last week at Daytona. It’s not unlikely for a person to be angry after a crash. Stewart has said that he was disappointed to win that way, but sometimes you just take them as you can. He said that he talked with Busch and that they’re on the same page. Meanwhile, Busch seems to be quite angry about the way it ended. If you don’t remember, he was blocking Stewart on the last lap but then struck the back end of his car and slammed into a wall, getting hit twice more by the rest of the traffic. Busch said, indirectly, that he was dumped by Tony and that Nascar should watch for those kinds of things and black flag them.

The Coke Zero 400 race at Daytona this weekend was fairly normal except for the last lap. An attempt by Kyle Busch to block Tony Stewart’s last-second pass started a big crash that sent Busch into the wall. Stewart won, but he wasn’t as happy about his win as he might have thought, because you never like to end the race with a big crash. It was also a very dangerous crash for Busch, as some racers don’t make it past a crash like that. This gives some credence to the people who are against the restrictor plate races, which tend to bunch the cars up. This makes for an extra exciting race, but it also makes it significantly more dangerous for the racers, because crashes are more likely.

Dale Earnhardt Jr has been on NASCAR’s Sprint Cup for years and years. He’s just coming off a very good race last weekend and will be aiming for another one at the Coke Zero 400 this weekend in Daytona. He’s a little bit sad, though, because NASCAR zapped his former weeklong break in Daytona before the race. In 2004, they had decided to move that break until later in the season, because they wanted to break up the long streak of races that finish up the season. But Earnhardt preferred the break in Daytona, because he has friends there and he could party with them. Now the schedule doesn’t allow for that. So we guess he’ll just have to focus on racing instead.