NASCAR BLOG

Villenueve, who we talked about last week, came in 4th in the Nationwide race this weekend. It was his first real start in NASCAR and it was a tough one. There was rain on the ground and lots of restarts and caution flags. He realized that the race is practically only about keeping the car in one piece rather than winning. He was able to finish and got even better than the top 10 finish that he had been hoping for. In fact, Quebec drivers took 3 of the top 7 spots in the race. At the same time, the racer who won was Carl Edwards. It will be a lot of fun to see how far these Quebec players end up going and how long it takes them to start really winning races. But top 7 finishes are nothing to scoff at, especially the first time around.

When Jacques Villenueve starts competing for Nascar this weekend, he will be working hard at making sure that he can keep his run going. He’s been one of the best racers in open-wheel racing, so we’ll have to see if he’s actually good at Nascar, but people anticipate that he will be a very strong player this year. When we watch him compete in Montreal this weekend, it will be fun to see him racing a different kind and put himself in the winners circle as soon as possible. He did try to do Nascar several years ago, but he hadn’t done his homework completely and has learned a lot in the meantime. We will be watching this racer as things move forward and hopefully he will keep his reputation high after the race this week.

After winning this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, there is a lot more discussion as to what the fans actually think of him. Busch has an on and off kind of personality. Lots of fans really dislike him, for his mean manner towards some of his fellow racers as well as his arrogant attitude to lots of people and his general petulance. But there are moments when he’s a really nice guy too. He tried to hand the checkered flag to a crying fan behind the fence this weekend. And he goes to charitable tournaments too. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s a fierce competitor and wants nothing but to win. This gives him a bad attitude on occasion. Hopefully he’ll find a way to balance it out better over time.

With the Sprint Cup a little more than half over, it was time for the annual ceremony in the garden of the White House, where we saw a lot of the most popular racers in the sport being honored by the President. Jimmie Johnson was the main focal point of the attention on Wednesday, most likely because he won the Sprint Cup last season. He was clearly the best racer last season, and hopefully he will make his way back up there this season. He’s certainly a contender for this year, if only he can leap over Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart. But whatever happens, he met President Obama this week and he, and the other racers, were all quite honored to have that kind of attention lavished on them.

Brian Vickers won the Carfax 400 this weekend in the state of Michigan. It was a duel about fuel economy that pushed them forwards and it was a lot of fun for them to try it out. Jimmie Johnson, last year’s winner, had tried to win against Vickers by pushing his car to the end of its fuel. But just like it has several times recently, it didn’t work form him at all really. His ability to push his car that way is relatively low, it appears, since he’s tried it several times without success. He’s still in third place for the Sprint Cup, but will have to push to catch Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon and win a two-peat. But not to worry, there’s still a couple months on the Sprint Cup calendar yet, so we await the next race eagerly!

It appears that Kyle Busch is the guy to beat this weekend in Michigan. There are so many other great racers, like Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards, but Kyle Busch has had ten top 2 finishes in a row now and how can you expect that he would do poorly this time around. This is a smart racer, who can conserve his fuel and power his way through any way race. This has been an odd year, though it appears that Stewart is winning almost all the time at this point. This isn’t completely true, because obviously Busch is winning sometimes, leaving Stewart further back. We shall see what this ends up as when we get into September and October soon enough. If you’re ready for a big conclusion to the Sprint Cup, then you are in for a big treat this year.

Tony Stewart won the Watkins Glen Raceway event in the Sprint Cup on Monday. You might be wondering what that means, that they’re racing on a Monday. Well on Sunday it was raining so much that they had to put off the race for a day, so that it would be safe to race. This also allowed for the cameras to get the images more easily too. Andy Lally was making his Nascar debut against some of the best racers in the sport, but he wasn’t ready for the 24 hour delay at the end. He ended up finishing 27th in the race, which isn’t a terrible finish for a first-timer, but it does seem like he had gotten out of the zone in that single day. It’s starting to look like Stewart is moving forward into the drivers seat of the Sprint Cup and then we’ll be seeing if he can finish the deal in the end.

Lowes, the hardware and equipment store, is out as the sponsor of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. They were talking about a new deal, but evidently there was no agreement or clarification after all. It’s going to be weird not to have the Lowes Motor Speedway next season, but with the economy a lot of these kinds of endorsements seem to be falling by the wayside. Drivers are losing sponsors. If that continues, they might be driving plain painted cars.. well, perhaps it can’t get that far, but it’s still a little bit odd not to have so many companies pulling out of this kind of major sports that’s seen by so many people. Then again, we can probably expect that someone else will come in and get the Lowes stadium back into order.

Patrick Long is the newest winner on the Nascar circuit and this was very interesting to see. He’s won other races, of course, but finally he has an impressive win. The 28 year old won by 5 seconds over a rookie driver at the Nascar Camping World Series West. A few more wins and he will really get some people paying attention to him. Long led the field practically from the beginning of the race. Does this mean he can beat Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson? Probably not yet, but most people can’t. It’s going to be fun watching him in the future, though, because it appears that he’s working his way forwards in the racing world!