Full Throttle

Sue Kellogg writes an occasional column for Racing Junky. Here is her take on Sunday’s “NASCAR Massacre” at Dover

Today?s race at Dover proved that old saying that it is better to be lucky than good. When you add up all the cars that were contenders for most of the day only at the end to be knocked out of the race.

Jeremy Mayfield & Kasey Kahne ? These two had the strongest cars in the field for most of the day. Jeremy with his record-breaking pole was able to run out front and stayed in the top 5 for the better part of the day. Jeremy seemed that he was in the drivers seat to win his first race since 2000 when he was dealt a cruel hand. I believe that if he car had not ended up stuck in the mud during the 19 car crash he would have been able to stay on the lead lap and have a top 5 finish.

Kasey on the other hand was able to come through the crash and was sitting out front and was poised to win his first Nextel Cup race only to be cheated. Casey Mears was leaking oil and with just 18 laps to finish Kasey got into the oil and spun out with a hard crash. I am just wondering if Kasey is destined to finish second or below in a race.

Matt Kenseth ? Every week Matt starts towards the back of the field and this week with an engine change he had to start last. Matt as always was working his way through and was sitting in the fourth position when his car like Kasey Kahne?s was into the wall after the oil leak.

Jimmie Johnson ? What can you say about the Lowe?s team? They are point?s contenders and it looked like Jimmie was walking away from this race with a top 3 finish and leading the points. Jimmie was caught up in the 19-car tangle and his car was not able to return to the track.

While no drivers were hurt in any of the cautions, this race seemed to take a strange turn of events. While the race last week at Lowe?s was to say the least boring, this race once it seemed to get over halfway, got to be very exciting. There was a number of drivers and teams that ended up being very frustrated while some of the drivers who started and continued to be back in the pack ended up with top 10 finishes. During this race the drivers certainly needed to have more luck on their side than skill.

Red Flag instead of using caution laps.

I have a question to propose to NASCAR officials, when Ryan Newman spun out on pit road creating a caution and since he and Dave Blaney were the last drivers to make green flag pit stops and then all the confusion that ensued after that why did you continue to run caution laps?

It was obvious that there was confusion on scoring and with the complain from Matt Borland on how many laps Ryan was down you just kept running cautions. The caution flew for Newman at Lap 321 and the green was not dropped again until Lap 346. My opinion would be that you should of red flagged the race at that point until you had all the scoring figured out. The fans are who lose out because they want to see racing not running laps under caution. It has been reported that the tower on the cautions will be taking more control but the NASCAR officials need to work on how to fix this problem because it will happen again.

My hats are off to the BUD team and Junior. They seemed to be struggling all day getting the car right and were down a lap for a better part of the day. They never gave up, even though the odds were stacked against them. Junior could not get a break getting back on the lead lap until the very end of the race. This is what a championship team is made of ? never to give up and to get some luck. Instead of leaving Dover second in points, Junior continues to remain on top with a 98-point lead over Jimmie Johnson. Way to go boys!!!