Joe Reaquires Rights to “Front Row Joe”
Joe Nemechek - plagued by bad luck all year - reasserted his claim to being called “Front Row Joe” by winning his first NEXTEL Cup pole position of the year at Michigan International Speedway
Following Joe across the line Sunday will be Jeff Gordon, still fighting for a place in the Chase, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch in fourth. Ryan Newman, winner of his second consecutive Busch series event on Saturday rounds out the top five.
Of those currently in the Chase, Rusty Wallace and points leader Tony Stewart faired the worst during the qualifying session. Tony starts from the 36th spot and Wallace from 38th.
The list of those that didn’t qualify for the event include all the usual suspects: P.J. Jones, Carl Long, Eric McClure, Bryan Reffner and Morgan Shepherd will all be looking to Bristol next week.
A quick look at the results of the ARCA event here offers a clue to the possible outcome Sunday. The top three places were Dodges, led by Rusty Wallace’s son Steve in a Penske entry. “Like father, like son” they say. At this point the new Dodge Charger has been a bust. It’s not coindience the folks at Mopar are running factory rides in ARCA that includes the Wallace effort and that of Evernham’s Erin Crocker who has had the occasional “girls night out.”.
More track time means more data to mine. We may be seeing the results of that extra “digging.” With Ryan Newman scoring two straight Dodge wins and the top three in the ARCA event, I’ll ride that train of success and say Rusty Wallace will continue the trend. Here is my top ten.
1) Rusty Wallace
2) Jeff Gordon
3) Tony Stewart
4) Mark Martin
5) Joe Nemechek
6) Ryan Newman
7) Kasey Kahne 
Greg Biffle
9) Ricky Rudd
10) Kevin Harvick
NASCAR, Auto Racing, Sports
Bold pick for the win my friend, but I can’t argue with your top ten, just the finishing order. If it’s a Dodge that will win, I’ll go with Kasey, but I think it wil be Gordon’s time to come back to Victory Lane, that team is way past due for something good to happen.
It’s a hard year to predict anything. Everybody in my top ten is overdue except Biffle and Stewart. Truth be told I’d like to see Rudd win, he’s on the cusp of being out of that ride with Jon Wood doing better each week.
Another surprise this week may be Junior. He qualed about ten spots further up the order than any time in the last 3 months.
BTW George did you note my new “What Blogs are Sayin‘ feature? Your “home” heads the list.
Joe is going to have to do more then win the pole. Poles really don’t mean much if your team can’t take care of you in pits, and if your car doesn’t hold up.
-Jim
NASCAR FORUMS
Well it was a Dodge that won, but not Rusty OR Kasey. I hate it when the NASCAR races, or any race, turns into a gas mileage race as opposed to flat out speed. NASCAR should have pulled one of their famous, or rather infamous, late race cautions for “debris”, to allow everyone to pit for rubber and fuel. May the fastest man win!
I had thought at one point NASCAR should have thrown the yellow to allow everyone a chance to pit and clean their grill work. It was that bad, worse than I ever remember.
MIS is always bad because of it’s location out in the open plains, such as they are, of south central Michigan. Before I started my 20 year “naval odessy” I attended every NASCAR event there (’69-’81) and a few since. Flying paper has always been a “feature” of the place.
As is events turning out to be eco-friendly mileage tests. Because of the wide turns and three wide racing history shows MIS on average has fewer cautions so fuel mileage comes into play.