Kurt Completes Busch Bros’ Sweep
Kurt Busch elbowed Matt Kenseth aside with just five laps remaining to win Sunday’s gruelling Food City 500 at the half-mile Bull Ring named Bristol Motor Speedway.
Busch recovered from a flat tire to take the win, surviving a hard challenge from Kevin Harvick in the final four laps to score his first win for Roger Penske and the #2 Miller Lite Dodge team.
A clearly unhappy Kenseth finished third (but not as unhappy as J. Gordon who he punted out of the way) followed by Carl Edwards and Bobby Labonte, who posted his best finish thus far for the #43 Petty Enterprises team.
Mark Martin, Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne completed the top ten.
The best rides of the day were turned in by Labonte under the pressure of missing the 35th place cutoff. His 5th place jumped the Petty crew 6 spots and they will be assured of a starting spot, at least for one week. Biffle should also be happy after having early problems, but his 7th moved the #16 to within 48 points of the Chase cutoff.
The hard luck (or talentless?) driver of the event had to be Brent Sherman. Out of 18 cautions he was involved in one way or another in about 5. Obviously a very hard day, and lesson, for the rookie.
Out of 170,000 or so on hand, including fans and crewman, there was one guy whose luck stood ahead of everyone. This un-named lucky sole was in the right place at the right time to grab the rear valance panel of Dale Jarrett as it sailed over the fence and landed at his feet!
I would hope track officials made arrangements for it to be autographed by Jarrett. If I hear of it being sighted on Ebay I’ll be disappointed. Of course that won’t preclude me from bidding on it. It would look mighty fine hanging behind my wet bar and compliment my Mark Martin “used Goodyear” coffee table.
And what would Bristol be without drivers quotes? Here are a couple choice selections.
“I showed him my displeasure,” Gordon said of the shove that sent Kenseth back on his heels. “I get fired up, too.”
“If [Truex] wants to settle it, [he can] settle it in the bus lot later on,” Stewart said of Truex’s attempted retaliations.
“I’m not going to take it out on the race cars when we are on the track,” Harvick said of Busch, still seething about being taken out by Busch last week at Atlanta. “If I have to, I will take it out on him. He took a cheap shot at me last week, and that isn’t something that goes over well.”
Lovely… you can bet “things” won’t be forgotten next week at Martinsville.
UPDATE: Normally I enjoy reading David Poole’s articles, (And BTW he has a brand new blog, Life in the Turn Lane) but in this piece he went off track a bit. First he notes Bristol’s, shall we say, “ambiance:” “If NASCAR gave out every penalty that’s deserved for “aggressive driving” in a race at Bristol, it’d take a week and a half for somebody to complete 500 laps.” He follows that up with: “Dale Jarrett rides for five laps with a taillight panel dangling off his Ford and NASCAR lets him go until the metal flies off the car, into the grandstands and lands at some guy’s feet. All’s well that ends well? No. Flying sheet metal is dangerous. Jarrett should’ve been black flagged long before the projectile launched.”
You just can’t have it both ways. First noting the impossibility of calling every aggressive move is correct, it would never happen. But let’s do a little rewrite of Poole’s second comment.
“If NASCAR gave out a black flag that’s deserved for every taillight panel (or one of a dozen other similar panels) dangling off a car in a race at Bristol, only a handfull of cars would be on the lead lap at the checkers.”
Not to mention it isn’t sheetmetal, that panel is a single piece of fiberglass. Not that it is any less of a hazard but any one of a dozen cars had similar damage during the event. It’s only an issue because it ended up as a valuable souvenir for the aforementioned “Mr. Lucky.”
NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Bristol Motor Speedway, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle
I wasn’t particularly thrilled with David Poole’s article either. Even though I am not a journalism major (which is quite obvious if anyone reads my blog), I sure as heck know my facts prior to writing about it. Mr. Poole made it sound like it was a 1977 Buick Regal bumper being sling shot into the crowd. Please stop the drama Mr. Poole.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who called Poole on his error.
His post noting that garnered 15 comments and as expected most had to do with NASCAR bias and not the issue at hand.
*excuse me while my eyes roll back into their normal position*.
His post noting that garnered 15 comments and as expected most had to do with NASCAR bias and not the issue at hand.
I know I noticed that right off the bat. What happened to the issue at hand? It all went to the Gordon-Kenseth ordeal. I think we all need to move on now, and that includes myself. I am more than sure that there will be a whole new controversy this weekend and the bloggers will run rampid with it.
Enjoy your weekend!