The Daytona 500 was rained out on Sunday, started on Monday, and finished early Tuesday morning. Matt Kenseth won his second 500, at about 1 a.m., after a two hour red flag with 100 miles to go.
CHECKERED FLAG
Kenseth was fast all night, as were his fellow RFR teammates. Roush cherry picked new sponsor, Best Buy, and they delivered results for the big box store immediately with the big win. Kenseth led 50 of the 202 laps, and was untouchable at the end.
GREEN FLAGS
Dale Earnhardt Jr, was near the front all night, although he never led a lap, and finished second. Greg Biffle appeared to have started points racing early this year, as he fell to third instead of challenging his teammate on the last lap. Denny Hamlin led the most laps on the night, and came home fourth. Dave Blaney finished 15th, but was leading during the two hour red flag and him winning would have been a great feat for Danica's teammate.
YELLOW FLAG
NASCAR and Fox TV's best laid plans were all for naught as Danica Patrick was involved in a big wreck on lap two. Although, she made it back into the fray, 60-something laps behind, the viewers were cheated out of the planned Danica updates every lap or two.
RED FLAG
Juan Montoya was responsible for the two hour red flag when he hit an on-track, jet dryer under a caution flag. Apparently, a mechanical malfunction caused his Chevy to plow into the huge jet blower and thus igniting an inferno of hundreds of gallons of jet fuel. The blaze took several minutes for the safety crews to finally bring under control.
BLACK FLAG
Danicamania. Please. This is how you turn off fans that have stuck with NASCAR forever because they love the competition. Simply saying that she is the next big thing doesn't make it so. How about letting her on-track performance speak for itself?
JPM complained about having a problem in every gear... The 40 pit crew couldn't figure it out so what do they do after the long pit stop? The CC tells him to catch up with the pack. I'm thinking it's the Crew Chief that should be red flagged...
ReplyDeleteHave to say that DW alone doesn't really bother me, but Mikey too? That's over the top...
Question, are Toyota's racing engines going to be a problem? There was a reason JGR built their own...
Dwindy... The deal with JPM's crew happens every race. Crews work on cars, and send them out unrepaired so they don't lose a lap... sometimes 3-4 times during the same caution.
ReplyDeleteWith DW, it's not so much his cluelessness, it's his confidence. I watched the replay of the Bud Shootout, everything he forecast along the way was dead wrong.
Kyle's engine seemed strong in the Shootout, and Denny led the most laps in the 500. They should be fine.
Checkered flag has a big assist by team mate Greg Biffle. Kenseth was smooth on restarts, gathering Greg (the fastest car) up for dancing partner. But Greg performed wing man on the assault to a tee,
ReplyDeleteCR... More likely: Biff points racing already.
ReplyDeleteIf he gave Kenseth the win, he also knocked himself out of at least a 2nd place finish.
Come on Gene, DW was dead on when he said debris on Mikey's tires caused him to wreck coming out of the pits in his duel race :)I can't come up with any other possible explanation for why that happened. Nobody is simply that terrible, right?
ReplyDeleteJM... It is hard to believe that one announcer could be wrong 100% of the time, but...
ReplyDeleteWorst part of Mikey's wreck was that it put him on TV instead of in the race... Argghh!