You Mad Bro? Kevin Harvick wasn’t exactly what one would call chatty following this past weekend’s race at MIS. For the second time in three weeks, the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet was the fastest car on the track when it counted – but was too far back to do much following more problems in the …
Remember when all anyone could talk about was the fact Jimmie Johnson hadn’t won a race yet in 2014, and he kept saying over and over again not to worry? Looks like he was right. Johnson played the late-race pit strategy perfectly en route to his first career win at Michigan and third overall in …
Did You Notice?… The road course ringer era is over? Just two right-turn “subs” are on the list for Sonoma: Boris Said for GO FAS Racing and Alex Kennedy for Circle Sport. Said, driving the No. 32, has been in that position for years while Kennedy is a bit of a stretch, considered somewhat of a …
Key Moment – On lap 150, caution period pit stops took place for the last time. Jimmie Johnson, Paul Menard, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jamie McMurray stayed out. They would pit with 35 or so laps to go and run the remainder of the laps to the finish. That strategy paid off in top …
As the Sprint Cup Series heads off to Michigan International Speedway, it’s certainly possible Dale Earnhardt, Jr. could post back-to-back victories for the first time in his career. Having capitalized on a mistake by Brad Keselowski, the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet knocked Pocono off of the list of tracks he’d never won at, …
Chad Knaus, longtime — hell, only — crew chief for six-time champion Jimmie Johnson, lashed out Sunday after the No. 48 was defeated in its bid to become the first car to win three races in a row, or a hat trick, since NASCAR CEO Brian France started his campaign to liken stock car racing …
In many ways, the Sprint Cup Series’ venture to the Pocono Mountains was a microcosm of the season to date. There was a singular figure who led many a lap, multi-time champions finding ways to struggle, and frontrunners succumbing because of the not-so-alive half the alliance between man and machine. The end result was very …
The Duels aren’t points races, so nobody saw their title hopes go up in flames like you might see at Talladega in October. However, the week’s activities did leave a few drivers behind the eight-ball to start the season. In particular, Carl Edwards has suffered what could be an early season blow, beginning with a hard crash in preseason Daytona testing. Last week, practicing for the Sprint Unlimited, Edwards wrecked his car for that race, forcing him to go to his Daytona 500 backup. His team made preparations to return to Charlotte for a replacement, which was a smart move because they’d need it: Edwards suffered another practice crash before having his primary car turned into sheet metal spaghetti in the first Duel.
Duel One – Kevin Harvick thought it was time to go, prior to the first green-flag pit stop of the race and he went, blowing by Trevor Bayne on Lap 37. That was pretty much all she wrote. The field spent the rest of the day simply trying to lap up Harvick’s beer exhaust, the Bud Chevy in another time zone just like the Sprint Unlimited Saturday night.
Duel Two – Jeff Gordon led. Then he sped… on pit road, so Kyle Busch pretty much took control from there. Kasey Kahne tried, and failed on the last lap to make a charge as teammate Matt Kenseth served as sacrificial lamb for Busch’s second career Duel victory.
The good news is that nobody had to worry about points on Saturday night. The bad news is that many teams come to Daytona with three cars: their Sprint Unlimited car, Daytona 500 car and Daytona 500 backup. After a practice wreck, some teams could be left scrambling. Carl Edwards’s team already loaded his Unlimited car on a hauler bound for Charlotte after his practice wreck; they’ll fix it, hang new sheetmetal, and bring it back to serve as the Daytona 500 backup as Edwards was forced to pull his original second car out for Saturday’s race.
Carl Edwards, not known as a restrictor-plate expert, shocked observers by taking the top spot for the Great American Race. In what would be a sign of things to come, he never led a lap despite leading the field to green and endured an up-and-down day
It wasn’t the win he has been searching for for more than a year and a half, but for Carl Edwards, a seventh-place finish was a welcome ending. For Edwards, who has just three top-five performances in 2012, this week’s result was only the second to fall inside the top 10 in the last eight weeks, just his 13th top-10 finish in 31 races. That’s half the number he had a year ago, when Edwards lost the Sprint Cup title to Tony Stewart in a tiebreaker. The top-five stat is even more dismal. Edwards finished in that group 19 times in 2011, more than six times as often as 2012. No matter where his points finish is, it will be the worst of his career because he didn’t make the Chase cut and can finish no better than 13th.
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