ONE: Wine Country After the Irish Hills of Michigan, next up on the Sprint Cup Series slate is a trip out west to beautiful Sonoma and wine country. One of the two road courses on the schedule — the other being Watkins Glen — the chance to turn left as well as right brings up …
Move over Talladega — Michigan International Speedway deserves some of the spotlight now. NASCAR’s fastest non-restrictor plate track took a step up with the assistance of Sprint Cup’s new rules package, and Who’s Hot and Who’s Not shows that other than the faster speeds, nothing really changed. Long green flag runs were prevalent, and smart …
Some drivers just sneak up on you, and so far in 2014, Brian Vickers has been one of those drivers. He’s quietly put together some strong runs, including his fourth-place finish in Talladega this week. Vickers wasn’t totally stealthy on Sunday; he did lead three times during the race. The No. 55 team does still have some holes to patch (they’re not yet consistent enough to be a title threat), but Vickers sits 10th in points. That’s ahead of race winners Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, as well as three-time champion Tony Stewart and teammate Clint Bowyer. Vickers still needs to win to lock down a Chase spot, but he’s making a case for that happening.
Brian Vickers spun in turn three on lap 396 to bring out the final caution flag of the night. It brought most of the field to the pits, scrambling the running order and cost Juan Pablo Montoya his first win on an oval.
The thing about Brad Keselowski that makes him a threat every place on the circuit is that he doesn’t let any racetrack beat him. You can’t look at past finishes and think, “Hey, a rival could really have a great day, because Keselowski isn’t that good here.” No sooner will the thought be formed than Keselowski will go out and prove it to be wrong by posting a stronger finish than he’s ever had before. That, really, is what makes him scary good, and a threat to win every time out. Sure, he’ll have his bad luck, but that rarely indicates a trend. Prior to his back-to-back Bristol wins (fall ’11 and spring ’12), Keselowski hadn’t even cracked the top 10 in three Cup races there, posting a best finish of 13th. Now, he’s a top pick. And he can do that anywhere.
After finally gaining the opportunity to compete against Sprint Cup competition, again Brian Vickers proved to be a nice acquisition for Michael Waltrip Racing.
During the pit stops for a lap 476 caution, Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr. stayed out while Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, and the rest of the lead lap cars came in for two tires. Johnson restarted behind Keselowski and worked him over for four laps before taking the lead for good. In the end, Keselowski ended up about where he would have finished with tires, while some of the other top contenders on the day ended up falling back to unsatisfying results.
It wasn’t a win for Jeff Gordon, and he still has a lot of ground to make up before he can even begin to think about that elusive fifth Cup title. But this week, Gordon certainly looked a lot more like… well, like Jeff Gordon. After starting on the pole, Gordon remained in the hunt throughout the race, running inside the top 10 all day long and ending the day in fourth place.
The big question for Brian Vickers is: where does he go from here? He has done an admirable job filling in for Mark Martin in the No. 55 for select races, but Martin is signed with Michael Waltrip Racing for the lion’s share of the 2013 schedule as well, and Vickers deserves a ride before 2014. Vickers is a proven commodity with two Sprint Cup wins and a Nationwide Series title… and yet, his name hasn’t been heard in the mix for a ride. MWR has been reportedly looking at a fourth team for Vickers; but as of yet, that’s merely a possibility. He’s as good as some of the drivers whose names are being bandied around… and why his name isn’t among them might be the biggest question of Silly Season.
Although Marcos Ambrose and Brad Keselowski were making the last lap at Watkins Glen one for the ages, another driver was quietly posting his team’s second top-five run of the year. Sam Hornish Jr. followed up his third-place finish in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday with a fifth-place run on Sunday. But the numbers don’t tell the whole tale. Because Hornish has an open wheel background, it’s often assumed that he has extensive road-course experience. But he doesn’t; Hornish’s three IZOD IndyCar Series titles came when the series ran almost exclusively on oval tracks. Hornish had just 11 road-course starts under his belt when he made the move to NASCAR.
While Clint Bowyer was holding off all comers for the win, his Michael Waltrip Racing teammates were having a strong race of their own, solidly in the top 10. Although Martin Truex Jr. got caught in a late-race traffic jam that forced him off the road and into 22nd place after leading 15 laps early on, it was Brian Vickers who really shined in just his third Cup race of 2012. Vickers drove his way through the field from a 21st-place starting spot, inserting himself into the top 10 and then the top five, muscling past Jimmie Johnson in the late laps to take home a fourth-place finish.
When Brian Vickers climbed into a NASAR Sprint Cup racecar at Bristol for the first time since an uncertain November, he was determined to answer the questions that had dogged him for nearly two years, ever since he found himself lying in a hospital bed, wondering if he would race again. Ever since a 2011 …
A daily email update (Monday through Friday) providing racing news, commentary, features, and information from Frontstretch.com
