“The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading…” and I want to unload my picks for the best races of 2015.
I welcome you to this special edition of The White Zone. Over the next five days, I’ll be counting down my picks for the 10 best races of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.
This list was not a collaborative effort with anyone else at Speedway Media. This is all my opinion. I also believe that this list will be more contentious than my list of the five most disappointing races. In other words, there’s a good chance that your pick for the best race of 2015 won’t be my pick. We might have some of the same races on our lists, but they might not be in the same order. Leave your comments below if you feel that one race is in the wrong spot or if one race should be ranked over another race.
Just like with my list of the most disappointing races, this list will be spread out over the course of five days. Today will have picks 10 and nine, tomorrow will have picks eight and seven, Wednesday will have six and five, Thursday will have four, three and two and Friday will have the honorable mentions and my pick for the best race of 2015.
Without further ado, let’s get this countdown on the track.
#10 GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway
Kicking off our countdown at number 10 is the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
It was an amazing race with three, four and even five-wide racing for well over 75 percent of the event. It was one of the best restrictor plate races I’ve seen in a few years at Talladega (that’s not saying that any of the last few years weren’t great).
This race also gave me my favorite radio soundbite. MRN came out of the commercial break on lap 47 just a second before both Dave Moody and Mike Bagley cued up the radio to scream “TROUBLE IN TURN 2!”
In the end, Dale Earnhardt Jr. dominated the race and scored his 10th victory at the Alabama roulette-wheel and first at the track since 2004.
For most of the race, I had this event as the race of the year. It really was that good.
So you might be asking yourself, ‘If this race was so great, why is it ranked so low on this list?’ Well, it was because of those last 30 laps. I won’t go into too much detail about those 30 laps because this list is about exemplifying the positives, but I will say that the single-file train in a race that had so much side-by-side-by-side racing killed any chance of it being race of the year.
So in the end, this race was incredible in a style of racing for which I have high expectations. While the last 30 laps destroyed its chances of being race of the year, the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway still deserves to be number 10 on my list.
#9 myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway
Taking the ninth spot on my list is the myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.
The event that kicked off the 2015 Chase was definitely an enjoyable event. I can’t say it is one that I’ll remember 10 or 20 years from now, but it was a great race for an intermediate race.
Those first 50 laps might have been some of the best racing for the lead I’ve seen in a long time.
I won’t lie. There were times it seemed to drag on, especially with that 100 plus lap green flag run in the middle of the race. But it didn’t overshadow the racing on the track.
Emotions also boiled over halfway through the race when Jimmie Johnson made contact with Kevin Harvick on the lap 135 restart. Two laps later, Harvick’s tire blew out and he rear-ended the Turn 3 wall. After the race, Johnson went to the motorhome lot to talk to Harvick. Harvick came out of his RV and shoved Johnson in the chest. Harvick’s wife DeLana and business manager Josh Jones were nearby in the waiting white SUV when they jumped out and diffused the situation. Given that nothing ever became of this following Chicagoland, I would guess that the two have put it behind them.
You might find it wrong for me to do this, but I didn’t put this a spot or more, higher, because this race added more fuel to the restart zone fire. It was on the lap 145 restart when Jeff Gordon appeared to get a jump on race leader Kyle Busch. NASCAR reviewed it and declared it a clean start. This was the second of three straight races where there was an issue with a driver jumping the restart. All I’ll say on this is that I’m sick to bloody death of talking ad nauseam about the restart zone! I really hope that we can go all of 2016 without another issue with the restart zone.
What carried the most weight in this race taking the ninth-place is Denny Hamlin scoring this victory. Only two and a half weeks removed from a torn ACL in his right knee, he somehow managed to score the victory at Chicagoland. After the race, he came into the media center and asked, “Show of hands, how many of you had me getting bounced out of this round?” About everyone raised their hands. I didn’t even have him advancing out of the Challenger Round with that ACL tear.
All in all, it was a good race to open the Chase. If there had been just a little more action, I would have put this race a spot or more higher on this list. Nevertheless, I can live with the myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway taking the number nine spot on my list.
Do you agree with my list so far? If not, what race should I have put in place of either or both these races? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below. I’ll be back tomorrow to give picks eight and seven.
