After taking a splash of fuel with seven laps to go, Johnny Sauter would beat his ThorSport teammate Matt Crafton back to the line to score the victory in the Careers for Veterans 200 at Michigan International Speedway. It marks Sauter's first victory of the season and his 10th victory of his career. It also marked the first race that Sauter had Jeff Hansley on the pit box.
This weekend in Michigan Gordon broke the track record in the final session of qualifying with a lap of 206.558 miles per hour. The speed is the seventh fastest qualifying speed in NASCAR history and the only one not on a super speedway. It is Gordon’s sixth pole award at Michigan and the 76th of his storied career.
The news of late has been enough to make a clown cry. In fact, we just lost one of our most treasured entertainers, by his own hand. We have the tragedy involving Kevin Ward Jr. and Tony Stewart still on our minds. We have Martin Truex Jr.’s girlfriend facing health challenges.
As the NASCAR touring series rolls into the central part of the United States I can’t help but reflect on last weekend. First, I’m going to discuss NASCAR racing and not opine about incidents that happened away from NASCAR sanctioned tracks.
The references to the “hot head” Tony Stewart really burn me, as though his past demonstrations of temperament have any more to do with the events of last weekend than whether or not he takes a morning tinkle upon awakening or if his facial stubble is the result of a poor razor.
1. Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Earnhardt finished 11th at Watkins Glen after an untimely late caution cost him any chance of winning. He passed Jeff Gordon to take over the lead in the Sprint Cup points standings, and now leads Gordon by four.
NASCAR’s great redemption story of recent memory came to a close with AJ Allmendinger’s first career Sprint Cup win at Watkins Glen on Sunday. With the close of that story comes the beginning of another; his quest to find consistency as a proven winner.
Things are not rosy at Roush Fenway Racing. Lately, they’ve lost their top driver to apparently Joe Gibbs Racing, and today they lost 3M as a primary sponsor on the No. 16 Ford of Greg Biffle. The performance has been putrid at best all year even though Carl Edwards has two wins, but Biffle and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. have not had the performance that a top team should have.
As the NASCAR community mourned the death of sprint car driver Kevin Ward Jr., which led to Tony Stewart’s decision not to participate at Watkins Glen, the racing did go on at one of the sport’s more challenging road courses.
Watkins Glen might have hosted the action on Sunday, but it was Saturday night at the Canandaigua Motorsports Park a hundred miles away that drew our attention.
The road to NASCAR’s championship runs through Charlotte Motor Speedway this October, as the sport’s top drivers return to the track’s historic 1.5-mile oval for Bank of America 400 weekend.
One of the biggest races in NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship playoffs will also get a major spotlight on FOX, as the 15th annual NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway will air on FOX adjacent to a FOX football broadcast on Sunday, Oct. 4.
Austin Cindric and the No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse team delivered one of their strongest performances of the season Sunday afternoon at Kansas Speedway
Josh Berry and the No. 21 Menards/Dutch Boy team have regularly found themselves in contention for top-five and top-10 finishes, including a strong stretch since the start of the NASCAR Cup Series Chase.
