With military tributes abounding and NASCAR patriotism at its best, here is what was surprising and not surprising from the 55th annual running of the sport’s longest race, the Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Kurt Busch attempted to complete “the double” this weekend – the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600. That’s 1100 miles of racing in one day on two tracks that are 575 miles apart, not to mention the fact that it is also in two very different types of race cars.
At the end of the 2013 season, Kurt Busch left Furniture Row Racing and headed over to “greener” pastures – Stewart-Haas Racing. After a thorough search, Furniture Row named Martin Truex Jr. as the new driver of the No. 78.
Come Sunday, Kurt Busch will join John Andretti, Robby Gordon, and his boss Tony Stewart as the only NASCAR drivers to complete the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. Kurt Busch will start the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500 from the 12th position.
Josh Wise got in the Sprint All-Star race, and at least managed to still be running at the end. His sponsor, Dogecoin, got all sorts of publicity, and Danica Patrick, Kyle Larson, and Austin Dillon got screwed.
There are three major stars in NASCAR’s constellation of drivers. They are simply called Jimmie, Junior, and Jeff, and few could argue that this trio has shone the brightest. Jimmie Johnson has six championships, including five in a row.
Surprising: Weird and freaky things continue to happen at NASCAR races and the Kansas race was no exception. The lights went dark on the back stretch, the speedy dry truck lost a gear, and the car that was ‘Freaky Fast’, starting from the pole with a new track record, just could not pull off the victory, coming in second instead.
There are things in life that just irritate a person. There are calls for me to worry about man-made global warming when I got snow falling outside in the month of May. There are three hours of television devoted to a two-minute horse race. There are entertaining races from Talladega, with big names leading, big names wrecking, only to have the thing won by Denny Hamlin.
A guy grabs you and pushes you around. The universally accepted response is a punch to the other guy’s head. My dad taught me that, and so I taught my sons. It is a simple case of cause and effect, you push to start a confrontation and a punch usually will end it.
Gordon led 173 of 400 laps at Richmond, but his quest for his first win of the season fell short. He finished second behind Joey Logano after a spirited four-car battle for the win during the final laps. Gordons leads the Sprint Cup points standings, five ahead of Matt Kenseth.