As I peer out my window, I see cloudy skies and snow upon the ground. Even for us in the Great White North, this sucks. Yet, for many NASCAR fans, the skies are blue, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and even that fat little mouse is eager to help Cinderelli build her dress. Life is perfect. Well, almost perfect. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his fourth of the season at Martinsville, but just one race too late to keep his title hopes alive.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the caution filled Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500 at Martinsville Speedway. The victory was Earnhardt's fourth of the year and it was an emotional one. Ten years ago a Hendrick company plane went down during the fall Martinsville weekend killing all on board including Ricky Hendrick and John Hendrick the son and brother of Earnhardt's car owner Rick Hendrick.
What a wonderful race we saw at Talladega on Sunday. It had visual excitement that can only be rivaled by Daytona. We had suspense, as we did not know who would continue in the Chase and who got their hearts broken right through to the final lap. It was everything we could have hoped it would be. Then Brad Keselowski won the damn race and ruined everything.
Tires, man. That was the story of the race at Fontana. If one was conservative in their set up, like those owned by Joe Gibbs, all was well. If not…well, they blew it.
The racing at Martinsville Speedway this weekend was a refreshing as a dip in a West Virginia lake in the month of February. The collective fan base woke up, dried itself off and became interested again. Funny how a short track does that.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver, Denny Hamlin, turns in a lap of 99.595 mph to set a new track record and score the Coors Light pole for the Goody’s 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Today’s record was the 18th new track record this season.
We waited with anticipation for the action, and Talladega once again delivered. Once again, we watched the cars (and trucks for those watching on Saturday) go flying around inches apart in aircraft formation, in wonder that they could pull this off lap after lap without it all going up in smoke and torn sheet metal. In the end, they could not avoid the unavoidable.
While everyone focused on the battle for the win at Martinsville, there was a team that quietly finished 16th and continued their steady climb up the standings. They are Germain Racing with driver, Casey Mears who scored his 4th top 16 finish of the year at the historic short track.
