Enough with the contrived fake news. No, I am not talking about folks who think their candidate was robbed for being of a certain gender, or obviously the victim of the actions of a foreign power, or that they lost to someone who just has to be Darth Vader incarnate.
Texas is next on the dance card this weekend, an apropos venue to hear about Bellator and Monster Energy getting together to present some pre-race smackdowns, some good ole fashioned ass whippin’s, some unscripted mayhem.
1. Brad Keselowski: Keselowski passed Kyle Busch with 43 laps and cruised to the win at Martinsville, earning his first win at the Virginia short track.
This weekend the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to Martinsville Speedway for the sixth race of the season. It’s the shortest track on the circuit and a favorite of both fans and drivers. But did you know it’s the only track that has hosted Cup races every year since the beginning of the Cup series in 1949?
The ratings are in. They continue to sink, with anything not being raced at Daytona all down. Daytona was great, the rest were okay. There used to be a time when okay was good enough.
Kyle Larson went back to his home state of California and won at Fontana. A win. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the 24-year old from Elk Grove is not perfect. Sure, he might be leading the standings, but perfection?
Despite placing fourth on Sunday, no Ricky Stenhouse Jr. No Dale Earnhardt Jr. Neither Austin Dillon or Ty Dillon. No Danica Patrick. A.J. Allmendinger was third at Daytona, outside the Top Twenty ever since. One can have the name, the equipment, the marketing, but results are what matters and for some those results just have not been there just yet.
Ryan Newman ended his winless drought at Phoenix International Raceway. Newman stayed out while most of the front runners pitted for two tires after Joey Logano blew a right front tire that brought out the final caution flag of the day with six laps remaining. Newman held off Kyle Larson on the two-lap overtime restart to win his first race since 2013 on Sunday in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Camping World 500.
You had better luck finding Nemo than Ryan Newman in Victory Lane in recent years. He was there for the first time since July 28, 2013 in Indianapolis. That was surprising enough.
Since joining RCR in 2014, Newman has made the playoffs a couple of times (2014, '15), with his '14 effort culminating in a narrow championship miss, finishing second to Kevin Harvick in the standings.
