It was, for the most part, a race about nothing. This is not to say that Watkins Glen was boring, for it was actually one of those pleasant occurrences where we had an event that actually was entertaining enough to keep us watching. The damndest things can happen on a road course, and they did.
Jeff Gordon has had great success at Watkins Glen and in what is his last time running at the road course in upstate New York. Gordon has 4 wins, 6 top 5’s and an average finish of 14.8. Jeff was asked what the road courses meant to his career. “I think early on I just remember wanting to take on every challenge as a team that we possibly could to improve to be a bigger threat for the championship,” he said.
Still, rain at Watkins Glen means racing. Take off the slicks, replace them with rain tread, and off they go. There is a possibility of rain, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is among those who would not mind using the wipers. Of course, you just got to know that come Sunday the sun shall be shining.
If. We all have a closet full of “ifs” that we may ponder about. Take last Sunday for instance. If Kyle Busch had saved enough fuel, he may well have won his fourth straight race, moved into the Top 30 in points, and sat atop the season standings with five victories to his credit. But he did not, so he does not.
There were those who put on the fire suits, got to be among the big boys, but when it came time to go they might have been best suited to go down the road instead of the track. Instead of being competitors, they were lucky to be participants, saddled in entries that had no hope of being anywhere near the front.
New Hampshire is the next stop on the Chase tour, and if anyone needs to rewrite expectations it would be Aric Almirola and AJ Allmendinger. Both have not done well at Loudon in the past, though Almirola was fifth in the race 15 months ago and the Dinger has one Top Ten.
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.
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.
With drivers racing with heavy hearts following the tragic incident involving Tony Stewart and Sprint Car driver Kevin Ward, Jr. The world's best stock car drivers knew they had to put on a great show to allow the fans to forget about the events that occurred, even if it was for just a few hours.
Dale Earnhardt Jr is having a rather pleasant season thus far. On Sunday, he swept the season series at Pocono, upped his count to three wins this term, tops the standings, and is second only to Jeff Gordon in accumulated points. No bad at all.
