Random Thoughts on the Auto Club 500 race
Posted By Paul on March 2, 2005
Maybe Fontana, California isn’t ready for 2 NASCAR races a year. FOX did their best not to really show it, but there were times that you couldn’t help but notice the many empty seats.
Kasey Kahne is having a rough go of it to start his sophomore season; I had expected him to be right in the battle for the win in both races. Hopefully, it’s just been a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But that Mountain Dew car was cool looking; hope they run those colors a lot, it’s certainly better than having 2 look-alike cars.
It figures, last week I was saying how this was going to be THE year for Dave Blaney….so this week he backs 2 cars into the wall. Hopefully he gets straightened out for Vegas and can have another strong showing.
What was up with Hendrick motors? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Hendrick have such poor performance from their engines. That late race black flag for Gordon put a hit on his points total.
Couldn’t help but notice how much Kurt Busch has matured over the last 2 years; in his post-race interview, he was asked about his obvious frustration with events in the final few laps and instead of saying something stupid (which he likely would have a couple years ago, he simply brushed it off as good hard racing, everyone doing an excellent job of what they needed to do. Spoken like a champion.
I really hated to hear of the passing of Paul Sawyer, former owner of the Richmond track, and a stalwart in NASCAR’s early days. What I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the articles, is their current family involvement in Virginia Motor Speedway, without a doubt, one of, if not THE best dirt-track facility in the country. I’ve been there a couple of times, met son Bill Sawyer, and everything about that track, from the Sawyers on down is First Class, all the way.
Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking that the crew swap at DEI was a terrible idea? Dale Earnhardt, Jr. just hasn’t been comfortable with this new team, and with Tony Eury Sr and Jr, it seemed like he was. True, they didn’t win the championship, but they were right up and you knew they were capable of it. I don’t sense that feeling at all with this new crew set-up.
Weekly DW rant - How many commercials can FOX run that feature DW? It seemed to me that every other commercial had him in it. And I sure wish someone would tell him to either keep his yap shut until he knows what the real situation is, or else to keep it shut after it has been shown - yet again - that he was wrong. But no, ol’ DW is never wrong, instead we get, “I was just thinking that, before you said it…” Give me a break DW, you’re a bigger jerk now than when you were driving.
And finally, because I can’t help myself, for real racing action, you can’t help but think that Rockingham was a heck of a lot better than the freight train parade we had to endure on Sunday.
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