Saturday night's race at Richmond was not just about the Busch/Earnhardt incident, there were other things going on too. As much as we have been caught up in the controversy that is Kyle Busch and what he did or did not deliberately do to Dale Jr, there were 41 other cars out on the track too - each with their own stories.
Two such stories are centred around Michael Waltrip/Casey Mears and Denny Hamlin.
Michael Waltrip was riding around minding his own business when he came upon Casey Mears. Michael then started to pass Casey on the outside coming out of the turn down the stretch. Once Mikey got almost 1/2 a car length on the 5 car, Casey moved up the track pinching Mikey against the wall as well as sending himself into the wall too.
Once both drivers got their cars pointed in the right direction Mikey then hammered the gas and proceeded to push Mears around the track, despite the fact that Mears had his brakes on at the time, he eventually ended up into the wall. Mikey effectively ended Mears' night as well.
NASCAR parked Mikey for the rest of the night. Expect fines to be handed out to Mikey and his organization later this week.
Although Mikey is justified in his anger, his actions are not justifiable. I think NASCAR did the right thing.
Let's hope that NASCAR continues to police the drivers like this in the future.
Personally, I think Mikey's beef is more with Mears' spotter and not Mears himself, but who am I?
Now let's move onto Hamlin.
Hamlin had the car to beat on Saturday - everyone else was just racing for second - until he had a tire going down and then it all went south for him.
Hamlin tried to ride it out, and hopping for the caution flag that never came. In an effort to stay on the lead lap Hamlin 'parked' his car with its expired tire on the front stretch almost under the flag stand trying to draw out the caution flag, which he did.
Don't you think what he did was just little too obvious? Yep, NASCAR thought so too and held him for 2 laps.
Much has been said that Denny did that so that Kyle would have a shot at winning the race because he would then be right up on Jr's bumper on the restart instead of almost a full straightaway back.
O.K., I concede that it is certainly plausible that is what his intention was, but I don't think so. His intentions were more self-serving in my opinion - he wanted to stay on the lead lap so he could still have a shot at winning the race, not his teammate Kyle Busch.
And before you all start sounding off, Denny is not the first driver to do this sort of thing and he won't be the last. For example, few years ago Dale Jr spun himself out at Bristol to stay on the lead lap, and Robby Gordon threw debris out of his car to get a caution in a race at Atlanta back in 2006. There are more, but those were the tow that came to mind first.
Before you take off, why don't you check out my newest blog "1957 Chevy 'Black Widow' Stock Car"? I will be updating it at least once a week until it is finished, then I hope it will become an information/link hub for fans of that legendary race car.
If you have anything to contibute to this new blog please let me know, as I am willing to work with you to get this blog as accurate as possible. I want this thing to be so accurate that if someone were to build a 'Black Widow' clone using my info that anyone looking at it would be hard pressed to prove it was a clone. Thanks.
by 4ever3 on May 5, 2008 11:31 PM EDT
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