Atlanta Motor Speedway - Kobalt Tools 500

Danni

RESULTS
1. Kyle Busch
3. Dale Jr.
9. Brian
11. Kurt
17. Casey (1LD)
20. David (2LD)
21. Martin (2LD)
26. DJ (3LD)
30. Michael (4LD)

Junior took full advantage of his 2nd place qualifying effort and passed teammate Jeff Gordon after the green dropped. He set a blistering pace that pretty much stunk up the show for the first 30 or so laps. Other cars were not having such a good time, including Michael who brushed the wall. When the first caution came out for debris on Lap 38, only twenty cars were on the lead lap - but our Brian got the free pass.

After the yellow, Kyle Busch took over the dominance from Junior. Teams continued to struggle with the new car combined with the hard tires. David was relatively horrendous in the beginning of runs but would get better as time went by (or at least get better than drivers he was fighting for the free pass). But by the time he'd get into position to get the Lucky Dog, the leader put more cars a lap down far ahead of him.

As a rule, the race ran green. Yellows came out occasionally for debris or harmless spins (except Elliott Sadler's third and final, in which he hit the wall and really put himself out of his own misery). Brian got another free pass mid-race and afterward showed what he had. As a result of his great finish, he is virtually locked in the top-35 when the points shift after Bristol.

David's day was another California repeat - battle somewhat in the beginning, get trapped a lap down and run top-10 times at the end. It was annoying, especially at one point after a yellow pit stop. At the time, David was only one lap down and the crew tried to rip off an awesome stop to get him out first. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so well. In a frenzy, David ended up running Michael out into the grass. Michael then proceeded to run into the back of the #00 in a nonappreciative way. Now, the #55 was two laps down! They didn't show it on the broadcast (Shawn let out some angry words over the radio) but it was aired on This Week In NASCAR on Monday and it didn't make me too happy, especially since Michael seemed to still act miffed about it. To add to the irritation, the #28 and #38 that lined up in front of David on that restart were two or more laps down and marred him back in traffic as the #2 and #5 (cars he was fighting with) drove away into the sunset. UUUGH!! But at the end, David and his team did a good job and got a sufficient finish that put a cushion between them and 35th in points. He even managed to pass Martin late in the race to be the first car two laps down. Impressive!

Michael and DJ had more handling issues, though DJ salvaged a decent day. It was pretty depressing, considering they are playing with fire near 35th in the standings. It's also causing a lot of apprehension for another driver - David. After Bristol, he's in the #44 with, according to Michael, the #44 owner points. So if DJ falls out and David stays in, David has to deal with qualifying for races again while Michael McDowell gets a free ride. This whole topic makes me furious but that's another blog, I guess.

Casey and Kurt had days similar to David, but Kurt was lucky enough to get the free pass and advance his finish. Dale Jr. was the best of everybody, though as I'd feared his performance sagged slightly at the end and allowed Kyle Busch to steam off with Toyota's first Cup win. I was so happy for Kyle! He's an awesome guy who deserves success. Toyota should be proud to have someone like him. Kyle's burnout was excellent and his excitement was contagious.

The conclusion of the race ended with smoke in two others fashions - Tony Stewart and his coinciding sour attitude. At the start of the race weekend, he'd said that the tires were too hard and it was going to be difficult to drive on them. This is a result of everyone cording tires at the Atlanta test last year, so Goodyear naturally brings a harder, safer tire. To their credit, not a single tire failed during the race. But I guess Tony doesn't give a crap about safety. Even though he finished second, he still found reason to not only complain like a baby, but to personally insult Goodyear employees and threaten to go home and remove all Goodyear tires on his vehicles so he could replace them with Firestones. In the mandatory post-race press session, he continued his whining, constantly reiterating "like Junior said" as if to condone his nasty views because he supposedly had the 100% support of the sport's most popular driver (I counted at least 6 times). Which, interestingly enough, he did not because Junior never dropped to Tony's level of bad-mouthing Goodyear employees.

Okay. So the tires were too hard. I think everyone got that point. However, it was how you dealt with them. Funny, Kyle Busch is commonly described as a selfish brat, yet he handled the situation like a man. "I'm going to say that I didn't like them," he said. "But I just went out there and we all had the same tire. They're going to pay somebody to win the race. And so that's what I focused on, just trying to go out there and be the one that they were going to pay to win the race. I just drove the thing to the best of my ability." Perfect! Tony acted like he was singled out and given the worst tires. HELLO, EVERYONE HAD THE SAME TIRES!!! And this is coming from someone who blew a tire at Las Vegas and hit the wall hard enough to cause his lower extremities to tingle?!

Jess and I came up with a couple of theories for Tony's outburst (besides the typical, "That's just Tony" that most of his so-called fans use to explain all of his embarrassing behavior because they can't come up with anything convincing). The first is that he's on probation. Tony seems to never really be happy unless he is attacking someone. He can't go after a driver right now, so he goes after the easiest thing to blame for all your problems - Goodyear. The second and probably most intriguing is the fact that Tony is humiliated that he did not get Toyota's first win, but furthermore was defeated by his upstart teammate! Tony's so used to being Number One at JGR so this must have hurt him pretty bad. Perfect way to remove attention from this fact and a NASCAR milestone? Make a big stink, a technique that is so becoming of Tony.

Plain and simple, Tony got support only about the tires being too hard, but definitely not for his scorn for Goodyear. In fact, several drivers said that he went too far. None of these drivers seemed surprised about this fact.

Just... grow up, Tony. You don't need to act like a baby to get your word out. I really hope his young fans don't start acting like him or this world's in for big trouble.



#00 Quotes of the Race:
(A caution comes out for debris)

David: "WHERE? Where, where, where, I don't see anything!" (pause) "There's nothing, there's nothing there!"

Shawn: "They're saying below the white line getting into (Turn) 3."

Ryan: "We see it. Your dad sees it. We're okay, we'll just tighten you up."

You can tell David's been bitten by debris cautions before when battling for the free pass!

POINT STANDINGS
1. Kyle Busch
6. Dale Jr. -134
9. Brian -174
10. Kurt -187
11. Martin -194
27. David -307 (+78 in front of 36th)
30. Casey -334 (+51)
32. DJ -350 (+35)
33. Michael -362 (+23)