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Racin' With Russ
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 9:44 AM EDT
Toyota continues to dominate at Daytona
By RUSSELL SCHMIDT
It doesn't seem to matter what adversity Kyle Busch faces during a race, the young Toyota driver manages to rally back for a decent finish or in Saturday night's case in Daytona, rack up yet another win for the non-crowd favorite.
Busch had another problem with the power steering, similar to his circumstance earlier in the season at Bristol.
The big difference on Saturday night was despite falling back to the rear of the pack, he was able to pass Jeff Gordon and hold off a hard-charging Carl Edwards in a green-white-checker finish to claim his sixth Cup win of the season and 10th career checkers.
I don't know about you, but the dominance of the Toyota teams in NASCAR is wearing a little thin on me. With drafting help or not, they manage to get out front. I still don't understand why more of the non-Toyota teams are not jumping up and down in NASCAR's face to complain about the visible horsepower difference, especially on the big tracks. Most post-race dyno reports indicate a 15-30 horsepower advantage.
The overall race was filled with wrecks and several leaders out front, including polesitter Paul Menard, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (led the most laps) and Carl Edwards among others.
Jeff Gordon led many of the final laps, driving a tight line to the bottom of the track. Inexplicably, with a handful of laps remaining and Busch all over him, Gordon drifted to the top of the track, seemingly testing the waters up high ... bad move. Busch's Toyota zoomed by with Gordon later stating that was an obvious mistake on his part.
A green-white-checker set up a Busch, Gordon, Edwards lineup. Busch got a good jump; Gordon drifted down the track just a bit; Edwards tapped him around and into 31st place.
The rest of the pack zoomed around the big track until all heck broke loose behind the leaders. Edwards had pulled alongside Busch, but when series officials watched the tapes, Busch was out front by a nose.
The final results for the top five included Edwards in second, followed by Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch and David Regan.
The latest Cup results has Busch out front by 182 over Dale Jr. and 202 over Jeff Burton.
The Nationwide race on Friday night at Daytona saw more fast Toyotas up front with Denny Hamlin coming out of nowhere to claim his latest win, this one over Kyle Busch, Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer and Brad Keselowski. Bowyer now leads Keselowski by 202 and Edwards by 218. In case you've lost track, that's 13 Nationwide wins (out of 19 run) for the Japanese manufacturer. Is there an advantage somewhere? You bet. What do you think? Drop me a line.
Open Wheel News - The Indy Racing League race at Watkins Glen saw one of the biggest messes in IRL history. Cars were spinning out and hitting each other during the pace laps, and not just the likes of Milka Duno and A.J. Foyt IV, but the talents of series points leader Scott Dixon and Ryan Briscoe! Then, just when things couldn't get any weirder, Danica Patrick nearly hit three crew men when she lost control of her car on pit lane! This further proves what I've been saying all along, she can't drive a nail ... only now I can say she can't drive on or off the track.
When all of the craziness settled down and the smoke cleared, first-time winner Ryan-Hunter-Reay took the checkers in front of Darren Manning and Tony Kanaan.
Across the pond, the Formula One race in England saw the most spinning racers I've ever seen in any race, let alone an F-1 run.
Almost every driver spun at least once or in the case of Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, some four times! At the end of the race, the sun finally broke through with Lewis Hamilton the winner in front of Nick Heidfeld and Rubens Barrichello. The latest results has a three-way tie at the front between Hamilton, Massa and Kimi Raikkonen.
From Rumorville - Out of the rumormill and into reality is Mark Martin being appointed as driver of the Hendrick No. 5 car full-time in 2009 and a part-time gig for 2010. I know, you're saying, I thought Mark wasn't going to run a full-time schedule anymore and you'd be right ... ordinarily. Only, this deal was too good to let slip for the wiley veteran. After all, here's a guy that's been around a long time and one of the true consummate professionals without a title. He'll have one more shot and what better place than a Hendrick car with what has turned out to be the star-studded team of the decade. Think about it, four-time champ Jeff Gordon, two-time champ Jimmie Johnson, fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. and veteran Martin ... wow! Can it all work? We'll see next year.
Did you know how close the standings are in the race for the Chase after the Coke Zero 400? Kenseth is up to ninth, which is amazing considering not so long ago, he was mired down in 22nd. Bowyer is only 10 points away from falling out and Stewart is only two points ahead of Kevin Harvick for the final spot. Very close stuff!
That's it for this week. Next week's RWR will review the Cup and Nationwide results from Chicagoland and more racing news from around the globe.
Questions? Comments? Contact Russ at racinwithruss@comcast.net
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