This 500 miler had its fair share of drama, nothing mind you like next week’s race at Bristol will have, but it did having some in many different aspects.
The sponsorship debate continued with Robby Gordon and Jeff Burtons cars with first, Robby Gordon having Motorola on his car and after being told on Friday to remove the decal because it had to do with Verizon Wireless, NASCAR on Sunday then told Gordon he could have the Motorola back only as its Digital Audio Player. The other sponsorship problem with Cingular now the new AT&T, AT&T is sueing NASCAR because of it. Who knows…Picture on the right (Image Credit: Robby Gordon's Website.)
While watching this race, I was impressed with Juan Montoya, the rookie (at least on ovals), his performance of running most of the day in the top 5/top 10 shows that he can adapt to just about any type of track. The only problem Montoya really had all day long was with a lap car holding him up, of course that was Jeff Gordon, other than that Montoya brought it home in the 5th position.
On incident that really caught my eye and I still don’t understand what really happened was on lap 231 with Biffle, Vickers and Reutimann. While going down into turn 3 with Vickers up high, Biffle was below him and Reutimann came up on the highside behind Vickers and after watch the video a couple more times and listening to the inside Nextel Cup crew, Biffle looks to be coming up to enter the corner and Reutimann was doing the opposite coming down to end and contact was made sending all three cars into the wall with Kasey Kahne having no were to go and getting into it.
After the race, Biffle said it was Reutimann's fault. On Inside Nextel Cup, Biffle was on and at the end of the talking, its was a racing deal and nothing more. I agree with that one in that it was a racing deal.
Coming right down to it, the final caution raised a lot of people in the fact that FOX didn’t show the debris and only said Debris in turn 3.Damn, another phantom caution that had a direct impact on the out come of the race. I have to say, I am not happy with seeing phantom cautions happen at all, it’s the television broadcast’s job to show the reason for the caution and if its debris, find it and if not found, tell us that they couldn’t find the debris. In that case, fans will say its phantom caution and that’s that.
There’s no doubt that this was a phantom caution which means no debris shown, its phantom. So if NASCAR did throw a it, why? I agree with Dave Despain on this in that it wasn’t thrown to help Johnson/Hendrick Motorsports, rather to get the side-by-side finish and not just have another fuel ecomony race.
In the end, even after the Stewart-Johnson fight ending with 2 laps to go with Stewart into the wall and Johnson going on to victory, this weekend’s racing was just your average race and like the title says, its just good racing. See Yeah!
