(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Tom Boland,CP)
Before I get into some thoughts on this past weekends first Busch series race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, let me first state something, I am not a fan of Robby Gordon at all and I can’t stand him at all, plus he let’s his short temper and hitting people out of the way get the best of him and that’s it.
With that said, I will try and come up with reasonal points about just what should have happened compared to what did happen and as a huge fan of NASCAR, I am disappointed in this Montreal race and there is a lot of blame and wrong calls to go around. If you fast forward to the last four laps of this race since the first 70 laps was just a lot of give and take. With 4 laps to go, Ambrose was leading coming to green and going through turns 1 and down through turn 2 and then Robby Gordon hit Ambrose in the right corner backend just as they went out of frame to come up to make the past on Ambrose, Ambrose then either didn’t see the caution or he decided to make a move of his own and hit Gordon spinning him out and by this time the field was under yellow because of what happen in turn 2 with a huge pileup, going down into turn 2, Scott Pruett squeezed Harvick out and when he came back up, he hit Pruett spinning him out as a result causing the pileup. Lots of cars spun, it became a total nightmare.
First I believe Robby Gordon once he spun should have been put back in second spot after he should have blended in behind or in front the #77 and than ask NASCAR to put him back in second with promission to rejoin second spot , but all bets were off when Gordon raced up under caution breaking the first rule and than hitting Ambrose twice. As a result he should have gone back to 12th spot and had to race back up. Gordon could have won this race, but screwed himself. NASCAR made a error in letting Gordon stay in second and we all know what Gordon was going to do next, spinning Ambrose and going on to his self-thing victory that was not. For Ambrose, I don’t know about that spin out of Gordon, he might have been wrong too. But with Ambrose, when he got spun out, NASCAR costed him his first victory hands-down. From there Harvick took advantage of all these problems and won the first Montreal race. Congrats to Kevin Harvick for his victory in Canada, he was in the right place at the right time.
Now as a result NASCAR has laid into Robby Gordon, first Sunday morning suspending him from that days Pocono 500 race, perfect call, Harvick did something like that years ago in a truck race at Martinsville and the next day he was suspended from that Cup race, right call, no doubt. Even more… Tuesday afternoon, NASCAR handed down the second set of penalties with fining him $35,000, placed on probation till years end and a warning that reads (From NASCAR.com article: “The fine and probation also carried the stipulation that if, during the remaining NASCAR events in 2007, there is another action by Gordon that is deemed by NASCAR officials as detrimental to stock-car racing or to NASCAR, or is disruptive to the orderly conduct of an event, he will be suspended indefinitely from NASCAR.” (Read More…)
All in all, NASCAR made errors in Montreal with the lengths of caution periods, not red flagging and putting Gordon back before final restart and not throwing the caution after he spun Ambrose and put Ambrose up. Gordon made the error of racing up under caution, spinning out Ambrose and not doing what NASCAR told him to do. Ambrose shouldn’t have spun Gordon, but I don’t know the events of what he know.
Bottom Line, there were a lot of errors everywhere in Montreal, the stands were packed, but the race was not a success, see yeah next year and I hope everyone learned something. BTW: I totally agree with NASCARs penalties on Robby Gordon.
