This week, the Crappafoni Pictures crew is in Thunder Valley at the Bullring, aka Bristol Motor Speedway for this week's serving of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, southern BBQ-style, and washed down with plenty of NOS Energy Drink. Enjoy!
THE GOOD
Kyle Busch: as the race winner, he gets first billing. He was dominant when he needed to be. He led the last 25 laps of the race in becoming the new master of Bristol, sweeping the NNS and Sprint Cup races. He becomes the fourth different winner of the season. Good job Kyle!
Carl Edwards: he won the pole and looked strong throughout the race, and for awhile it appeared he would get his second win this season, and fourth in the last six races. He gains a spot in the standings, going from third to second. An extra Good for running the fastest lap of the entire race.
Jimmie Johnson: he led the most laps in the race, and was in position to win his second consecutive spring race, but a bad final pit stop put him in the bottom half of the top 10. That bad stop cost him any chance to win. One small consolation, he's going home next week to Fontana, where he is dominant.
Matt Kenseth: he took a page out of Kevin Harvick's book as the field asked, "Where did HE come from?" Although he was in the top 15 for much of the race, he wasn't a factor until the end, when he came from seemingly nowhere to finish fourth. He never led, but the 17 crew made his car better as the race went on. Kudos to the crew for getting the job done.
Paul Menard: at the Chase, he finally began to show his potential as a driver, and had good results despite less than stellar equipment. Since joining RCR, he's finally starting to put it together with stellar equipment and getting good runs on a consistent basis. The Menard/Slugger Labbe pairing of driver and crew chief is really paying dividends this year. For the first time in his career, he LOOKED like a front-running driver. He led very early in the race and was in the top 10 for pretty much the whole race. He's currently carrying the banner for RCR at sixth place in the points standings. Good run Paul!
Kevin Harvick: he looked like he had a car that could contend for the win, as he was especially good on short runs, and Bristol always seems to have a late race caution to set up a short run. Happy wasn't so happy late in the race when he checked up to avoid a loose Kasey Kahne and Mark Martin plowed into his left rear quarter panel, spinning out Harvick. He restarted 17th and fought all the way back to finish sixth, just behind his teammate Paul Menard. He moves up five spots in the standings, from 20th to 15th. After a very slow start at Daytona, where he blew an engine early and finished 42nd, he's looking like the Happy of last season, when he was consistently ripping off top 5's and top 10's.
Honorable Mention: Kurt Busch, Kasey Kahne, Greg Biffle, and Ryan Newman. (ANOTHER top 10 in the Tornados Chevrolet for Newman!)
Honorable Mention #2: Jon Jones (UFC fighter)--he foiled a robbery several hours before his championship fight in UFC 127. This has nothing to do with NASCAR, but Mr. Jones deserves kudos for foiling a robbery. (It did have a chase, where Jones chased down the robber on foot and held him down until police arrived.)
THE BAD
Michael McDowell: he was the first to start and park, running 35 laps and declaring himself done for the day. He drew the short stick this week at the start and parkers' meeting in the Todd Bodine Meeting Room.
Jimmie Johnson's crew: they cost him a win, plain and simple, with that horrible final pit stop. Although Johnson made up a spot on the track, it wasn't enough. Give Kyle Busch a lead of that size and he'll take advantage of it. One of his crew members slipped on that final stop, costing him a few spots.
THE UGLY
Clint Bowyer: he must have felt like a ping-pong ball today, with him slapping the wall a couple of times. He was put out of his misery late in the race when his engine blew as a result of the nose of his car blocking the radiator and preventing air from getting in and cooling the engine.
Ol' DW: shillin' for Toyota again!!! DW, you seem like a good person at heart, and you're very likeable, but your shilling for Toyota is growing tiresome. I know your brother owns a couple of Cup teams and they run Toyotas, but enough already!
Those are my nominees for the race. Feel free to come in with yours!
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8 comments:
whoever would have thought that Menard would be 'the man' at RCR this year....he's been great!
Tez, I certainly didn't! I thought he would improve with better equipment, but not to this extent. I look for Menard and Harvick to work together at Talladega like Harvick and Jamie Mac did last spring.
I've got a bad for ya jon...
How about JJ? At the end of the race he chose the points over the win... He had both Carl and Kyle right in front of him and stated that he hung back hoping those two would do the paybacks thing and he'd just waltz to the win by default... Well it didn't happen, and we witnessed another symptom to NASCAR's popularity problems. The dude took the easy way out rather than going for the throat (or the win as the case may be)... I don't think you'd have ever seen that 20 years ago... So JJ gets his points, he's real smart, and the fans, who are always hoping for that magic moment, got vanilla...
Thanks jon!
Ugly to Fox for not showing ANY of the driver intro songs - I dont know if this is a copyright problem or what but last year fans were up in arms about not seeing the pre race activities at Bristol and are again this year. I'd much rather see driver intro's like they used to show than those talking heads predicting whats gonna happen out on the track (and never does...)
I'd give an ugly to the size of the crowd. And, to Fox for trying to say there were 130,000... 120,000, .. or "well over a hundred thousand" at the track. The place holds 140,000, and it looked slightly over half full.
DW sounded like Kyle Busch's cheerleader at the end of that race. No wonder he said he was completely exhausted afterward.
If I tried to rob a store and had a UFC fighter chasing me, I'd probably just go and put the stuff back. That guy didn't stand a chance.
Hey Dwindy!
JJ IMO will regret going for the win when the Chase comes around and he doesn't have those bonus points for winning the race, particularly if he loses the title by 3 points or less.
Hey Kristen!
I didn't see the prerace or anything leading up to the race. I wish they'd have shown it--Brian Vickers' song was, "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" by Shania Twain. (JJ picked it out for him at Vickers' request.) I'd have DIED LAUGHING had I been able to see it!! I very seldom see the talking heads--DW shills for Toyota and basically takes over the prerace show.
Gene, good call. I think you're being generous when you said the stands were half full. I'd say closer to a third full. There were a LOT of empty seats masquerading as fans.
Brent, I forgot to clarify the foiled robbery. Someone tried to steal either a car or the contents inside. Jones was on his way to a lake to meditate and he happened on the scene. (This was the morning of his fight against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua for the UFC light-heavyweight title.) Jones shouted at him, the dude took off with Jones in pursuit and Jones eventually caught him. Jones is the younger brother of Baltimore Ravens DT Arthur Jones.)
Well it was a nice quiet race. Kudos to Kyle for out running every one else. It was certainly not what I expected.
I did notice a few seats were empty which was a big surprise. Perhaps NASCAR should put up full sized manequins in the empty seats to make it look like a sold out crowd. That would justify their claims of having over 100,000 people in the stands.
For some reason, the races so far this year don't seem to get my attention.
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