Gordon wins again!! The consistency and
\npatience of a winning team continues to shine through as Gordon powered the
\nnumber 24 to the front to win the inaugural event in Kansas this past Sunday.
\nThe race was red flagged with ten laps to go, and when the green flag was
\nthrown, Gordon took the lead and was able to hold off a last minute charge by
\nthe second place finisher, Ryan Newman. Gordon dedicated the race to Jason Dahl,
\ncaptain of United Flight #93 that crashed in rural Pennsylvania on September
\n11th. Jeff, Bobby Labonte, and many of the drivers had the opportunity to spend
\nsome time with Captain Dahl’s son, Matt earlier on race day. Matt’s favorite
\ndriver is Jeff Gordon, so who better to win!<\/p>\n
The Dupont Chevrolet team has
\n"championship" written all over it, the confidence shows, and with
\neight races remaining, a 222 point lead, I can’t see them losing. This
\norganization is just plain good.<\/p>\n
Rounding out the top ten were; Ricky Rudd
\n3rd, Rusty Wallace 4th, Sterling Marlin 5th, Mark Martin 6th, Robert Pressley
\n7th, Tony Stewart 8th, Kurt Busch 9th, and Dave Blaney 10th.<\/p>\n
Rusty Wallace led the most laps for the
\nday and appeared well on his way for the win, but a late race penalty for
\nspeeding on pit road caused him to have to restart at the tail end of the cars
\non the lead lap, and there just wasn’t enough time to make it back to the front.
\nHe wound up finishing fourth. Rusty got "caught" while trying to win
\nthe race off pit road to come out in front of Ricky Rudd. It was frustrating to
\nsay the least, but its frustrating for us fans also, who want to see him win, to
\nsee him make a mistake like that – remember last year?<\/p>\n
As somewhat typical with a new track, the
\nrace had its share of accidents – 13 yellow flags were thrown with 70 laps run
\nunder caution, it left a lot of teams frustrated at the end of the day, to say
\nthe least.<\/p>\n
On lap one with everyone scrambling to try
\nto get to the bottom, Stacy Compton squeezed Casey Atwood, who was running on
\nthe inside, causing Atwood to spin and hit the wall collecting John Andretti in
\nthe process. Frustration mounted for the Evernham crew, after a great run by
\nBill Elliott (leading 33 laps) was ruined by engine failure late in the race.
\nTough day for that team.<\/p>\n
Ward Burton also had another tough day, as
\nJerry Nadeau ran into the back of him causing him to spin and hit the wall, and
\ndoing major damage once again to the number 22. Ward’s disappointment was very
\napparent as we saw him throw his glove at Nadeau when he went by him on the
\ntrack. Burton later said it was not so much he was mad at Jerry, it was dealing
\nwith the fact that this was the 11th time this season he was taken out of the
\nrace with irreparable damage to his car. That would cause anyone to get ticked
\noff, and we hope things improve during the remaining races for this team.<\/p>\n
Johnny Benson was running in second place,
\nlooking good, but on lap 184 he blew the engine. Dale Jr. was running in third
\nat the time and did a great job of handling his car with oil all over the
\nwindshield, but with 39 laps to go, Earnhardt hit the wall hard and was out of
\nthe race.<\/p>\n
Matt Kenseth, the car really good, running
\nin fourth place, blew a right front tire, hit the wall, and sustained major
\ndamage.<\/p>\n
Dale Jarrett was taken to an area
\nhospital, later released, with a diagnosis of a mild concussion, sustained when
\nhe and Bobby Labonte touched, resulting in Jarrett hitting the outside wall hard
\non lap 247. Labonte had run up on the lapped car of Ricky Craven, with Jarrett
\nup on the outside of him, and as Jarrett came down across in front of him,
\ncaused the front of the 18 to hit the back of the 88 and sent him spinning.
\nBobby later said he was just not able to get out of it in time to prevent the
\nhit, and he was mainly concerned about Dale.<\/p>\n
So needless to say, it was a rough one for
\nmany of the teams. Hopefully, the track will be "broken in" more the
\nnext time the Cup cars race there.<\/p>\n
Other notes:<\/p>\n
Hats off to Jeff Green for the win in the
\nBusch race on Saturday. That’s two for two, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it
\nbecomes three this week in Charlotte. We may actually have a points race in that
\ndivision – well, maybe\u2026.<\/p>\n
Just reading that Jeremy Mayfield is out
\nof the number 12 car immediately. That’s been coming for awhile, but now we can
\nspeculate as to where he is going to go for next year.<\/p>\n
Let’s see, Jimmy Spencer is not returning
\nto the number 26, and rumor has it he may go to the 12 or 33. So then, Nemechek,
\nwhere’s he going? Well, rumor has it that it may be with the Petty team, or
\npossibly the number 31, as we have not had the official word that Robby Gordon
\nhas that ride.<\/p>\n
Kevin LePage is out of the Kodak number 4
\n(also effective immediately), with Bobby Hamilton Jr. picking up the ride this
\nweek in Charlotte. Mike Skinner has supposedly signed for that ride next year,
\nbut it hasn’t been made official yet as far as I know. And there was speculation
\nabout Skinner going to the 77?<\/p>\n
Who knows – we’ll just have to wait to see
\nhow it all shakes out. I have only one thought on this whole thing. I think they
\nshould put someone really good in the other Childress car. That’s all I’m going
\nto say.<\/p>\n
This week we move on to one of my favorite
\ntracks, Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte. My prediction — one of the Gibbs
\nteam’s will win.<\/p>\n
That’s all for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gordon wins again!! The consistency and patience of a winning team continues to shine through as Gordon powered the number 24 to the front to win the inaugural event in Kansas this past Sunday. The race was red flagged with ten laps to go, and when the green flag was thrown, Gordon took the lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}