After a fourth turn spin out on lap 180, Kurt Busch came back to lead for 111
\nlaps and held of a hard-charging Johnny Benson to pick up his second win of the
\nseason at the Old Dominion 500 in Martinsville, Virginia. Busch also made the
\nrecord books at this speedway starting from the 36th position to gain the
\nvictory. Previously the farthest starting position for a winner was 24th.<\/p>\n
JB was hungry for the win, but in Busch’s own words;<\/p>\n
"Nobody can be hungrier than I am. This is sweet. This is Winston Cup.
\nThis is racing with the best of the best. Racing with Johnny Benson at the end
\nis no different than racing with a Dale Jarrett or a Jeff Gordon or a Dale
\nEarnhardt that used to pressure you hard. It was a great race, a great ride for
\nus and it’s just great that Martinsville puts on good shows like this all the
\ntime. With the grooming of the race track, it didn’t turn out as well as
\neverybody though it would, but it provided a second groove. If you could run on
\nthe bottom, you could run on the top. It made for an interesting race on a
\nshort-half mile like this," said Busch.<\/p>\n
Johnny Benson’s second place finish made this his sixth top-ten finish for
\nthe 2002 season. This was also his best finish in fourteen races at Martinsville
\nSpeedway. From where I was sitting, there were a lot of people on their feet
\ncheering for the #10 as he managed to get close enough a couple of times to
\nattempt the pass during the last few laps of the race. One of these days, JB!<\/p>\n
The fastest car on the track just might have been the car that finished in
\nthird place. Two laps down early in the race, Ricky Rudd came back to end up
\nthird.<\/p>\n
"The guys built us a new race car," said Rudd. "We got two
\nlaps down early; I guess Matt Kenseth and I got together. It wasn’t intentional,
\nbut that cut a left-front tire down and we weren’t five laps into the race. We
\nshouldn’t have been running that hard, I guess, but we had to make those two
\nlaps up. And then we kept getting boxed in in our pits and had to come from the
\nback. We had one of the fastest cars out here, and we were lucky to get back to
\nthird. The guys had a good race car for us."<\/p>\n
Tony Stewart hangs on to the points lead after winding up in 11th place. A
\nsevere headache resulting carbon monoxide inside the car after the crash panels
\nwere caved in created a somewhat dangerous situation for the driver of the #20
\nHome Depot Pontiac. NASCAR officials are investigating the problem, but it
\nappears that Stewart seems more susceptible than most. Luckily, his eleventh
\nplace finish only cost him a few points in the race for the title; Stewart now
\nhas an 82 point lead over Jimmie Johnson.<\/p>\n
Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished in fourth place; making this is fourth straight
\ntop ten finish; consistency starting to be the name of the game for this team.
\nThis may be a glimpse of things to come for 2003; with possibly a
\n"title" season in the not too distant future.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how much was visible on television, but Todd Bodine, on
\nprobation until the end of the season for rough driving during the race in
\nCharlotte, looked like he should have been driving Jimmy Spencer’s car with that
\nbig "target" on the hood. It seemed like just about everyone was
\ngiving him a shot when they passed by and there was nothing he could do about
\nit. One almost felt sorry for him; nahhh\u2026<\/p>\n
Maybe it has to do with the fact that following the race in Charlotte he
\ndenied any responsibility for causing the ten car pile up; afterwards the story
\nchanged.<\/p>\n
Other notes:<\/p>\n
After spending a lifetime watching racing, I’ve had the opportunity to be
\npart of the behind the scenes world of NASCAR for a little over a year and a
\nhalf now; it’s been a learning process to say the least. As far as the racing
\nworld being a tight-knit little community, one has to say that is pretty much
\ntrue. The comrade is very much evident, but sometimes some of the new people are
\nleft to feel like outsiders. A point in case, I got talking to a photographer
\nfrom a local paper some place in Virginia outside of Martinsville, and he
\nrelayed this story of a fellow photographer who threatened to pour water on his
\ncamera if he didn’t get out of her way in Victory Lane. Is this the way you want
\nto treat people coming into this sport? Luckily this young man was not
\nintimidated, still had a great deal of enthusiasm for the sport (hooked), and
\nwill be back.<\/p>\n
In all aspects of life, you find that when you treat people with respect, you
\nget it back. Why is it that some people never seem to get that? It’s a shame; it
\nmakes life so much easier.<\/p>\n
The Winston Cup Series moves on to the Atlanta Motor Speedway this week. It’s
\na fast racetrack and with the earlier date, it looks like the weather will be
\nreasonable, the grandstands hopefully will be full, and we’ll get to see some
\ngreat racing!<\/p>\n
That’s it for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a fourth turn spin out on lap 180, Kurt Busch came back to lead for 111 laps and held of a hard-charging Johnny Benson to pick up his second win of the season at the Old Dominion 500 in Martinsville, Virginia. Busch also made the record books at this speedway starting from the 36th […]<\/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-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","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=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}