The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule is a quarter of the way finished. We’ve had nine of the36 races, two multiple winners (neither one named Johnson), a boat-load of leaders and leadchanges…and a lot of unfinished business.
Kyle Busch won at Bristol and Richmond, taking the mantle of short-track star from DennyHamlin. Kevin Harvick won at Auto Club and Martinsville, then promptly fell off the planet interms of contention.
Jimmie Johnson won at Talladega by the slimmest of margins, but hasn’t been the guy he wasthe past five years. Not that it matters just yet, but already folks are looking to say thatFive-Time is looking mighty…peaked.
Jeff Gordon won earlier in the season, then set about finding every spot on every track thatdoesn’t have a soft wall on it. Richmond was a tangle that put him in a bad spot on theinside of the corner.
And it seems like everyone is ticked off at each other. Richmond was a treasure-trove ofone-liners, most of which would be victims of the seven-second delay.
Five-Time was described by the fiery Greg Zipadelli as a “bleeping moron� after punting JoeyLogano into the fence, and Tony Stewart wondered why the best drivers out there were drivinglike “bleep.� Martin Truex Jr. “fired� his pit crew after a stop…seriously. “You’re allfired, every bleeping one of you,� was the gist of what I heard on the scanner.
It came true, actually. At Darlington this weekend, there will be four new tirechangers/carriers on the 56 car.
That’s not even a patch on what Kurt Busch let fly.
Apparently, the cooler of the Busch brothers (and by that I mean generally he is lessvitriolic on the radio overall than his race-winning younger sibling, though the sarcasmmeter is pushed through the roof) had enough of an ill-handling car and just started tomonologue.
It wasn’t Johnny Carson, either.
No aspect of his team’s shortcomings was spared, apparently. I didn’t hear all of it, becausehe wasn’t a factor during much of the race, but what I did hear was best said to a guy ifyou’re standing more than a couple of feet from him.
Parentage, intelligence, personal habits…all were touched on by the elder Busch. Good thingRoger Penske was either in Brazil or back at home, because it takes a bit to make The Captainblush and he’d have been redder than a deficit scorecard in Washington.
The whole Newman-Montoya crash-‘em deal was rather tame on the radio. Newman doesn’t screamon the radio much, and after he wound up against the fence with a torn-up race car, he calmlysaid words to the effect that revenge was a motivating factor.
I don’t speak Spanish (I should learn, really), so I don’t know exactly what Montoya wasthinking, but I do know this: neither one of them is a good choice for bracing right after anincident. Newman’s bigger, but Montoya is pretty solid, and it would be 6-5 and pick ‘em ifthey rumbled.
Newman did start it, and Montoya finished it. As it should be…
Ah, the joys of short-track racing! Richmond is a good place to race; wide and fast andmulti-lane, it gives the boys a chance to stand up and holler. They took that to heart,apparently.
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