What You Inevitably Missed Not Watching Auto Racing This Weekend
by Bronto on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 08:44pm

– Joey Logano got his first Sprint Cup win at New Hampshire thanks to a great pit call by crew chief Greg Zipadelli. As the leaders hit pit road for green flag pit stops with a little less than 70 laps to go in the scheduled 301 lap race, Zippy had Logano stay out because thanks to being buried in the back of the pack, Logano had pitted at the tail end of the last caution flag. Just a few laps after Logano inherited the lead, it started to rain and the race was called with 28 laps to go.
– Logano becomes the youngest winner in Sprint Cup history, breaking the previous record by a year and four months. The youngest winner before Logano? That’d be his teammate Kyle Busch, who was approximately 20 years and 5 months when he won at California in September of 2005.
– Speaking of Shrub, he passed Logano with 36 laps to go in Saturday’s Busch* race at New Hampshire. If it wasn’t for fluky mechanical errors and other bad luck, Busch could have 10 wins in the series. But in perhaps the oddest event of the race was when Willie Allen was parked four laps in for not having a crew chief. Allen was driving an obvious start-and-park effort that’s fielded by Brian–Brad’s older brother–Keselowski to fund his underfunded independent operation. But not having a crew chief is a pretty poor attempt at racing, no matter the intentions.
– While we’re on the subject of start-and-parks, Ron Hornaday won the Truck Series event at Memphis Motorsports Park. It was a banner day for the Truck Series, as only seven trucks parked it within the first 30 laps. Rumors swirl about the viability of the series, despite NASCAR’s insistence that all is well. The trucks used to produce some fantastic racing, but with the economic impacts hitting NASCAR’s third-tier series especially hard, the racing has declined as well.
– Scott Dixon tied the IRL career record for victories at 19 with his win at the SunTrust Indy Challenge in Richmond. It was a banner night for Target Chip Ganassi as Dixon’s teammate Mr. Ashley Judd finished second and Team Penske’s Helio Castronevs and Ryan Briscoe finished 17th and 19th respectively.
– The quality of racing was once again a hot topic after the race at the 3/4 mile track, as virtually every driver complained about the single file funeral procession that doubled as a race. Third place Graham Rahal said that he passed two cars all night. This is a sad trend for the IndyCar Series which at one time had some of the best racing of any of America’s top touring series. Some engineering changes are in order, especially if Tony George is willing to follow through on his threat of stopping the series if it isn’t profitable by 2014.
TAGS Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Scott Dixon |
