Southeastern 500 Winners And Losers

The Southeastern 500 of 2007 has been run and Kyle Busch survived a late scare from Jeff Burton for his first win of the season. Being the debut race of NASCAR's SpecCar/Car Of Tomorrow it has gotten unusually tight attention, and a listing of winners and losers is in order.

------------------------------------------------

WINNERS -

HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS - Two of their cars could either struggle or hit the wall and yet the Hendrick fleet has enough depth to win and finish in the top three. Jeff Gordon's rally from a mediocre mid-portion of the race was somewhat surprising given that his effort over the past year has been more uneven than it had been over the course of his career. Casey Mears, meanwhile, recovered from several incidents and finished an encouraging tenth.

RCR ENTERPRISES - Kevin Harvick had a dismal qualifying session, yet through pit cycling and some hard running he finished fourth. Jeff Burton, meanwhile, nearly stole the whole show at the end with an audacious restart in the final laps, passing Jeff Gordon high with two to go. Clint Bowyer, meanwhile, went largely unnoticed en route to a solid eighth place.

JEFF GREEN - Strong all weekend, Green finally got breaks his way to finish sixth.

JAMIE McMURRAY - The black sheep of the Roush/Fenway fleet finally surged forward in a race and hung tough all day.

CARL EDWARDS - Over the last year-plus seeing Carl Edwards running strong has become less and less frequent, but here he was mixing it up well after his BGN win.

BRIAN VICKERS and MIKE BLISS - Just making the race was an accomplishment; running strong all day was even better.

--------------------------------------------------

But with winners, we have plenty of losers -

LOSERS -

THE CAR OF TOMORROW - Finally fans got to see what a year of testing indicated - the car races poorly in dirty air. Kyle Busch made that point abundantly clear. Literally no one could get the car balanced properly and anyone from fifth on back was largely DOA as far as catching the leaders went. For the entirety of the race the drivers could ill-afford to race aggressively; of course being Bristol this fact could be explained away, but the COT's punishment of aggressive racing and setups nonetheless showed itself to all.

ROBERT YATES RACING - All of a sudden David Gilliland is falling off the map; the wreck can't be blamed on him but it comes amid less and less muscle being displayed in his racing. Ricky Rudd meanwhile looks just plain poor in that racecar.

RAY EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS - They all qualified superbly and for awhile raced well, but blown tires and wrecks wiped out any chance of a decent finish.

JOE GIBBS RACING - This is one that will haunt the organization for awhile. First Tony Stewart has the race in his hip pocket and then a fuel pump cable breaks and he loses 25 laps. Then Denny Hamlin takes over but late in the race gets waylaid in lapped traffic and loses the lead, then almost wrecks on a late restart and loses the top ten.

DAVID RAGAN - Welcome to Bristol, David - did your dad Ken ever talk about this place?

JUAN MONTOYA - He was one of the few drivers actually trying to make something happen, and it cost him big time; that he only lost seven laps is amazing.

MICHAEL WALTRIP RACING - Talladega headline - "MICHAEL WALTRIP RACING A NO-GO AT TALLADEGA: Former track winners Waltrip, Jarrett once again fail to qualify" - yes, chances are it's come down to this for Dale Jarrett.

ROBERT GINN RACING - Regan Smith took over for Mark Martin as scheduled, but it was a bad weekend for the organization as Joe Nemechek failed to make the race and both Smith and Sterling Marlin had subpar days.

DODGE - The highest-finishing Dodge was David Stremme in 12th. It was a bad day all around - Ganassi's Avengers aside from Stremme wrecked or spun; Evernham's guys wrecked; Petty's two Dodges could never get out of traffic; and Penske's Panzers resembled George Peppard's flame-thrower scenes in Tobruk.

NASCAR - NASCAR was a loser not just because of the poor showing of the COT, it was also a loser with AT&T's lawsuit over NASCAR's ban on use of its logos on Jeff Burton's car. It brings back reminder that NASCAR is overstepping badly in dictating to sponsors instead of welcoming them with open arms.

-------------------------------------------

So now the SpecCar travels to Martinsville, and chances are its weaknesses as a racecar will be exacerbated by Martinsville's hairpin flatness.

Stay tuned for more verbiage like from Kyle Busch after winning the Southeastern 500.