Monday, March 21, 2016

More Fontana Postmortems

The California 400 weekend is now past, but there remain some postmortems worth mentioning. 

The incident that had everyone talking was Danica Patrick's crash after tangling with Kasey Kahne. Kahne, not known for controversy on the racetrack, seemed surprised when Patrick swerved up toward him, while Patrick tore up yet another racecar in a career increasingly defined by torn-up racecars.

While she was wrecking again, her boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse led a surprising surge into the top-5 by edging out Chase Elliott.  Stenhouse and the moribund Roush fleet haven't had anything to be proud of, but lately have begun regaining some ground.

The young guns may have a new member in Brian Scott, whop quietly drove Richard Petty's #44 to a respectable 12th.

Contrast these young guns with Austin Dillon, who won the pole but never led, struggled all race, and finished 24th.   He's still ahead of the game from where he was last year, but progress still isn't coming at the pace a lot of people seem to expect.

Haven't we seen this movie before?  Kevin Harvick leads the most laps and at the end doesn't have what is needed to win the race. 

Speaking of faltering, Martin Truex Jr's season has plummeted the last few races even as he led over twenty laps at Fontana - this of course is no thanks to Joey Logano, as Joey did it again in a wreck at Fontana.


Before the race weekend Brian France stated that "there is some interest by a couple of manufacturers" to race in Cup - with Rumor Control Central indicating Audi. We'll believe that when we see it, though one certainly wants Dodge to return as well as Honda to enter.


So it goes as the Easter Bye Week hits.

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