Busch And Blaney Bag Bizarre Daytona 500

The 2017 Daytona 500 will go down as the most competitive running since 2014 - 37 official lead changes seems low given how sustained the nose-to-nose battles for the lead were - and one of the more bizarre runnings and one that decidedly didn't go according to anyone's plan.   It was also a humorously fitting debut for Monster Energy Drink's sponsorship of the Winston Cup Grand National series, not only for the intensity of the racing but also for the imaginative nature of some of the promotion - in a clever crossover of sports Patriots tight end/controlled party star Rob Gronkowski was part of the prerace show (adding to the irony the prerace show proceeded amid the Boston Bruins' 6-3 whipping of the Dallas Stars, a nice synergy of racing, football, and hockey) - was won by a car whose primary sponsor is also the series sponsor - a scenario the sport has seen play out from such races as the 1975 Purolator 500 (won by the Purolator Mercury) to the 1981 Mountain Dew 500 (won by the Mountain Dew Buick) and so on.   There is plenty to break down in this one -



The curious case of Joe Gibbs Racing -  NASCAR's new segment format saw the first case of raceteams trying to beat the format with strategy, and the result was farce.   Joe Gibbs Racing put themselves behind the eight ball by short-pitting fifteen laps in, and cost themselves a lap doing it again later.   Stewart-Haas Racing short-pitted and caught a lucky caution courtesy of rookie Corey LaJoie, who committed the dumbest rookie mistake we've seen in a while.    Kevin Harvick cycled into the lead, but it seemed he would have done so without short-pitting - the whole strategy of working pitstop sequencing backwards as if a superspeedway were a road course did nothing but put the teams who kept short-pitting behind the eight ball.   

Kyle Busch wound up winning the first segment and the bonus points resulting, this after some of the best Daytona Cup racing in many years, and after two days of terrific racing from the Truck and Busch/Xfinity Series.  

But Kyle Busch's day ended past halfway after JGR yet again short-pitted and were barely on the lead lap during a lengthy green flag run - and a tire went down (the resulting melee also saw the third red flag in two days of racing).    Kyle Busch's criticism of Goodyear was refreshing given Goodyear's seeming sense of entitlement for being an exclusive tire supplier and also its inconsistent and generally mediocre record with raceable tires - and in an odd coincidence 2017 marks the last year of Goodyear's present contract.

The net result was a confusing series of pit strategies, the likes of which Daytona hasn't really seen since the ill-fated 1991 500 when NASCAR banned tire changes under yellow and teams insisted on strategizing to avoid green flag stops.  



Chase Elliott channeling Ernie Irvan - Chase Elliott won the pole and won his qualifying race, and he showed true aggression fighting to get to the front.   The problem was Elliott at times looked less like his dad and closer to Ernie Irvan, looking out of control at times - before the race NASCAR gave a mild warning about "the consequences" of blocking, which had become more pronounced for the Cup side not just this Speedweeks but last season as well.   Elliott got damage in one of the crashes, but the theme all week was cars getting damaged and roaring back to the lead anyway - "these cars look like they've been running Martinsville" was a phrase Darrell Waltrip first used at Talladega in 1996.

Five years ago this July Kurt Busch was in what amounted to NASCAR exile from his firing from Penske Racing thanks to chronic psychopathic behavior on the track and in his treatment of people around him - he exploded to one of the signature races of the decade in winning the 2012 Firecracker 250.

Five years later Busch's Ford was crunched up and he clawed to steal the win from Kyle Larson.    It is his fifth win for Stewart-Haas Racing and first in a Ford since the Summer 500 at Pocono in 2005 driving for Roush Racing.  


Pearson/Petty reborn plus a whale of a day for darkhorses - Not that Richard Petty qualifies as a darkhorse in the traditional sense, but the struggle for success for Petty's raceteam the last thirty-plus years doesn't require elaboration, and seeing Aric Almirola claw to finish fourth was something to behold.   Even more magical was that Petty's #43 and the Wood Brothers #21 were in the lead draft at the end - though Ryan Blaney raced closer to Tim Richmond than David Pearson en route to a spectacular second and an eye-opening Speedweeks.  

And muscling into the fray was AJ Allmendinger, driving Brad Daugherty's #47 and finishing a solid third.    And the way the finish shook out it was a big payday for team owners Jay Robinson, Archie St. Hilaire, and Mark Beard, whose cars all finished in the top-eleven.



How much more incentive is there to go for the lead?   This much..... -  Kevin Harvick finished 22nd and outpointed all but four other cars - Joey Logano finished sixth and outpointed all but two other cars.   In the Truck race Johnny Sauter finished 15th and is second in Truck points - all because the new bonus points structure rewards going to the front sooner rather than later.    Incentivizing going for the lead - it may be just one race weekend but it's clear there is more incentive to go for the front now - and that is only a good thing for racing.


In all, it was by far the best Speedweeks in years, and a great start for Monster Energy in NASCAR.    It can become even more competitive down the road - and this start gives reason that it will.

Talladega And The Rise Fall And Rebirth Of Kurt Busch

Well didn't that beat all.

Toyota provided sponsorship of the Richmond 400 for 2015, but it didn't help Toyota teams - or Ford teams, for that matter; the two brands combined for just six finishers in the top 20 - as Kurt Busch and Chevrolet bitch-slapped the field.  Busch led 291 of 400 laps for his first win since the 2014 Virginia 500.   Coming as the first NASCAR driver in recent memory suspended for off-track ugliness - and it says something about how disreputable a person he is that he's gotten three suspensions -  Busch's win is another twist in a career that's been controversial almost from its very beginning.



Busch's career began after the shooting death of Dick Trickle's nephew Chris Trickle, a driver on NASCAR's Southwest Tour.   Busch replaced Trickle and won the Tour title in 1999.   He thus got a tryout in Jack Roush's "Gong Show" driver development program and was signed to drive one of Roush's NASCAR Truck Fords.


His first race was the Daytona 250 in 2000 and it set the tone for his career - he hooked two trucks hard into each other in the trioval and it blasted Geoff Bodine into the fencing, ripping out 100 feet of fencing and wiping out over a dozen trucks.   He won four races and was promoted to the former Chad Little Winston Cup team, where he posted six top-tens and famously swerved Dale Earnhardt at the ill-fated Daytona 500, earning a petulant gesture from Earnhardt.   His breakthrough win came at the Southeastern 500 at Bristol in 2002 when he stayed out after pitting on Lap 325 and never pitted again.   He edged Jimmy Spencer in that race and had another more controversial pair of encounters with Spencer, first at the 2002 Brickyard 400 when he sideslammed Spencer and Spencer hit back, taking Busch out.   At the 2003 Yankee 400 the two tapped several times, then a fight erupted in the garage that earned Spencer a suspension by NASCAR; Busch was booed at Bristol the next week when he won.  

Busch got fired from Roush Racing in November 2005 when he was arrested for the ultimate driving sin of DUI and attacked cops involved.   Roush's spokesman famously declared they were finished as Busch's apologists.

Penske Racing signed him on and the fights continued, as Kurt got into it with brother Kyle at Charlotte in 2007, then came his meltdown year of 2011.  He got into Jimmie Johnson at Richmond and physically attacked Joe Menzer, a NASCAR reporter, in a postrace interview.   At Loudon he lied in a postrace presser about it, then tore up a transcript in possession of reporter Jenna Fryer that proved the fight; a November set-to with ABC's Jerry Punch finally led to his firing from Penske.

He was hired by James Finch's low-budget organization, competing in both the Busch series and Winston Cup; he crashed Ryan Newman at Darlington and nearly struck several of Newman's crewmen, which led to another near-brawl and a probationary period for Busch.   When he threatened to attack reporter Bob Pockrass at Dover, NASCAR suspended him for the Pocono race.

He then did something shocking - he won the 2012 Firecracker 250 at Daytona in one of the greatest races Daytona and the Busch series had ever seen, but the punk inside never changed; more incidents followed in 2013 and finally came the domestic abuse scandal that got him suspended (again) in 2015.

Driving for the now-powerhouse Stewart-Haas team, Busch has once again showed what his talent level is - and he's also shown that he has no business holding a competition license.    His rise, fall, and rebirth have been there for everyone to see, and the next fall will be there as well.


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Talladega thus beckons as the 2015 season has become yet another all-Chevrolet show.   The fall of Ford is especially painful to those who remember the effort Ford undertook to win the manufacturer title after GM cars won it 1976-91; Ford would win six of the next eleven manufacturer titles.   Dodge's 2001-12 presence didn't change the balance of power in the series as some no doubt hoped it would, and Toyota's presence has been decidedly lackluster overall.  

Joe Gibbs Racing and Penske are the only non-Chevy teams putting up any real fight, as the collapse of Roush-Fenway continues with a driver lineup that shows no future; only Richard Petty's #43 - a team that ought to be a Dodge - has shown any other non-Penske Ford moxie.   The Michael Waltrip Toyota team likewise has been a non-starter as far as competitive fight has gone.

Not only has it been an all-Chevrolet show, it's been an all Stewart-Hass vs. Hendrick show, with Talladega almost the first weekend since Daytona to offer the chance of non-Chervolet resistance to actually win a battle.    The RCR bunch, while better than last year, still isn't any threat, and those who held out hope for the return of the number 3 have to cringe at the poor performance of Austin Dillon.  

It hasn't been all peaches and herb for Stewart-Haas, though - Tony Stewart has slipped almost to irrelevance and Danica Patrick can't sustain what little success she's gotten.

So it all awaits this weekend at Talladega.

Speedweeks 2015 And What You Deserve In Life

Speedweeks 2015 races toward its finale as the NASCAR Sportsman Series - now the Xfinity Series - hits the Big D while the Winston Cup cars go for the 57th Daytona 500 Sunday.   The Truck Series went first Friday night, and it illustrated what has made this year a so-so Speedweeks at best.   The battle for the lead in the first half of the Nextera Truck 250 was by far the best racing of Speedweeks so far, a huge multilap battle headed by Tyler Reddick in a Brad Keselowski Ford and Ty Dillon in an RCR Chevrolet.

But then halfway hit and when a Truck appeared to run flat out of gas, a huge crash in Turn Three erupted; not only did it wipe out multiple Trucks, it took all life out of the race, as the second half was all Tyler Reddick all the time, specifically the final 33 laps.   That no one challenged Reddick illustrated yet again the absurdity of NASCAR's myopia against push-drafting - without it there simply isn't enough passing.

The racing is good, but it deserves to be a lot better (as it would in subsequent days).


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Not having drivers like Denny Hamlin and Danica Patrick can certainly help the sport become better.   The two were involved in a late set-to in the Qualifying 150s and as usual Patrick went all immature and stalked to Hamlin to remonstrate.  

This is one of those confrontations where neither party deserves anything positive.   Hamlin is a long-time bully on the racetrack and a stuck-up in the garage area, called out as such by ATHLON SPORTS a few years ago, while Danica Patrick remains the gutless soft-porn model who got where she is on her gender - identity entitlement at its worst - as well as with sexually suggestive photo spreads.  

The idea the sport would be better off with either of these two is foolishness.


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Hamlin and Patrick lead to the larger issue that they say you get what you deserve in life.   When a judge overseeing the dispute between Kurt Busch and his ex-girlfriend issued a restraining order against Busch, making a point that the evidence against Busch was sufficient to warrant the order plus order for him to undergo psychiatric evaluation, NASCAR, which had waited longer than most sports bodies on this issue, suspended Busch indefinitely.  

The suspension has, like the killing of Kevin Ward by Tony Stewart last August, brought out the worst in racing fans, who seem afraid of the idea that a major NASCAR star is objectively guilty of being OJ Simpson to be shunned by larger society.  The defenses of Busch, whose history of bullying and derangement is far too extensive to ignore - to where he was fired from Penske Racing after 2011 - are pathetic and refuse to confront the issue of what evidence is there that he didn't do what got him a restraining order.    There simply is no credibility to think a restraining order would come down without credibility on the part of the accusation.

The attempt by some fans to cite Travis Kvapil in contrast also fails as Kvapil in effect settled his assault accusation out of court.

The sport is not better off with Kurt Busch's participation, period.   You get what you deserve in life and Busch deserves to be shunned the way Tony Stewart deserves to be shunned.