Sunday, April 15, 2012

GREAT NASCAR WEEKEND, AND THE "ROCK" SEES A FIRST.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. survived a late race restart to win his first race at Texas Motor Speedway in Friday nights O'Reilly Auto Parts 300. Stenhouse Jr. (No.6) held off Denny Hamlin (No.18) and Paul Menard (No.33) on a restart with six laps to go and win his second race of the '12 Nationwide Series season. The win cut Elliot Sadler's lead down from 18 points to 4 points. Sadler (No.2) came in 12th. Pole sitter Menard tried to be just the third driver to win the race from the pole in the Nationwide Series. Menard's five time race lead of a 100 laps was not enough to hold off the hard charging No.6, leaving him to come in second 1.4 seconds behind the leader. Kasey Kahne's (No.38) saw a change in his season as he came in third, with Hamlin and Austin Dillon (No.3) rounding out the top five. Danica Patrick (No.7) had her first Nationwide top 10 finish by coming in eighth which appeared to give her a big boost in her quest of her first Nationwide season. Though Ford won the race, Chevrolet showed strong with six cars paced by Menard finishing in the top ten.

Texas Motor Speedway also hosted the Samsung Mobile 500 on Saturday night. Greg Biffle (No.16) the Sprint Cup points leader won the 330 lap race with the drivers sailing through the final 234 laps without a caution. Jimmie Johnson (No.48) who appeared to be heading for a win, giving team owner Rick Hendrick his 200th win, finished second after slapping the wall with 15 laps to go. Johnson appeared annoyed that the race finished on such a mild note, but this writer's feeling is his, "I'm Jimmie Johnson and I wanted to win" didn't seem to impress the hard charging Biffle. Mark Martin (No.55) came in third followed by Jeff Gordon (No.24) and Matt Kenseth (No.17). Pole sitter MartinTruex Jr. (No.56) finished sixth. Biffle ended a 49 race drought and firmly placed himself in the points lead. Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are tied at second and third, nineteen points behind Biff.

This one is for Zeb:
Kasey Kahne celebrated NASCAR's return to Rockingham Speedway with a win Sunday in the Good Sam Road Assistance 200 Truck Series race. The track was purchased at auction by Andy Hillenburg, and he successfully brought NASCAR back.  The truck race was the first NASCAR-sanctioned event at The Rock since 2004.  Kahne held off James Buescher for the win. Kahne had to start at the back of the field because he didn't qualify the truck Saturday while at the Sprint Cup race in Texas.  It was the fourth win in five career Truck Series races for Kahne, who finished seventh in the Cup race.  Matt Crafton was third, followed by Johnny Sauter and series points leader Timothy Peters.

2 comments:

Zebster said...

I wish I could have seen the truck race at The Rock. I miss that place. I did get to watch a pretty boring Cup race at Texas for the first Nascar race I've seen this year. I'll take out all those lines. I have no idea how you're getting them in there. LOL

dasnake said...

beats me i did what you said, sorry that you have to clean up my mess but it will come, thanx.