Well Tony Stewart (14) has gotten the monkey off his back and he did it in fine fashion Sunday afternoon. After a very sluggish start, Stewart was back into victory lane at the FEDEX 400 BENEFITTING AUTISM SPEAKS and possibly into Chase contention.
Stewart put an outside pass on Juan Pablo Montoya (42) with three laps to go and hold on for his first win in 30 races. With things not going good for Stewarts team which includes Ryan Newman (39) and Danica Patrick (10), this win puts to rest rumors of grumbling within the team, as some reports of crew chief Steve Addington's job being questioned. Stewart was visibly upset about these reports that he said stemmed from the media and not the garage.
Jimmie Johnson drove his wheels off to come from almost a lap down to lead the race but got a black flag for jumping a restart on the 19th lap and put at the back of the field with a drive thru penalty. With the 48 out of the picture, Montoya and Stewart battled for the lead. Jeff Gordon (24) was third followed by Kyle Busch (18) who came fourth and last years champ Brad Keslowski (2) grabbed fifth.
Matt Kenseth (20) and Martin Truex Jr. (56) both had engine problems, with this race TRD has a dire need to find out why the Toyotas keep losing engines. Pole sitter Denny Hamlin (11) finished 34th after hitting the wall late in the race. the Petty cars with Marcus Ambrose (9) and Aric Almirola (43) both finished, although back in the field. Kasey Kahne (5) finished 23rd.
The Nationwide Series saw Joey Logano win THE 5 HOUR ENERGY 200 for the Penske team, holding off Brian Vickers, Matt Kenseth, Trevor Bayne and Kyle Busch. Busch dominated most of the race leading 72 of the 200 laps, but was 10th in the final restart and pulled off a fifth place finish. Points leader Regan Smith finished 9th. Bayne, who critics have been saying needs to start finishing races came through with a fourth place.
Speaking of Kyle Busch, and this writer likes doing that a lot, he won the Camping World Truck Series, Lucas Oil 200. Matt Crafton was 2nd, followed by Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, and Brendan Gaughan. Pole sitter Darrell (Bubba) Wallace although driving a tough race in the beginning was relegated to 10th place.
My big query this year is the TRD problem, this has been raising it's ugly head for two years now, and the main problem appears to be a top end valve spring breakdown. This has been known and brought to light for that two years and it isn't getting any better. What the heck is wrong with finding a new vendor, if the steel is dirty and causing the spring to breakdown and fail why aren't the other big name builders having the same problem, just a query but it can't be that hard to find an answer.
2 comments:
It was a pretty good race. I was disappointed with how the 43 ran and Kasey's finish.
The boss doesn't expect you to always mention his cars. :)
maybe ya didn't hear, i'll keep ya in the loop.
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