month of May at Charlotte, but in the end the fastest gun in the west
went ahead and shot himself in the foot. First Johnson was lucky to
escape serious damage after spinning Hut Stricklin while trying to
put him a lap down. Then he got too aggressive trying to get into his
pit stall and overshot his mark. Meanwhile while the cagey old gunslingers
of the sport, Mark, had been running inside the top 10 most of
the night, but not making any attempt to keep up with the torrid pace
Johnson was setting. If a faster car (including two of his teammates)
pushed hard enough Mark would let him by while carefully noting how
many laps were left to run. The event wasn’t Mark’s first rodeo.They don’t pay the big bucks (including that nice little million dollar bonus) for leading on lap 100, 200 or 300. After four and a half hours of racing the only lap that matters is lap 400 and it’s often split second decisions that determine the outcome of NASCAR’s longest race. When Mark saw his opportunity, he seized it and his pit posse helped finalize the deal with a lightning fast stop that returned Mark to the track in first place after the final round of pit stops. After that Mark held off a determined charge by his teammate and protégé Matt Kenseth and sliced his way through traffic like a man possessed to claim his first win in over two years.
Mark has reached a stage in his life where a million dollars isn’t going to alter his life. He paid his dues to get there. After being fired by JD Stacy Mark’s career nearly ended and there was a point in his career a few hundred dollars to buy one more set of tires was terribly important. Mark says most of Winston’s money will go to his team members who surely earned the bonus tonight. Mark doesn’t have to win races to be able to show next week anymore. It’s not about money anymore. He’s got nothing to prove to anyone after a long and storied career. He may not be NASCAR’s Iron-man but 508 starts are nothing to sneeze at either. So why does he keep racing? Because Mark still possesses the burning desire to win races. And he keeps seeking that elusive Winston Cup championship like Ahab went after that big white whale. Mark currently finds himself third in the points standings, 143 markers behind Sterling Marlin another long time campaigner still looking for that first championship trophy. All it’s going to take is one bad race for the 40 bunch and Mark is back in the championship picture.
Mark’s 6 car failed post-race inspection after measuring approximately
1/8th an inch too low after the race. Did that alter the outcome of the
race? It’s hard to say. Certainly it didn’t force Jimmie Johnson’s
miscues nor did it play a factor in the way Mark sliced through lapped
traffic in dirty air. But would Mark have been running in that front pack
in position to take advantage of Johnson’s miscue had it not been for the
lower ride height? We’ll never know. But it would seem down the road
NASCAR needs to define what the penalties are for a race winner whose car
doesn’t measure up to snuff after an event. Casual race fans are baffled as
to why an “illegal car” can win a race. And you can just guess the jokes
about how the Viagra car went flaccid are going to circulate this
week.Mark has often gone on record as saying Matt Kenseth reminds him a lot of himself. It was Mark who was instrumental in getting Jack Roush to hire Kenseth and put him in a Roush Racing car. On paper at least Mark owns part of the 17 team. With a million dollars on the line, the two drivers being so close, and whatever debt Kenseth feels he might owe Mark, some will question if Kenseth gave it all trying to win the race. From what I observed Kenseth went flat out after the win. Would he have wrecked Mark to take the win? Probably not, but Kenseth doesn’t typically wreck anyone to make a pass. Would he have driven by him if the opportunity for a clean pass presented itself? I truly believe Kenseth would have. In fact he was probably counting on lapped traffic to give him an advantage as a younger and bolder driver. But Mark attacked those lapped cars like a man half his age.
While Ricky Craven was convinced he could win this race, a third place finish isn’t bad. In fact it was Craven’s best finish of the season. It was also a considerable improvement over last year’s 31st place finish for the Tide Ford in this race last year back when Cal Wells was still trying to keep his second team limping along on life support.
The spotlight has been focused on Ricky Rudd all week as he assumed the
mantle of NASCAR’s “Iron-man” from Terry Labonte breaking the record for
the most consecutive starts. He took his turn at the front, and finished
fourth after a hard battle with Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart after four
hours plus of hard racing. Rudd has complained the more “seasoned drivers”
aren’t getting their due from the TV folks who seem so obsessed with
this “young guns” garbage. Let the record show eight of the top 13 finishers
Sunday evening were over the age of forty, while only one member of that
group was under 30.With all this talk about age, Jeff Gordon is in an awkward position. He’s barely crossed into his thirties but it seems like he’s been around forever. Back in the 80s he’d have been lucky to have any ride at all in Winston Cup at his age, but Gordon has scored four championships in his first decade of NASCAR racing. It seems because of his marital split Gordon is acting more like a young man again, so I guess we can ascribe this to the Byrd’s old adage, “But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Tony Stewart passionately wants to win the Indianapolis 500 someday, but he agreed to remain focused on Winston Cup this year and forego Indy. Last year when Stewart raced at Indy he finished 3rd. Sunday night he finished 6th. It appears Joe Gibbs might as well just let him go run Indy next year to obtain a better result in the 600.
Jimmie Johnson handled the bitter disappointment of losing a race he dominated with class and aplomb. If it’s any consolation to him, the old saw goes “You have to lose a few this way before you win some this way.”
Once again the perils of the overly aerodynamic cars were on display for
all to see. Leading the race in clean air (greatly aided by timely cautions
that kept him out of lapped traffic much of the evening) Johnson’s car
was clearly in a league of its own. But as strong as that car was, once
it was mired in traffic and Johnson couldn’t get clean air to help nail
his car down to the track he was an also ran. For whatever reason the
two front running Hendrick cars, the 48 and the 24 seem to suffer the
most in traffic, though it’s clearly effecting all the teams.Michael Waltrip finds himself in a perilous career position. He’s over 40, and his job is supposedly in jeopardy. You’ve got to think that top 10 finishes in three of the last four races has got to solidify his position he deserves to remain in the 15 car.
While Bill Elliott never seemed a legitimate contender for the win Sunday night, he did manage to hang out in the front pack most of the night and finish 9th. That’s not bad for a guy who won a title back in 1988 back in an era where some of the guys he is racing against were still putting bubble-gum cards through the spokes of their bicycle wheels with clothespins to annoy the neighbors.
Rusty Wallace had to be nervous Sunday night. His engine was overheating early in the race and he watched his teammate fall by the wayside with a blown engine mid-way through the race. It’s often noted Jeff Gordon hasn’t won a race since Kansas last year. For the record that was the same event where Rusty Wallace scored his last top 5 finish in a Cup points race, yet Wallace tends to talk about the veteran drivers as if he isn’t one of hem. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
Points leader Sterling Marlin has eight top ten finishes this season and
just missed two more including Sunday night. Marlin swears he isn’t points
racing, but if that’s the case his team needs to step it up a notch.
Right about now the warm air Sterling is feeling is Matt Kenseth breathing
down his neck.It’s worth mentioning that two other “seasoned drivers” Terry Labonte and Kyle Petty finished 12th and 13th. And where were the highly heralded young guns other than Johnson? Kurt Busch finished 31st, Kevin Harvick was hopelessly out to lunch all night and came home 34th, Dale Earnhardt Junior was 35th and Ryan Newman suffered yet another engine failure that relagated him to 41st. (You think Penske’s “A Team” was busy at Indy this month?”
Yes, there’s a tremendous youth movement in Winston Cup these days and that’s good for the sport. Most of these young drivers are very talented, dedicated and likeable young men who will continue to thrill the fans for decades to come. But the final 100 miles of NASCAR’s longest race told the tale. The established veterans aren’t about to roll over and play dead collecting those big paychecks and stepping politely aside to allow a more demographic friendly group of young men to take all the trophies. Mark has lines around his eyes from all the afternoons he’s spent squinting into the sun gunning for victories, and along the way he’s learned some tricks the kids haven’t quite caught onto yet. The calendar shows last weekend was Memorial Day, but after the World 600 one could make a valid argument it was Veteran’s Day. The traditional observance of Veteran’s Day isn’t until November, the same month when a Winston Cup champion will be crowned. Perhaps that’s an omen.
