Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
Hello everyone. I’m still not feeling 100%, but I’m plowing on through it anyhow.
Since I am sick, I was able to see most of the Martinsville race from my horizontal position on the couch and here is my take;
1) Kurt spinning out Kyle was pretty neat to see - I wonder if that spin out helped to weaken Kyle’s rear end gear? No giving between those two, just taking.
2) Nice to see Jamie McMurray have a decent run.
3) No full pick-up problems for Denny this time round.
4) Too bad Jr didn’t win - it would have been nice to see.
5) Matt Kenseth goes for vigilante justice out on the track. He must have been watching some of Carl’s past race videos. You know, I don’t have a problem with what Kenseth did, because he did it on the track and not on pit road and he did it on a track where they aren’t going 200 mph either. He could have been more subtle though, he was way too obvious, I probably would have slowed up a bit, then closed the gap and waited until the next corner to unload on him. NASCAR probably wouldn’t have done anything then because it would have look way less obvious.
6) What was Michael McDowell in the #00 thinking? Once the race leader gets by you, you are a lap down so why is he racing the rest of the leaders just as hard? As long as he stays the first car a lap down he is fine for the “lucky dog”.
OK with all this being said I can’t help but to wonder if the reason why Burton didn’t punt the little insignificant rookie McDowell out of the way was because of what happened to Kenseth? Burton doesn’t have the luxury of instant replay built into his dashboard so he didn’t know how obvious Kenseth’s ‘incidental’ contact was and maybe he was afraid of getting parked for two laps like Kenseth did if he tried to move McDowell out of the way.
Here is what each of them had to say after the race;
Burton - “I thought we were going to be in pretty good shape, but that kid in the double zero car [McDowell], he needs to learn some manners or he is going to get taught,” Burton said. “He can choose to do it the way he wants to — the hard way or the easy way. But one way or another, he’ll get taught.”
McDowell - “I was just focusing on trying to get around the 28 [Travis Kvapil] and trying to stay on the lead lap,” said McDowell, who finished three laps down. “The 11 [Hamlin] got by, and we were able to run with him and the 31. When he [Burton] got to us, when he finally got underneath us, I tried to give him as much [room] as I can, but at the same time the 11 is racing the 28 — and you don’t hear the 11 complaining about the 28 right now.”
Based on what is said here, I think some of the more seasoned drivers are going to have to ‘teach’ McDowell the hard way.
Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images
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