Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Dixon was in second position on Sunday and eyeing Darren Manning for the lead with 10 laps to go when the Kiwi spun warming up his tires and collected Ryan Briscoe. That ended Dixon's hopes of extending his streak of three straight wins at Watkins Glen. However, by finishing with an 11th place result, Dixon extended his IndyCar Series championship lead from 43 to 48 over Helio Castroneves.
Castroneves started a career-low 26th in the Camping World Grand Prix at The Glen because of a steering malfunction that prevented him from completing a qualification lap in the No. 3 Team Penske car. His weekend didn't improve much. The championship contender came home 16th.
Dan Wheldon was sideswiped on the opening lap, forced into the grass and then onto pit lane with right rear suspension damage. The No.10 team worked to get Wheldon’s car back on track to pick up as many points as possible before finishing 24th. Wheldon is now 59 points back in third.
Up next is Nashville Superspeedway Saturday, July 12th (8:00 p.m. EDT, ESPN) where Dixon is the defending winner of the event.
With 25 Nextel Cup drivers entered in Saturday’s Busch Series event, Bobby Hamilton, Jr. and the remaining 17 Busch Series drivers knew there would be nothing easy about the USG Durock 300. The race had all the makings for domination by the Cup drivers. The 25 Cup drivers were able to take advantage of nearly three times the amount of practice over the weekend in sweeping 17 of the top 20 positions on the 1.5 mile superspeedway. The advantages were just too strong for the 25 Cup drivers in the field. Hamilton crossed the finish line in the 29th position.
“Today was very tough for us, we did all we could with the practice we had to work with,” Hamilton said. “My guys worked hard on the Eckrich / McDonald’s Ford all weekend. We were real excited to have Eckrich on board our car this weekend. Now we can go to St. Louis and O’Reilly Raceway Park the next two weeks for what should be very good races for our team. We have our focus on moving up into the top-five in the point’s race and these next few weeks will be very important for us.”
Kevin Harvick captured the win, leading Matt Kenseth across the finish line.
Constant Reader knows I am a Bobby Hamilton Jr. fan. But what this article doesn't say is that Bobby was the seventh highest Busch regular. For whatever reason, Team Rensi's performance wasn't even up to their normal "Busch Regular" standards on Saturday.
Granted, this article does ease the pain of the disappointment of the 29th place finish to some degree.
Still, why did David Gilliland, driving similar Team Rensi equipment, finish 27th if it was all about practice? It seems to me that Rensi's equipment simply isn't up to the quality of the Nextel Cup operation's Busch cars. I would like to see Rensi admit this and Bobby's handlers and he himself complain a little less about the practice issue.
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