Surprisingly Good Finish: Gotta give this one to the runner-up finisher, Juan Pablo Montoya. Honorable mentions: David Ragan (4th), Brian Vickers (5th).
Most impressive performance: The aforementioned David Ragan. It seemed like everytime I looked he had his Roush-Fenway Ford running around the top 5.
Perserverance: Giving this to Casey Mears. He had nothing more than a 25th place car for the majority of the race, but wound up being the highest finisher from the Hendrick brigade. He was 16th with just 8 laps to go, but finished 7th.
Surprisingly Bad Finish: I'm giving this to Matt Kenseth, as he finished 41st. Honorable mentions: Carl Edwards (40th), Kurt Busch (39th), and Tony Stewart (38th).
Deserved a Better Finish: No doubt this was Tony Stewart. He had at worst a top 5 finish, but a multi-car crash with about 15 laps to go spoiled that.
Should've Stayed in Bed: Some might think Matt Kenseth, but I'm going to go with Kurt Busch. It seems like he's been getting this award quite a bit this year. He spent most of the day running outside the top 30, and it wasn't until late he crept into the top 10, but was caught up in the same caution as Stewart.
Roush in house crew gets the headache award. They had they camber off on a couple of the cars. That was what caused the tire blow outs. I know GoodYear was sweatin bullets at it.
Most impressive should have gone to the Shrub. I think he did a heck of a job. Yellow line controvesy, kinda like Jr. when he passed Kenseth a couple years back under the line.
Give a call to Paul Menard who had a heck of a race til his was booted by J.P.M. Also to Michael Waltrip for getting his sponsor some great T.V. time. Also in the Nationwise Series, Morgan Shepard great race for a great cause
Good stuff. I agree with ya on Kurt Busch. We kept watching him running by himself, all alone, and we even cheered for him one time because we felt sorry for him... the other people around us in the stands just laughed :)
Do you really think it was the camber that caused Matts tire to blow? Because even in the Nationwide series there were some blown tires (Right Front) Just like Matts, Tony,.. hopefully the Killer bee will come back and be in the chase. I dont want this to be the first year since he started driving, to miss the chase
Cant argue with any of these MMracer. Kenseth is having a rough patch for sure but its mostly mechanical problems, whereas Kurt seems to not have the setups down yet. One thing I am impressed with is Kurt's perserverance thru these bad runs, he hung in there several races to get the lucky dogs and get a decent finish when it could have been much worse...he had a top 10 until that wreck with 15 to go.
He has been caught a couple times and it has nothing to do with having a license to drive. He's said he has a personal account on the luxury online service '#### for all 18+ to meet successful and celeb singles. He is attracted by lots of sexy ladies. He got hundreds of emails after joining the site for two days
How about Elliott Sadler? He was in the top 5 most of the race and was coming again at the end until he was involved with the last lap crash. And how about Mikey? He was in the lead with 5 laps to go and was on his way to a forsure top 10 until he blew up on the last lap.
Let's hear a shout out to Travis Kvapil and the crew of the #28 Yates Racing team. Ran a white, unsponsored car most of the year but still 23rd overall in points and two Top-10s; including a 6th place finish at Talledega.
Smoke did have a great car last weekend. But that is one of the disadvantages of restrictor plate racing. The Big One or Mini-Big One can happen at any time.
