commercials ever. When his Dad wore the mask to impersonate Dale was thigh slapping funny, yet a so very touching concerning their loving relationship.
Some years ago I was a huge DJ fan. He was driving for Coach Gibbs in the Interstate Pontiac/Chevy. The day his Dad called his win of the Daytona 500 was historic and memorable as he beat The Intimidator to the finish line. A while later, Dale did, to me, the unexplainable. He left a great ride with Coach Gibbs and took up with Robert Yates and the dastardly Ford camp. For a good number of years Dale and the 28/88 Fords were among those I rooted against. Then Dale did the unthinkable. He left Yates for a ride in the MWR Toy with UPS following him as his sponsor. To me that was blasphemy. Now that he’s finally running his last race and moving to the E$PN broadcast booth I will put aside my dislike for some of his actions and reflect on his contribution to the sport. Through it all, Dale has been a gentleman and outstanding spokesman for our sport. Even though Dale had a famous racing father, he didn’t just slide into a CUP seat on his name. Dale earned his way in through wrenching his own short track racing efforts, Busch racing and finally getting his chance at a CUP ride. I wish him well, God speed and smooth sailing. Well done my man.
Friday dawned with threatening skies and only allowed the CUP cars an hour of practice before the skies opened and cancelled Busch Lite practice and CUP qualifying. The scheduled Saturday morning CUP Lite qualifying session was converted to a final practice before the race started later in the afternoon with the lineup set by points.
After a rain delay the CUP Lite race finally got underway and ran a little past half way (171 of 300 laps) before being called by rain. Clint BowWow was declared the winner with Kase of Bud Kahne in second in the Ragu car. David RotoRoterMan was third and my Navy car fourth with Brad Keselowski at the controls. Nationwide regulars Mike Bliss, Jason Leffler, Mike & Kenny Wallace were fifth, sixth tenth and eleventh respectively. Truex, Jr. wrecked early and took Rowdy out with him on lap thirteen. Kiddie Kyle reared his ugly head as he stomped off and out of the track without comment. Hey Rowdy, stuff happens. Get used to it and learn to grin and bear it.
The frontal system that caused the rain in Bristol also affected us here in Charleston with heavy rains, lightning, tornados and hail up to 4 ½ inches in diameter. Fortunately, the morning dawned with bright sunshine and not a cloud in the sky here and cloudy with 0% chance of rain in Bristol. Let’s get ready to watch Ned Jarrett drop the green and see if we’ll see the infamous framin and bamin or just good, clean racing.
Well, it ended up we saw a lot of good racing, some framin and bamin, a mini big one and a whale of a finish. Congratulations to RCR for a one, two three finish for my beloved Chevies. Kudos to Jeff Burton for the win and his class act Polish victory lap with the checkered flag. Hey kiddies, that’s how you do it. Donuts and burnouts are childish and overdone. Possibly the biggest story of the day is Aric Almirolo for his eighth place finish in his first start of the season. It looks like this kid is the real deal. The amazing thing, for Bristol, is all forty three cars were running at the finish. Whoda thunk it?
It wasn’t a good day for the JGR toys. Tony StewPot led the most laps and got taken out by Kevin Havock, with six to go, and ended up fourteenth. Rowdy was leading the race and spun out. Denny Hamlin was leading on the green/white/checker restart and had another fuel pickup problem which relegated him to sixth place. Rowdy’s nineteenth place finish kept him in the points lead by thirty points over Greg Baffled.
The mini big one took out a high running Ken Schrader, The Rocket Man, Bobby Labonte and others. It was started when Franchitti and McMurray got together and taking out Paul Menard and the afore mentioned drivers. Casey Mears was wrecked through no fault of his own and was dropped to thirty third in points although still running at the end. Sam Hornish barely squeaked into the thirty fifth position in points. Jamie McMurray’s ill fortunes dropped him out of the top thirty five.
Junior was the class of the Hendrick stable in fifth with Big Daddy Gordon eleventh and Jimmy J twentieth. Mikey’s gang finished well enough to keep all three in the top thirty five heading to Martinsville. DJ’s final race was less than stellar and barely hung of for thirty fourth in points. David Ragan actually finished the race and I didn’t see him spin out or hit anything. The Pigtail had a good enough run to maintain fortieth in points while finishing five laps down. Hey Kyle, wanna tell me how much better you’re running?
The most impressive part of the race was the track and the new car allowing drivers like Tony to pass for the lead on the outside. Also still impressive about the new car is the way it seems to prevent spinouts much more readily than the old cars handling allowed. Granted, it still seems
passes on the inside are still difficult as demonstrated by Kevin Havock’s taking out the StewPot. Less than impressive was how the Bristol tire seemed to shed slivers of rubber as opposed to the old marbles. What was with that? The good thing was we didn’t have any blown tires.
While this wasn’t the Old Bristol form of racing, I thought it was better. The lesser number of cautions may have led to brief front runners in single file, but overall, there was a lot of side by side racing in the pack with little of the contact between cars leading to wrecks or spinouts. To me, this beats the old racing at Bristol where it was five laps and a caution for five laps. Sunday’s race saw the pace car relenting it’s most laps led bonus. I see nothing to complain about with what we saw all race long and the finish was well worth the price of admission. Kudos to Bruton Smith and the track management for making Bristol a race track instead of a demolition derby of old.
Kudos to Fox for sticking around to interview
numerous drivers instead of cutting away to a
nonsensical repeat of their usual programming.
One of the neatest things of the whole day was
the presentation of the Mountain Dew car to a
voiceless but humbled and surprised DW. I’m
sure many appreciated DW’s loss of voice but
he’s just DW. That car brought back a lot of
fond memories for me as I know it did DW.
DW was “The Man” for me back in the days
when he drove that car to numerous victories
and championships. The only thing wrong was
that they didn’t put the car on the track to pace
the field for a lap or two. That would have really
been awesome to see and ole DW would
probably have wet his britches. I sure would have. One thing that impressed me was that DW didn’t follow the old school superstition about green race cars since he also drove the green and white Gatorade 88 car to a ton of victories.
Once again, this is my opinion based on my observations. You have every right to disagree but not to become disagreeable.
Please watch after your innocent little ones. I pray the horror of 911 will never leave your memory and help your perspective about what our brave, young troops are willing to die for. God bless you and yours, our great nation, all who serve to protect and defend and all victims of terrorism.
Freedom Isn’t Free
We are the Land of The FREE Because of The BRAVE.
Mom, Apple Pie, John Wayne and NASCAR Racin. Now that’s America
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