Johnson wins a depressing Brickyard 400

Well folks, I don’t know what to say. In my mind yesterday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race, the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was one of the most that was one of the most pitiful races I ever watched. Sure, Jimmie Johnson had a great car and captured his second Brickyard win along with the 48 Lowe’s team, but what I saw yesterday was definitely not a race. If you were living under a rock yesterday and missed the race, you were probably one of the lucky ones. The tires that Goodyear brought were totally terrible; they couldn’t even last more than ten to 15 laps before blowing out. The tires looked the same every time they were pulled off with the cords showing due to severe wear. The rubber wouldn’t even stick to the track instead it became dust that blew away in the wind. This pathetic race was just mind blowing, but now everyone wants to know who is to blame?

The finger of course was pointed towards NASCAR and Goodyear for not handling the tire situation in a logical fashion. The first mistake that NASCAR made was not to have an open test at Indy this year like they do every year instead they only had a little tire test in which they only invited three teams to participate. They could have also used a different compound come race time, but they decided to stick with unreliable tire.

NASCAR VP of competition, Robin Pemberton said after the race on Sunday to Autosport.com that many of the solutions thought of wouldn’t help out one bit. "I think when you have an open test things like that have already been decided," Pemberton said. "I don't think an open test here would've done enough for us, it wouldn't have helped, I don't think.

"You may have had enough issues that you'd have gone back and redesigned the tires, but I don't know if we could've gone with that in time. Hindsight is always 20/20, I think we'll just learn from this experience and try to do a better job next year."

Other people tried to blame the abusive track surface at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the problems that were occurred on Sunday, but Pemberton denied that as a cause for the problems, instead he thinks that racing with the Car of Tomorrow for the first time at Indy may have caused the issues.

"This isn't the first time we've raced here with the surface the way it is, and in the past we've been able to accomplish what we need to accomplish," Pemberton said. "So to pick on the surface wouldn't be fair. I think the new car, and probably not having a test here, probably didn't help us at all. You can say that surface is abrasive, but we have been able to accomplish a full fuel run here in the past."
"We have to anticipate where the tires and the competition are going to meet on Sunday afternoon," he added. "We have challenges when we develop tires here because you have such a dramatic change in surface grip as the track rubbers in. You can make everybody happy on Friday, miserable on Saturday, and really miserable on Sunday, or you can come back and work best at trying to achieve the right grip when it comes to Sunday afternoon."

Pemberton also believed that not having any support races at Indy was the cause to the problems either.

Problems pushed aside a few good things did happen on Sunday, A.J. Allmendinger got his first career top 10 in NASCAR Sprint Cup competition, getting he and his Red Bull team ever closer to the top 35 in owner points. Elliot Sadler and Jamie McMurray got their best finishes of the season finishing 4th and 6th respectively. And with Johnson’s win Hendrick Motorsports got their first win of the season that didn’t involve fuel mileage, (with the way race was run, fuel mileage wouldn’t have been a factor anyway). The Sprint Cup Series moves on to Pocono where they and fans like I will hope that the memories of this race will disappear like a bad television series.

NASCAR to learn from tyre debacle [Autosport.com]

Let it Rain

Kurt Busch's 2008 season has been full of highs and lows. After finishing second at the Daytona 500, Busch would fail to score another top 10 finish until Pocono in June. Busch would come into Sunday's race outside the top 20 in points, but on Sunday with a little help from Mother Nature, Busch would find himself in victory lane at the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 in New Hampshire. Pit strategy had him out in front and all it took was a little rain shower to seal the deal.

"Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good," Busch said. "Sometimes you just don't win them the right way, I think we can honestly say that, but we had a lot of work and a lot of effort put in today and we'll take it."

Busch's win wasn't the only surprise of the day as it was Michael Waltrip finished second, his first top five finish since 2005. J.J. Yeley who missed the race last week finished third. Martin Truex, Jr. finished fourth and Elliot Sadler rounded out the top five, his first top five since leaving the Yates team in 2006. Of course the race had a much different picture before Kurt Busch took the lead on the second to last caution came out when Jamie McMurray jacked up Dale Earnhardt Jr. who forgot to use the apron when entering pit road. Tony Stewart dominated the day leading over 130 laps, but the pit strategy of others and the rain relegated him to a 13th place finish.

The race saw seven cautions for 33 laps including the final one in which Clint Bowyer was punted by Sam Hornish, Jr.

While his brother was celebrating in victory lane, Kyle Busch saw his points lead over Jeff Burton dwindle down to 64 over Jeff Burton. The younger Busch suffered a late race incident with Juan Montoya (more on that later) and finished 25th.

The series now moves heads back to Daytona to the newly named Coke Zero (yuck) 400 on Saturday.

Rain hands Kurt Busch Loudon Victory [Autosport.com]

Oh Thank Heaven

Tony Kannan took his first win of the Indycar Season last night in the Suntrust Indy Challenge in Richmond. Kannan dominated the race from pole and held off his fellow Brazilian Helio Castroneves and points leader Scott Dixon for the victory. Dan Wheldon and Oriol Servia rounded out the top five.

"I'm going to enjoy my win tonight for sure," Kannan said. "I knew that I had to keep fighting. There's nothing else I can do. If you're going to have the season you expect every year, then it's going to be pretty boring I would say. I knew it was going to turn around," Kanaan said. "I didn't know when. I thought it was last weekend [at Iowa] and I made a mistake."

"When those kind of things happen, I have a tendency to actually have more strength to turn the situation around. I think I work better when I put a lot of pressure on myself, and you know, I came in determined to win this race, and it worked out."

The night featured heavy carnage in which the yellow flag was waved nine times, tying the race record set in 2001. Only 12 cars of the 26 that started managed to finished the race, leaving many drivers frustrated at the end of the night. The crash during the restart on lap 79 was probably the worst as 5 cars were caught up in a crash. Ryan Hunter-Reay crashed out of a race for the second time in three weeks and was none to happy with the man he tangled up with Mario Moraes.

"I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt until I saw the tape of the crash but now I don't know that I can do that," Hunter-Reay said.

"It's just short-track racing. We had a busy race out there tonight. I was holding my breath on every lap. We were just out there surviving and trying to get some points and we can't even get that done without something like this happening to us."

Meanwhile Scott Dixon's points lead over Helio Castroneves was narrowed a little to just 43. The Indycar Series now moves on to twisty road course in Watkins Glen. The race will be next Sunday on ABC.

Kannan thrilled to end win drought [Autosport.com]

Drivers play down Richmond carnage [Autosport.com]