Go a head and burn them up Joey Logano, you earned it, you have won the Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway, his second career victory in the Cup Series. Yes, that was one of the headlines that fans will be talking about over the next week before Michigan. But boy was there so much more.
1. Joey Logano is finally starting to show good results in the Cup Series and that he is here to stay. On Sunday, Logano started on pole and raced most of the day pretty well before two late race cautions and fuel strategy would put him up front racing for the lead with Mark Martin.
But with a few laps to go, Logano would make his move heading down the long front straightaway into turn 1 were Logano would get into Martin (bump and run if you will), moving him a bit up the hill and enable him to go by for the race winning move. All I'm going to say it, while there's nothing wrong with the bump and run move, I bet Martin will not soon forget it.
2. NASCAR can still send teams for a loop or in this case a speeding penalty loop. Early on in this race, the headline story was all about several drivers including Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, just to name all receiving speeding penalties. But fans must remember that NASCAR doesn't make judgment call on this, its all done by computer and it was the scoring loops that recently changed that for a while sent teams back to the pits once or twice in some case to sever speeding penalties.
But I think since TNT wasn't up to speed on anything especially this, NASCAR needed to go to the TNT booth and send a simple message to fans saying what exactly was going on and that NASCAR was talking with every team on how to fix it. Just a thought.
3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. started up front and battled for the lead for most of the day. But it was fuel strategy that would cost Junior a big shot at winning this race. Dale Jr. is having a good year so far, but this 8th place finish didn't even begin to tell the real story on how well he ran all day long. Its the end of the race this #88 team needs to work on.
Note: Pitting for fuel in the late stages of the race was a good call to make despite how it turned out even if it was a little bit of points racing or in his case, keeping the points gap he has. The #88 team didn't know that there was going to be several caution laps.
4. Saying I was frustrated with the TNT broadcast was an understatement to say the least. I realize that this is there first race back and the camera shot were good, but the fact is the three announcers in the booth and Larry Mac in his own Hollywood Hotel type studio killed this broadcast considering they could never shut up. If TNT wants viewers, they need to pick it up, stop talking especially Wally and Kyle in the booth and let Adam call these races, there was action on-track, call it, otherwise I'm going to shut off these races and go do something else on raceday.
5. We have a new points leader and its Matt Kenseth leading Dale Earnhardt Jr. by just -10 points. Biffle slips to third (-16), followed by Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson rounding out the top 5. And we have a fight for the wild card spot going on between Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman, Joey Logano and Kasey Kahne, by the way, they all have one win apiece. These two wild card spots are going to take 2 wins to make the chase.
Damn...oh yeah, one more thing, Joey Logano is now in the 2013 The Shootout and the 2013 All-Star Race and he did it all by winning from pole at Pocono. And in a better position to possibly make the chase.
1. Joey Logano is finally starting to show good results in the Cup Series and that he is here to stay. On Sunday, Logano started on pole and raced most of the day pretty well before two late race cautions and fuel strategy would put him up front racing for the lead with Mark Martin.
But with a few laps to go, Logano would make his move heading down the long front straightaway into turn 1 were Logano would get into Martin (bump and run if you will), moving him a bit up the hill and enable him to go by for the race winning move. All I'm going to say it, while there's nothing wrong with the bump and run move, I bet Martin will not soon forget it.
2. NASCAR can still send teams for a loop or in this case a speeding penalty loop. Early on in this race, the headline story was all about several drivers including Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, just to name all receiving speeding penalties. But fans must remember that NASCAR doesn't make judgment call on this, its all done by computer and it was the scoring loops that recently changed that for a while sent teams back to the pits once or twice in some case to sever speeding penalties.
But I think since TNT wasn't up to speed on anything especially this, NASCAR needed to go to the TNT booth and send a simple message to fans saying what exactly was going on and that NASCAR was talking with every team on how to fix it. Just a thought.
3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. started up front and battled for the lead for most of the day. But it was fuel strategy that would cost Junior a big shot at winning this race. Dale Jr. is having a good year so far, but this 8th place finish didn't even begin to tell the real story on how well he ran all day long. Its the end of the race this #88 team needs to work on.
Note: Pitting for fuel in the late stages of the race was a good call to make despite how it turned out even if it was a little bit of points racing or in his case, keeping the points gap he has. The #88 team didn't know that there was going to be several caution laps.
4. Saying I was frustrated with the TNT broadcast was an understatement to say the least. I realize that this is there first race back and the camera shot were good, but the fact is the three announcers in the booth and Larry Mac in his own Hollywood Hotel type studio killed this broadcast considering they could never shut up. If TNT wants viewers, they need to pick it up, stop talking especially Wally and Kyle in the booth and let Adam call these races, there was action on-track, call it, otherwise I'm going to shut off these races and go do something else on raceday.
5. We have a new points leader and its Matt Kenseth leading Dale Earnhardt Jr. by just -10 points. Biffle slips to third (-16), followed by Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson rounding out the top 5. And we have a fight for the wild card spot going on between Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman, Joey Logano and Kasey Kahne, by the way, they all have one win apiece. These two wild card spots are going to take 2 wins to make the chase.
Damn...oh yeah, one more thing, Joey Logano is now in the 2013 The Shootout and the 2013 All-Star Race and he did it all by winning from pole at Pocono. And in a better position to possibly make the chase.
