Race Review: Pennsylvania 500 presented by Rush Hour 3

Pocono has Two Dates…Why?
I hate to just fill another race review with negativity, but what else can you do when you watch over three hours of poor racing squeezed in between gangster-styled music videos and absurdly annoying “Draft Tracker” sessions. Kudos to the Miller Lite team for hitting the mark, but isn’t that what happens every race here? One team hits it, runs away, and that’s the end of the day. I think that during the longest stretch of green flag racing I actually dozed off and dreamed I was watching Darlington. It was magical.

Tell me Again that NASCAR Doesn’t Show Favoritism
Dale Jr. again needed a little “administrative assistance” during the race, and NASCAR Race Control was happy to oblige. After he (intentionally, in my book) spun himself to bring out a yellow that he desperately needed to replace his shock, NASCAR took a whopping five laps to resume the green flag. This was for a single-car spin that left no debris. How long did it take for them to go green after the biggest wreck of the day? Three laps. Three laps to clean up six cars worth of debris, but five laps when a single car spins just doesn’t compute. It is getting tiring, and I think that if ESPN wasn’t giving fans the worst coverage of NASCAR seen in the last six years that maybe more people would have noticed.

Speaking of Which…
Rumor has it that after the antics of last week (missing a practice session and playing commercials over most of qualifying), ESPN has been kicked off all future qual and practice sessions, effective by Michigan in two weeks. That is a huge blow for the network, which has tried to take the NASCAR watching community by storm and has failed utterly. From inane commentary from unqualified analysts to the afore mentioned (and still absurd) “Draft Tracker” fiasco to “Back in the Saddle,” ESPN has been a monumental disappointment (and in some cases, rage-inducing nightmare) for NASCAR fans everywhere.

Chris Tucker - Bravo good sir.
He joins Kevin James and Nicholas Cage in the elite club of great ‘Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!’ commands this year. All the CEOs and board members need to take note; that’s how you do it. We don’t want anymore of those wimpy little “I don’t even know if the mic is on” commands. Say it like you mean it!

Has Anyone Noticed…
That during the commercial about NASCAR ‘invading’ New York, the scrolling marquee of news stories above the cars is describing something about a “newborn being murdered?” Just seems like a very poor choice of video to use, and you would have thought that the editors of that piece would have caught it.

The “What Were They Thinking” Award
We have dual winners this week! First, it goes, again, to NASCAR Race Control for restarting the Busch race at Montreal with Robby Gordon still lined up in second place. They KNEW he was going to spin out Marcos Ambrose, and to be honest, I think that’s why they left him there; they wanted the drama and the headlines, at everyone’s expense. Think about it; if that race had ended with Ambrose or even Gordon checking out, it would have been a backmarker in the sports news of the weekend, especially with the Bariod Bonds chase still limping along. Instead, they got a controversy that actually got the race, in the junior NASCAR league, mentioned on the 6:00 o’clock news in venues all across the country. They did it on purpose, and shame on them for costing Marcos Ambrose a shot at his first win.

Equally stupid and jaw dropping were Robby Gordon’s own antics. He might have had a case had he lined up where he was supposed to and just finished the race and protested the caution dance later, but ramming into a driver’s car three times under caution, refusing to line up, spinning the leader while you are already disqualified, then doing a burnout and declaring you won the race is far beyond the acceptable conduct for a driver in the second most popular motorsports series in America (behind only Nextel Cup, of course).

Chase Watch
A little shake up internally as Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson swap spots (Johnson’s top-5 eclipsed Harvick’s rather lackluster 17th) swap spots, with the 48 team now in 7th and the 29 back in 9th. Elsewhere, the real race is heating up for 12th, as the battle of the beers is back. Dale Earnhardt Jr, despite finishing 2nd, lost 12th to the only person who COULD gain points on him, the winner, Kurt Busch. Down the stretch, it is Penske vs DEI at this point; there are two spots available for Junior, Busch, Martin Truex and Ryan Newman. I give the edge to Truex and Busch at this point.