Trouble in Turn2

A few notes and happenings for the early week.

• The Cup teams “traveled” to Lowe’s for a test session. Nothing too exciting on the speed charts, but one little note did catch my eye. Nationwide prospect and Dale Earnhardt Jr protege Brad Keselowski test-drove the #70 Haas-CNC car. The connections are obvious, with Hendrick Motorsports supporting both JR Motorsports and Haas-CNC. With Haas-CNC using a “Raise Your Hand If You can Drive this Week” rotation, could we see Keselowski make a handful of Cup starts this year? He’s not ready for a full time Cup ride, especially a high profile one at HMS, but Haas-CNC seems like a perfect option. No pressure for Keselowski to live up to the lofty standards of Jeremy Mayfield, and Haas gets to audition a young prospect. One to keep an eye at least.

• Somewhat lost in the Dale Jr-Kyle Busch-HOw to Incite an Angry Fanbase Dustop, was the mysterious behavior of Denny Hamlin. After seeing his dominant car get a flat tire, he remained on the track for several laps, despite more than ten laps left in the race. Ultimately he just stopped on the track to bring out the caution flag. He tried to explain to Dustin Long during Monday’s test at Lowe’s Motorspeedway.

  “I was trying to get to pit road. The problem was if I ran any kind of speed around the race track I was going to drag the sway bar arm off. It went into turn 3 and that’s when I totally lost the entire tire. So I stopped, trying to be able to turn it down on to pit road but I had already crossed (by) the wall (that separates the track from the pits). I didn’t want to risk tearing up the car to where we couldn’t even finish the race, so I knew I had to stop or else I was going to jeopardize even us finishing the race.

  For me, that doesn’t fly. Hamlin first lost speed while leading the race and it didn’t completely blow until at least ten lead lap cars had passed him. He had plenty of time to make it to pit road before his tire was fatal. Hamlin said he didn’t want to jeopardize tearing up his car. Staying out on the track and not running full speed posed a pretty big risk too, with cars tightly packed trying to avoid the limping #11 car.

  I was already (upset) anyway because I felt like we should have won the race. Regardless if I was running fifth, I would have done the same thing because I pride myself on not getting DNFs and if I would have ran that one lap on that flat tire … we would have been done. I had to do what I had to do regardless of whether it kind of affected someone else or not.

  This comes across as extremely selfish. There are 43 cars on the track and each driver has a responsibility to at least respect the other 42. Staying out on the track when you have a tire going flat, not running at full speed only creates danger for the others. It has nothing to do with pride in no DNF’s, staying on the lead lap or using the racetrack for wallowing. Imagine if in the future Hamlin is running in the top five, having a nice run and a car with a problem refuses to leave the track and collects Hamlin in a wreck. I’m pretty sure Hamlin would be livid, but that’s exactly the atmosphere he created on Saturday night.

  Literally adding injury to insult was Hamlin’s hip injury suffered on Sunday playing pickup basketball. I guess it’s a more macho injury than his cut hand suffered from running a foot race around his hauler last year.

• Speaking of Kyle Busch(since everyone else is), some interesting quotes from Nationwide (click here for audio and more quotes) regarding his manhood initiation with Seven Wallace.
  

  He’s a boy trying to play in a man’s sport and I don’t take those games so we are going to fight if it comes down to it. If he wants to play that kind of game, then that’s what we are going to play.

  Take notes boys, learn how to be a man. Real Men throw HANS devices at other drivers, abandon their teams while they repair your wrecked race car, and hide behind the blanket answer of “I’m a racer” to dismiss any and all racing incidents. Manly, indeed.