View From the Couch: Pocono II
If you missed Sunday’s race at Pocono here is a quick recap in a segment I like to call, “Pocono in a nutshell”: Carl Edwards won(again) the race on fuel mileage, Mark Martin was undone by no fault of his own (again), Jimmie Johnson looked strong(again) and the Deathstar(Kyle Busch) appears to be penetrable(slightly). Meanwhile my kitchen remodel is coming along nicely.
Pocono ended i a fuel mileage race which is becoming a trend this year. I have a theory why. The CoT is so hard to drive that teams are willing to take more risks with strategy because it’s so difficult to pass under green. The fact that there are fewer cautions late with the car also means longer green flag runs at long speedways like Pocono and Michigan which also contributes.
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Nice run for Chad McCumbee in the #45 Petty Enterprises car. He finished a career high 17th on Sunday. It was only the 3rd top 20 of the season for the team as they scramble to crack the top 35. They still sit in 40th place and Kyle Petty will return to the seat next week at Watkins Glen. Last year when Petty drove at the Glen he got in a wreck, finished last and injured himself after slamming his hand in frustration. In an unrelated story Petty Enterprises is ordering extra steering wheel padding.
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One of the silliest graphics during a broadcast is the “estimated fuel gauge”. Whenever there is a fuel mileage race, the networks pull that one out. It’s inaccurate, doesn’t really show the viewer anything they didn’t already know and usually all the drivers listed on the graphic are all low on fuel. Thanks for the info, TV.
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Speaking of no fuel, did anyone else think it was funny when Dale Earnhardt Jr and Jeff Gordon drag raced to the finish line as both ran out of fuel? It was like a photo finish in speedwalking.
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Kevin Harvick regained his spot in the top 12 with a 4th place finish. He spun on the first lap, but incredibly didn’t hit anything. Despite the 4th place result, he didn’t gain many points on his closest competition because David Ragan finished 5th, Clint Bowyer 6th and Matt Kenseth led a lap and finished 11th. Only 19 points separate the four drivers with only five races left. While everyone from TV, news and nerdy, stats-based bloggers will talk about the Chase and how close the points battle is, Harvick will take a different approach, “You just go out and race as fast as you can. That’s about all you can do.” And Harvick is exactly right. Everything else is out of his control. According to Sports Club Stats, Harvick has a 69.2% chance of making the Chase while Ragan in 14th has a less than 50% chance. It’s going to stay crazy until Richmond.
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August 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
One ESPN journalist I do agree with is Terry Blount. He has been lobbying NASCAR for quite some time to let the teams have more leeway in adjusting the new car, and that could solve a lot of the problems.
Blowing my own horn, I have been writing the same thing since even before the CoT was being used.
There is a fine line between parity and mediocrity, and I think NASCAR is on the wrong side of that line.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I don’t really see the handling of the car as being a major role in the fuel mileage strategies this year, because …. well, really, they’ve always existed. Typically the fuel strategies are pretty blatant, and there’s only a select few on that strategy, but most of this year’s strategies have been of a different breed. Johnson had a top-3 car at Phoenix regardless of his strategy … Junior had a top-five car at Michigan … and, Carl Edwards had the best car at Pocono.
Besides, when you have half the field on one strategy, and the other half on another, I have a hard time believing that it’s anything more than than simply trying to dissect how the rest of the race is going to play out with cautions, thus dictating what’s the best strategy to go by.