As for Tony Stewart’s win, it was only a matter of time.  A lot of hard core fans will be critical of a “fuel milage” win, but we always see a couple of those every year.  And Larry McReynolds made an important observation during the race.  Tony Stewart and crew chief Darrian Grubb could have played it safe, got gas and gone for the guaranteed points.   But instead they rolled the dice because they really didn’t have anything to loose.  Tony, leading the points, is pretty much guaranteed of making it into the chase.  But going into the chase first in points with no wins means that Tony would be behind anyone with a race win.  So by going for it, the now get 10 extra points when starting the Chase.

By the way, Ryan Newman will win soon.  He’s been running too well.  And to have the kind of finish he did at Pocono after having to pit several times to fix a spark plug problem shows how strong both teams at Stewart Haas are.
Finally, it was really cool watching the race from Pocono after having just driven that track. When the commentators kept repeating how hard the tunnel turn is, I kept saying to myself “Yes, it really is that hard.”  I always had a lot of respect for race car drivers, but that has grown.  As successful as my own experience was, it’s a lot different being in a somewhat controlled environment with only three cars on the track from 43 cars doing their own thing.

Since we are at the midway point, I thought I would look at my preseason predictions and see how I’m doing thus far.  Here we go:

1)    Jimmy Johnson will have another good regular season and great chase, however, will just fall short of his fourth straight championship.  This is no way a slight to JJ.  Winning one championship, let alone three is amazing, but the odds of winning a fourth straight are astronomical.  That said, he will come in second too . . .

This one is hard to tell since the Chase is it’s own Animal, but JJ is having another great season.  JJ is having another great season with wins at Martinsville and last weekend at Dover where he was the dominate car.  He also has six top 5 and 8 top 10′s and currently stands third in the points.  However, if you ask me, the driver to beat when it comes Chase time will not be JJ.  More on that later.

2)    A Roush-Fenway driver not named Carl.  I predict that Greg Biffle will win the championship by winning the race at Homestead.  Why the Biff?  He has the same shop behind him that Carl does, but unlike Carl, Biff has won championships (One each in Truck and Nationwide series), he knows how to win in the Chase (back to back chase wins) and most importantly, he knows how to keep his car clean and get the most out of a bad day.

Not looking good here, although The Biff is in Chase contention.  Despite winning the first two races, all of Roush-Fenway has been struggling this season for no reason I can fathom.  I still expect Biffle and teammates Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth to make the chase, but they have a lot of catching up to do if they expect to be serious title contenders.

3)    The Dodge teams will continue to lag behind the other manufacturers.  As a result, I really believe this will be Dodge’s last year in the sports, at least for a while (and it pains me to say this).

This has been true so far, with Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne being the only two Dodges running in the top 20.  Time will only tell how accurate this is now that RPM has started running the new Dodge engine.

4)    Tony Stewart will become the most successful Owner/Driver since Alan Kulwicki.  He will qualify for the chase, and teammate Ryan Newman will be on the Chase bubble.

This is also true, as Tony leads the points heading into Pocono, the first Owner-Driver to do so since Kulwicki.   He has a non-points win in the All-Star race, six top-5′s, nine top-10′s and an average finish of 9.6.  Historically, he’s never done this well this early,  so look for this trend to continue throughout the season into the Chase.  I really think Tony needs to be considered the front runner for the title.

I was off on Newman though.  He will easily make the Chase and will also contend for the title.

5)    David Ragan, Jamie McMurray, Brian Vickers and Casey Mears will all win races this season, and one of them will make the chase.

Of this group, only Vickers has shown any promise this year.  McMurray has had some good runs but rotten luck.   Ragan has been very disappointing, although his UPS commercials have been great while Mears and all of Richard Childress Racing have been having a disasterous season. The one driver not on this list, but who should have been included is David Reutimann.  “The Franchise” has a win in the Coke 600 (a win is win folks!) and currently sits just 31 points out of the Chase.  He is a serious contender to make the chase.
6)    A small, one car team will surprise a lot of people and run in the top 20 all year.

Nope, not even close here!

7)    Robbie Gordon will win one of the road races this season.

We’ll find out when the cicuit head to Sonoma in a couple of weeks.

8)    Here’s an easy one:  both Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth will win at least one race this season.

Like I said, easy.  Kenseth won the first two races of the season, the Daytona 500 and the following week in Fontana.  Gordon won his Gatorade Duel and at Texas, one of the few tracks he never won on previously.  A note on Gordon.  I’ve always been a critic of his because, well, I didn’t like the way he spun out Rusty Wallace to win some races, but whether you like him or not, he’s one hell of a race car driver and a great champion.  I really hope his back can heal and that he is not forced out from behind the wheel anytime soon.  Like Kyle Busch, Gordon is great for the sport and you hate to see any great Champion forced to leave because of injury.

The Good: A tremendous race from start to finish.  The final 10 laps were amazing, first watching Tony Stewart catch Greg Biffle, and the Jimmie Johnson catch them both to take the win.  Tremendous racing.  Also, Dover’s new pit road debuted to what can only be called a tremendous success.  Dover is basically my home track, and it’s great to see all of the improvements they have made to the facility of the past few years.  If you get a chance to see one race a year, go to Dover and site between turns 3 and 4.  You can see everything!

The Bad: The continuing struggles of Richard Childress racing.  Even though they had three cars in the top 20 (Clint Bowyer finished 11th, Jeff Burton 16th and Kevin Harvick 17th), this has been one of RCR’s best tracks over the past several seasons.  If a rebound was going to start, you would have thought it would have started this past weekend.  After having three drivers in the Chase the past several years, RCR will probably only have one.  You have to wonder if this was the result of going to four teams?

The Ugly: An early caution coming in the middle of green flag pit stops putting a bunch of good cars down a lap or more.  You have to wonder if Biffle used up some of his stuff early in the race getting his lap back, which may have lead to Johnson being able to catch him in the closing laps.

The day actually started the night before at my Dad’s house.  My brother, not known to me, invited two of my closest friends to share the experience.  One of them came from Clifton, about 45 minutes away, the other from Las Vegas, NV.  Michael had booked us a hotel and off we went after dinner to try to get a decent nights sleep as we had an early start to the next day.  For whatever reason, I do not get a good night’s sleep in hotels, so it was very hard to get up the next morning, but up we were and on the road at 6:30.

After getting close to the track, we found a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (I’m addicted to their iced coffee!)  And then off to the track.

Once we got there, it was through the tunnel, on through the infield and in to the garage area to register and start class.  Class is really a couple of short video’s designed to give you basic safety information, teach you about the signs you’ll be shown from the flag man, etc.  The biggest thing is that you’re driving race cars, not street cars and they are very different.

After the video class, it was off to the garage where our instructor first showed us how to get into the car.  This may sound silly to some people, but stock cars don’t have doors. Next, it was how to fasten the belts and info on the cockpit’s gauges (no speedometer),  and what there ideal settings should be.  I was paying more intention to the light on the dashboard that warns if something’s wrong, and the button to activate the fire extinguisher system.  The other important button was the master switch.  Again, race cars don’t have keys.

From here, we piled into vans for a spin around the track.  We were going 65 miles per hour, but it seemed like we were flying.  It was a van.  The main purpose of the van ride is to teach you about the marks you need to hit to go fast.

The way the track is set up, you have two sets of marks.  The first is a set of colored cones going into each turn.  The first cone is yellow.  This signifies two things, the first is that you are getting close to your turning point.  The second is that this is were you need to make sure you’re maintaining your spacing from the car you’re chasing, and make any adjustments needed.  The next cone is red.  This means it’s time to turn.  From here, your marks change to blocks on the track.  These blocks show you the ideal line, and you want to drive over them.  The last cone is a green cone that goes with a triangle on the track that shows you the apex of your turn.  In other words, time to  follow the blocks back out of the turn.

After the van ride, it was off to the drivers meeting.  This was really to teach us about the safety equipment we would be wearing.  Firesuit, helmet, HANS device.  Then we suited up and got ready to roll.

Michael, Lester, Pete and Myself suited up and ready to drive.

My friends Pete and Lester got out first.  It seemed like they had to wait for a while in the cars.  In addition to drivers, the school also had ride-alongs going on, so pit road was a busy place.   Once the car that had the instructor that Les and Pete were following pulled in and had a quick safety check, they were off.  I really didn’t get to see much, because the cars that Michael and I were to drive pulled in.  Michael was in the 5 car, a COT Toyota.  My car was an older style Dodge Intrepid.  Once we got to the cars they took some pictures (I didn’t purchase them, so don’t ask!) The first test was getting in and getting fitted in the chair.  I needed a pad to push me forward so that I could comfortably control the pedals.  Then, with the help of the race schools crew, I was getting belted in, helmet on,  HANS set up and reseting the tach.   I was all stapped in, and when I say all strapped in, you are so snug in the car.  You can’t turn your head to the right very far, just enough to see out the windshield, which is a lot smaller than you would think. One last review of the controls and then my window net went up and waited for the signal to fire the engine.

I was now in the car all by myself, and, oddly enough, I felt really, really comforable.  I wasn’t at all nervous, instead very content.  At that, it was time to flip the switch to fire the engines and put it into gear and roll down pit road.  These cars are 4-speed manuals, and you get through the gears very quickly, in fourth by the end of pit road and then onto the track for your first lap.  The first lap is a pace lap run at 5000 rpm’s (again, there’s no speedometer in the car).

I really needed that lap to judge my distance from the chase car, but after that, I was off and running.  It was amazing.  I know at one point I was turning of 7500 rpm, then 8000, then over 8000.  I was hitting my marks.  I would feel the car start to slide and then would accelerate to get more grip, catching my instructor.  I was really cranking.  I was amazed at how late we would turn into the corners, and how quickly I would be able to get back into the gas.  But I think the most amazing thing was that, from a speed stand point, I really didn’t fell like I was going that quickly.  My thoughts were really on staying with my instructor and hitting my marks.

Before I knew it, I took the checkered flag, which in this case didn’t mean the end, but go as fast as you can into turns one and two, then signal my brother that I was slowing down and heading into the pits, throwing the car into neutral and coasting to a stop.

Once I was done, I just sat in the car for a second amazed at what I did.  I figured I had hit the 160 mark, I had to.  The guys on pit road were right over to help me out of my hans and helmet.  That’s when I hit the recall button on my tach, over 8300 rpm.  “Not bad”, said the gentleman helping me, “that’s about 170.  One of the fastest I’ve seen today.”  All I knew was I felt like Dale Earnhardt winning the Daytona 500.  “We did it, we did it.” I drove a stock car at 170 miles per hour, and nothing could seem more natural.

I can’t wait to do it again.

The Bad: I really thought the race was kind of boring until the last segment.  It seems that on these intermediate tracks the if you get up front you can drive a way from the pack for a while.

RCR also had a dismal night.  It really seems that the Childress program is in big trouble and needs to make a bunch more changes.  It’s really surprising since they have been so good for the past couple of seasons.  The good news is they still have several drivers in Chase contention, so they shouldn’t panic too much.

The Ugly: Well, it really wasn’t very ugly unless you hate Kyle Busch, but the way he passed on the outside time and time again was amazing.  I’ve said it before  and will say it again, the man can just wheel!  What was ugly was the number of people online blaming Kyle Busch for the wreck that took out Jeff Gordon.  There really was no blame there, just three cars running where there’s only room for two, and anyone who really understands racing knows that those where three guys running for a million bucks, so non of them were going to give an inch.