Setzer, Edwards and Biffle win

Dennis Setzer, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle win this weekends NASCAR races.  I think the most surprising win was Dennis Setzer, he's quietly been lurking near the top in points, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to him until Saturday.

Setzer won when the white and yellow flags were displayed at the same time after Ted Musgrave blew and engine, dealing a bad blow to Musgrave in the points.  I think if they had displayed the yellow before the white flag, Busch may have been able to catch him in a green-white-checkered finish. 

I guess the most confusing part and frustrating part for me, is that I am a Musgrave fan and he was doing well, he may not have been able to catch the leader, but he was headed for a good finish that would keep him in the points lead.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  Ted blew his engine and started falling back, NASCAR dropped the white and yellow flags and that was the race, the field was frozen.  At first they had Ted in 11th with the frozen field, but after reviewing tapes to make sure of positions when the yellow flag was displayed, they dropped him all the way down to 28th.  While I understand he blew the engine, he wasn't that far back when the yellow flag came out, so I think they should have kept him in 11th, but I guess they figured that because of the engine problem, he didn't deserve a high finish like that when other trucks were still running.  That finish dropped him from 1st to 3rd in points, trailing Hamilton by 24 points.

In the Busch race, it was all Edwards, that #60 car was untouchable, Biffle tried, but didn't have enough and ended up wrecking trying to catch up to him.  Rusty drove his own car and was doing OK until a loose wheel caused a problem and then if that wasn't enough, he ended up running over debris cutting down a tire.  That didn't bring out a caution, but shortly after that, NASCAR called a caution for debris, too late for Rusty though.  One good thing was that Sorenson, although he didn't have anything for Edwards, finished a solid 4th and kept the points lead.

Over in the Cup race, there was a concern about tire wear, they were wearing all the way down to the cords for many teams, but it didn't cause too many problems and most of the teams seemed to figure it out and it got better.

Vickers got the worse of the tire problems early in the race, he was coming in early, earlier than the team wanted him, but he felt he may have a tire going down.  He was right, as he was coming down the entry to pit road, the tire blew, he spun and ended up hitting the water barrel barrier, they did end up repairing the car and getting it back out, but I can imagine it must have been a long race for him.

A lot of long green flag runs made it a long day for most with Stewart and Biffle trading the top spot.  Biffle won in the end, making it his 5th win of the season and bringing him within 49 points of the leader Jimmie Johnson.  Both Johnson and Gordon seemed to suffer during the race, Gordon getting the worse of it.  He kept saying he felt like he had a problem with his tires and he ended up finishing 32nd, dropping him to 12th in points, 406 behind Johnson.

Rusty and Newman weren't doing great, but Newman was mostly in the top ten all day and Rusty in the top 15 for the most part.  Near the end, Newman dropped off and ended up finishing 15th dropping him one spot to 7th in the standings.  Rusty, on the other hand, seemed to get his car handling better near the end and crossed the finish line in 10th, barely ahead of Burton.  Another top ten for Rusty and even though others in points around him did well, he remains 8th in points.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., while not having a great race, finished in 17th.  While that really isn't considered a good finish, it's an improvement over most of his finishes of late.  If they don't get those cars running right, he's going to be watching the Chase from the outside instead of the inside like last year.

On to the road course next week, which should be a good race for Rusty and Gordon, unless he has handling problems, should be able to gain some points back that he lost this week.  Others to watch for next week, barring mechanical problems, should be Stewart, Harvick and Rudd, all do pretty well at road courses.