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April 13, 2008
Johnson Gambles and Coasts His Way To Victory
OK, he didn't coast, but he may as well have, he certainly backed down enough to save on the fuel. While I'm not a Johnson fan, he and crew chief Knaus made the gutsy call and it won them the race and they had a good car to begin with also.
Some may say, quite loudly I might add, that Johnson slowed down too much in the closing laps and should have been black flagged for not going the minimum speed, but I think he was keeping minimum speed and while I'm not a fan, he won the race fair and square.
Second place finisher Clint Bowyer is the only other car that gambled on fuel, everyone else pitted in the closing laps.
As usual, I was following Harvick and wasn't too thrilled at the beginning of the race, way too tight in the center and loose off, they worked on it throughout the race though and did get the car better, not completely to Harvick's liking, but they got it better. I thought he was going to have a great finish there at the end, they were discussing back and forth about whether or not to pit, at first they were going to gamble, then they decided with about two or three laps to go to pit next time for just a splash. Well, Harvick was coming anyways, he was out of fuel...grrrr. Running fourth at the time he ended up eighteenth and dropped three spots in the standings to fifth. Hopefully they get a good car for Dega in two weeks!
Burton kept the points lead with his sixth place finish, not bad for spinning earlier in the race because of someone's blown engine. His lead is eighty points over Kyle Busch who moved up to second in points.
And what was with the beginning of the race? It's bad enough it was delayed because of stupid baseball, but then to miss the start of the race when the baseball game was on FX was just completely ridiculous. NASCAR and FOX need to get their act together!
Your thoughts?
April 13, 2008 in NASCAR | Permalink
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Comments
Fox are a bunch of idiots, the worst part is the baseball game was on both Fox and FX at the same time, couldn't they at the very least have put one on one station and one on the other? Did it really need to be on both? Idiots.
Burton spun out because of Newmans power steering line coming off, not a blown engine. Can't believe that he didn't get the car down to the apron sooner though. That was a poor move on his part.
Don't like Johnson, but I've got him in my pool so the points are good, but man did they make the call on the gas mileage. He still had enough for decent burnout! Maybe some of those other teams didn't need to come in. I was really pulling for Martin to win. That would have been kind of funny, a DEI car winning before a Hendrick car or Jr. in 2008.
Go Jr. go! Oh wait......70 races and counting.
Posted by: canucken | Apr 13, 2008 11:12:42 AM
Kathy,
I agree it was ridiculous how FOX handled the broadcast of the race, the baseball game should have been put on FX after it came back from the long rain delay and they should have kept the race broadcast on FOX.
Congrats to Chad for making the obvious look amazing, once everyone pitted it became a no brainer that he was going to pit and all he had to do was slow Johnson down to conserve enough fuel.
It was a very boring race, but we have come to expect that with this new car.
Junior survived the end of race pitstop to finish 7th and to move up one spot to 3rd in points.
Posted by: Jon | Apr 13, 2008 11:13:34 AM
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