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View From The Couch – Darlington

As far as Saturday night’s race, Kyle Busch won, he’s a great driver and will win more races this year and in the future. He slapped the wall multiple times and still won, it was impressive, but he is not Wild Thing. Ricky Vaughn, Mitch Williams, The Troggs, even Tone Loc all rank higher than Kyle Busch concerning rights to the “Wild Thing” moniker. Now let’s move on and talk about something that hasn’t been beaten to death in the last few weeks.

The race itself wasn’t very thrilling. Tires meant very little and track position was everything. On lap 250 Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr surrendered 1st and 2nd to pit for tires, while the cars from 3rd to 10th stayed out. Normally at Darlington a strong car with fresh tires would make its way back to the front rather quickly, but Hamlin and Truex spent the next 50 laps stuck in traffic at the end of the top ten. Darlington was obviously still treacherous, but without the steep dropoff in tires, the race was a little stale. It was the fastest race in Darlington history, speedwise and was almost 30 minutes quicker than the 2007 race, but boy did it feel long. I taped the race and despite fast forwarding through all the commercials, it still felt really long. Maybe it was because nothing exciting happened. I fear for my attention span in two weeks.

Thoughts

  • A few weeks ago, I wondered if there were two drivers you would want to watch battle for the lead in a tight race, than Greg Biffle and Kyle Busch. Considering the fireworks Biffle and Busch presented on Saturday night, my answer stands. The save Biffle made when Busch bumped him in a turn was incredible. It’s a shame Biffle had mechanical problems because he was the only other driver that had something for Busch, and you knew if he was around at the end it would have been a great fight.

  • While top ten stalwarts like Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick had trouble, the door was opened for some other drivers to enjoy good runs. David Ragan finished 5th for his second top five in three races. He also moved up to 12th in the standings. Travis Kvapil had another strong race (what does a team have to do to get a sponsor for crying out loud?), spending almost 300 laps in the top 15 before finishing 8th. One of the happiest teams on Saturday night was the #22 team. Dave Blaney climbed as high as 2nd before finishing 9th. The finish also pushes the team past Sam Hornish Jr for the crucial 35th spot in owner points.

    “This is a brand new car, and it was really good all weekend. They kept getting it better and better all night. That last run, we kind of faltered for some reason. But not bad, man. That is run that this team needed.”

  • No rookie finished better than 28th and were at least 4 laps down. Too Tough to Tame indeed.

  • Elliott Sadler handled his incident with Tony Stewart the right way. He publicly, and immediately accepted all the blame. If there is anything else to sort out, he and Stewart can iron it out in private. In the heat of the moment, that’s the wise and classy thing to do. Too often drivers would prefer to point fingers or shirk their responsibility on national television.

  • Nice to see both Bill Elliott and Sterling Marlin back in Cup cars, especially at Darlington. The two have seven combined wins at Darlington. Marlin drove for the injured Dario Franchitti in the #40 car, which has now come full circle. Marlin and David Stremme, both let go in previous years by Chip Ganassi have both subbed for Franchitti in recent weeks.

Next up is Exhibition Weekend, I mean All-Star weekend. Boogity, Boogity, Boogity boys, let’s go wreckin’.

For more NASCAR opinion, insight and statistics check out Trouble in Turn 2.

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