Archive for November, 2007

Congratulations to Jimmie Johnson, who is, once again, the Nextel Cup Champion.

One week ago after the NASCAR Nextel Cup race had ended, Jeff Gordon said “It’s over” regarding the battle for the Cup title.

He was right.

Jimmie Johnson did all he needed to do to wrap up his second-straight Nextel Cup by playing it safe. He finished seventh as Matt Kenseth won Sunday night’s Ford 400.

After starting on the pole and leading the first lap, all Johnson had to do was finish 19th or better. Gordon’s

fourth-place finished sealed the championship for Johnson who won the title by 77 points.

Is it wrong if the only thing I can think to say right now is, “I can hardly wait for February?”

I don’t know. Is it just me, or are there just too many Indy Car drivers making the transition to NASCAR? It makes you wonder if there is something seriously wrong in the Indy program or if NASCAR is now so lucrative they’re willing to drop everything to make the transition.

Sam Hornish Jr. is leaving the IndyCar Series for a full-time ride in NASCAR, joining the mass exodus of open-wheel stars fleeing to America’s most popular racing series.

The three-time IndyCar champion told The Associated Press he will drive the No. 77 Dodge next season for Penske Racing with Mobil 1 as the sponsor.

…

Penske will officially introduce Hornish as the third driver for his NASCAR team on Saturday night at the Penske Racing Museum in Phoenix. He’ll join a team that already fields cars for Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman.

I just hate to see some of the established NASCAR drivers missing races because of the new guys.

Congratulations Carl!

Kevin Harvick won another race and runaway points leader Carl Edwards finally wrapped up his first NASCAR Busch Series championship Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway.

Edwards, who built a lead of more than 800 points in the first half of the season, stumbled through the second half of the year before putting away the title with an 11th-place run in the O’Reilly Challenge. He leads runner-up David Reutimann by an insurmountable 552 points with two races to go.

Read more over at the NASCAR website.

NASCAR finally tracked down the problem with water in the fuel during the Atlanta race last week.

A failure in a portable piece of dispensing equipment was to blame for fuel being contaminated with water during last weekend’s Nextel Cup event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, NASCAR officials said Friday.

Several cars, most notably those of Denny Hamlin and Dave Blaney, experienced problems with water in the fuel late in last Sunday’s event. An investigation conducted by NASCAR and official fuel supplier Sunoco found that the fueling station at the Atlanta track functioned properly, but a piece of portable equipment used to transfer the fuel did not.

What amazes me most is that it took them longer to find this problem than it does to hand down inconsistent fines and miscellaneous penalties. When you think about it, there are only a couple of ways water could have gotten into the fuel, and they pretty much knew the main takns were okay, so that left very few alternatives.

I’m glad they ruled out sabotage and finally figured it out though.

NASCAR has no idea what the fluid is, or how it got into the fuel supply, but they are confident enough to rule out sabotage? Howz that?

NASCAR officials and Sunoco are investigating how water got into the racing fuel during Sunday’s NExtel Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Speaking Monday during a two-day test session, Nextel Cup director John Darby said the contaminated fuel affected “more than two and less than 43″ of the cars in the Pep Boys Auto 500.

Darby has asked Nextel Cup teams to disassemble their fuel filters and fuel cells from the cars involved in Sunday’s race in order to determine how widespread the problem might be. In addition, he’s asking Craftsman Truck Series teams – which also fueled from the pumps over the weekend – to report on anything out of the ordinary.

The water that entered the system was a cloudy brown color. NASCAR, Sunoco and independent labs are currently testing the substance to see what it might be and where it came from.

NASCAR has ruled out sabotage.

I find it strange that it was in the fuel supply for the Nextel Cup race, but did not affect the Craftsman Truck race, nor the testing that was done on Monday. Something isn’t right. I couldn’t say if it was sabotage, but it’s just odd enough I wouldn’t rule it out til I at least knew what the substance was.