| | | | | |  | | CIA Stock Photo | The Toyota Save Mart 350 in Sonoma certainly lived up to expectations. | | | | WHAT WENT DOWN | Turning right leads to wild day in wine country | |
| | David Allen / Racegear.com Staff The Toyota Save Mart 350 in Sonoma certainly lived up to expectations. By scoring his fifth win of the season, Kyle Busch proved he was the real deal if anyone had any doubts. Even with three late cautions that bunched the field back together, Busch left the competition in the California dust. Busch came from a 30th starting position and lead 75 laps in route to his first road course victory, and he increased his points lead to 103 over second place Jeff Burton.
Wild Turns
Besides Kyle Busch’s win at Sonoma, some things never change. As usual, things got a little wild at the end. The chaos started when David Reutimann had a left front tire go down, sending him into the tire barricade with less than 10 laps to go. Reutimann’s car was badly damaged and prompted the race to be red flagged so the track could be cleaned. Seconds after the green flag waved, an aggressive Jamie McMurray slipped off the course on the restart making contact with Kevin Harvick. The contact between McMurray and Harvick prompted a three-car pileup when he locked the brakes up in the horseshoe turn. The problems at the front of the field would take one more twist when on the ensuing restart Tony Stewart slammed into a helpless Scott Pruett causing NASCAR to red flag the event once more to clean up Pruett’s spewing car. Tony Stewart, one of the drivers involved in both incidents, let his frustrations be known when he snapped back at reporters who asked him about the pileup. Stewart made it clear he would not be sharing his thoughts until he had been given a chance to review the incident.
Need a Substitute
Road course weekends are usually when fans and drivers expect everything to be different than the other 34 weeks out of the year. When teams come to a road course, some organizations will contract a road course specialist to drive their cars to increase the chances of winning. The common garage used to describe these hired talents are “road ringers.” Boris Said, Ron Fellows, Max Pappis, Marcus Ambrose and Scott Pruett all brought hopes of that one time NASCAR victory with them, but by the end of the event none of the road course aces remained in contention.
Candles to name Calling
Jeff Gordon also came into the weekend feeling special emotions. This weekend Gordon and family celebrated his daughter’s 1st birthday. Saturday might have been full of smiles for Gordon, but they quickly began to fade after the opening laps. A frustrated Gordon could clearly be heard on the radio describing is car as “the worst car out there” as cars were passing him through every braking zone. Gordon, a five-time winner of this event, didn’t let early troubles get him down.
Crew chief Steve Latarte seized an opportunity during an early caution to dial in the handling on the number 24 Chevrolet. Lartarte, who could barely hear his driver due to microphone issues, had to go on instinct to get the DuPont team back in the hunt. The Hendrick crew chief spent much of his time on the first stop lowering tire pressures to increase grip on the slick surface. The air pressure adjustments made Gordon’s ill-handling car a little less cranky, allowing the former series champion to make his way back into contention. Late cautions helped Gordon maintain his 3rd place finishing spot behind David Gilliland and Kyle Busch.
Career Best Finish
David Gilliland showed that an underfunded two-car team can still get the job done. Gilliland turned in a career-best 2nd place finish holding off veteran Jeff Gordon in the closing laps. Sporting part-time sponsor freecreditreport.com, Gilliland was the only driver to even have a shot at the dominant car of Kyle Busch in the closing laps.
“Obviously I wanted to catch Kyle, but once I got up to turn four, I quit worrying about that and focused on keeping my car on the racetrack,” Gilliland said. “We went through there once and I thought, well, the next lap is probably going to be better because there's 40 cars gone through there and the last lap, it was every bit as slippery as the first lap going through there.
“You know it was everything could I do to keep my car on the racetrack at that point, and Kyle was sliding around, I was, Jeff was, and so it was a handful. You know, obviously the restart before that, like Jeff said, I got a good run on Kyle and I was able to apply a little bit of pressure to him and just hoping he would make a mistake.”
| | Posted June 23, 2008 , 6:45 pm EST
Last Updated June 24, 2008 , 9:58 pm EST | | | | | | | | | | |
