Sunday wasn’t a good day for anyone associated with NASCAR. Torrential rains delayed the race, frustrating drivers, disappointing fans, and thoroughly messing with the schedule of intrepid reporters everywhere. Did you know that you can’t take the day off just because a Sprint Cup race was postponed until Monday? You can be sure that I’ll be writing to my congressman about that oversight.
Monday was a great day for Ford. Not the automaker. That Ford saw no one finish higher than 8th in Monday’s belated running of the Goodies Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville. No, it was Mike Ford, Denny Hamlin’s crew chief, who reigned supreme on Monday.
Hamlin was leading the race with less than ten laps to go when a caution came out thanks to Jeff Burton’s blown tire. Ford immediately called for Hamlin to pit for fresh tires. Hamlin pitted along with teammate and second runner Kyle Busch, but none of the other leaders hit the pits. This lead the TV announcers to pontificate about Ford’s foolishness and the fact that he had just given the race away.
And had Busch not crashed on lap 499, they would have been right. Jeff Gordon was less than 100 feet away from winning the race, but instead had to line up for a restart along with the rest of the competitors. After the green-white restart, Hamlin drove like a man possessed running from fourth to first in the blink of an eye and taking the race by a comfortable margin.
It was a fantastic finish. Too bad most of America missed it.
And under the “He even wins when he loses” heading (and if you’re a regular here you know where I’m going with this): Jimmie Johnson finished in 9th place, well out of contention for the win. And yet he leaped over Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvck to take the lead in the points standings. Six races down, thirty to go.
