KIDWCKED
06-21-2010, 10:52 PM
c/p from espn by
By Ed Hinton
ESPN.com
Archive
AP Photo/Ben MargotJeff Gordon made a lot of enemies at Infineon raceway. But will those enemies do anything about it at New Hampshire?
I'm not here to pile onto Marcos Ambrose. Poor guy is suffering enough over his mistake, stalling his engine under caution on an uphill grade to let his best chance yet at a Cup win slip away.
Nor shall I place an asterisk beside Jimmie Johnson's first road course win, even though he acknowledged to reporters at Sonoma that, "It was definitely a gift kind of handed to us" by Ambrose's agonizing error.
I'm here to ballyhoo the Sunday Smackdown that's supposed to compel you to watch the next Sunday Smackdown, at Loudon, N.H.
We all really should watch next Sunday, to see if Martin Truex Jr. really does what he vowed twice on Sunday to do next Sunday -- get Jeff Gordon back for spinning him at Sonoma.
If he does, we'll know racin' is still racin', and payback is in the protocol of NASCAR.
If he doesn't, we'll have to go on suspecting that racin' has become rasslin' -- a lot of angry talk and threats over a little contact.
There wasn't much in the real drama, the high drama of Sunday's race to lead you into next Sunday. Ambrose made the kind of mistake even sympathetic fans want to forget.
Six laps from his first win, after Johnson's team had virtually conceded, Ambrose was trying to save fuel, killed his engine and then tried to restart it going uphill, "the last place you would probably do it," as Johnson pointed out. Ambrose stalled and fell to seventh, and wound up sixth.
Gift that it was to Johnson, he did have one of the strongest cars all afternoon -- stronger even than Ambrose's at times -- so you can't call his first road course win a fluke. Cup races are won like that quite often.
So, on with the melodrama, on to the next Smackdown. To heighten the buildup, Gordon has said he expects to take his payback medicine.
Just listen to those two, after they'd made contact in the carousel turn and Truex had spun, dropped way back in the running order and wound up in position to be knocked out of the race in a massive pileup on the next restart.
"I was five or six cars clear of the 24 [Gordon] going into [Turn] 11, and for some reason he just turned me around," Truex told television reporters. "So that's all right. What come around goes around and if these guys don't have any respect for me I ain't gonna have none for them.
"And I'll get him at Loudon."
Told Gordon had apologized, Truex smirked and said, "Does it matter? We're sitting here on the trailer and he's out there, gonna run for the win [Gordon would wind up fifth, just ahead of poor Ambrose].
"It's all right, we'll get him."
Twice he vowed that. Now, we shall see.
Gordon, who had a pretty slam-bang day all around, admitted that there were "some things I'm not proud of that I did today. Certainly with Martin. I completely messed that up, and I'll try to patch that up."
Told Truex was steaming, Gordon replied that, "He should be. And whatever's coming to me, I understand it.
"When you blatantly get into a guy like that, you can say you're sorry all you want … I certainly had no intentions of what was happening with him. I had the 42 [Juan Pablo Montoya] behind me, dive-bombing me into the braking zone …"
Ah, the ever-useful third party.
Well, after watching the video maybe a dozen times, I still believe Montoya didn't touch Gordon, or even come close, until after Gordon and Truex had already made contact.
Also, coming down the short straight into the carousel turn, I couldn't see that Truex ever was "five or six" car lengths clear of Gordon. Maybe two car lengths tops, and that was before they began braking into the turn and naturally closed up.
Further, it sure looked like Gordon was well up inside Truex's left-rear quarter panel when the contact occurred. Not to mention that Gordon was taking the same line into the carousel that most other good road racers in the field were taking.
So Gordon's guilt just didn't seem as blatant as they both said.
But they've stirred the pot for next week. Sort of like two weeks ago when Joey Logano railed at Kevin Harvick over another tap-and-spin at Pocono.
By Ed Hinton
ESPN.com
Archive
AP Photo/Ben MargotJeff Gordon made a lot of enemies at Infineon raceway. But will those enemies do anything about it at New Hampshire?
I'm not here to pile onto Marcos Ambrose. Poor guy is suffering enough over his mistake, stalling his engine under caution on an uphill grade to let his best chance yet at a Cup win slip away.
Nor shall I place an asterisk beside Jimmie Johnson's first road course win, even though he acknowledged to reporters at Sonoma that, "It was definitely a gift kind of handed to us" by Ambrose's agonizing error.
I'm here to ballyhoo the Sunday Smackdown that's supposed to compel you to watch the next Sunday Smackdown, at Loudon, N.H.
We all really should watch next Sunday, to see if Martin Truex Jr. really does what he vowed twice on Sunday to do next Sunday -- get Jeff Gordon back for spinning him at Sonoma.
If he does, we'll know racin' is still racin', and payback is in the protocol of NASCAR.
If he doesn't, we'll have to go on suspecting that racin' has become rasslin' -- a lot of angry talk and threats over a little contact.
There wasn't much in the real drama, the high drama of Sunday's race to lead you into next Sunday. Ambrose made the kind of mistake even sympathetic fans want to forget.
Six laps from his first win, after Johnson's team had virtually conceded, Ambrose was trying to save fuel, killed his engine and then tried to restart it going uphill, "the last place you would probably do it," as Johnson pointed out. Ambrose stalled and fell to seventh, and wound up sixth.
Gift that it was to Johnson, he did have one of the strongest cars all afternoon -- stronger even than Ambrose's at times -- so you can't call his first road course win a fluke. Cup races are won like that quite often.
So, on with the melodrama, on to the next Smackdown. To heighten the buildup, Gordon has said he expects to take his payback medicine.
Just listen to those two, after they'd made contact in the carousel turn and Truex had spun, dropped way back in the running order and wound up in position to be knocked out of the race in a massive pileup on the next restart.
"I was five or six cars clear of the 24 [Gordon] going into [Turn] 11, and for some reason he just turned me around," Truex told television reporters. "So that's all right. What come around goes around and if these guys don't have any respect for me I ain't gonna have none for them.
"And I'll get him at Loudon."
Told Gordon had apologized, Truex smirked and said, "Does it matter? We're sitting here on the trailer and he's out there, gonna run for the win [Gordon would wind up fifth, just ahead of poor Ambrose].
"It's all right, we'll get him."
Twice he vowed that. Now, we shall see.
Gordon, who had a pretty slam-bang day all around, admitted that there were "some things I'm not proud of that I did today. Certainly with Martin. I completely messed that up, and I'll try to patch that up."
Told Truex was steaming, Gordon replied that, "He should be. And whatever's coming to me, I understand it.
"When you blatantly get into a guy like that, you can say you're sorry all you want … I certainly had no intentions of what was happening with him. I had the 42 [Juan Pablo Montoya] behind me, dive-bombing me into the braking zone …"
Ah, the ever-useful third party.
Well, after watching the video maybe a dozen times, I still believe Montoya didn't touch Gordon, or even come close, until after Gordon and Truex had already made contact.
Also, coming down the short straight into the carousel turn, I couldn't see that Truex ever was "five or six" car lengths clear of Gordon. Maybe two car lengths tops, and that was before they began braking into the turn and naturally closed up.
Further, it sure looked like Gordon was well up inside Truex's left-rear quarter panel when the contact occurred. Not to mention that Gordon was taking the same line into the carousel that most other good road racers in the field were taking.
So Gordon's guilt just didn't seem as blatant as they both said.
But they've stirred the pot for next week. Sort of like two weeks ago when Joey Logano railed at Kevin Harvick over another tap-and-spin at Pocono.