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| Photo by Matthew Lowell Thompson |
Nationwide Series
It's kind of become sport in our house for my husband and I to review the grand marshal's command to start engines. We're always looking for passion and excitement. And Mary McDowell, President and CEO of OneMain Financial, was one of the best in a long time. Sometimes CEOs and representatives from the title sponsors can be wet blankets when starting the race. But Mary blew the doors off the joint (you could even hear one of the drivers comment on her command on the radio during the ESPN broadcast).
Concrete Carl dominated the day, although that back flip was a little dicey looking. I was happy because Carl Edwards is my driver, but my husband was disappointed because Kyle Busch was not in the race at all. Maybe I missed something, but is Kyle concentrating more on the Sprint Cup Chase? I'm guessing running in the Nationwide series is not nearly as important when you can earn points in only one series.
Truck Series
Congrats to Ty Dillon on his first start in the Truck Series and a national NASCAR event. Ty has been tearing it up in ARCA with seven victories so far this year.
One driver Ty can learn from is winningest Truck driver Ron Hornaday, who won his 50th Truck Series event Saturday night.
American LeMans Series
The Audis and Peugeots returned to the track in ALMS. I tried keeping up with race on Saturday on ESPN3 and Twitter. But are you like me and wish that this race was not on tape delay (or all the ALS races for that matter)? If nothing else, ESPN and its family of networks should figure out a way to broadcast the 12 Hours of Sebring and the Petit LeMans live on television. In my heart, I know college football will win out every time. (And don't even get me started on the fact that ABC ran the Baltimore ALMS race on tape delay up against the live broadcast of the Baltimore IndyCar race.)
Sprint Cup
First and foremost, who knew that Jan from The Office could sing?!? Nice job with the National Anthem, Melora Hardin!
But having attended the Dover races several times, I'm disappointed by the number of empty seats at the track. My husband always says that everyone is out buying souvenirs, but I think that's just wishful thinking. Dover is a great place for fans because you can see the whole track from almost every seat in the house. And the banking is crazy -- we found that out a few years ago when we did the fan walk there.
Smoke loses the point lead to Harvick and Edwards (although Harvick technically has the lead because of a tiebreaker), and there's movement up and down the leaderboard. The top 9 are separated by only 19 points. This is getting good. The new points values might just work.
IndyCar
Maybe there's always this much drama, but it seems there was a lot going on off the track in IndyCar. First, Sam Schmidt Motorsports announced that Dan Wheldon would replace Alex Tagliani in the 77 car in Kentucky in order to prepare for the $5 million run in Vegas. Then Helio Castroneves was fined $30,000 for his tweets criticizing the officiating in Japan. Then Al Unser, Jr. was suspended indefinitely following his DUI arrest this week.
But thankfully, there was a switch to the on-track drama this weekend, focusing on the points battle between Will Power and Dario Franchitti. Franchitti regained the point lead, making the race in Vegas very interesting. But my congrats go to Ed Carpenter, who pulled off his first first IndyCar win by a nose (literally). Maybe baby Zoe is a good luck charm for Sarah Fisher Racing!
NHRA
The good news? Antron Brown got a national record in Top Fuel, running a 3.766. The bad news? Rain postpones the finish of eliminations to Monday. (Guess it's a good thing I didn't talk my husband into going to Maple Grove this weekend.)
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