I guess it comes as no surprise that there was at least a little bit of drama at the end of the race in Fontana. It did, however, come down to a race between two drivers, Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon and unless something unexpected happened, they were the only two that really had a chance at winning. Although the last lap wasn’t that exciting, the last several offered just enough doubt as to who was going to win that it did make it worth watching all the way to the end.
Matt Kenseth drove across the finish line and became one of only two drivers to win the first two races of a Nascar season. Considering Matt didn’t have a win last year, I think this would qualify for him having a great start to the new season.
Jeff Gordon finished a very strong second and that was the second week in a row he made a very strong showing.
I have to admit the race was a little better than I thought it would be. It still was not filled with the drama of some races. It did become interesting at the end when it was toss up as to whether Matt or Jeff was going to pull of the win. There was also the fact that Kyle Bush was poised to take advantage of any mistake by either Matt or Jeff and that also added a bit to the drama of the ending of the race.
As a fan, I still have a tendency to lose interest in the middle of the race because, at times, it becomes a follow the leader type of race. It appears to me the drivers are at least willing to just burn up some miles and maintian a certain position. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that part of racing, too. There are very few races 500 miles in length that we find where all of the drivers are running flat out for the 500 miles.
One thing I notice about these type of races is a driver’s intention is to get out front and stay there if possible. Once he is out front, it is easier for him to fall into a rhythm and usually the C.O.T. car handles better out front in clean air.
Michael Waltrip said something interesting in an interview about the C.O.T. that I found interesting. He described the difference of being out front with only a couple of cars in front of him and the difference of being further back in the pack. It seems the more cars you have around you the worse the turbulence and the worse the car handles. That is the important reason why any driver that is able to is going to do as much as he can to get out in the cleaner air and stay there if possible.
All in all, Fontana didn’t have much happen that caused an uproar so there isn’t much to talk about in that area. The only thing that really was going on that made people wonder was whether or not Kyle Bush was going to win all three of the races for the weekend. He won two of them in one day and had a stellar performance in the cup race on Sunday. I guess he still has something to look forward to putting in the record books someday soon.
Well…California is behind us and it is time to move on to Las Vegas and I’m looking forward to it. We’ll talk more about it later in the week…
See ya next time…
Russ
©February 2009 – all rights reserved
Just A Fan’s View and Rusty Norman