NASCAR News

This weekend's NASCAR Cup race is at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California.  The Toyota/Save Mart 350 is one of just two road course races on the schedule.

The entry list for the race has 44 names.  Only one car is going home after qualifying Friday.

There's not much NASCAR news until the teams get to the track Thursday. 

There's a small adjustment to the 2012 schedule.  The spring race at Dover will move back to early June right after Memorial Day.  Attendance sagged when they moved the race to May, so they're moving it back.

Michigan International Speedway and ESPN have combined forces to put a race title sponsorship and media sponsorship package together for Michigan's tourism bureau.  This story is really only interesting in that it answers the question of how much money is thrown around to put one of these NASCAR races together.

But the money is nothing compared to what it takes to put on an F1 race.  The Austin city council is voting Thursday, basically signing on the dotted line to officially put on the American Grand Prix. 

It seems that a yes vote by the seven-member council would finally allow race promoters to take advantage of the money in the Texas Major Events Trust Fund.  The promoters would pay $4 million a year for ten years and get back $25 million a year for ten years to give to Bernie Ecclestone and F1 management for the privilege of holding the race.

A host of other problems are rearing their ugly heads, including the fact that Austin, Texas, a town with virtually no extra hotel rooms, has never held an event of this size before.  The latest wrinkle in the saga is that two educators and an accountant have filed a lawsuit to block payment of the subsidy to the race promoters.

NASCAR: NSCS -- Dover: AAA 400 Results

Image via Wikipedia
Jimmie Johnson took a big step towards his fifth straight Sprint Cup championship this weekend at Dover.  Johnson won the pole, led five times for a race-high 191 (of 400) laps and beat Jeff Burton to the finish line by 2.637 seconds.

It was Johnson's sixth career win at Dover, most among active drivers, and his third victory in the last four races at the track.  It was Johnson's sixth win of the season and the 53rd of his career.  Johnson has now won 19 of the 62 Chase races he has been in.

Johnson passed Kyle Busch for the lead on Lap 337 and held it until a green flag pit stop on Lap 363.  After the field cycled through stops, Johnson was back in the lead again and pulled away for the win.


Five of the top 6 finishers were Chase drivers.  Kurt Busch overcame a speeding penalty to finish fourth, followed by Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch.  Joey Logano finished third to break up the streak.  (Race results)

A. J. Allmendinger seemed to be the only driver who could compete with Johnson.  He started second and led three times for a career-high 146 laps, but a flat tire put him two laps down.  He rallied to a tenth-place finish.

How quickly the tide can turn in NASCAR.  Last week at Loudon, Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer were running 1-2 in the closing laps and looked like strong Chase contenders.  Stewart ran out of gas just before taking the white flag and fell to 24th.  Bowyer won, but was penalized 150 points when his car failed inspection.  At Dover, the misfortunes continued.  Both drivers were caught speeding on pit road and couldn't make up their laps.  Stewart finished 21st; Bowyer 25th.  Now, both drivers are virtually out of the title hunt.

Matt Kenseth got on the brakes too hard trying to get on pit road and blew a tire.  He finished 18th.  After his second mediocre finish in two Chase races, his title hopes are just about done too.  His Roush teammate Greg Biffle finished just behind him in 19th.  He was on pit road when a caution came out and lost a lap as a result.

Jeff Gordon had a good run, but lost a lot of time on the final pit stop when a tire changer dropped a lug nut.  His car was too loose at the end, and he fell back to finish eleventh.  Kevin Harvick also had handling problems at the end and finished 15th.

Denny Hamlin was quite satisfied with a ninth-place finish at one of his worst tracks.  That allowed him to hang on to the series lead in the points standings.  Johnson moved up four spots to second, 35 points back.  Kyle Busch remains in third, 45 points back.  Kurt Busch (-59) climbed one spot to fourth.  Harvick (-65) dropped three spots to fifth.  The top eight -- including Edwards, Burton and Gordon -- are within 83 points of Hamlin.

Hamlin had an eventful few days at Dover.  He made quite a few disparaging comments about Richard Childress Racing to the media Friday regarding Clint Bowyer's penalty and the excuses offered up.  Harvick took exception and purposefully ran into Hamlin during a practice session Saturday.  Both drivers took their cars to the garage to bang out the sheet metal.  Since they were 1-2 in points at the time, they had side-by-side stalls in the garage and took the opportunity to air out their differences in a little shouting match.  JGR president J. D. Gibbs later told Hamlin something along the lines of "The next time you have a thought, keep it to yourself."

Meanwhile, RCR's appeal of the penalties is set for Wednesday.  The numbers are not on their side.  There have been 132 appeals since 1999.  88 were upheld, and only 42 were reduced or overturned.  In two cases, the penalties were increased.  No penalties have been overturned in six appeals this season.  If RCR loses the appeal they can make one final appeal to the NASCAR chief appellate officer, John Middlebrook.

NASCAR: NNS -- Dover: Dover 200 Results

Image via WikipediaKyle Busch dominated Saturday's Nationwide race at Dover, the Dover 200, leading 192 of the 200 laps and picking up his eleventh series win of the season,  That broke the single season series record set by Sam Ard in 1983 and matched by Busch last season.
 
Busch is rapidly closing in on Mark Martin's all-time record for series wins.  Martin has 48; Busch's win Saturday was his 41st.

Busch beat his JGR teammate Joey Logano to the finish by four-tenths of a second.  Carl Edwards was third, followed by Reed Sorenson and Kevin Harvick.  (Race results)

Edwards cut 53 points off of Brad Keselowski's lead in the points standings, but still trails by 320 points with just seven races remaining.  Keselowski finished 17th.  Busch (-500), who has competed in just 23 of the 28 races this season, is third in the standings, followed by Justin Allgaier (-764) and Paul Menard (-817).

Danica Patrick prepared for the Monster Mile by competing in Friday's K&N Pro Series East race.  She led a few laps and finished sixth to earn her first NASCAR top-10 finish in the low level series.  But Saturday was "another character-building day".  She botched her qualifying run and started 42nd in the 43-car field, was a lap down 17 laps into the race, then blew a tire and hit the wall on Lap 71.  She went to the garage for about 90 laps to repair the damage, then returned to finish 35th, 94 laps down.

Elliott Sadler was involved in the scariest incident of the afternoon.  He spun in the middle of Turns Three and Four on Lap 136, backed into the wall and came to a stop in the middle of the track at the exit of Four. Rookie Drew Herring, who was having radio issues, didn't see him until it was too late and plowed into the front end of Elliott's car.  The race was red-flagged for almost eleven minutes to clean up the debris, but both drivers walked away.

NASCAR: Dover Preview

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAll three of NASCAR's national touring series are in action the next two days, with two of the three races at Dover International Speedway.

First up is the Nationwide Series; they're in Dover Saturday afternoon (3 p.m. ET, ESPN2) for the Dover 200.  The Camping World Truck Series race is the second half of the Saturday doubleheader.  They're on the other side of the country in Las Vegas for the Smith's Food and Drug Stores 350 (9 p.m. ET, Speed).  The main event is Sunday's Sprint Cup race, the AAA 400 (1 p.m. ET, ESPN), back at Dover.  It's the second race in the ten-race Chase for the Sprint Cup.

After a dismal 25th place showing in last weekend's race at Loudon, Jimmie Johnson took a positive step toward his fifth consecutive championship by capturing the pole for Sunday's race.  Johnson turned a lap in 23.116 seconds (156.736 mph) to edge A. J. Allmendinger, who ran a qualifying lap of 23.130 seconds.  Mark Martin initially qualified third, but his lap was disallowed after inspection when the gas pressure in his right rear shock was found to be too high.  Martin will start 42nd.  Martin Truex Jr. starts third, followed by Denny Hamlin and Juan Montoya.

It was the 25th pole of Johnson's career, the third at Dover and the second of the season.  Johnson leads all active drivers with five wins at the track.

Other Chasers:  Greg Biffle starts sixth, Kurt Busch eighth, Carl Edwards tenth, Kyle Busch 11th, Matt Kenseth 14th, Jeff Gordon 15th, Clint Bowyer 24th, Tony Stewart 25th, Jeff Burton 27th and Kevin Harvick 33rd.

Jeff Green, Josh Wise and Ted Musgrave failed to qualify for the race.  (Race lineup)

Dover International Speedway is also known as the Monster Mile, and for good reason.  It's a mile-long concrete oval with high banking (24 degrees in the turns and nine degrees on the straightaways).  That translates into a lot of speed, but the track is very narrow, leaving drivers nowhere to go if (when) something happens in front of them.  It should be exciting.

After Clint Bowyer's 150-point penalty dropped him from second to twelfth in the points standings, Denny Hamlin now has a  45-point lead over the new second place guy, Kevin Harvick.  Hamlin finished fourth back in the May race, but doesn't usually do too well at Dover.  In fact, other than Daytona, Dover is Hamlin's worst track in terms of average finish.  His 22.8 is the worst among all Chasers.  But he was feeling cocky enough to get into a war of words with Richard Childress over Bowyer's rules violation.

Danica Patrick returns to NASCAR for Saturday's Nationwide race.  She got some valuable seat time at Dover in today's K&N Pro Series East race where she finished sixth.

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• Johnson edges Allmendinger for Dover pole (sportingnews.com)
• Hamlin faces his toughest track: Dover (sportingnews.com)
• Unforgiving 'Monster Mile' brings different challenges for Chasers (cbssports.com)