How on earth do you forget to put the lug nuts on?
06/28/2004
Robby Gordon lost a wheel during the race on lap 14. There is no excuse for this one in my mind. Chris Andrews and the team have a bit of explaining to do. NASCAR tech has some explaining to do also.
At the top level of stock car racing how on earth can this happen? All the cars go through a tech inspection before they are let onto the track. The crew checks and rechecks the car a bunch before the green flag falls. I am baffled about this, I hope to god it wasn’t something malicious, there is no room in racing for that. Robby’s problems just kept compounding all race long. By the end of the day, he used up 3 tires, 3 sway bars and ended up 34th.
I watched the rest of the race with little enthusiasm, Jeff Gordon just ran so well he was out front all day long. I was keeping an eye on Brandon Ash for quite a bit of the race. Do you remember Brandon from Phoenix last year? He made it into the race on his qualifying time. He is a good self funded driver, nice guy also. He was looking good for the first part of the race, then he had mechanical trouble at about lap 50. The only action I remember is from the 6th through 10th places the last half of the race. There was a bit of passing and maneuvering going on. Jeff Gordon looked awful after the race. The TV broadcast said his cooling system shut down, it showed, he looked bad. Jr. also had a tough race: it seems he ran into anything and everything he could. He didn’t do a good job on the road course. If he had stopped skipping over the barriers and held the car on track, he could have finished better than his 11th place finish. He car was strong but his skills didn’t match the car.
What else happened this weekend: I helped cranky move, she has a swank new apartment just a couple of blocks away.
Tonight: a night at home….. Yah, that’s what I need a quiet night.
