Kenseth Holds Off Field For Win In Cali

After a race with a long stretch of green flag laps toward the end of the race, Matt Kenseth was able to hold off the field for his first win of the season and get some redemption for penalties sustained in Daytona. It looked as though Kevin Harvick might catch him as the laps wound down, but a red flag with a handful of laps remaining, then a flat left front tire on Harvick’s car, meant Kenseth could breath a little. He was able to hold off Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Burton for the win.

Jeff Gordon On Top…Again

Jeff Gordon has grabbed the pole for the race at California Speedway this weekend. It comes as no surprise, though. Jeff has been looking forward to this race since before the season began. He runs well in Cali.

As you look at the top 10 qualifiers, Chevy dominates. Only the Dodge’s of Kasey Kahne and Juan Montoya were able to muscle in amongst the Bow Tie Brigade. It makes you wonder what Chevy has that the others don’t.

Racing In Cali

The 2007 Daytona 500 is now in the history books. Regardless of what you or I think, it is what it is. The questions will linger for some time, but they don’t matter. This week, we move on to California.

Daytona is the NASCAR “Super Bowl”, yet because of the different qualifying format and restrictor plates, to me it always feels like it’s something different. It just doesn’t seem to fit into the rest of the season. The second race always seems to be where the season starts. Of course there are teams who now have to play catch up. Some teams wrecked some good cars at Daytona, some teams didn’t make it, so now they struggle to make the top 35, and some drivers are toward the top of the points who won’t be there in a few weeks.

2007 Daytona 500

Well, the first race of the 2007 season is now in the books. We have our first winner of the season, Kevin Harvick. We have our first disappointments of the season, Dale, Jr., Stewart, among others. We’ve even had our first green, white, checker of the season.

This Daytona 500 was different than in the last few years. In recent years, we have gotten accustomed to two wide racing, twelve to fourteen rows deep for most of the race. This race, though, was single-file racing for most of it. There were relatively few passes for the lead. Even years when Dale, Jr. has been dominant, there has been good side-by-side racing, with lots of passing. There were really only two dominant drivers, today, Stewart and Kurt Busch. Ironically, they were eliminated in one swift moment.

2007 Predictions

The Daytona 500 is just a day away. We’ve already seen qualifying, the Shootout, and several practices. So, I’ll give you my predictions on who will win the Cup, who will surprise and who will disappoint.

Daytona Qualifiers

We now have the qualifiers in the books. The proved to be a couple of interesting events. I think a few things were sorted out and learned. The definitely show that it will be an interesting year coming up.

One thing that I took out of it was the number of cars trying to make the Great American Race. There were about 30 cars in each qualifier. That’s almost an entire field! That sure made it tough on some of the teams. Both Red Bull teams heading home, Jeremy Mayfield heading home, among others. Now, I realize that all the teams who ran these two races are not going to be trying to make the field each week, but I believe there are about 50 who are. With only 43 spots, there are going to be a lot of disappointed teams each week. It will definitely make getting in that top 35 in owner points all the more important. With more and more teams trying to run full time, I wonder if NASCAR will have some sort of fix for it. Sponsors will be watching the situation, as well.

Shootout, Qualifying and Suspensions

It’s been quite a beginning to Speedweeks. There has been quite a bit of action, and not all of it has been on the track. It seems to be leading to a quite interesting season. So, let’s look at the week that has been.