Weekend That Was

Road courses always have been a curious thing in Nextel Cup racing.

I mean, what's the point, right? You run a total of 36 races in a season -- and only two of them require a series of right turns as well as the usual hard lefts?

Well, Juan Montoya made the point Sunday that road courses can be quite entertaining. It wasn't just that the flamboyant Montoya captured the first Cup victory of his career, winning the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. It was the way he did it. (watch video)

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Robby Gordon's post-race whining notwithstanding, Montoya's run to the front was captivating -- and the fact that he ran the last few laps while the specter of running out of gas loomed over him and other frontrunners only added to the suspense.

Afterward, Gordon and other drivers, including second-place finisher Kevin Harvick, lamented that "the fastest car didn't win." (watch video) Funny how that works. Had it been them and not Montoya who gambled and worked the fuel strategy to their winning advantage, they wouldn't have been complaining.

And really, how often does the fastest car actually win the race anyway? Plus, the fastest car at the beginning or middle isn't always the fastest car at the end. In most of these events, it's as much about the in-race adjustments teams make to their cars as it is anything else.

The bottom line is that Sunday's event may have been one of the most compelling of the season thus far. In fact, it could be argued that at least two of the top four or five races run this season have involved fuel-mileage gambits at the end -- the other being the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway one month ago. We're talking for pure entertainment value -- and outside of the season-opening Daytona 500, which was a thriller -- it's hard to beat the show that was put on Sunday at Infineon or the Coca-Cola 600 at LMS.

Some folks acted like Casey Mears was supposed to apologize for winning that one, too. But managing your fuel mileage, as Jeff Gordon also did with a much-criticized gamble when he won a rain-shortened race at Pocono on June 10, is part of the game. There is no crime in getting it right.

Which brings us back to road courses. Has NASCAR gotten it right by keeping the two road-course races on the schedule? The only other road-course event is set for Aug. 12 at Watkins Glen International, in a little more than one month before the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship begins.

Some NASCAR purists have long argued that the Cup schedule should be purged of all road-course events. Why race twice a year on a road course when the rest of the season is spent on ovals? (Continued)