Weekend That Was: Pocono Raceway

Let me begin this by pointing out that technically I am on vacation.

Not the kind of NASCAR-imposed vacation that Robby Gordon took during Sunday's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway, but the kind that had been planned several months in advance with far less emotion and irrational behavior involved in the process.

At my age I prescribe to the Mark Martin school of thought on Nextel Cup racing, and covering it. A part-time schedule is required to keep me fresh. I also have to credit Martin for turning me onto the joys of watching races I'm not personally in attendance at on TiVo, and realized this was the perfect weekend to test my skills with the television remote in that area.

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Besides, there is a new network doing Cup races these days. Despite their ridiculous harping on Tony Stewart for simply wanting to have a good time (on his own time) with a case of Schlitz beer after his win at Chicagoland Raceway last month, they deserved a closer look from the comfort of my own couch.

Memo to ESPN on the Stewart/Schlitz deal: Hate the choice of beer if you must, but don't hate the beer drinker. This sport was built on the backs of beer drinkers, and this is America. The man has the right to celebrate any way he wants, as long as he's not breaking any laws. In fact, it was refreshing and humorous to see him candidly advertise his post-race beer-guzzling plans.

Anyone who thinks otherwise, well, that's just a bunch of a bull ... Whoops, better stop there.

Back to the latest weekend that was, here are some lap-by-lap (but not all the laps, because during some I couldn't help taking a nap) observations from the Pennsylvania 500, gleaned while watching like the majority of the rest of America's race fans:

Lap 1 -- Blowing past pole-sitter Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch takes the lead in his No. 2 Dodge for the first time.

Lap 4 -- Jamie McMurray spins out in his No. 26 Ford for the first time. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be his last. (And hey, didn't he say he was going to honor his sponsor, Crown Royal, by drinking a little of the good stuff after his last victory? I don't recall anyone getting their shorts in a bunch over that one -- although he didn't proclaim that he was going to "get to the bottom of the bottle" or anything like that).

Lap 18 -- A race that already is lacking in character offers a hint of some when Stewart, running 11th, gets right behind Kevin Harvick, who is running 10th. These are the two who tangled down the stretch a week earlier at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (watch video) -- but it's too early for them to get into it this time. Too bad.

Lap 53 -- Just before the second caution of the day comes out for what appears to be a yellow piece of tape labeled "debris" by NASCAR, Earnhardt comes on his radio and tells his team that his car is pushing badly. It's so tight, he says, that "on a scale of 1-10, it's a 20."

Color commentator Rusty Wallace, former driver of the No. 2 beer car, offers some keen insights on the unique race that is Pocono, pointing out that saving your brakes early is important and that "the corners are so different. Hit one of them the wrong way and you're in trouble."

Lap 64 -- McMurray spins again. Defending Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson quietly moves up to fifth.

Lap 81 -- Busch is still leading. Naptime approaches.

Lap 100 -- Naptime over, and TiVo isn't even required to catch up. Busch still leads. (Apparently sometime during the stroll through slumberland, Clint Bowyer led briefly and so did Jeff Green, but only until Busch could get gassed up and going again).

Oh, and one newsworthy item: The engine on Dale Jarrett's No. 44 Toyota blew up. The television guys comment that the Toyota drivers are so concerned about their engines not being able to take a pounding that they're actually limiting how much they run the cars in practice, which makes one wonder at the irony of that. Aren't they the guys who need the most practice?

Lap 117 -- The television guys talk about how Busch's relatively new crew chief, Pat Tryson, previously worked with Mark Martin at what was then known as Roush Racing and note that Tryson said Busch reminds him of Martin. But geez, after celebrating only his 29th birthday Saturday, isn't it a little early for Busch to consider running a part-time schedule?

Earnhardt is still upset at his car's handling, telling his crew over the radio: "It's worse than it was. I didn't think that was possible."

Lap-by-Lap

Kurt Busch led 175 laps in the Pennsylvania 500, the most of any winner in Pocono history.

• Lap-by-Lap, click here
• Race Video, click here

Lap 123 -- Earnhardt spins, seemingly ruining his day (watch video). He hustles back into the pits three times during the ensuing caution period, where crew chief Tony Eury Jr. stands by to install what later will be referred to as a "magic shock." Earnhardt drops to 26th, the last car on the leap lap, on the Lap 129 restart.

Lap 138 -- Earnhardt, suddenly pleased and sailing with his new magic shock in place, already is up to 14th when the next caution comes out. Busch -- yawn -- still leads.

Lap 142 -- Busch spices things up momentarily by dropping to ninth after his pit crew had to deal with some troublesome lugnuts during a stop. (Maybe they were just bored, like the rest of us).

Earnhardt gains 11 more spots when Eury gambles to gain track position by putting on only two tires instead of four. Now this looks like it might get interesting.

Lap 153 -- Um, wrong on the interesting part. Flying again on four fresh tires (instead of the two that permitted Earnhardt to briefly take the lead), Busch retakes the lead, this time for good.

Lap 172 -- Wallace points out that veteran drivers Ricky Rudd and Bill Elliott, who have a combined 101 starts at Pocono, are having good days. With Busch checking out on the rest of the field, it makes sense to start pointing out this kind of stuff.

Lap 178 -- On a restart with 22 to go, Wallace says of Busch: "He's going to have to hit a deer to get stopped." Then he tells a funny story about how the late driver Neil Bonnett once did hit a deer that wandered onto the backstretch at Pocono.

Only in NASCAR.

Lap 190 -- Busch leads his 165th lap of the day, setting a Cup record for a race at Pocono Raceway. Ho-hum.

Lap 200 -- After leading seven times for a total of 175 laps in the event, Busch snaps a 51-race winless streak (watch video). Earnhardt fails to snap his own 46-race winless streak but tells reporters that he felt like he won after recovering from the spin, taking on the magic shock, and going on to finish second (watch video).

Despite driving a beer car -- and outdueling one for the victory, if you can call this "a duel" -- Busch, a seemingly nice guy whose own attempts at one-liner humor are often best left unsaid, makes no remarks about plans to get to the bottom of a box of Schlitz (watch video). (Of course, he couldn't go for the Schlitz and dis his own sponsor anyway, at least not publicly).

In other words, the post-race party probably was about as interesting as the race itself.

Bottom line
All in all, Sunday was not a bad day for the guys in the television booth -- Wallace especially. He combined insight with humor, ripping off a few well-timed one-liners, and didn't talk too much.

But he does appear to be more in love with "draft tracker" than most of the rest of us. It's kind of cool but not quite the ground-breaking tool it has been advertised to be.

Kurt vs. Junior
Busch's win was the 16th of his Cup career, placing him one behind Earnhardt. More importantly, at least as far as this season is concerned, it helped vault him one spot ahead of Earnhardt in driver points. They began the race with Earnhardt 12th and Busch 13th, and ended it flip-flopped, with Busch now a mere seven points ahead of Earnhardt.

The top 12 in driver points after 26 races qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup over the final 10. Sunday's race was the 21st of the season, leaving them just five "regular-season" races left to settle who gets in.

The guess here is that the elder Busch and Earnhardt both will get in, leaving someone else currently in the top 12 as the odd man out. It could be Bowyer, who probably will take a points hit on the road course at Watkins Glen next weekend; or Martin Truex Jr., Earnhardt's teammate at Dale Earnhardt Inc. who currently is riding in 11th but struggled to a 22nd-place finish at Pocono and has yet to face the late-season pressure of trying to make a Chase.

Pit Stops
• What was Robby Gordon thinking? Well, obviously he wasn't when he ignored NASCAR's scoring decisions and subsequent penalties repeatedly toward the end of the Busch Series race in Montreal on Saturday (watch video). It was an utterly immature and stupid display, and his feeble attempts to explain it all away to reporters in the garage on Sunday fell far short of making it anywhere close to acceptable (watch video). To let Gordon get away with that kind of behavior would have been to let anarchy creep into the sport, and you can be sure that more penalties will be headed his way very shortly.

• The last Cup driver parked for a race, incidentally, was Jimmy Spencer -- who was suspended after punching none other than Kurt Busch during a post-race incident at Michigan in 2003.

• Gordon is the second driver to be parked for a Cup race as the result of his actions in another NASCAR series. Harvick was the other. He was parked in the spring of 2002 at Martinsville after raising the ire of officials during a Truck Series event at that track one day earlier.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.