Any NASCAR event on a road course will have it’s share of bumps. With only two road events on the schedule it’s not exactly a specialty of many. That alone has led to numerous hot heads and trashed race cars.
This weekend at Sonoma was no different. For many the goal of a road course event is to simply keep the wheels on pavement. Often if you are successful in that you can simply sneak by the other skidding cars and net a good finish.
The other thing you can expect from a road course event is 30 different pit stragetys and clueless announcers. We got all of that on Sunday as well.
We saw Tony Stewart push Brian Vickers down the straight away taking the #83 car out of contention for any type of quality finish. That didn’t stop the announcers from making a big deal when Vickers had moved up to fifth place following pit stops from the cars ahead of him. They glanced over the fact that Vickers was still in need of a stop of his own that would ultimately put him back in the pack.
Instead Vickers goal for the remainder of the event was retaliation. Which should be a surprise since the road course events have turned into short track events the last few years with cars “dive bombing” each other and relation coming 13 turns later.
Tony Stewart acknowledged that Vickers wrecked him and that he probably deserved it. But he also took that time to tell everyone else on the circuit that he planned to wreck them should they be in front of him.
The one good that that did come out of Infineon is that Kurt Busch, the dominant car, captured the checkers. Busch dominated the race on speed, driver ability and pit strategy.