Allstate (Brickyard) 400 Notes

The Allstate 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a pretty good race to follow today.

Reed Sorenson led the pack to the green flag while Jeff Green blew a tire early on lap 14, and lap 20 saw a multi car wreck when Ryan Newman, who had been dropping back through the pack spun out on his own.

The early battle was between Tony Stewart and dale Earnhardt Jr., as Jr. had the car to beat.

When the ESPN camera looked down the straight-a-way, you can see the cars making defensive moves, dodging low to block potential passers, making it 3 and 4 wide in the front stretch during the restarts and when traffic got tight.

Lap 37 saw Earnhardt with a 1.7 second lead over Stewart, Sorenson, J. Burton and J. Montoya. But the next lap saw Kasey Kahne get loose in turn 1, tapping Tony Raines into a spin, ending their days.

Then a junk yard broke out as a big wreck hit at lap 45, which included the 48 and 99, 26, 88, 10, 21, 18 cars. It looked like Jamie McMurray got loose and collected the 10 & 48 cars, but then it was all collateral damage after that for everyone else trying to whoa up in time.

Johnson made a bunch of pit stops during the yellow flag trying to fix the damage, but by lap 69, the damage proved too much as his LF tire blew, and he slammed into the turn 3 wall, and the car erupted in flames. While the car is sliding along the wall, Jimmie drops the window net, and as the car comes to a stop, Jimmie springs out quickly, and ok, except for burnt eyebrows.
(Resized image, courtesy of Fox Sports)
That’s 2 races in a row Jimmie is a DNF.

Lap55 saw Casey Mears get loose and get into Johnny Sauter, collecting Elliott Sadler & Kyle Petty, finishing their days. The entire Evernham entry field is now out of the race.

Lap 69 let us see Stewart, Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Montoya, Martin in the top 5 as Stewart got the adjustments he needed to be competitive finally. There were 31 cars on the lead lap.

We were treated to a debris caution on lap 76, but damage was to follow as in the pits, the 07 car of Clint Bowyer pulled out his pit and forced the 2 car of Kurt Busch up into the 33 car of Scott Wimmer. Scott gets forced into the outer pit road wall hard, and his fender ends up tearing off the rear panel of the Miller Lite car. Wimmer eventually goes down 14 laps from this incident, though he was having a good day.

There was another debris caution on lap 90, but we didn’t see the green flag until lap 98 because David Reutimann’s engine quit, and decorated track with oil.

Earnhardt Jr had a good car most of the race until he blew a motor on lap 136, retiring the Budweiser car. Jr’s car came to a complete stop on pit road, but NASCAR still let the field pit. The first of a few mystery calls on NASCAR’s part.

The last 20 laps had some drama going on as we watched Tony Stewart close in on Kevin Harvick, hearing his (Stewart) in-car radio broadcast, “Here kitty kitty”, and prophetically passed Harvick in turns 3 and 4 with 11 laps to go. Harvick tried to get back in there, they rubbed fenders a bit, but Stewart was too strong and the fender rubbing proved fateful for Harvick as he dropped to a final finishing spot of 7th.

Tony Stewart won the Allstate (Brickyard) 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with over a 3.5 second lead!

He was followed by Montoya, J Gordon, Kyle Busch, Reed Sorenson, Mark Martin, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, Dave Blaney & Matt Kenseth rounded out the top 10 spots.

There were 21 cars on the lead lap.
Chevy wins. The top Dodge was Montoya in 2nd. The top Toyota came in 9th under Dave Blaney, and the top Ford was brought in by Matt Kenseth in 10th.

The entire Home Depot team climbed the fence!!

A TONY OOPS: During his TV inteview, Tony said "This one is for everyone of those fans in the stands who pull for me and take the bulls**t for it every week".. that's going to be a few grand for TV Station and Driver. WELCOME TO CUP COVERAGE ESPN.

After the race, we never saw a Kevin Harvick interview because it was said that Harvick has been in the NASCAR trailer, presumably from Kevin coming up and rubbing on Tony’s car after the checkered, but we don’t know yet what NACAR is over reacting about.

http://www.nascar.com/races/cup/2007/20/data/results_unofficial.html

http://www.nascar.com/races/cup/2007/data/standings_unofficial.html

For more coverage about Stewarts expletive, and more in depth coverage, check out
http://www.thatsracin.com/242/story/5706.html, by David Poole