Brickyard 400

Just wanting to know what everyone's thoughts are on the Brickyard 400 and where NASCAR is at this point of the season. I posted my thoughts on my blog at http://bhcoffey.blogspot.com You can read them there and all of my other NASCAR entries, but in a nutshell, I thought this past weekends race was rather boring.

Juan Pablo Montoya got out to a huge lead and seemed to dominate the day that went mostly green. Everyone had trouble passing, even lapped cars as Kyle Busch complained about getting hung up behind lapped car David Gilliland before hitting the wall after a tire blowout.

Then of course Montoya got a speeding penalty on pit road during a green flag stop ruing his chances of winning the race and to be the only driver to win both the Indy 500 in an open wheel car and the Brickyard 400 in a stock car. A whole discussion could happen on whether Montoya was actually guilty of speeding and whether NASCAR needs to change the rules or give drivers better indicators of their speed while they are in the car. But suffice it to say, NASCAR does give you 5mph over the speed limit and Montoya was 5.06 miles over and so he got penalized. In my opinion he should have been like only 2-3 miles over the speed limit and took it easy since he had a 5 second lead on the track.

But either way his lead would have been reduced within 2 laps when Dale Earnhardt Jr. blew an engine bringing out the caution. This is what ultimately led Jimmie Johnson to his repeat victory at the track. Johnson was able to pass Mark Martin on the restart, and the last 10 laps were actually somewhat exciting because Mark was gaining and had a chance to pass, but Jimmie held him off, won the race and got to kiss the bricks for a third time. But in essence, was the race too boring? and is the COT car making it that way? why were there not more cautions? And what about the Double File restarts? good for the race or bad?