Jimmy Johnson may have the pole, look no further than his outside to find an unusually confident Mark Martin. Starting second in the DEI prepared #8 ARMY entry, Mark Martin has a certain swagger of confidence that is not his normal persona. Never one to overstate his case, Mark Martin has boldy predicted that his team, his car, is prepared to win today.
Tire concerns may take the the focus off the track and onto pit road. After as few as 10 laps, R/F tires were showing the cords during happy hour. this prompted Goodyear to bring in tires intended for Pocono. It is a different compound. NA$CAR will put out a yellow at lap 10 so that all the teams can come to pit road for tires. Engineers and crews will then get to see what the first set did in race conditions. If it becomes necessary to change to the Pocono tire, NA$CAR will put out a red flag and cause the whole field to change to the Pocono tires.
Across town at ORP in Claremont, The NCTS race was contested on Friday night. Johnny Benson took the checkers for his second consecutive victory in that series.
Saturday night, the cup lights ran at ORP. Despite the engine rule change to help ‘level’ the field, the #18 JGR Toyota lead all but 3 laps to win. The driver, Kyle Bush had his usual ‘in your face’ post race comments about the engine rule aimed at reducing the horsepower of the dominant Toyotas.
The usual suspects should have a good day at Indy today. Look for the HMS cars of Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon to be in the mix. The JGR Toyotas will certainly be strong with hometown favorite, Tony Stewart looking for his first victory of 2008 in the cup series.
Grumpy hopes that we can enjoy a good race today. The outcome should not be changed by a tire failure that could take out one or more of the contenders. The Brickyard 400 has alway been more hype than good racing. The long straights going into very flat corners do not lend themselves to good side by side racing of the much heavier NA$CAR racers. The IndyCar series runs a much wider tire and plenty of ground effects to put a car that weighs less than half of a COT into the turns without lifting the throttle. Face it, we are gonna see a lot of single file running down into the corners. That is the way it is. That aside, don’t forget that the race is on ESPN.
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