Racin' With Russ
By Russell Schmidt

Edwards Bests Boring Bristol
August 29, 2007

It was supposed to be the toughest ticket in town race with a history of cars, parts and tempers flying in all directions.

After all, when you put 43 NASCAR Cup cars on a half-mile high banked track, the usual scene found drivers rooting and gouging each other out of the way. While the fans may have been rooting for their favorite drivers and there may have been some price gouging going on at the local motels, the action on the track was less than stellar…..read boring.

Never did I think the words boring and snoozer would enter the vocabulary of a Bristol night race description, but in this case, they’re appropriate.

While the $8 million dollar remake of the track created a lot more side-by-side racing, it has all but destroyed the idea of beatin’ and bangin’ on each in order to gain a spot.

We could also point to the Car of Tomorrow design as the recent Busch and Craftsman Truck races were exciting.

Kasey Kahne led the opening laps and appeared to possible have turned a ho-hum season into something worth while talking about. Despite Kahne leading the most laps, Carl Edwards wheeled his Ford Fusion into the top spot with a little more than 100 laps to go, going on to claim his second win of the season and a guaranteed spot in the Chase.

After performing his famous back flip off the door sill of his car, the Roush Fenway driver proclaimed the win to be the greatest of his career at what used to be the palace of pain.

Rounding out the top five included Kahne, Clint Bowyer, Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

At the end of a typical Saturday night Cup race, many of the cars would have the battle scars of being in a tough race with plenty of crowd pleasing rubbin‘…the average car looking more like a survivor of a demo derby, rather than a stock car race. Most of the stats indicate five to ten cars dropping out because of too much damage to repair and a badge of honor would have to include at least a few ‘black donuts’ down the sides of the cars.

Looking at the final stats for Saturday night’s race finds only two cars not crossing the finish line, those being Denny Hamlin, the result of a rare blown Gibbs engine and David Ragan, the result of well…too many spins.

Is there a fix to return the track’s action level back into what it once was? Well, I guess we could ask them to take out the progressive banking, but after many months of work and $8 million spent, that’s not about to happen.

I think the next time the cars come back to the Tennessee track, Goodyear will have developed a compound to help out the ‘action’ factor and by that time, some other changes to the COT may help. Otherwise, we have a lifetime of watching ho-hum races at a track that used to be the most exciting.

On Friday night, the Busch series took to banks of Bristol and the race was more than entertaining, especially the final few dozen laps when Kasey Kahne, Jason Leffler and Ryan Newman were rubbing more than paint.

There was three-wide action produced after the ever-widening Newman made passing nearly impossible. Kahne decided to take the high lane, while freshly-tire-shod Leffler worked better on the bottom.

Kahne made the final pass for the lead with all three cars bumping on the back chute and Kahne pulling away for his second Busch win of the season.

Newman fell to wayside with a flat, while Leffler, David Reutimann, Kyle Busch and Scott Wimmer made up the top five finishers.

The Craftsman Truck series kicked off the busy week at Bristol on Wednesday night with Travis Kvapil well in control of the lead until visitor Kyle Busch took himself and Kvapil out of the equation.

Is there a race Busch doesn’t hit someone or something? Not many.

That handed the lead and eventual win over to Toyota pilot Johnny Benson, edging Brendon Gaughan, Mark Martin, Mike Skinner and Rick Crawford at the stripe.

Open Wheel News - Felipe Massa took his third trophy of the season after winning the Formula One race in Turkey with Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen second and Fernando Alonso third.

Closer to home, Scott Dixon took over the lead late in the race from Dario Franchitti at Infineon in California, going on to win his fourth race of the year and into the Indy Racing League points lead with just two races remaining.

From Rumorville - The rumormill has been in overdrive lately as to who will be driving the No. 8 for DEI next season. The latest reports indicate it will be none other than Mark Martin and rookie Aric Almirola. We should hear a formal announcement in a few weeks at the race in Richmond.

What do I think of DEI’s choice? Well…I’ve been a Mark Martin fan for a long time, but splitting a top-shelf ride such as the coveted No. 8 between a seasoned veteran and a rookie should leave most DEI race fans holding an empty card of enthusiasm.

Look for two more open-wheel drivers, namely Sam Hornish Jr and Jacque Villenueve to test the stock car waters before the end of the season. Hornish is slated for several Cup starts later in the season and Villenueve is expected to test and race a Craftsman truck for Bill Davis Racing quite soon.

Did you know? Based on all-time wins, who is the most prolific active driver in Cup? If you guessed Jeff Gordon, you’d be correct. The four-time champ has won (79) nearly 16% of 500 races entered over the past 15 years. The only other driver with double digit stats are Tony Stewart (32 - 10.4%) and Jimmie Johnson (27 - 13%).

That’s it for this week. Next week’s RWR will review the Cup and Busch results from the big California Speedway and more racing news from around the globe.