Monday, November 18, 2019

Meanwhile, in NASCAR, Part Deux ...

Those Guys ran the last race of the NASCAR season in Homestead, Fla., yesterday, and Kyle Busch won, which means Kyle Busch is your 2019 Monster Energy Cup champion.

(Had to think for a minute before coming up with the title sponsor. It's been the Winston Cup, it's been the Nextel Cup, it's been the Something, Something Cup, and now it's the Monster Energy Cup. Next season, who knows, it'll probably be the Velveeta Lucky Charms Medicare Supplement Cup.)

But I digress.

Back to Busch, who also won the title in 2015, and who yesterday led a 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing. This neatly bookended the team's 1-2-3 finish at the Daytona 500, and got everyone thinking mystical thoughts about karma on account of Gibbs losing his son J.D. to a degenerative neurological disease last year.

Everyone pretty much dedicated the season to J.D., and look happened: 1-2-3 to start the season, 1-2-3 to end it, Busch wins the title, JGR wins an incredible 19 of the 36 Cup races. You never want to be so trite as to say ol' J.D. was pulling the strings up there in the good place, but it's as decent an explanation as any.

At any rate, Busch won yesterday because Kevin Harvick didn't have the car to muscle with him on the long runs, and the other two members of the final four -- Busch's JGR teammates Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. -- fell victim to a couple of really boneheaded mistakes in the pits.

Truex got taken out of it because his crew somehow managed to put the tires on the wrong side of the car, and he had to come back in to get them switched. Hamlin's crew, meanwhile, tried to make his car more aerodynamic by putting a piece of paper over the grill.

All that did was make the car overheat, however. And Hamlin had to come back in to get the paper removed.

Gotta wonder who among those two pit crews will find a pink slip in their lockers today. Talk about spoiling the celebration.

No comments:

Post a Comment