The Kobalt 500 as a tale of attrition as tires eliminated one after another competitor at Atlanta Motor Speedway. I was surprised because we’ve not heard or seen much about tires this season, but now we have Atlanta. At least it’s not track surface chunks or stray running caution lights. It’s something that someone had some control over, when you dwell on it.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. led the pack to the first green flag start, but Kyle Busch just took the lead from him and spanked Jr. Dale should have taken the outside line to start the race maybe. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered actually.
But cautions and their source was an interesting note.
Cautions:
- Robby Gordon slammed the outside wall, LR tire. Lap 4.
- David Ragan RF Tire on lap 34.
- Edwards / Logano got into each other on lap 40.
- Debris on lap 78.
- Mark Martin had a LR tire (?) go out on lap 114.
- Joey Logano lost a tire on lap 158.
- Debris on lap 224.
- Denny Hamlin blown tire on lap 288.
- Elliott Sadler gets put into Max Pappis on lap 293.
Early on Kyle Busch had the car to beat, then he faded and it looked like Kasey Kahne was the man to beat as he had some serious spark in his plugs. Then as the race wore on Kurt Busch said, wait, I’m good here! And he was one of the handful of contenders that gave everyone a run for their money.
By the end of the day, everyone’s money was where their mouth was ad the top-10.
Kurt Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kasey Kahne and Matt Kenseth and Brad Keselowksi led the pack on lap 310 of 325 laps.
Where’s Jimmie? Mid-pack all day long. Where’d our pole sitter go? Backwards from the moment the race started.
And then Keselowksi gets upside down and ya know what, even though back on lap 78 Carl came down on Keselowski, he really seemed fixated on it being Brad’s fault, even after seeing the replay showing him being the one coming down on Brad.
At first, Carl was saying Brad was being aggressive, then when he saw the replay, started saying how Brad didn’t give him race room and seemed to not be letting go of the idea it was Brad’s fault.
In this late-race incident, being 156 laps down, Carl was back on-track and the replays seemed to show that you could see Carl’s hands turn right while he was in the frontstretch, into Brad Keselowksi.
Like I said in my Twitter feed, Dear Carl, when you’re down by 150+ laps, and you’re looking for some form of misguided retribution, DON’T WEAR WHITE DRIVING GLOVES. It’s just not cool.
Carl was parked and called to the hauler.
When he was interviewed, the question posed to Carl Edwards was “Did you intentionally wreck him…” Carl’s reply was “I’m glad he wasn’t hurt.” He never said no, and felt it was better if they don’t get into it again.
Carl may seem like the nice-guy, but he sure does have a seething anger-monster the lurks beneath. Ask Matt Kenseth when Carl rushed him with cocked fist a few years back.
And the restart created quite the crunch and munch, taking out more cars. Like the drivers said, extra green – white – checkers will just create more damaged sheet metal.
The final restart showed Kurt Busch lead the pack, and as he put it, to win the race for the umteenth time today.
The top finishers were
- Kurt Busch,
- Kenseth,
- Montoya
- Kahne
- Menard
- Allmendinger
- Vickers
- Biffle,
- Harvick &
- Scott Speed.
Good job Kurt! Check out ‘Dinger!
Other finishers:
- Jimmie Johnson finished 12th,
- Dale Earnhardt Jr., 15th,
- Ryan Newman 17th,
- Jeff Gordon 18th,
- Bobby Labonte 22nd,
- Kyle Busch 25th,
- Carl Edwards (parked) 39th.
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Atlanta: Unofficial Results | Unofficial Standings
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