Dale Earnhardt Jr. must be feeling lighter a foot these days as a 143 race losing streak monkey just leaped off his back with his victory last week at the Quicken Loans 400 held at the Michigan International Speedway.
The victory for the driver, who is having a great season, could help him break another streak that he would love to see gone, that of never having won a championship. In the top ten in points all season he is now just a mere 4 points behind Sprint Cup leader Matt Kenseth. The top five was filled out by Tony Stewart in second followed by Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle and Jimmy Johnson.
Toyota/Save Mart 350
This week’s race is a horse of a different color, as it is a road race at Sonoma, a good deal slower and much harder to pass. The 1.99 mile track, once as long as 2.52 miles, is situated at the gateway to the Napa and Sonoma wine country so if you are heading out you might want to make a weekend of it.
Road races are not to everybody’s taste. No high curves, the banging and bumping that characterize so many other races is missing. I think that they make a nice change of pace, but do not see a need to add another, not that I am aware of any push to do so.
Broadcast
June 24, 2 pm ET on TNT
Instead of pointing to a number of Twitter addresses as we have in the past it seems to make much more sense just to send you to a site that appears to have consolidated a who’s who of racing twitter addresses instead. So head over here for a huge list.
Sprint Cup Standings
1) Matt Kenseth
2) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -4
3) Greg Biffle -17
4) Jimmie Johnson -33
5) Denny Hamlin –51
The Nationwide race last week witnessed Joey Logano winning for the second win in a row by leading the last 24 laps but was forced to hold off a hard charging James Buescher to win his fifth race of the year.
Some of the top racers in the Nationwide series did not have great races including points leader Elliott Sadler finishing 11th. Danica Patrick had a very interesting race, there were seven cautions and she was involved in three of them. She did manage to finish in 18th. The top five last week was filled out by Buescher finishing second followed by Kurt Busch, Cole Whitt and Austin Dillon.
Sargento 200
This week the teams are headed to Road America for the Sargento 200, far away from the wine country where the Sprint Cup is running and instead out where the cheeseheads live in Wisconsin. This is also a much longer course that the one in Sonoma, with a 4.04 circuit and 14 turns.
Broadcast
June 23 3 pm ET ESPN
Nationwide Series Standings
1) Elliott Sadler
2) Austin Dillon -8
3) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -27
4) Sam Hornish Jr. -45
5) Cole Whitt -81
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