Watching NASCAR this week: Lenox Industrial Tools 301

There was a great finish last week at Daytona, with Tony Stewart making a last lap pass and then holding off a trailing gang of rivals to win his 18th race at the fabled track. Only Dale Earnhardt has more wins at Daytona. The win moved Stewart up 4 places in the driver standings.

The victory must have been even sweeter for Stewart since he was forced to start at the back of the pack due to a failed inspection, and it took him some time to fight his way to the front. He passed Matt Kenesth and then led to the finish. Jeff Burton managed to roar by Kenesth at the end for second followed by Joey Logano and then Ryan Newman.

There was some last minute prerace activity as NASCAR suspended driver AJ Allmendinger just prior to the race for failing a random drug test that he took on June 29, with NASCAR reporting that he had an illegal stimulant in his system. He has claimed that he does not take drugs and that there is an error in the test. Team Penske flew in Sam Hornish Jr in from Charlotte at the last minute, barely a half hour before the race started, to replace Allmendinger.

Since then Allmendinger has elected to bring in his own experts to test his “B” sample, something that is expected to happen next week at the earliest. If he fails he will face an indefinite suspension and need to take a program to get reinstated.

ESPN put up some interesting tidbits about the first half of the season and one that really jumped out at me was this one that points out how unimportant winning is compared to simply finishing. Brad Keselowski has three victories, five top-5s and eight top-10s this season, which is good for 9th currently. Kevin Harvick has zero wins, three top-5s and eight top-10s, but Harvick is 6th in the standings.

Lenox Industrial Tools 301
Next up is a trip to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 on a 1.05 mile, oval track. It is interestingly the largest sporting facility in New England and can seat 105,000 spectators. There is also a 1.6 mile road course on the site.

Twitter– 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 list.

Broadcast
July 15 at 12 noon ET TNT

Sprint Cup Standings
1) Matt Kenseth
2) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -25
3) Greg Biffle -44
4) Jimmie Johnson -58
5) Tony Stewart -90
6) Kevin Harvick -90
7) Denny Hamlin -92
8) Martin Truex Jr. -92
9) Brad Keselowski -103
10) Clint Bowyer -104

Nationwide

Kurt Busch won last week in Daytona with a tremendous finish in a race that had 42 lead changes, more than its fair share of crashes and must have delighted any fan that watched. His car looked like it was about to blow at any second over the last few laps and he managed to reach the front of a greatly diminished field with a lap to go and then held on for dear life. The top five was filled out by Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Michael Ammett, Austin Dillon and Joey Logano.

Broadcast
July 14, 2:30 pm ET ESPN

F.W. Webb 200
This week Nationwide will be featured in a shorter race in New Hampshire, the F.W. Webb 200. This may be old hand and I have just missed it but Nationwide is providing a nice behinds the scene view of teams activities with garagecam Head over here to take a look.

Nationwide Series Standings
1) Elliott Sadler
2) Austin Dillon -8
3) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -18
4) Sam Hornish Jr. -35
5) Justin Allgaier -72