Martinsville: Dazed and Confused
So, the thing is, there comes a point in the Cup season where one's mind wanders. It comes at almost always the same point, sometime late in March, a day on which one realizes that the novelty of white people turning left has once more worn off, and that every single storyline in Nextel Cup that was supposed to hold us captive this season has totally gone to shit. Think about it: the MWR/Rise of the Toyotas storyline is fucked. There isn't a single Toyota in the whole top 35, and Waltrip himself has made one and only one race. The resurgent Tony Stewart storyline's not going anywhere. The "Everyone's Going To Kill David Ragan" storyline definitely isn't going anywhere, for some reason. The Year of the Evernham storyline might be going somewhere, but it certainly isn't hurrying. Pretty much the only one still going strong is the "Will Junior Blow One Engine Too Many and Leave DEI" story. And that one isn't that interesting, aside from the fact that unlike most Cup stories, they don't involve black Jews.
So it's sort of inevitable that a certain sense of fatigue sets in. We've seen everything already: a superspeedway, a 2-mile, a couple 1.5s, a short track...at this point, what else is there? What will you give us, NASCAR, that is new, frightening, and vicious?
Usually the answer to that comes at Talladega, but sometimes it comes at Martinsville, and we're hoping that tomorrow will bring precisely that. Mostly, we all bout the drama: at this point last year there were three active feuds going (Stewart vs. Kyle Busch, Stewart vs. Kenseth, Gordon vs. Kenseth) and now there are none worth mentioning. What we want to see tomorrow is:
* Jeremy Mayfield trying to express his realization of the futility of the self by putting the 19 into the wall
*Denny Hamlin finally pissing somebody off, hopefully someone particularly passive-aggressive
* the winner not being from Hendrick
What we can expect to look forward to in reality, though, is the 11 and the 24 fighting it out for the lead all day long. The 5 and the 29 will probably be contenders, and DEI looked pretty good in both practices. All in all it should be the kind of fun that feels so right that it can't be wrong. Your top 5:
5. Harvick
4. Gordon
3. Kyle Busch
2. Junior
1. Hamlin
So it's sort of inevitable that a certain sense of fatigue sets in. We've seen everything already: a superspeedway, a 2-mile, a couple 1.5s, a short track...at this point, what else is there? What will you give us, NASCAR, that is new, frightening, and vicious?
Usually the answer to that comes at Talladega, but sometimes it comes at Martinsville, and we're hoping that tomorrow will bring precisely that. Mostly, we all bout the drama: at this point last year there were three active feuds going (Stewart vs. Kyle Busch, Stewart vs. Kenseth, Gordon vs. Kenseth) and now there are none worth mentioning. What we want to see tomorrow is:
* Jeremy Mayfield trying to express his realization of the futility of the self by putting the 19 into the wall
*Denny Hamlin finally pissing somebody off, hopefully someone particularly passive-aggressive
* the winner not being from Hendrick
What we can expect to look forward to in reality, though, is the 11 and the 24 fighting it out for the lead all day long. The 5 and the 29 will probably be contenders, and DEI looked pretty good in both practices. All in all it should be the kind of fun that feels so right that it can't be wrong. Your top 5:
5. Harvick
4. Gordon
3. Kyle Busch
2. Junior
1. Hamlin
posted by SPT at 6:54 AM
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