Posts Tagged: watkins glen

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11
Aug 09

Stewart Wins Again, Watkins Glen Needs SAFER

The second consecutive rain delayed race produced a fun one, with Tony Stewart winning for a 5th time at the New York road course. Appropriately, he called The Glen "his house" from victory lane. Much will be said about the latest win and Chase momentum for the #14 team, as well it should.

The biggest thing I'm taking away from the race is the need for the SAFER barrier at the road courses. Sam Hornish, Jeff Gordon, and Jeff Burton are all lucky to walk away after their crash that red-flagged the race for nearly 20 minutes. For reference, here's the crash:


Also, let's not forget, Jason Leffler took quite a hit as well in the same area:


In 2009 in these series, SAFER needs to be outside of these high-speed turns. You just never know what's going to happen. We got lucky this weekend. It's a benefit to have crashes like this expose something that can be fixed. Let's hope Watkins Glen does the right thing and installs the barriers. We might not be as lucky next time.
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5
Aug 09

Return Of The Ringers: Watkins Glen

Some names that should make Watkins Glen interesting, at least during qualifying:

#04 - P.J. Jones
I still rememer, to this day, the effort of P.J. in the old A.J. Foyt #14 Conseco car several years ago. He finished the race 4th with smoke pouring off the tires that were rubbing. Yet he still threw the car all around the course.

#08 - Boris Said or TDFKA (The Driver Formerly Known As) Terry Labonte
Obviously Boris is the only one that would actually be competing, so I'm hoping there's no weather. The Glen is more of a Boris track than Infineon, since you can count on Boris to knock at least 3 or 4 guys off course. That hurts him much less here.

#09 - Ron Fellows
Expectations for Fellows have been lowered with his age, but the old guy can still get it done. The #09 is one of the Hendrick cars so this will be a real effort and not a start & park.

#13 - Max Papis
Papis has to view this as his best chance to make a name so expect to see him make things exciting here.

#43 - Jacques Villeneuve
Ah, Jacques is back in Sprint Cup. It should be interesting to see what he does in this car. No one should expect miracles but come on, Reed Sorenson would have put this car in 34th at best. At least Jacques has the talent to race his way to a respectable finish.

#55 - Patrick Carpentier
He had an impressive finish at Infineon and this track probably suits him better. Still though, he'll be hard-pressed to top that finish of 11th. He had a lot of good breaks back in June.

#71 - Andy Lally
Lally has competed at Watkins Glen more times that he could count and is making his Sprint Cup debut. He competed in Montreal before and was actually pretty fast. Could me make some noise in this car? We'll find out Friday.

10:35 PM - Oh well, scratch Villenueve. Pencil in 34th for Sorenson.