May 31

Written by: The Commish
5/31/2011 6:58 PM 

The last race of the weekend was the Lime Rock Grand-Am Rolex race and both the weekly and monthly winners earned their prizes thanks to the win by the No. 10 SunTrust Dallara/Chevy and the seventh place result from the No. 01 Ganassi car.  The Nos. 60 and 8 Riley/Fords were second and third in front of the No. 99 GAINSCO car and the Nos. 5 and 9 Action Express Riley/Porsches.  There were only three other DPs on the track Monday and one of them was the No. 90 Coyote/Chevy that a number of us thought would score more points than the other favorites.  We were wrong; it finished 19th, right behind the No. 77 Doran Dallara/Ford.  Which is better than the first-out No. 2 Starworks car.

Saturday's Nationwide race at Charlotte saw Matt Kenseth take the checkers over Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Reed Sorenson and Bad Brad Keselowski with Elliott Sadler 10th, Kevin Harvick 16th, Kasey Kahne 22nd and Kimi Raikkonen 27th.  Kenseth was a last minute substitute for the recovering Trevor Bayne in the No. 16 Ford.  Good choice, eh?

Sunday, May 29, 2011 -- the greatest single day of racing ever -- started with the Monaco GP and while Sebastian Vettel's win over Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Mark Webber was no surprise it was certainly a matter of good luck.  At race's end Vettel's tires were shot, the Ferrari and McLaren were just an RCH behind and there were still too many laps left for the the Red Bull driver to hold them off.  Then Vitaly Petrov crashed his Renault and knocked himself silly which caused a red flag for meat wagon access and everybody got to pit for new tires.  

That was that, the order of finish was confirmed after a couple more procession laps with Mark Webber coming home fourth ahead of Kamui Kobayshi, Lewis Hamilton, Adrian Sutil and Nick Heidfeld. Felipe Massa and Michael Schumacher both DNF'd early and one of these days either Nico Rosberg or Adrian Sutil are going to get their first F1 win.  

Kevin Harvick won the Sunday night Coke 600 at Charlotte when Dale Earnhardt Jr's National Guard Chevy ran out of gas on the last lap, dropping him to seventh behind David Ragan, Joey Logano, Kurt Busch, A.J. Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose.

Yes, it turned into a mileage race.  Denny Hamlin finished 10th, Juan Pablo was 12th with the fastest cars of Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards coming home 13th, 14th and 16th thanks to late pit stops for a splash.  Tony Stewart, polesitter Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton, Kasey Kahne, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, Jamie McMurray and Mark Martin all scored bupkis.

The 2011 Indy 500 was a Centennial celebration that more than lived up to its hype.  Y'all know how you did with your Super 7 Sweep points of course but just to document everything Dan Choppers Wheldon won his second Indy 500 when rookie J.R. Hildebrand, in the Panther Racing National Guard car that Wheldon ran last year ran wide, hit the marbles and crashed in the last turn of the last lap.  J.R. still held on to second with Graham Rahal, Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon third through fifth with Marco and Danica in ninth and 10th, Dario 11th, Will Power 14th and not another favorite in the points.

For the second year in a row no Penske Racing car led a lap with neither Helio or Ryan Briscoe scoring any FMFL points.  For the second weekend in a row the Ganassi cars fell victim to what appeared to be human errors in judgement.  Great story Alex Tagliani led early, lost the handle and then crashed to finish 28th.  Other great story Simona De Silvestra also crashed early, as did -- shock of shocks -- EJ Viso and Takuma Sato, the first two drivers out, both from KV Racing.

It was a great race.

The World 600 was a great race.

The GP of Monaco was a great race.

This may have been the best day of racing I have ever had the great pleasure of watching from the comfort of my home, in HD, with surround sound.

This week it's Cup and Trucks at Kansas City, DPs at the Glen and the Nationwide Series at Chicagoland.  Starters aren't due until this coming Friday at midnight and make sure you search out those entry lists to make sure you're not starting someone who won't be racing.

Copyright ©2011 The Commish