Sure, Dale Jr finished 35th or 36th or 37th, but who cares.
After qualifying 3rd, Dale Jr ran in the top 8 the entire day. When's the last time you could say that? His car was competitive, not perfect, but good enough to ensure the rest of the field saw him there. Jimmie Johnson, the race winner, couldn't pass him for 40 laps. At one point he passed Mark Martin on a restart and got to second place. He also passed two cars on the outside of a restart, something nobody thought could be done at Indy's one groove track.
Like I said though, the car wasn't perfect and it needs to be that in order to win nowadays. The car was a 5th-10th place car and Dale Jr felt his car was at its best just prior to his engine letting go. If he wasn't going to win, truthfully is there a better time to end your day than at that point. The car was getting better, and thats the thought they'll take heading to Pocono. In this case, we don't need a top 10 finish to proclaim this race a success. The car was good and thats what Jr and Jr Nation will remember. In a way, you could say Jr's car finally got much better at the end of HIS race.
And if you still can't see the positives in yesterday, you could take pride in that Jr's motor explosion had to be the most awesome one ever to see on TV, it looked like a volcano of smoke coming from that car, it left everyone gasping for clean air around turn 4. So they knew Junior was there, finally.
No comments:
Post a Comment