Wednesday night saw the latest running of Tony Stewart's Prelude to the Dream charity race at Eldora Speedway in Ohio, and while the race wasn't exactly a thriller -- the host once again slid away with the checkers -- it was a midweek kick to see everyone's favorite drivers skidding around unfamiliar terrain.
The race was shown on HBO pay-per-view, and if you didn't get it this year, you ought to seriously consider scraping together $25 and getting it in 2010. Not only is it a good charity endeavor, funneling money to Kyle Petty's Victory Junction and an array of charities designed to aid wounded veterans, it's also a lot of fun seeing who can handle the mud and who can't.
Driving on dirt is completely unlike asphalt, and the guys who were able to master the "turn right to go left" strangeness had a huge advantage over those who were clearly just hanging on for dear life (cough*JoeyLogano*cough). Here are a few other observations from the evening:
• Jimmie Johnson is a genius-level learner. He was miserable in his first practice lap but deduced how to run on the track properly, and posted the fastest time in qualifying. But he scraped a wall during the opening lap of the race and was never a serious threat.
• Kasey Kahne was flat-out outstanding, and is truly coming into his own as a driver, but like Johnson hit the wall in the opening scrum.
• Kyle Busch quietly worked his way up to the front of the field; if he can learn from this, he's going to make some folks very nervous in Richmond.
Almost every driver was running an equivalent of his trademark colors and number; it was fun seeing these guys in the NASCAR equivalent of softball uniforms. And for the introductions, rather than a monstrous stage with fireworks, they lined up along a chain-link fence. This was low-end racing at its finest, and it was exactly what everyone wanted to see.
The drivers say this race takes them back to their roots, and it's easy to see why. Credit goes to them for sticking with the race year after year; this is fast becoming one of the must-see events of the NASCAR season.
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