NASCAR at the Glen

NASCAR is at Watkins Glen Int'l in New York where we have seen excitement the last few years at this 2.45-mile road course. AJ Allmendinger fought off Marcos Ambrose to take his 1st career Sprint Cup win in 2014. Matt Kenseth won last time out at Pocono where Logano and Kyle Busch ran out of fuel.

Xfinity Series is their first road race of 2015. In fact, 3 of the next 4 races are gonna be on road courses. So it could shake up the championship by the time Road America is done on August 29th. Chris Buescher leads the points heading to the road course stretch. Logano, Keselowski and Larson are the notable Cuppies in this race.

Cup Entry: http://www.jayski.com/news/stats/2015/story/_/page/22-Watkins-Glen-2015-Entry-List

Xfinity Entry: http://www.jayski.com/news/nxs/2015/entries/story/_/page/NXS-2015-19-Watkins%20Glen-Entry-List

Digner wins pole for Cup. Truex 2nd, Stewart 3rd.

Logano has pole for Xfinity. Kes 2nd and Chase starts P3.

Jeff Green costing Logano the lead lol

Larson broke, so is Townley

Really Ty?

Joey wins with a really fast car. Kes 2nd, Buescher increases his lead with a 3rd and Boris Said P4!

Regan Smith-Ty Dillon lol

Smith honestly had no shot at the title, and neither is Ty, guy can't drive, will likely getting outdrove by Chase and Buescher by miles.

So yeah.. Mid-Ohio is next

Race was pretty bleh.

Ty was driving like ass today, Don't blame Regan Smith for being mad.

Allmendinger, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Should have stuck to what you're good at, which isn't NASCAR, Hornish.

This race has been really good.

Well it's about time...

That race was horrible. When a Watkins Glen race is horrible, you know you screwed up the package.

*yawn* Good win Logano, I guess...

Race was decent :/

Can't believe we had 2 straight fuel mileage races :O

I'm not sure if NASCAR is actually starting to cut it out with the debris cautions or what because these fuel races have been quite the show.

Okay race, wasn't the wild show of last year, but oh well.

Lackluster surprisingly.

Hornish got a top 10, holy crap.

Ben Atkins wrote:That race was horrible. When a Watkins Glen race is horrible, you know you screwed up the package.

*yawn* Good win Logano, I guess...

Alta wrote:Lackluster surprisingly.

...Okay, then. Not really sure if we were watching the same race or not. If you're actually serious about this, then... Well, I guess we're looking at this from two completely different spectrums, because I actually thought the race was good. To each their own, though. Anywho...

My thoughts on the Cheez-It 355 @ Watkins Glen:

It's about f**king time!

After three straight shitfests, we come to Watkins Glen and finally get a damn good race. This wasn't a case where a leader got in front and ran away. The drivers following the leader actually stayed close and made it a damn good race for the lead. At one point, the top six were basically right on top of each other on multiple occasions, and it was a lot of fun to watch.

Of course, some of the restarts were pretty silly, and turn one was calamity corner as usual. And several Chase contenders experienced a crap ton of trouble in this race, leaving the door wide open as far as the bottom half of the top 16 is concerned.

And for the second week in a row, we have a fuel mileage race, combined this time with a great battle for the lead between Harvick, Kenseth, Logano and Busch. And when Lolgano botched turn one, I thought that Harvick had this in the bag, that is until I heard the engine stumble as he came up to turn 6, and it finally ran out coming out of turn 7, giving Logano just what he needed to sweep the weekend. The Xfinity race kind of sucked, but the Cup race, IMO, made up for it. Good win for Logano as well. I know he's not the most popular guy on here, but he's definitely become a bonafide title contender in recent years. And with his 2nd place finish, Kyle Busch has cracked the top 30, effectively putting him into the Chase for the time being. Oh, boy. The Chase system is about to be cracked wide open.

Final rating for the Cheez-It 355 @ Watkins Glen:

Finally, we see a good race from NASCAR, and this will actually be the first race since Bristol back in March that I will rate above an eight. My final rating for this race is a very solid 8.25/10. Not as good as last year's race, but still very solid and we got to see a last lap pass for the win. Probably not the guy a lot of people on the forum want to see make that last lap pass, but still, overall, one of the best races Cup has put out in quite some time.

Next up, we head back to Michigan, which produced a less than stellar race the last time we were there, and it was rain shortened. Will things be different this time around? Hopefully.

Paul Menard just passed Jeff Gordon in points, not sure how to feel as a Gordon/Menard fan.

It wasn't as good as last year, but it still was a great race indeed, IMO. And Logano winning? I'll take him over Busch. A 8.0/10.

PackerMan71 wrote:

Ben Atkins wrote:That race was horrible. When a Watkins Glen race is horrible, you know you screwed up the package.

*yawn* Good win Logano, I guess...

Alta wrote:Lackluster surprisingly.

...Okay, then. Not really sure if we were watching the same race or not. If you're actually serious about this, then... Well, I guess we're looking at this from two completely different spectrums, because I actually thought the race was good. To each their own, though. Anywho...

Little to no passing at the front, especially in the final 30 laps. That run to the end was just awful. I remember literally nothing from the first 2 thirds either.

Ben Atkins wrote:

PackerMan71 wrote:

Ben Atkins wrote:That race was horrible. When a Watkins Glen race is horrible, you know you screwed up the package.

*yawn* Good win Logano, I guess...

Alta wrote:Lackluster surprisingly.

...Okay, then. Not really sure if we were watching the same race or not. If you're actually serious about this, then... Well, I guess we're looking at this from two completely different spectrums, because I actually thought the race was good. To each their own, though. Anywho...

Little to no passing at the front, especially in the final 30 laps. That run to the end was just awful. I remember literally nothing from the first 2 thirds either.

The 'little to no passing' may have been because of fuel strategy, but Logano was putting the heat on the front runners in the late going, so it made things quite interesting to me. Plus, the top six were pretty much right there together, so if anybody made a mistake, they were gonna pay for it dearly, which added to the tension.

So, yeah, I don't agree with your opinion that it was awful by any stretch of the imagination, but then again, we all have different tastes and perspectives on it, so its whatevs at this point.

I thought it was good, granted it wasn't the restart show we've gotten the last three years (which is what I suspect is the real reason behind people not loving this race), but the tension of knowing someone may run out those last few laps while two good cars were charging up there really added some tension. Hell, that last lap looked like Joey about threw the race away.

Also, I found this. Thought it was great so I was motivated to make this:

I think (kind of a big disagreement with Packer's post on how the last 3 years of Glen races have been) that the reason this race kind of felt lackluster is we've been treated the last 5 years to honestly some of the better Nascar road races in recent times and the fact that this one was pretty tame kind of dampens the craziness and fun this track has been heavy with other the past few years.

Alta wrote:I think (kind of a big disagreement with Packer's post on how the last 3 years of Glen races have been) that the reason this race kind of felt lackluster is we've been treated the last 5 years to honestly some of the better Nascar road races in recent times and the fact that this one was pretty tame kind of dampens the craziness and fun this track has been heavy with other the past few years.

Well, I guess we're gonna have to just agree to disagree on this subject and move on. It is what it is at this point.

Honestly, I liked it better because I expect next week (Michgan, with the Indy package...) to be really crap.

my summary: can paved run offs go away

Dan Mackay wrote:my summary: can paved run offs go away

Never.

Liam O'Brian wrote:

Dan Mackay wrote:my summary: can paved run offs go away

Never.

Hate paved runoff. Removes any penalty for mistakes, allows drivers to cheat track margins, and generally makes race tracks look ugly as all hell.

Make it go away pls.