Jeff Gordon hit the big 5-0 at Pocono.
It has been 50 races since his last Sprint Cup victory.
He was in great position to triumph at Pocono before making a pivotal four-tire stop on lap 171, when several drivers only took two tires or didn’t take any. Gordon restarted 11th but only managed to fight his way back to sixth.
“I’m bummed out that we just can’t catch a break,” Gordon said. “It just seems like when we get ourselves in position to win the race, it just seems like we can’t catch that break. You make those breaks by working hard, teamwork, good fast race cars and putting yourself in the right place.”
Gordon has done all of that except win this season.
NASCAR is in control; deal with it: Be careful. The NASCAR police could be monitoring our conversation.
Yes, they are that intrusive.
They might be checking your posts on Twitter.
That’s what happened to Denny Hamlin, who recently admitted he was one of the drivers NASCAR fined secretly over the last few months.
Ryan Newman got zapped too. Newman got in trouble for comments he made after a crash at Talladega in April. Newman, clearly frustrated, said restrictor-plate races shouldn’t be points races, and events are more about marketing than competition.
Hamlin thinks the situation that got him in trouble involved a Twitter conversation after the Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland.
“More than likely,” he said. “Chicago weekend, talking about some of the Nationwide stuff, but most of those conversations were all direct messages to one person. Anybody that follows me on Twitter knows I’m opinionated, and that’s what people follow me for, is just for the quotes here or there.”
That is the problem NASCAR and other sports giants have with the social media like Twitter and Facebook. It’s an unfiltered, untamed universe. You get candid stuff from athletes. It’s a great thing. It’s also frightening for control freak organizations like NASCAR and the NFL.
”Whether you agree with it or not, it happened,” Hamlin said. “They’re in control.”
Junior’s so-so season: Dale Earnhardt Jr. continues to sputter along, trying to make the Chase. He remains 14th in the standings after Pocono but dropped from 93 to 129 points behind 12th-place Clint Bowyer.
“It hurt it,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We didn’t have a great car. The motor broke at the end. The car was junk all day. … I spun out. The car wasn’t good.”
Not much has been good this season. Earnhardt may win popularity contests, but making left turns consistently is what it’s all about.
Time is ticking away.
George Diaz
