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GURSS: A Wild Week In Motorsports
Written by: Jade Gurss   
08/04/2009
Mooresville, NC
 
Faster. Louder. The weekly column on SPEEDtv.com by Jade Gurss. (Harold Hinson Photo) ยป More Photos
From a Friday start to a Monday finish, it was a wild motorsports weekend all across the country…

Between Ron Hornaday and Mark Martin, 50 must be the new 29. The elder Martin is getting a lot of raves in Cup, but Hornaday has been even more unstoppable in the Truck Series. To win five races in a row (at ANY age) is remarkable, but to do it like Hornaday has is particularly noteworthy. His passion and competitive drive seems to rage more than it ever has, and the Kevin Harvick Inc. team, led by equally energetic crew chief Rick Ren, has rarely put a foot wrong all season. To sweep five straight without a glitch is the result of consistent excellence from the entire team. Hornaday now leads nearly every career statistical category in the Truck Series, and Ren is the all-time leader in victories as a crew chief. At this rate, they’ll both hold those records for many years. With a huge points lead and the momentum the team will take to Bristol next week, NASCAR might start engraving the championship trophy sometime soon…

If I’m consistently critical of NASCAR for snoozefests, it’s only fair I compliment them on exciting races and finishes, and they’ve been on a hot streak in the past couple of months. The best thing NASCAR has done in a long time (maybe the best thing since the Chase was introduced in 2004) is putting in the double-file restart rule. The format forces action after every yellow-flag period, and if it can make even a 500-mile Pocono race interesting, it’s a great thing. The racing is more frenzied with guys consistently going three-wide where they ordinarily won’t dare. It’s clear the drivers are on edge for each restart, but they also universally realize the increased entertainment factor for the fans in the stands and watching from home. This week, the double-file starts have the potential to make the Watkins Glen race a gem. With a hard-braking zone going into turn one, we’ll see some great moves (and likely some equally boneheaded ones) there and in the usually single-file esses. I imagine there will be 43 guys holding their breath each time. It should make for a fun Sunday afternoon drive through the bucolic Finger Lakes region of New York…

Brad Keselowski out-dueled Kyle Busch (aided by a gutsy pit call from Tony “Pops” Eury) in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Iowa. Keselowski continues to show he deserves the full-time Cup ride he so covets for 2010. The
Iowa track made a fine debut with the Nationwide cars, and further proved that tracks should consider the progressive banking feature like at the Rusty Wallace-designed facility. Homestead has proven the progressive banking concept on a bigger scale, and now the Iowa Speedway has shown it’s equally effective at a length of less than one-mile…

While I thought the final laps of the Nationwide race were entertaining, it was easily topped by a sparkling race for the Indycars at Kentucky Speedway. From start to finish, the open-wheel boys put their new aero package and the newly instituted push-to-overtake burst of power from the Honda engines to great effect with a lot of passing and side-by-side racing. The final laps with Ed Carpenter and Ryan Briscoe seemingly glued together at 200+ mph was great nail-biting action and devilishly good entertainment to watch. It was easily the best Indycar race of the season…

With the Cup race rained out Sunday, the focus fell upon the still-young Rally X category at the X Games. The final was a head-to-head battle between Smooth (in the form of former Indy champ Kenny Brack) versus Crazy (embodied by the extremely talented Travis Pastrana). The Ford vs. Subaru battle was nearly a dead heat until Pastrana nosed his car into the jersey barrier, giving the win to rally rookie Brack, who was consistently the smoothest driver of all the entrants…

Can this weekend top it?

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Jade Gurss is the owner of fingerprint, inc., a sports publicity company. He has written two New York Times Best Sellers, including what is believed to be the biggest-selling motorsports book in American publishing history (Driver #8 with Dale Earnhardt Jr.). His two decades of publicity and marketing experience involves nearly every category of motorsports, including nine innovative seasons as NASCAR publicist for the Budweiser brand and Earnhardt Jr. His blog can be seen at: http://fingerprint.typepad.com
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