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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: LMS Races All Wet
Over its 50-year history, Lowe’s Motor Speedway has hosted some of the most compelling races in the history of NASCAR...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted May 26, 2009   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
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Over its glorious 50-year history, Lowe’s Motor Speedway has hosted some of the most riveting and compelling races in the entire history of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing. Great finishes, unforgettable moments, dramatic conclusions. Unfortunately, Monday’s Coca-Cola 340 wasn’t one of them.

Yes, that’s right, Coca-Cola 340.

Mother Nature took a race that was supposed to be 600 miles and run over four hours on Sunday night and made it a 340-mile race that took six-and-a-half hours to complete on Monday. For those of you without a calculator, that means the real average speed of the Coca-Cola 340 was about 53 miles per hour, a pace that would get run over on Bruton Smith Boulevard, the main drag leading in and out of the track.

Instead of a last-lap shootout, the race ended with 43 race teams standing around for nearly two-and-a-half hours before NASCAR finally concluded that the rains weren’t going to stop and calling a halt to the proceedings.

That made David Reutimann, who was running 14th on the last green flag lap prior to the third and final rain delay, a first-time Sprint Cup winner. Reutimann’s crew chief, Rodney Childers, told his driver to stay on track rather than pit, which he did. Ryan Newman, the race’s runner-up, and third place Robby Gordon also eschewed the customary pit stops and parlayed track position to great finishes.

Driver Reutimann, crew chief Childers and car owner Michael Waltrip, each of whom was credited with his first Cup victory in his respective jobs, were understandably delirious afterwards. And make no mistake about it, this win paid the same amount of points as every other Sprint Cup race does. In racing, a victory is still a victory.

“Who deserved to win the race?” questioned Waltrip, himself a winner of a rain-shortened Daytona 500. “Who won the race off pit road? Who stayed, who didn't? You can argue that all day long. I think given the information and the call that Rodney made, he being the first one to make it, I just would hang my hat on that. As a winner of a rain shortened race before, eventually they'll quit asking all those questions.”

So congratulations to Childers for having the guts to make the call and to the entire team for a much-needed first victory. “ I didn't even put much thought into it, to be honest with you,” said Childers. “I told him (Reutimann), ‘Hey, we're running 14th, to make the adjustments we need to make, we're going to lose four spots on pit road and come out 18th. There's 24 cars on lead lap. So we either take a chance on winning this deal or we restart 24th.’ We stayed out.”

And they won as a result.

Not a great race. Not a thrilling finish. Not a memorable, down-to-the-wire victory. But a victory nevertheless.

Some other thoughts on the weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway:

• The weather wasn’t NASCAR’s fault and it wasn’t the track’s fault. Sometimes, weather happens. This was one of them rain-cloud deals and as much as it made for a pretty miserable weekend for lots of folks, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

• Dale Earnhardt Jr. qualified 27th, finished 40th and didn’t run that good. You can rest assured the formidable brain trust at Hendrick Motorsports has gone to Defcon IV trying to figure out what in the blue blazes is wrong with Earnhardt and the No. 88 Chevrolet.

With NASCAR’s regular season just one-race shy of halfway, Earnhardt is 19th in points, 203 markers outside of a birth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. In his last three races, his best finish was 27th. I would shocked if there wasn’t a radical shake up at that team within the next two weeks.

• NASCAR has called a mandatory driver-team owner meeting today at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, N.C. The subject of the meeting presumably how to improve the sport.

Sprint Cup Director John Darby has gone on record as saying that NASCAR’s new-generation race car will not be changed anytime soon, but the drivers, teams, fans and the media have been complaining about the inability of cars to make passes at the front of the field. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this.

• Last but not least, kudos to NASCAR for stopping the race at 3 p.m. and pausing for a moment of observance for our men and women in the military service. It was classy, respectful and emotional. With all that went wrong on Monday, this went very, very right. Well done, NASCAR.

See you in Dover on Friday.

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

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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