Stunning the field
And me, too. Your pole sitter for Sunday's Busch race in Mexico City:
No, it's not hired guns Ron Fellows or Boris Said. (They'll start fourth and fifth.) No, it's not defending series champ Martin Truex Jr. (He'll go off third.) And, no, it's not hometown favorite Adrian Fernandez. (He crashed in qualifying and got a provisional.)
Your pole sitter: Mexican driver Jorge Goeters, who's making his first-ever Busch start.
Yeah, me neither. What I've been able to piece together on him in the last 10 minutes: He's 33 years old, he's raced in a bunch of different obscure series, and he tested recently with David Green at Virginia International Raceway.
Sunday, he'll be in the #66, Greg Biffle's usual Busch ride. I wonder if Biffle could have gotten the car around the track as well as Goeters did.
Comments (2)
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Sounds like a case of home court advantage, to borrow a phrase from basketball. Has Jorge raced on that track before?
Posted on March 6, 2005 1:50 PM
Alan: I think I heard on the broadcast today that Goeters has raced this track below. Same with several other of the Mexican drivers in the race.
Not that it seemed to help a whole lot. Busch cars are a lot heavier than pretty much anything you can race (except, of course, Cup cars), and handling that extra weight around the corners is a chore.
Then again, Goeters looked right at home Sunday for the first 20 or so laps - he led the first quarter of the race, and nobody had anything to pass him. Then he had the longest pit stop in modern NASCAR history (20 seconds; the cameras caught his crew chief slamming his clipboard into his own legs), then he blew an engine. So it goes.
Posted on March 6, 2005 8:13 PM