Five laps: Friday at Richmond
Welcome to the (mostly) All-Earnhardt edition of The Spotter because Senior would have been 57 on Tuesday:
Lap 1: Ah, Richmond -- the second-best race on the schedule. (First: Richmond in the fall, the race before the cutoff for the Chase.) It's also the place where Junior won his last race two years ago. He'll win Saturday. You just watch.
Lap 2: Jeff Gordon's still a whiner. Boooo hoooo hoooo, Junior didn't help me. (More.) Let's face it, 24 fans: The Hendrick cars just don't dominate at the plate tracks any more. Two-Time's rope-a-dope hang-in-the-back tactic isn't sandbagging. It meant his car just wasn't that good. And, no, I can't explain why Casey Mears was had the best Hendrick finish. Can you explain how Furniture Row Joe ended up on the pole?
More after the jump.
Lap 3: Speaking of 'Dega, there's nothing cooler than hearing the cheers of Junior's Green Army being heard above the noise. In every other sport you can hear the crowd -- except in racing. The exception is when the 8 88 does something good.
Lap 4: And speaking of Junior, I'm still sit up everytime I see the 8 or the Bud Car during a race (though, admittedly, it's not all that often, which makes it sort of like last year.) That said, it took three drivers to replace Junior -- Kahne in the Bud 9, and Martin and Almirola (Martinalmirola?) in the DEI 8.
Lap 5: What would Dale Earnhardt be today? Probably alive, if NASCAR didn't have its head up its collective hind parts before he ran up the hill into the fence at Daytona. As sad as it sounds, Kenny Wallace is exactly right.
Green-white-checker lap: Look who has squeezed into the top 12 -- Juan Pablo! That almost makes up for that disturbing Juicy Fruit commercial. They still make that stuff?
Cooldown lap: Denny Hamlin finishes fourth in the Denny Hamlin 150 at his old track. The winner? Are you sitting down? Kyle Freakin' Busch. Dude is on fire.