stunner but it wasn’t butchered the way it has been at some other tracks this season. Carmichael, Starr, Lofton, Dillon, Crafton, Peters, Skinner, and Sauter all rendered the proper respects to the flag. But the same can’t be said for Buescher or two NA$CAR officials who were on pit road. Just how hard is it to put your hand over your heart for the minute or so it takes for the National Anthem to be performed?
Mr. Darlington, Harold King, gave the command to start engines and he must’ve read what I wrote last week about the command being fouled up at Nashville. He got it right with the “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines”.
Kenny Schrader was back in the #2 truck for KHI which is a good thing for both him and KHI since Kenny has a lot of experience with Darlington. But his night didn’t start out that well. The battery in the truck was dead and had to be changed. NA$CAR considered it to be a pit stop and so he had to start shotgun on the field. Luckily, the start and parks moved over and let Kenny move up several positions before the green flag dropped. It was a shame really when you consider how well Kenny had qualified (6 th). Timothy Peters got his 2nd pole of the season. Before the green flag dropped, the Human Shill was cheerleading for The Bunion and it would continue throughout the entire race.
Once the green flag dropped, Peters was able to maintain the lead and had teammate Justin Lofton following him in 2nd. We didn’t get to stay green for very long. On Lap 4 Dennis Setzer spun which was the cause for the caution. In the process, Mario Gosselin spun to miss Setzer and naturally we heard from the Human Shill about Gosselin. There was also a replay of the start and apparently there was an accordion effect which caused Skinner to get into Ickler as Skinner pitted on lap 4 to have the front of his truck checked out. Schrader hit the pits using a bit of pit strategy to get off-sequence with everyone else.
We got a restart on Lap 8 and didn’t make it far because on the next lap Jason White got into Austin Dillon causing Dillon to scrape the wall and White went down to the inside the track. When they restarted again on Lap 12, things seemed to work out a little bit better this time. Since Schrader had lost a lot of positions on his pit stop, he was making up a lot of ground was had moved up to 15th. When they showed Peters and the leaders running around the track, it was pretty apparent that both the 01 and 85 trucks weren’t up to speed. By lap 26, Hornaday had moved up to 2 nd place while Peters was still leading. By Lap 38, 6 trucks had gone behind the wall. Most were start and parks.
They had a nice green flag run going and Peters had built up a 3.5 second lead, which is something else at Darlington. And naturally, with that big of a lead, I suspected that something was going to happen and I wasn’t wrong. On Lap 47, Ms Terry DeBris made an appearance, this week as a jug of moonshine, but we didn’t get to see her at home and apparently neither did the fans at the track. With the ensuing pit stops, Hornaday got the lead off of pit road. Once they restarted we wouldn’t get very far before another caution would come out. As luck would have it, it happened while Speed was presenting its' commercial programming just like their big sister network Focks does. It seems that TJ Bell got into the wall. Once again the teams hit the pits and Austin Dillon got the lead by going with a fuel only stop.
They restarted on lap 81 and on Lap 84 Ricky Carmichael spun in a similar manner to what Gosselin had done earlier in the race but no caution came out. They make it to Lap 91 before yet another caution came out. This time, Donny Lia in the 07 truck got into the wall from a blown right front tire. Immediately, The Human Shill jumped in to say that it wasn’t the tire manufacturer’s fault that the tire blew. They restarted on Lap 95 and Dillon was leading with The Bunion in second. And once again, yet another caution came out when Mario Gosselin hit the wall and caught Ricky Carmichael. If Ricky didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all. He was running around 6 th place when that happened.
When they restarted on Lap 103, The Bunion was able to get the lead and Hornaday was in second. And once again, they only got in two laps before Caution #8 came out. Lofton got loose and hit Skinner and then Starr hit Lofton. That pretty much ended Skinner’s night and Lofton went behind the wall. They restarted on Lap 109. Ickler bounced off the wall a couple of times and Lofton returned to the track on Lap 117. The bouncing off the wall by Ickler took it’s toll when Caution #9 came out on Lap 122 because of Ickler’s right front tire blowing out and him hitting the wall.
Thye restarted on Lap 127 with The Bunion leading, Peters in second, and Hornaday in third. And just like with the Cup cars, clean air played into things. The Bunion was able to pull away from Hornaday and Peters. Those two would battle it out til Hornaday’s tires seem to give up somewhat. With the lead The Bunion had, you had to wonder if Ms Terry DeBris was going to show up again but luckily she didn’t. Had she, we might have had a different winner as the first 4 trucks were gambling on fuel and any sort of GWC finish probably would’ve caused them to run out.
This week, there was no burnout as it was heard
over the radio that the engine that was in the
truck was their Chicago engine. “No burnout
dude, Chicago motor”. Despite Schrader’s
pre-race misfortune with the battery, he still got
a Top 10 finish and Jennifer Jo Cobb, the only
running Ford out of the two that were there,
finished 14th.
They don’t get much of a break as they’ll be
racing at Bristol on Wednesday night.
Once again, our folks in uniform are going where
they’re needed. With the recent floods in
Pakistan, they’re heading there to help out with
evacuations and relief efforts. And this in a country where we know there are folks who aren’t friendly or supportive of our troops. But like the professionals that they are, our troops go where they’re told and do the job assigned to them. My thanks to all our folks in uniform for doing what so few will ever dare to do.
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