Before the weekend Tony Stewart said everyone loves Sonoma because it’s almost a getaway vacation for drivers and their girlfriends and/or wives. Something tells me after Sunday’s race, no one was happy sans Kurt Busch and his wife Eva.
Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers had a spat. Joey Logano and Robby Gordon decided that their orange paint schemes needed to be swapped. And Juan Pablo Montoya just ran over everyone in his way late in the race before Brad Keselowski ended JPM’s bulldozer day by punting the No. 42.
“Montoya just drove through me at the top of the hill, that’s just obvious,” Kahne said. “Last year when (the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing) cars were really, really good and Jamie McMurray was the man, Juan still couldn’t win a race. That shows about what he can do here in NASCAR anyways.”
Ouch. Montoya, naturally, didn’t see things the same way.
“I got beside (Kahne) and he knocked me a couple of times, and they just don’t give me any room so it was hard,” Montoya said. “The No. 2, I got on his bumper moved him a little bit, got beside him and passed him and he just plain and simple wrecked us. It’s hard when people don’t know how to race on road courses and think they do. It’s OK.”
And that comes from one of the supposed best road racers on the circuit.
Keselowski gave his side, saying, “The body language of Juan’s car said he was going to wreck me. I just made sure that didn’t happen.”
“I don’t race guys that way and I’m not going to let anybody race me that way,” Stewart said. “So if they block, they get dumped. Plain and simple.”
Even the race winner, whose bumpers were awfully clean, if not pristine, chimed in.
“This sport was based off of guys roughing each other up,” Kurt Busch said. “That’s that good old short track racing that we see – the good old door slamming, bumper to bumper. It’s the heritage of our sport.”
Stewart has been angry all season about the way some drivers have raced.
“I’ve been complaining about the way guys have been racing all year,” said Stewart. “I like Brian; I’m not holding it against him at all. I don’t care if it was [teammate] Ryan Newman. I would have dumped him, too. If they want to block, that’s what is going to happen to them every time for the rest of my career.”
And darn it, those were just the post-race interviews on Sunday.
The race was even more entertaining. Who was next? What was going to happen and in what turn would it happen? And how interesting did all this beating and banging suddenly make this week’s upcoming race at Daytona?
With the new version of restrictor plate racing, I doubt anything will transpire, but it will be very interesting to see what comes of all the post-race chatter.
This was truly what NASCAR wanted when they implemented the “Boys have at it” policy last season. Drivers got mad, used their bumpers, retaliated, and policed themselves.
I can’t wait to see how this plays out at Daytona. It’s going to be wild…and fun.
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