Racin' With Russ
By Russell Schmidt

Kahne Kontinues as Konqueror
Monday, June 9, 2008

After not winning for nearly two years, Kasey Kahne has recovered to take three wins over the past month starting with the million dollar All-Star race, then the Coke 600 and yesterday the young Dodge pilot endured the heat and a pit road penalty to win the 500 mile Sprint Cup race at Pocono.

The weekend started off correctly for Kahne and crew by capturing the pole. Kahne did lead the lions share of laps, but several other drivers appeared as if they might land a win by day's end. Among them were Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle and most notably Brian Vickers, who for a while appeared poised to land his second career trophy, although it would have been a first for his Red Bull team.

But, despite numerous restarts for minor incidents and the oppressive temperature conditions, Kahne zoomed away from the pack handily over the closing laps, going to claim his second points win of the season, his ninth career.
The Gillette-Evernham driver has now moved up three places in the overall standings to sit ninth.

On the other end of the success spectrum would involve stories concerning Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart. Busch came to Pocono to wrap up his nationwide tour of three tracks in three days. On Saturday, he stuffed his car hard enough in practice to bring out the backup car. Then, early in the race while passing Jamie McMurray, he stuffed the second car in the fence. While he came out later in the race many laps down, he spun again and finished 43rd. The end results was a BIG hit in his points lead, which has now been reduced to only 21 over Jeff Burton. Stewart had been running well all day, that is, until NASCAR deemed he was speeding exiting a late race pitstop. That sent Stewart's demeanor into the stratosphere and deep in the final results to 35th.

Rounding out the top five in this one saw Vickers second with Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Burton among the top runners.
The Nationwide race at Nashville Superspeedway turned out to be one of the most exciting races of the year. First time winner Brad Keselowski took over the top spot from Cup driver Clint Bowyer with a handful of laps remaining.

The DEI driver certainly needed to 'get up on the wheel' to do so, much to the crowd and crew's approval. The action behind the leader was just as hot as David Stremme tapped Bowyer aside to claim second with David Ruetimann third, leaving points leader Bowyer fourth and David Ragan fifth.

Boy wonder Joey Lagano started his second ever Nationwide race in fine style by capturing his first pole, then led most of the early laps before getting tangled up in a three-wide pass. The result saw a dejected young driver finishing in 31st, but having nothing to hang his head about.

Bowyer leaves Nashville with a healthy 166 point lead over Reutimann and 188 over Kyle Busch. Busch's 'triple' effort over the weekend found him with mechanical problems and a 20th place finish.
The Craftsman truck race on Friday night in Texas saw a spirited battle between teammates Jack Sprague and eventual winner Ron Hornaday. Kyle Busch came from the back twice, but ran out of steam to mount a challenge, settling for second, but ahead of Johnny Benson, Sprague and Todd Bodine.

Hornaday's latest win vaults him back on top of the points with Matt Crafton and Benson not far behind.

Open Wheel News
The Indy Racing League had a large starting grid of 28 cars at the Texas Motor Speedway where Scott Dixon ran away with yet another win, this one over Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe. Dixon has also extended his lead in the overall points standings over Castroneves.

The Formula One series ran in Canada over the weekend with Robert Kubica picking up his first F-1 win in his brief career. Lewis Hamilton ran into the back of Kimi Raikkonen on pitlane, sidelining both. Kubica edged Nick Heidfeld and David Coulthard and now leads the points.

From Rumorville
Word through the pits indicates Tony Stewart has made up his mind as to where he's going and what he'll do for the foreseeable future, only he's not quite ready to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. My thoughts are he will leave Gibbs by the end of the year, move to another team with partial ownership. Stay tuned.

With Verizon's impending purchase of Alltel, things are looking bad for Ryan Newman's backing on the big blue Dodge. Here we go though another phone sponsor debacle. It also appears that Verizon wants no part of NASCAR team sponsorship.

Did you know?
After Ashley Force recently became the first woman NHRA Funny Car driver to win a major event, this past weekend, the women keep adding to the record books as Melanie Troxel became the first woman to set fast time of day with stats of 4.752 at 327.27 mph. Who says women can't drive?

That's it for this week. Next week's RWR will review the NASCAR action from Michigan along with more racing news from around the globe.

Questions? Comments? Contact Russ