2011 Race 12 Recap – Coca-Cola 600 from Charlotte

Terry Renna/AP

Race: Coca-Cola 600
Track: Charlotte
Winner: Kevin Harvick
What happened: Kevin Harvick passes Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in turn four for the .703 second win over David Ragan.
History: This win was Kevin’s 17 career Sprint Cup victory
Points: Carl Edwards leaves with the points lead by 36 over Kevin Harvick.

Michael says:

Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. gets 11th place in his first race, that is fantastic. Goes to show you him and Trevor Bayne have a lot of talent, just no place to go in Roush-Fenway. Unless Carl Edwards moves on to Joe Gibbs Racing, Red Bull Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports or NEMCO Motorsports. Ok, kidding about one of those (you figure it out) but Roush-Fenway does have a pickle on their hands. Even if “Crazy Cousin” Carl leaves that’s just one opening. I say take one for the 99 car then farm the other one out to the Wood Brothers like their doing, but help them run the full year. Bayne obviously would be the natural fit for that ride. Or, what I said earlier in the year, maybe “Crazy Cousin” Carl leaves, maybe David Ragan goes to the 99, and…wait for it…Mark Martin returns to the 6 car to finish out his career before handing it off to Stenhouse. Just saying you heard it here first.

I know everyone in Junior Nation was happy as all heck to see him up there at the end, but would another fuel mileage win satisfy them? On the flip side, it’s funny how I don’t consider Harvick’s win fuel mileage based where if Junior won I would have.

PTI debated who had the worst fail yesterday, Junior or IndyCar’s J.R. Hildebrand? I say Hildebrand, because you could argue his crew could have told him to back off with the lap car as he had a good lead on Dan Weldon. That was just a case of pushing too hard, and getting into the marbles and nothing you can do. Conversely Junior and his team just rolled the dice on fuel mileage, big, big difference. Had he run too hard and burned up his gas, maybe, we’re getting closer. But in the end it wasn’t a mental mistake as opposed to a miscalculation.

By the way Denny Hamlin ran out of fuel too, just saying. A lot of people over looking that fact.

With Kurt Busch finishing 4th and Brad Keselowski running good until the end, maybe Kurt isn’t such a D-Bag for calling out everyone over the radio. And maybe I was wrong about Keselowski being a better Tweeter than driver.

For those who missed it Speed Energy is now in Rochester, NY! Greg and I could not be any happier, you can find it at some GNC stores. In other news, in case you missed it Robby Gordon did race at Charlotte all be it 99 laps. His car was pink. It was good times for all.

I’m eating crow some more because I thought the crew changes at Hendrick benefited everyone not named Eanrhardt, Jr. But here we are and he’s having a career year where Martin and Gordon are left trying to figure out what is going on.

Slightly new format as I’m convinced WordPress will never work with me, so I have to get used to its quirks. I want pictures by paragraphs but apparently that’s too much to ask to have that and keep proper spacing, no matter what it looks like in draft mode. Also, I’ll take a brief second to talk about how excited I am for the June 14th test at Watkins Glen with Tony Stewart and Lewis Hamilton swapping rides. Once that goes down, we’ll have better content to leverage and make this site and the Facebook more how we envisioned. Just have to get a base first to make it all work and not look stupid. Speaking of stupid that leads me to…

I don’t think my picks to win could have done any worse. Well maybe if I picked all start and park teams, but seriously a best of 16th place. I’m going to have to get a new way to pick besides throwing darts at a board!

Picks to win:
Carl Edwards – 16th
Tony Stewart – 17th
Kasey Kahne – 22nd
Jimmie Johnson – 28th
Kyle Busch – 32nd

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