Ok, here is my rant on Richmond, When they first penalized Michael for rough driving and parked him for the remainder of the night, I was as furious as one could be. And even though my good friend Section was trying to interject some common sense into the incident I didn't want to hear it. I also took out some of my frustration out on the Junior fans whose driver was involved in a racing incident at the end of the race. I'll take care of those issues with a thread. But after having a chance to sleep on it and also to calm down after I woke up here is what I have come to a conclusion on.
What Mikey did was totally uncalled for and he should have been punished, for 50 laps I'm still not sure but that was NASCAR's call and I'll live with it. Another thing I tried to rationalize out of this, this stunt that Mikey pulled, if handled after the race may have resulted in a points reduction. With that being said, I figured Mikey would probably have finished around the 20th position. Maybe as high as 18th with the late cautions. So if a point reduction would have been taken after the race say 25 to 50 points then by NASCAR setting him down it actually cost him 51 points so I'd say he paid his dues and Nothing else should come of it. Especially how NASCAR handled the Kurt Bush incident last year and Kurt put a crew member in danger and Mikey didn't really put anyone in danger. It was uncalled for but nothing that should warrant anything more than what was done on the track.
Now I want to look at a couple of thing on the bright side of the race. I appears that Mikey has subcombed to Bobby as his crew chief, Mikey was telling him what was wrong with the car and not really making any suggestions as to what to fix. he left that to Bobby, Mikey was really starting to run well and it showed on the latter part of the race. He stayed out on with 40 lap tires hoping to catch a quick caution and get back on the lead lap. Well, that didn't work out but drivers with fresh tires that passed him early in that run, Mikey was catching back up to and passing just before he had to pit. Mikeys lap times at the end of the run were just as good as the leaders. So maybe they are on the verge of getting things turned around.
David had another strong run and moved ahead of Mikey in the owners points battle. Now is the time for both the 44 and 00 to start going for the top 15 to top 10 runs.
Lets just hope that Darlington is the start of good things to come and seeing MWR starting to climb towards that top 20 in points.
