With California and even Las Vegas being as "challenging" to watch as they were, we all anticipated Atlanta. It is one of the fastest tracks on the circuit and has some of the closest finishes in history. It also has some of the most emotional races and finishes in history.
It wasn't meant to be.
We had our first caution flags before we had even five laps under green and it only got more ridiculous.
If we were going to have a bonehead move of the race, it would be on lap 66. Marcos Ambrose pitted and a tire got away from the pit crew, crossing pit road and rolling out into the infield grass. Without talking to NASCAR, one of Marcos' Crew members ran out across pit road and out into the infield to retrieve the tire. NASCAR naturally threw the caution and caught more than half the field a lap down. It would only get worse.
NASCAR implemented one of their insanely stupid restarts, when cars not quite a lap down start ahead of the leaders...... and the insanity continued.
By lap 87, Carl Edwards was leading with Clint Bowyer in second and Kurt Busch, yes, KURT, in 3rd. By lap 96 there were only 9 cars on the lead lap and so it would remain for most of the race.
On lap 101 the engine issues started. Bobby Labonte, who had spun earlier, started reporting that his engine was sounding "flat". Of course he is in Roush-Yates equipment.
Roush started off the season great with two wins right out of the box, but engine failures were their story last weekend. The problem last week was nicknamed the “Phantom Valve Train”,. Jack Roush wanted to blame it on the tire. Last year at Atlanta the race was a tire management race. The tires were shredding on the abrasive track and teams were forced to pit more often to change tir es, resulting in less long green flag runs. This year, Goodyear brought a different tire, BUT, all teams had representatives at tire testing and no problems were reported. Doug Yates, in charge of engine development for Roush Yates Racing did agree after tearing the engines down that tires were a factor. Because the tires are “racier” they resulted in higher revolutions in the engine, consequently putting more wear and stress on the engines. Unfortunately, that wasn’t determined until Vegas race day and the result was blown engines.
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