Kurt winds back to back spring races at Atlanta winning  the Kobalt Tools 500 with a dominate car all day.

The victory was great for Busch and new crew, chief Steve Addington, who used to be crew chief for Kurts younger brother Kyle Busch last season. It was a bitter sweet victory, all people are going to be talking about and remember is the late race incident between known rivals,  Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski.

Only two laps remaining Edwards clearly turned Keselowski on purpose, sending him upside down in the frontstretch. Keselowski’s car spun around backwards sending his car airborne into the fronstretch wall upside down. A wreck that should never had happened, this isn’t short track racing were the speeds aren’t so high. Edwards was black flag parked for the rest of the race and had to go to the NASCAR trailer immediately after climbing out of his car.

Fortunately Keselowski was not injured in the incident, but clearly and understandably upset. Edwards told reporters he intentional spun Keselowski but didn’t intend for it to go that bad.

  

Earlier in the race Edwards and Keselowski got together entering turn one were Edwards said Keselowski never gives him room. After Edwards watched the replay, he made it sound that Keselowski getting into him wasn’t as blatant as he initially thought it was.

With the late race incident, it sent the race into overtime. Taking two green white checkered restarts to finish the race.

Kurt Busch got a great restart on the first green white checkered attempt, but was slowed by another caution on the first lap with a multi car accidents going into turn three. Jamie McMurry went into turn three hard getting loose and creating a Hugh pile up.

On the second restart, Busch got a great jump. This time, the they were able to  completed two laps safely, this is the first win for Busch and his Penske team.

“I’m just so happy to bring this car home to victory lane,” Busch said. “Even with all the restarts at the end, I felt like we had the car to beat.”

Busch led 129 of the race’s 341 laps. Only Kahne at 144 led more

Kevin Harvick, who finished ninth, kept the point lead. Kenseth is second, Greg Biffle third, Jimmie Johnson fourth and Clint Bowyer fifth.

Some of the top teams had some serious tire issues. A lot of blown out tires and punctures during the race.

Caution No. 8 came out when Denny Hamlin’s left-front tire blew, forcing the field to slow at lap 288. A couple of laps after the restart, the caution came out again,  the cars of Elliott Sadler and Max Papis made contact.

Johnson pitted during that caution so that his team could repair damage Johnson’s car received when he and Ryan Newman bumped.

On lap 158 the right front tire blew on Joey  car , causing significant damage to the front of the Logano’s Toyota and bringing out the day’s sixth caution.

Lap 114 Mark Martin slid along the frontstretch when his car lost its left rear tire. Martin kept the car off the wall, but his Chevrolet later was damaged severely in the caution that resulted from the first green white checkered attempt.

Martin did not finish and ended up 33rd.

The Edwards Keselowski first incident caused the first multi-car caution flag of the day on lap 40.

A blown tire sent David Ragan into the third-turn wall on lap 35, causing the second caution of the race. The event had barely started when a tire problem sent Robby Gordon into the first-turn wall.

RESULTS: KOBALT TOOL 500

Speed tv contributed to this report

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Elliott, of course, is a hero in his native Georgia, where he earned the nickname “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” for some of his exploits in the 1980s, which including winning a Sprint Cup championship and the old “Winston Million.”

Just as they did last year, the Wood Brothers are only running a partial Sprint Cup schedule. But in each of the races they run, Elliott’s iconic No. 21 Ford Fusion will powered by the new FR9 Ford engine.

The FR9′s main claim to fame is not additional horsepower — these days, NASCAR keeps teams in such a tight mechanical box that no manufacturer can get a meaningful horsepower advantage. But what it does have is a lower center of gravity and an improved cooling system, both of which should contribute to better handling on the track.

  

All the other Fords at Atlanta — four cars each from Roush Fenway Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports, plus three more from Front Row Motorsports with Yates Racing and one from Latitude 43 Motorsports — will be powered by the old Ford engine, code-named “452.”

Sunday’s race will mark only the second event for the FR9 at a non-restrictor plate track. David Ragan ran it successfully in 2009′s season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

By the second half of 2010, the plan is for all the Ford teams to use the new engine. But for now, it’s just the Wood Brothers, who will use it in every race this season. And that arrangement seems to please everyone involved.

“With us running a limited schedule, in the unlikely event something goes wrong, it doesn’t kill us in the points because we’re not really worried about points,” said Len Wood, co-owner of the Wood Brothers team.

For Ford, having the Wood Brothers willing to run the new engine gives the automaker critically needed real-world testing. “They can run them on the endurance dyno all they want, but until you put that thing on the race track under the real deal with tear offs flying around and getting on your grille and heating it up more than you want, or with pit stops where it gets over-revved here or there, it’s never the real deal until you’re really out there,” said Wood.

It also gives Ford the luxury of a gradual engine roll-out schedule — and the other teams the ability to spread out the cost involved.

“There are a couple of reasons for the slow rollout. The first reason is you’ve got to get your race package complete,” said David Simon, a Ford engineer who worked closely with Doug Yates to develop the new engine. “You can’t go out there with an engine that isn’t fully developed, not at this level.”

Speed Tv Contributed to this report

Jammie McMurry lands McDonald’s for a sponsor to help fill the sponsorship void, the possibility of racing nearly half the season without sponsorship was no laughing matter to McMurray and his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team.

With McDonald’s coming on board for about a third of the Sprint Cup season, there are only a handful of races left for Earnhardt Ganassi to fill. The possibility of racing nearly half the season without sponsorship was no laughing matter to McMurray and his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team.

“I was worried,” McMurray said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “We didn’t have a full-time sponsor, a full year sold. But after winning the 500, team manager Tony Glover leaned over and looked at me in victory lane and he said he thought we were pretty safe and we could run the whole season.

  

“I felt pretty good at that point. It takes a lot of money to run a race team. I was definitely concerned with what was going to happen, although I will say they felt comfortable if the McDonald’s sponsorship wasn’t here, they had enough one-race or two-race things to run the entire season.”

Bass Pro Shops was only sponsoring the team for half the season, the team needed sponsorship to fill out the rest of the year. Winning the daytona 500 sure didn’t hurt in attracting McDonald’s.

“These sponsorship deals don’t just come off of a race,” McMurray said. “It takes a long time to not only sell the sponsor, but for the sponsor to go back and sell it to the board.

“It’s not something that winning the Daytona 500 did all of a sudden to bring the next sponsorship to our team. They’ve been working very hard on that to get sponsorship sold, although it certainly doesn’t hurt to win.”

Earnhardt Ganassi was in negotiations with McDonald’s well before the Daytona 500.

“We’ve been working with them for a long time,” EGR President Steve Lauletta said. “Obviously it was great to send them a note from victory
lane in Daytona saying, ‘How great is this?’

“It doesn’t hurt to win a race like that to push things along, but we were pretty well down the road before that.”

“It’s just a huge next step in terms of validation of what we’re doing on the track and off the track to have a brand like McDonald’s come on board to join Target and Bass Pro,” Lauletta said. “It says to everybody in our shop and hopefully people watching the sport that we’re a team on the move.”

Speed TV contributed to this report

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NASCAR and DIS workers eventually patched the hole, which grew to about 18-inches by 30-inches, after two race stoppages that lasted more than two hours, 25 minutes.

The track was last repaved in 1978, but DIS President Robin Braig said the age of the asphalt wasn’t the problem.

“It’s not unusually long [to not repave] at all because we’re in Florida,” Braig said. “We have the best temperature here. We keep such great care of our track. We walk it. We walked it [Sunday] morning. We walk it before every event.

“We know every inch. We saw no indications. We had two races [Saturday] on that track and we walked it again. This is something we couldn’t see.”

NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said that the sanctioning body did not have any indication that the heavy rains nor the cool temperatures had compromised the track during any of the other Speedweek races.

“There was no indication in any of the racing prior to the Daytona 500 that there were any issues with the track,” Poston said. “It was very unfortunate. There were no warning signs for this.”

NASCAR’s sanctioning agreement states that it can require a track to make any fixes necessary.

“Obviously their engineers are here, they’re going to make an assessment and we’ll be there with them and try to gain as much knowledge about the track as we can to see if it is a spot problem or a larger problem,” Poston said.

In all likelihood, the track will not be repaved before the NASCAR events on Independence Day weekend. Sister track Talladega
Superspeedway required five months to be repaved, and Daytona still has motorcycle racing scheduled through the first week of March before it could even start the process. There also needs to be ample time for tire testing because repaving would likely require a different tire specification from Goodyear.

Drivers are split on whether or not to repave the track, which would create higher speeds and also put handling at less of a premium.

“If you ask driver opinion, there’s clearly no consensus on repaving,” Poston said. “In fact, there’s probably closer to a consensus not to repave. But NASCAR’s role and the track’s role is to take in the safety and the maintenance of the track and those factors. They’re going to spend this week looking at it.

“The more laps you put down on the track, the more seasons it gets, the better the racing is. Some drivers, crew chiefs and spotters said yesterday may have been the best all-around racing we have ever had at that track. So the assessment needs to be whether there are patches in the track that need to be addressed or they need to repave the whole thing.”

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All in all I think Danica did a great job finishing 6th, she stayed out of trouble for the most part and didn’t cause any wrecks. I would have liked to see someone go to  the high side with her and try to make a run on the leaders. It didn’t look like she could pull up on the car in front of her to draft, but I thought maybe if someone could get up behind her they might have a chance.

Well for the most part I thought it was a good start for her, but wish the media would just let it die a little and let her drive.

Thanks for reading.

ARCA REMAX results

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Tony Eury Jr. talks to his driver, Danica Patrick, during ARCA test at Daytona Friday. (Photo courtesy of NASCAR)

Danica Patrick seems to be the only thing in the racing  news. I think that the sport is putting way to much pressure on her to perform. We have seen drivers from other types of racing come over to NASCAR and fail.

I think the people and media need to let her do her thing.

Danica Patrick took her first laps in an ARCA Racing Series presented by RE/MAX and Menards stock car during a rain-shortened test session at Daytona International Speedway on Friday afternoon.

Patrick, one of 26 drivers who posted a time during the 35-minute single car run session, was 12th quickest on the charts with a time of 51.095 seconds (176.142 mph) around the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

A trio of three cars fielded by long-time ARCA Racing Series team Venturini Motorsports comprised the top three positions in Friday’s test session, led by full-time series competitor Mikey Kile (49.804 seconds/180.708 mph).

The first of the three-day open test was shortened to just 35 minutes after rain plagued both morning and afternoon hours. Patrick was able to make just four laps at full speed during the session.

“It’s still a car once you get in it,” Patrick said during a post test media center press conference on Friday. “I feel most comfortable once I’m at speed actually. Everything from getting into the car to getting the car started – that part feels quite different to me. It’s not normal to me. The car gets pulled out to pit lane and you get in the car when its in its pit stall in an IndyCar and the getting strapped in part is something that I’ve been familiar with for a long time now so everything is a little bit different but once I get out there I feel good. I feel comfortable.

“These cars can run more lanes on the track. You’re all the way to the wall and the car is good to go there. It’s easier to drive there and in an IndyCar you can’t use quite as many lanes usually. That’s just one of the first things I noticed. The gear shifter has more travel. You have to pull something and no more paddle anymore. The clutch is long. It’s just different stuff. But I wouldn’t say that there is any instinctual stuff that is different which is the best part, right? Because I just get to be a driver and I get to do what I’m used to. I feel comfortable once I get going.

“It does have a little bit of a grassroots feeling because there are a lot of cars sort of unpainted and everything but it’s still a car that I need to learn and I’m unfamiliar with. I have a lot to learn so I’m glad I’m here.”

Although Patrick garnered most of the media attention during Friday testing at Daytona, Venturini Motorsports posted the fastest time overall with driver Mikey Kile, who plans on running the entire 2010 ARCA Racing Series.

“It’s good to unload off the trailer fast,” said Kile. “It was not a sticker run. It was a run in race trim. We didn’t get a lot of laps but this team worked hard during the off season. With three Venturini cars at the top of the charts it shows how hard they worked.”

Kile was followed on the charts by teammates Steve Arpin in the No. 55 Toyota (50.098 seconds/179.648 mph) and Daytona Beach, Florida native Alli Owens in the No 15 Chevrolet (50.375 mph/178.660 mph).

Brandon McReynolds, son of veteran NASCAR crew chief/SPEED commentator Larry McReynolds, was fourth fastest with a 50.375 second/178.660 mph lap around the 2.5-mile speedway during his first laps in an ARCA speedway car. McReynolds does not plan to compete in the February 6 Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 but will use this weekend’s test session to build his superspeedway racing resume and gain track time. He is testing with 2009 ARCA Car Owner Champion Eddie Sharp.

Joey Coulter rounded out the top-5 in his family-owned No. 16 Chevrolet with a 50.627 second/177.771 mph lap. Bryan Silas, Nick Igdalsky, Lance Fenton, Grant Enfinger and Matt Lofton rounded out the top-10.

ARCA Racing Series teams will return for two additional full days of testing on Saturday and Sunday.