6 observations after super Saturday of racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway

By foxsports
Published

Super Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway saw three separate races -- the Sprint Showdown, North Carolina Education Lottery 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race and the Sprint All-Star Race crammed into about 13 hours from start to finish.

For these three races, I did something I only do a couple times a year: sat in the grandstand to get a fan's eye perspective on the action. Here are six observations of a hard day's night of racing.

6. THE SURPRISES -- If you would have told me before the race that two different Roush Fenway drivers would win Sprint Showdown segments, I would not have believed it, but they did. Greg Biffle dominated the second segment, but the real revelation was Trevor Bayne, who drove like a man possessed by going three-wide, and splitting Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney to win the opening segment. 

Somebody must have lit a fire under that boy because drove it like he stole it, racing hard, aggressively and cleanly. He did a whale of a job and in fact has done a much better job overall  this season.

5. THE AIR TITANS -- How do I put this politely? NASCAR fans like to whine a lot. Well, some of them, anyway. Folks, the one thing there should never be any disagreement about is efficiency of the mighty fleet of Air Titans.

Saturday at Charlotte, the rain fell harder than cow piss on a flat rock in the early evening, yet the All-Star race got delayed only minimally, thanks to the Air Titans. Well done.

4. NEW WINNER -- No disrespect to Joe Gibbs Racing, but it was good to see someone else in Victory Lane on Saturday night. JGR's Toyotas won seven of the first 12 races of the season and were threatening to stink up the show.

Instead, Team Penske swept with Joey Logano winning and Brad Keselowski second. That could make for an interesting Coca-Cola 600 next Sunday night. 

3. THE CONFUSION -- By now, the uproar over Matt Kenseth failing to make a green-flag pit stop in the first segment of the All-Star race and bunch of cars falling off the lead lap has been well-documented. It was an unfortunate debacle that marred an otherwise exciting race.

But here's the deal: Anytime NASCAR tries something new, it almost always has unintended consequences. No matter how much NASCAR tries to play for every eventuality, something weird usually seems to happen. From the stands, the only thing we knew was that Kenseth was getting held for a lap as a penalty. We had no idea it was blowing up.

2. YOUNG MONEY -- Don't feel bad for Kyle Larson, a/k/a "Young Money." Sure, he finished second for the second consecutive Cup race. Sure, he nearly wrecked in the closing laps when he and Joey Logano made contact. 

But, boy, did he put on a show in both the Sprint Showdown, where he won the final segment, and the All-Star race, which he nearly won. This young man has hit his stride and will win a race before long.

1. THE RACING -- Two of three segments of the Sprint Showdown had thrilling finishes and so did the end of the All-Star race. Were they perfect? Of course not. But they had the key elements you expect from NASCAR races: Tight, tense completion, with surprise winners and late-race passes to win.

When you consider the crappy races we had the past couple of years, Saturday was a huge improvement. So NASCAR needs to build on the good, get rid of a couple of rough edges and then just do it again.

And yeah, the Kenseth debacle was a fiasco was a drawback, but it didn't spoil a solid day and late night of racing.