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Sprint Cup Preview: Pocono

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The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 6, 2008

SPRINT CUP PREVIEW: RACE NO. 14 - POCONO

Halfway to the Chase, Kyle Busch has a commanding lead in the standings, and Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne are holding onto the final three spots in the top 12. Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch were last year's winners at Pocono Raceway, site of Sunday's Pocono 500. Below, Tony Fabrizio takes a look at what's topical this weekend:

What's wrong with Pocono?

The rural eastern Pennsylvania track is owned by wonderful people in Joe and Rose Mattioli, but the racing there is lacking. Pocono is a 2.5-mile triangle in which two of the three turns have little banking. Racing is often single-file and spread out. The lack of side-by-side racing could be even more pronounced with NASCAR's new car, which the teams are still trying to figure out. The Mattiolis would make a popular decision if they shortened their two Sprint Cup races to 300-400 miles.

Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are winless. Which one of them will break through first?

All three look ready to win. Stewart almost had a victory two weeks ago at Charlotte, and he's driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, the best team on the circuit this year. He typically does his best racing starting in July, when the tracks get hot and slick. Earnhardt has been the strongest of the four Hendrick Motorsports drivers and looms as a threat almost every week. Gordon started the year out of sync, but he comes off three consecutive top-five finishes and looks ready to win. He's typically good at Pocono.

How could Kyle Busch make history this weekend?

He's competing in NASCAR's three national divisions at three sites - that's never been done. In addition to the Cup race at Pocono, he's driving Billy Ballew Motorsports' No. 51 Toyota in tonight's Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway and Braun Racing's No. 32 Toyota in Saturday night's Nationwide Series race at Nashville Superspeedway. Because of travel logistics, Busch will participate in only one qualifying session - today at Pocono. J.R. Norris will qualify for him at Texas, and Will Allen will fill in for him at Nashville.

Last week's race at Dover concluded Fox's portion of the season TV package. How were the ratings?

Reversing a two-year downward trend, Fox averaged a national rating of 5.7 with a 12 share (9.4 million viewers), an increase of 2 percent. The Sprint Cup telecasts were the top-rated and most watched regular-season sport from February through June for the eighth consecutive year. In the Tampa Bay market, the numbers were even better. Fox's ratings and share rose from 7.7 and 10 last year to 8.0 and 13 this year. (In 2007, the ratings for the races at Richmond, Darlington and Dover were excluded because of rain.) TNT will carry the next six races, and ESPN/ABC will show the final 17, starting with the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard on July 27.

Keeping Up With The Locals

•Zephyrhills' David Reutimann will commute between Pocono (actually Long Pond, Pa.), and Nashville for Saturday night's Nationwide race. Nashville is his favorite track, the site of his first Craftsman Truck Series victory in 2005 and a second-place Nationwide finish.

Josh Wise will practice and qualify Reutimann's Nationwide car at Nashville. Reutimann is fourth in the Nationwide standings and comes off a fourth-place finish at Dover. (He's 26th in the Cup standings, 10 points behind Hendrick Motorsports' Casey Mears.)

•Tampa's Michael Cherry, competing in NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program, scored a career-best third-place finish in last Saturday's late-model race at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Va. He also qualified third among 30 drivers.

Tony Fabrizio

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