On friday, I was stuck at work until five. When qualifying started at 4:00 for the Savemart 350 I “watched” by using the live scoreboard tracker on Foxsports.com. I waited patiently for Tony Stewart to qualify. And finally he was out on the track so I sat there watching my one computer monitor with vigor (i have dual monitors) waiting and waiting to see where he placed. I was very upset to see at the time he placed second to last of all those who had qualified, which at the time was eleventh or something like that. I even shot off a pissy email on friday to my friend that said “I see Tony tanked qualifying. I am not even gonna watch the race at Infineon.” I was frustrated because we should have qualified way way better. We usually do at Infineon and then being stuck at work I had no idea why we hadn’t.

Did I not watch the race? Oh I hope you know me better than that by now- I was frustrated and blowing off steam to my friend. I certainly did watch it. Team Home Depot couldn’t have run a better race. Tony was able to move through the pack fairly quickly and thanks to a most excellently timed pitstop for Tony paired with a caution, we were able to gain many positions and quickly recover from our poor qualifying effort. Towards the end of the race, we were able to see Tony climb as high as 3rd. He had a car that could have won the race, until we were hit in the rear and spun by Jamie McMurray who was hit and pushed into Tony by Kevin Harvick. AHH. The curse words flew out of my mouth. One of these days I may be able to watch a race without cursing. Initially putting us back down in a top-fifteen position, we got lucky with a good restart and an accident right in front of Tony that caused a couple cars to spin including Scott Pruett. This helped Tony limp the battered looking Home Depot car back into a top ten finishing position at Infineon.

Also, I had to love that post race interview with Tony. That is Tony is typical Tony fashion.

Also, it should be noted that Marcus Ambrose, the Nationwide Series driver who originates from Australia, made his first sprint cup debut at Infineon and had a fairly strong showing until he ended up having an accident that left him mired well back in the pack with not enough laps left to make it back towards the front.

My final thought on the Savemart 350 is this: What is up with the road race “ringers?” They show up every year for Infineon and Watkins Glenn and tend to expect a good showing. Don’t get me wrong I have said it before here and I will say it agan, I am a huge Scott Pruett fan…have been since his Indy driving days. But why did Reed Sorenson need to be replaced by Scott Pruett? I am sure the thinking behind it was something to the effect of, with Scott Pruett we might get more points. Sure, you might or you might not. And how do they expect Sorenson to learn to road race better if they throw Pruett in the drivers seat? I don’t believe in the ringers. Sorry.

Also- I sent this to Twitter via my cellphone but for some reason it didn’t post under the Speed Updates section:

If HMS fired casey mears methinks hms is possibly making room for Tony Stewart.

I know the rumor out there is Mark Martin will be filling Casey’s shoes at Hendrick Motorsports, but a small part of me thinks it might be for Tony. Just think about last year. First it was announced that Kyle would be leaving HMS, but no way were HMS signing Jr….then all of the sudden here comes Jr. Just a little something for you all to chew on for a bit.