auto club post race

I'm very happy that we were in on Truex, Larson and Kyle Busch all week long.  All three were in our initial write-up this week and they finished 1-2-3 at Auto Club on Sunday.

That said, for just the second time this year, our feature lineup didn't get it done on Sunday.  In large part that was because of the odd incident involving Kevin Harvick and Kyle Larson as they were fighting for 3rd and 4th place about 40 laps into the race.  It was odd that they were fighting so hard that early in the race and the incident itself was bizarre.  It looked like Harvick wanted to come down on Larson, but he either went too far or Larson moved up a bit and Harvick got knocked into the wall.  He ended up 35th and multiple laps down.

Up to that point, Harvick had moved up seven spots after starting 10th and he had 11 fastest laps.  He looked like a Top 5 car easily and, with a few adjustments, might have led laps and gotten many more fastest laps.  But, in that one instant, Harvick went from a 50-60 (or more) point car to a -10 point car.  That was obviously the difference in cashing in this week.  Under the same circumstances, I would pick Harvick again every time.  He had a strong record at Auto Club, was as hot as could be, and had the fastest 5, 10 and 15 lap averages in final practice.  Sometimes the right pick just doesn't work out.

We also got slammed by Daniel Suarez's late pit road speeding penalty.  He started 30th and was running inside the Top 20 with about 40 laps left in the race when he got nabbed for speeding on pit road.  He got a drive through penalty, which dropped him a lap down into 23rd place to finish the race.

On the plus side, we nailed the picks of Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch.  Clint finished 11th, but had 15 position difference points, for a total of 48 points.  Kyle finished 3rd, led 62 laps and ran 26 fastest laps.  He scored 68.5 points.

We're disappointed with the result today, but we're already looking forward to getting back in the $ next week at Martinsville.