While his younger brother has been stealing the spotlight, a rain shortened race finally gave older brother Kurt Busch his first win this season.
Dan Schmittou finds his speed to break his winless streak
Dan Schmittou had gone 59 races without a win, but finally stopped that streak before it hit 60 at New Hampshire. Dan won the Industrial Tools 301 for his 4th career win and first since October 2006. He also becomes the 2nd driver to win for Mafia Motorsports, their third win overall.
Dan scored 255 points with his picks of Martin Truex Jr., Elliott Sadler, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart. The rain shortened event allowed for some of the drivers finishing up front that you don't usually see up there. That resulted in the lowest scoring winning set of picks so far this season.
Dan has been up in the chase for most of the season thanks to a few top 5 and top 10 runs. He had a rough patch from mid March through April but picked it up for the next 4 races. However, the last 3 races were yet another pothole in the road to the chase. He needed something big to keep himself in it and this win did just the trick.
He now moves up 4 spots in the standings to 3rd place and helps contribute 18 bonus points to his team, Mafia Motorsports.
If there was anybody else who needed to kick start his season, it would be R.J. Palmer. Intimidator Racing, Inc. has been having a resurgence but R.J. was still just trudging along. He only had one top 5 to show for the season, but now can add another as he comes in 2nd place, tying his all-time high that he reached three times last year.
R.J. scored 250 points with his picks, just 5 shy of getting his first win. He moves up 2 spots in the standings to 35th place and hopefully ignites something as well.
Well if there's anyone who knows what it feels like to come close to winning but falling short, it's Marty Fleissner. Once again, Marty finishes just short after scoring the same amount of points as R.J., 5 less than the win. This is the 4th time that Marty has finished in the top 3 this year. Still, Marty has much to smile about this week. Even though he missed the win again, he takes the lead in the standings for the first time in his career. He knocks back Harry Jeffery to 2nd place after 5 weeks on top.
Mafia Motorsports gained the most points this week after Dan and Marty gave them 18 points. They now have three members in the top 5 and are the only team with more than one member in the chase.
Intimidator Racing, Inc. now has a member in the top 10 after Troy Wiggins finishes 4th this week. It is the 2nd consecutive top 5 for Troy and third for the season. Intimidator Racing, Inc. finally has broken out of the gate as all members are climbing the standings. They score 17 points this week thanks to R.J. and Troy and just a little help from Lou Demian who finishes 10th for the 2nd week in a row. One more point and they'll finally be out of the negative points total.
Rounding out the top 5 is Charquillia Addison who stops her skid. Charquillia had been on a long downward slide ever since Mid April. After leading the standings following the Martinsville race, Charquillia fell all the way down to 24th place. She gains 3 points back this week with her third top 5 of the season. Hopefully now she start the long climb back up.
Well, with New Hampshire over with, we now make our return trip to Daytona for the Coke Zero 400. Anything can happen in these restrictor plate races including the big one. There are sure to be fireworks both on and off the track. All picks need to be submitted prior to 10:00pm EST on Thursday, July 3rd. Enjoy the race and the 4th of July too!
6/3 10:00pm Update: The deadline for the Coke Zero 400 has now passed. The only person to miss submitting picks this week was Matt Sealey. All picks have now been uploaded to the site.
Daytona Marty Fleissner: Power Gauge Leader
Well, Marty Fleissner has now accomplished one of his goals this year. While he's still looking for that first win, Marty jumps to the top of the Power Gauge for the very first time. With a third place finish at New Hampshire, Marty also jumped to the lead in the standings as well. Not a bad weekend at all. Mr. Fleissner is having a big resurgence this year ever since joining Mafia Motorsports. Some say it could be help from his teammates, but since he's leading all of them, looks like he's doing just fine by himself.
In the last 5 races, Marty has two 2nd place finishes, a 3rd place finish and a 10th place finish. He just had the one little hiccup at Michigan after finishing 30th. He leads all players in top 5's and top 10's. He's already beaten his high total of top 5's in any year that he's raced and is just one short of the ten top 10's he earned in 2006. Now he heads to Daytona where he finished 32nd in February. However, he does have two top 10's and an 11th place finish as well.
The Intimidator Racing, Inc. teammates have been closely working together and it shows on the Power Gauge this week as they take the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place spots.
Lou Demian moves up 3 spots to 2nd place, the highest he's been this year. It's been a struggle for the President early in the season but things are coming together now. Four out of the last 5 races have been top 10 runs and he has not finished lower than 21st in the last 6 races. He moved up to 24th in the standings and still has hopes of making the chase.
Lou took the 2nd place from his wife Gwen who falls just one spot to 3rd this week. Gwen is also doing much better lately; she had a win back in Dover and two top 10's after that. She had fallen all the way down to 42nd place but is making a comeback after climbing up to 29th in the standings.
Two top 5's in a row gives Troy Wiggins 4th place this week, the highest he's been all season. Three of his last 4 races have been top 5's which helped push him all the way into the top 10 in the standings.
The entire top 5 is taken up by Intimidator Racing, Inc. and Mafia Motorsports. While Marty is on top, his teammate and owner John Sherman moves up 1 spot to 5th place. John is also in 5th place in the standings after moving up one spot there. He finished 14th at New Hampshire and is looking for his 2nd top 5 at Daytona this weekend.
Intimidator Racing Inc.'s 4th member, R.J. Palmer moves up the most spots this week. After a nice 2nd place New Hampshire finish, he vaults up 23 spots to 11th place, the highest that he's been. That 2nd place finish replaced a 40th place finish back at Lowe's.
Meanwhile while those two teams have been on fire lately, the formerly hot team, Racing Traditions, Inc. has cooled off considerably. Two of their members are tied with falling the most spots this week. Nathan Helton and Matt Sealey both fall 13 spots. Matt is down to 31st place while Nathan is down to 29th. Two rough starts in a row have hurt Nathan, who normally has good consistent runs. Hopefully his 100th start at Daytona this weekend will give him some good luck.
If there's anyone else who needs luck, its Steven Cotter. Steven is at the bottom for the first time this year after some really rough spots in his season. He finished in 3rd back at Michigan, and it looked like his luck might turn around, but a 35th place at Sonoma and 40th at New Hampshire did not help at all. Steven doesn't have the greatest luck at Daytona, but he's looking for something good soon.
Well mercifully for Jr. fans Richmond is done with and the winner was...Clint Bowyer?? After Hamlin led what seemed like an eternity, something as simple as a tire slowly going down ruined the whole night for him while Dale Jr. and Kyle Busch had their own problems...with each other that is. Replays can say one thing, but regardless I don't think Dale's fans will ever think of Busch the same way again. So of course I picked those 3, and you can figure out why I finished 24th, anyways lets talk about the teams.
The top 10 this week consisted of half single-car teams and half multi-car ones. It was Brian Travis of the single CrazyAboutRusty2 team that took the checkered, so great job Brian! The best multi-car team driver this week was Ed Blackman of SOCAL after Harry Jeffery just won last week. It was good enough to give them top average this week as well. Harry finished 17th, so you do the math. Also good to see Randy Cook Racing have a good average this week, thanks to Jeffery Willett's 5th placer and 12th for Mr. Cook. The team that was tied with SOCAL for the Overall lead last week, Racing Traditions, Inc. forgot to come to work or something, worst average so far this whole season. Very unfortunate for this team, but they'll bounce back im sure. It did drop them 2 positions to 4th though. The new top 3 consists of SOCAL, 2Fast4U, and Mafia Motorsports. Can anyone knock out the dynamic duo on the west coast?
Only 3 of the 8 multi-car teams had + bonus points this week, the biggest going to SOCAL with 9. Brian Travis got 10 all for himself, and definitely helped him move up the ranks. The other Multi-car teams with points were 2Fast4U (8, from Sue Perna’s 3rd), RCR (6, Jeffery Willett’s 5th), also North Coast ended up even with Bob Douce 10th and Jordan Hunt 34th. Racing Traditions, Inc was knocked around, especially from the top of the standings, with a -17. The 3 position drop sends them to 4th. The new top 5 goes like this: Mafia Motorsports leads by 1 point, SOCAL 2nd with the good week, 2Fast4u 3rd, RTI , and Syracuse Alpine Racing still maintains the 5th spot. Never a dull moment at Lucky Dog Racing, where anything can happen and anyone can win.
So now it’s onto Darlington, SC for another Saturday night so that we can all enjoy Sunday off for Mother’s Day. Normally I don’t like Darlington one bit, but it has its history and a new paved surface should make things quite interesting along with what could happen with Jr. and little Busch. Make your picks carefully with this race, but of course you shouldn’t listen to me this year with my continued struggles, so good luck to whatever yall choose
See ya at the finish line!
Signing off…your friend Rednex
Emphasis on Winning Drivers looking to make the Chase
