Jr's rear tire pair

H

HardScrabble

Guest
After Steve Park made contact with the wall a couple of interesting things happened.

First, the rear tire changer and carrier from the Peenziol crew was sent over to the #8 pit and took over those duties from Jr's regular crew members. Not a vote of confidence for the regular guys. Don't know that helped the #8 a whole bunch either

In the final standings for the race Steve Park is listed as the 36th finisher with 55 laps completed. His status is listed as "off track", a designation I don't recall seeing before. Usually it would be "Out of Race".

Did anyone catch the amount of damage to the #1 car? I don't remember.
 
I don't either, but I thought I saw the car out there driving around.
 
I see more of that car behind the wall than I do on the track, so I dont really know...
 
I don't remember seeing Steve on the track after he took it to garage. I do remember seeing the "off" instead of "out" at the end of the race though. I did see Skinner pedalling around rather slowly though.
 
I saw Park out there, getting lapped towards the end. He moved over for the leader and close pursuers.

The car did not look terribly damaged, but apparently he kissed the wall during the #43s incident. Probably roughed up the suspension badly.
 
Actually, the 55 is for points, not laps completed; that number would be 342...Steve did get caught up in Andretti's little oil spill and was in the garage for only 18 laps. The crew did a great job of getting him back out there. Lap times after the repair were good, and competitive with the leaders; no way to make up that many laps though. Listening to the scanner on racecast, the car got real loose with about 4-5 laps to go, so I figure Paul just told him to bring it in since he wasn't going to improve his finishing position.

I did notice the crew member swap; wonder if they did that just to see how things worked, since neither car was in contention for the win.
 
Heard tell JR complained about his rear tire folks last week.

My guess is that if yer gonna have a pit crew manager, the best thing you can do for all concerned is let that manager manage.

Could be that the Penzoil Team is taking on the title of Lame Duck at DEI. The moral on that crew must be at all time low. With only one top ten, only one top twenty and an average finish of 28.7, the idea that this kid might not have it at the Winston Cup level any more may be becoming reality for more than just the top brass at DEI.

That the kid took a massive hit to the head is reality. His lacluster
results on track are reality. That DEI only signed him to a one year deal is reality. That the contract is performance based is not known but it was the main sticking point during negotiations is reality.

Hoping against hope for the kid is not an easy thing to do considering the results he's had.

My personal opinion still remains. The kid will not be able to overcome his injuries no matter the quality of the cars he drives, the team he drives for, or the size of his heart.....sigh....
 
I'm not sure what's going on with Junior's pit crew, but if a team like DEI can't get faster average pitstops than 18 or so seconds, then something's very wrong. Maybe they didn't enjoy the talking to that Junior gave them last week. Maybe Tony Jr. does need to go. You can blame Junior all you want for bad driving and whatnot, but his pit crew is certainly not helping matters. :(
 
after next year maybe he will drive for some one else or go back to busch......:eek:
 
I think that Jr.'s team just needs some good finishes to get big mo on their side. You gotta figure that if the quality finishes aren't coming then the team doesn't have a whole lot to be excited about. It might be that all of DEI needs to have a reality check. Cause they've been consistently bad this year. Cept for the plate races but we won't go there right now.
 
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