SUNDAY DRIVERS

By David Mirsky

Hamlin: remind you of Tom Cruise?

DETROIT (Hollywood Today) 6/14/10 — NASCAR Sprint Cup driver, Denny Hamlin and his Fed-Ex sponsored Toyota have done it once again, and he’s been doing it over and over.  Hamlin has won today’s Heluva Good’s 400, held at the Michigan Motor Speedway just outside of America’s automotive hometown of Detroit.  And, the big news is, Hamlin has won 5 races this year, and even more impressive, he’s won those 5 races in the last 10 races, and promoted himself in the points rankings to third place, up two positions from last week.

Pole sitter, Kurt Busch led the field of 43 cars into the first turn, but before Kurt could finish one lap, Jamie McMurray took the lead.  Lap 2 saw Busch take the lead back from McMurray, and that’s how much of the day was for most of the race’s front runners.   Today’s 400 mile race consisted of 200 laps on this D-shaped oval, with 15 different lead changes.  Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, and Sam Hornish Jr. were among the race leaders until lap 113, when Denny Hamlin passed Kurt Busch for the lead and essentially the win.  Kasey Kahne was Hamlin’s closest threat near the race’s end.

It was amazing to see that there were so few yellow flags during the race, creating more green flag pit stops, which certainly made a more interesting race.  But honestly, that wasn’t enough in Detroit to hold most of the spectator’s interest, and it would have to be classified as a boring race.  Marcos Ambrose’s spins were probably the highlight of the race.  And , contributing to the race’s lack of excitement from the spectators , it came down to the Toyota import putting the good old American iron in their place.  I even heard that Toyota offered an incentive of a cash bonus to the winning driver of their car, something I never heard of.  Rounding out the other top 5 finishers were: Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart.  Noteables, Dale Earnhardt Jr. , and current NASCAR  Champion, Jimmie Johnson finished in the top 10.  Kevin Hardwick leads the Sprint Cup series over Kyle Busch by only 19 points,  and Hamlin by 136.

June 20^th is the next date for NASCAR, which will be heading to the west coast, to California’s Sonoma’s Infineon Raceway for a rare road course race.