Fuel Mileage and the Coke 600

Its been a while since we've had a fuel mileage race and I can't say it was all that bad to watch.  It seemed like for a while every other race was coming down to who had some fuel left and how long could they stretch it.  I never was one to really care for that type of finish, but last nights finish to the Coca-Cola 600 was a lot of fun to watch.  Who needed to pit?  Who would run out of gas?  Who whould roll the dice and come up a winner?  Casey Mears and his crew chief Darian Grubb took the gamble and came up with a win--Casey's first win.  Congrats Casey and how fitting to have one of the armed services sponsoered cars pull off the win in the longest race of the season.

Give us your thoughts on these while we contemplate the CoTs return at Dover's Monster Mile.

The Buzz ON PIT ROW is:

Would you rather FOX-TV show the lead lap cars crossing the finish line or see the winner's celebrations?

The Fast Lap this week asks:

1)  Have you ever seen such an unlikely top five as this?

2) Should the 600 be moved to Saturday?

3)  Humpy Wheeler suggested changing the qualifyoing format to 4 segments with a quarter of the cars on the track for each segment.  Yea or nay?

4)  Which was better the Coca-Cola 600 or the Indianapolis 500?

Let us know how you feel about these questions or anything else that happened at Lowe's last weekend.  If we like your comments we could use them on the air during Tuesday's show.  Leave us a comment on the blog or call the show--toll free at 1-877-502-8255 between 5-7pm edt on Tuesdays.

Photo: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images

Comments

[Steve]

1. If there has been a more unlikely group to be in the top five in recent history, I can't remember one. Not only Casey Mears picking up his first win, but having Brian Vickers bring home a Toyota in the fifth spot would have seemed impossible even a week ago. Hats off to Kyle Petty for a third. Yeah, it was a fuel milage thing, but he had himself in a position to be there, regardless.

2) Moving the 600 to Saturday makes a ton of sense. Most of NASCARs night races are held on Saturdays anyhow. From NASCARs perspective, by having the race the day before Indy, would put it forefront in peoples minds and give NASCAR drivers the ability to run both races. It's a natural.

3) Humpy comes up with some strange ideas, like school bus jumping. However, this one would really up the excitement of qualifying; something that is sorely needed. If indeed NASCAR is not going to budge on the top 35 rule having the drivers "race" for starting positions would definately bring excitement to the qualifying process again.

4) I thought the Indy 500, this year, was a lot of fun to watch. It had little interest in the recent past. Maybe it was having Sam Hornish as the defending champ, or three women in the field or just the fact that more than half of the starting grid was filled with recognizable names again. Passing was abundant and there were stories everywhere. This race still has a ways to go before it is back to its lofty perch, but I liked it.

There you go--rip 'em apart!

[charlie]

OK, I will.

1. As I said on the show, and I have witnesses at work, I almost switched my pick in the ON PIT ROW Chain Game to Casey Mears or Brian Vickers, but I wimped out. Certainly a surprise finishing order. The only more unlikely finish would have been an all Everinham top three.

2. This is the part of the show where Steve earns his stupid stripes. Memorial Day Sunday is the greatest racing day of the year with the 600, 500 and Monaco F1, all at different time, and Stevo wants to break it up so we can have another Saturday night cup race. No more chance at somebody running the "double" on the same day. No. Move the 500 to noon. On Sunday.

3. Dumb and dumber. Let's turn qualifying into a drafting contest. We could even have "debris" cautions during qualifying. Great idea. No. If Humpy wants people in the stands for time trials, tell him to get NASCAR to DROP THE TOP 35 RULE!

4. I'm an open wheel racing fan. Itune in the 500 evry year, hoping for a return of the magical feel that it used to have. This year was better. But any race with two rain delays and a shortened length can't compare to the drama the 600 had this year. You gotta love a Sctsman named Franchiti winning anything, but I'll take a Petty finishing third this year.