Rain plays spoil-sport at Watkins Glen again
In the third time in the last four years, rain swept the bud pole qualifying for the centurion boats at the Watkins Glen in N.Y.In a series of lucky strokes, Jeff Gordon again will start first, this will be third time that he has taken advantage of the qualifying being rained out, he has also been at the head of the standing for the previous 17 weeks. The remaining of the lineup of 43 cars was done in consonance with the rule book of the cup.
With his Hendrick Motosports Chevrolet No 24, racing for the eighth time in this racing season, Gordon hopes to score another win. Denny Hamlin will be with his No 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Chevy.
“I keep trying to find the benefits of leading the points, and it’s moments like (Friday) where it pays off,” Gordon said. “You hate to see this weather come in like this, but it’s just one of those days. I was riding around in the pace car and the track was dry, but the windshield was wet.”
Interrupted by intermittent rain the Busch cars could be seen practice for 88 minutes.
“I thought we were going to find a window, but it just keeps rolling in, it just keeps making parts of the track wet and there’s just no getting around that,” Gordon said. “Obviously, I didn’t draw a good number of qualifying, so going out second wasn’t going to benefit us, but I thought we really made some gains at the end of practice, so I didn’t think we were going to be on the pole if we’d have gone, but I thought we’d have a top-five — and obviously starting up front is going to be important here.”
“For a part-time team, you don’t get to race that much and two races in a row get taken away,”ko said. “I don’t understand why the schedule can’t be adjusted and just qualify when it’s going to be sunny. It’s just hard for a small team — it pretty much puts us out of business, it puts me out of business. It’s just a lot of income lost”.
“We’re going to Talladega. That’s our next race. That’s our last race. We’ve shown performance every time we’ve gone, but the problem right now, an independent team, it’s almost impossible. Right now, it’s just depressing.”
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