First of all, lets talk about racing! That's what we do around here. We have 100 events a year between our Cup Racing, Nationwide series, and Motocross team so we are criss-crossing the country all the time. So, lets start off with a little cup update.
I've got to tell you--what a great, young talent we have in Joey [Logano]. He's only 19 years old. Last year at this time we were around 32nd in points. This year, we got off to a tough start at Daytona where he finished 20th but he bounced back in two of the toughest tracks we go to, Vegas and L.A., and finishes 5th and 6th before a disappointing outing this past weekend in Atlanta (where we were caught up in a wreck). Nonetheless, Joey is off to a great start for us right now and he is 14th in points…Nothing has gone right for the #18 car and Kyle. We've had good cars and he's felt like we've had a car that could finish between 4th-6th each week. Unfortunately, we are sitting in 15th in points after cutting down the tires this past week. Hopefully, that will turn around for him…Denny has gotten off to an awful start for three straight races. We were concerned and had a meeting with Mike Ford and the rest of the team last week to craft a game plan for Atlanta. They didn't qualify very well but very quickly they moved up into the lead. We led a good portion of the race and Denny never pushed the car--he was waiting to the end. We cut up two tires late in the race though and got caught up in the last wreck. I think though with both Kyle and Denny, you'll see a big jump for them in the future.
Motocross wise, Justin Brayton has been fifth and sixth almost every week. Last week we had a disappointment at Daytona when we had a wreck with Justin. He and Michael Byrne though are doing a good job of representing Joe Gibbs Racing and Yamaha. Josh Grant, who is really our star over there, should be coming back soon from the injury he sustained prior to the season starting. We are hoping to get him back in 2-3 weeks.
In the Nationwide Series, Kyle [Busch] already has one win in three starts. Joey [Logano] has a pole and a top 5 finish in 2 starts. And Denny Hamlin finished second in his only race over there. We dominated things last year in the Nationwide Series and we're off to a great start this year.
As you may have heard, this past weekend in the Cup Series we had some crazy things happening. I mentioned that the #20 car got caught up with Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski as they got together after the second restart at Atlanta. Brad hit Carl and knocked him up the track into Joey's car which hit the hall and pretty much ruined our day. After that wreck, Carl Edwards had to go into the garage and fix up his car and ended up being several dozen laps down. Late in the race though, Brad was running in sixth place and Carl bumps him on the straightaway and the car gets totally airborne. People began to ask, "Was that a payback?" Earlier in the year, NASCAR came out and said they were going to put racing back in the hands of the drivers and let the drivers control the racing on the racetrack. So, everyone is talking about this incident now. Had the car not gotten airborne, I don't think we would be talking about it. When you see something like that though--it scares everybody. So the question is, "What's NASCAR going to do about it?" I don't know the answer to that. They did park Carl for the rest of the race but it will be interesting to see the stand they make with this incident. I have always looked at this issue as if it's always been up to the drivers. Driving these race cars every week, you certainly wouldn't want someone driving beside you who was your enemy. So, if you made an enemy, you would think that you would try and make peace.
