Sunday, June 26, 2011
Staff report
SONOMA, CALIF.
The winding road course in Sonoma is a perfect fit with the serenity and peacefulness of the Northern California wine country.
All that charm went to the wayside last year when 43 stock cars fired up their engines and abandoned the idea that racing around the twisting 11-turn, 1.99-mile Infineon Raceway requires finesse, patience and maybe even a bit of dignity.
What ensued was an eye-popping demolition derby as drivers ran each other over, knocked cars out of the way, and collected names for further retribution. The man at the center of the brouhaha was Jeff Gordon, the very prince of the valley.
“Disaster. It was just one of those terrible days where I made a lot of mistakes, no doubt made a lot of people unhappy and been trying to move on from it ever since,” Gordon said of last year’s race.
Although the five-time Sonoma winner finished fifth last season, he left a trail of angry drivers in his wake, with Kurt Busch at the head of the line that included Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr., and Elliott Sadler.
“It was an off-day for Jeff,” Busch said. “He apologized to a handful of guys afterward and for some reason [he] pinpointed me, excluded apologizing to me.”
Countered Gordon, “I’ve tried to apologize to the ones that I really made mistakes with. There were some racing incidents that went on that day that was just racing and that you just move on and race one another however you race one another.”
Tony Stewart, who complained last week at Michigan that drivers were “acting like a bunch of idiots” on restarts, is willing to wager today will be exciting in a way Stewart doesn’t want to see.
“I can promise you, there will be a lot of guys that will just crash each other just because they think they can,” Stewart said. “I’ll bet anything I’ve got in my pocket that in the last two or three laps, somebody dumps somebody just doing something stupid. So there’s no doubt in my mind that’ll happen.”