Watkins Glen Video

Total Destruction:

Full race recap can be found here.

Watkins Glen In Car Audio

August 10 – - The rain-delayed HelluvaGood at the Glen was a day of ups and downs — well, mostly downs — for Jeff Gordon.  Before the race, Gordon took the blame for a poor qualifying effort, yielding a 31st place start.  The team’s goals for the day were to have fun and play strategy to gain track position, hoping for a lucky caution.

Gordon clawed his way through heavy traffic and took advantage of an excellent first pit stop to reach 16th place by lap 22.  On lap 23, the David Stremme’s talent evaporation resulted in a spun in the inner loop, damaging Gordon’s and Kevin Harvick’s cars and forcing an extra pit stop.

Gordon once again chewed his way from 31st to 20th at lap 41 when Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed, but couldn’t move his damaged car forward.  On lap 62, Sam Hornish ricocheted off the inside barrier in turn 9 after contact with Kasey Kahne and helicoptered into Gordon’s car, slamming it into the barrier in a head-on crash that ended Gordon’s day.  Gordon exited under his own power and was saddled with his first DNF of the season with a 37th place finish.

At the front of the field, Tony Stewart held Marcos Ambrose at bay to win his 5th career race at Watkins Glen — the most of any driver.  Stewart expanded his points lead to more than 250 points on Jimmie Johnson, and more than 340 points on Jeff Gordon.  Maybe there is some silver lining in the Chase system after all.

source: gordonline.com

Standings

Race Results

Crash Takes More Toll on Gordon’s Back – nascar.com

Audio

In Car Audio Direct MP3 Download

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Pre-Race

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Post Wreck

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Photos

Post Race Comments

“It wasn’t that hard of a hit its just my back can’t stand too many hits. I really was concerned for Sam (Hornish). He took a heavy hit into the wall, a heavy hit by me and Jeff Burton. I saw him go off into the grass and I knew he was going to come out in front of me and I was just hoping to squeeze by and didn’t make it. It just made a rough weekend for the DuPont Chevrolet even worse. Now we just leave here and focus on Michigan.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW?

“I’m hurting. Everything feels good except my lower back where I’ve already had issues. It will just take a couple of weeks for it to heal. By then we’ll go to Bristol and get through that then we’ll be alright.”

WHEN YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO HIT HIM, DO YOU BRACE DOWN OR RELAX?

“The first thing I was trying to do was make it by him. Actually I sped up a little bit. I saw him slide off there and I was trying to get off the corner as fast as I could to get by before he got out there but as soon as I saw him and bounce out I knew I was going to hit him. I just braced myself and got on the brakes and waited for the impact.”

HOW IS YOUR BACK? ARE YOU OKAY?

“It’s just not what I needed you know. You take three or four steps forward up to this point, and you take a hit like that and you take a couple steps backwards. So yeah, it was a heavy impact. I’m just glad Sam (Hornish) is all right. I saw him get wide there off the carousel and I knew he was going to hit the tire barrier and ricochet off and I was just hoping I’d get by him before he got out to me and man, I nailed him and spun him around like a top and my car just came to a halt and it really took a toll on my back again. So I hate that, but I was real proud of this DuPont Chevrolet team. We didn’t have a great weekend going and the car wasn’t perfect, but we were playing out the strategy and got caught up in that first incident. It’s just one of those days. But we were going to ride it out and make something out of it. I think Steve Letarte had some tricks up his sleeve with the pit strategy. Just wrong place, wrong time.”

WHAT WILL YOU HAVE TO DO THIS WEEK TO GET READY FOR MICHIGAN NEXT WEEK WITH YOUR BACK?

“Oh, Michigan is pretty easy. If we were going to Bristol next week, I’d be concerned. So we’ve got a couple of weeks to hopefully heal. We went through this at Dover when I hit at Dover and hurt my back as well. Every time I hit something it takes a toll on my back, but it seems to recover. But when you’re braking that hard it’s already pretty tight and then you hit like that and it spasms a bit. But we’ll be all right. Rough hit really for Sam. I saw him get taken wide there off the carousel and once I saw him starting to go around I knew he was going to get the outside wall and I kind of knew with what we saw with Jason Lefler in the Nationwide race. I was just trying to pick where to go. I don’t know if there is any safe place to go from where I was sitting. I just nailed him. I tried to squeeze by him on the outside and there was just no way. Nailed him and spun him around like a top. It took a toll on my back. Nothing else hurts, everything else is good. It’s jsut the back. Then I got into the outside wall the other side and was just sitting there in the track hoping nobody was going to hit me again.”

ITS BEEN A TOUGH WEEKEND FOR YOU.

“Sure. The only saving grace is that there are no road courses in the Chase. You want the bonus points. You want a good run. You want momentum. We just haven’t been good here in quite some time. I think our car was actually decent today we just didn’t qualify good enough to show for it. We moved up quite a few spots which is already tough to do on a road course. You don’t see anybody passing unless they’ve got fresh tires out there. I got caught up in that first incident and that really messed up our strategy. We were making some ground up until that happened. I’m proud of the guys. We made improvements as the weekend went on. We’ll just have to wait until the next time we come back here to show just how many improvements we really made?”

ARE YOU SORE?

“Oh man, my left side and my back is super sore. It’s going to take probably a couple of weeks for it to heal completely and then we’ll be back to new. This happened at Dover when I hit the wall in Dover it was similar. This is a little bit different angle and it’s hurting. Luckily we’ve got Michigan coming up next weekend. It’s pretty easy on things.”

WHAT’S YOUR FIRST REACTION AFTER SOMETHING LIKE THAT?

“Well first reacation is man that hurt and then you hope you don’t get hit again. I was just bracing myself. I saw cars that were still coming by pretty fast. As long as the car wasn’t on fire I was good to sit in there until everybody went by. Then I just wanted to get out and see what kind of pain I was in with my back. I knew I was hurting and then was wondering is Sam (Hornish) was okay because he took a couple of heavy hits there. I saw Jeff Burton was in it too so just making sure everybody was alright and then get back here and go home.”

HOW MUCH DO YOU PROTECT YOUR BACK NOW? “There’s nothing you can do. You got to get out there and you’ve got to just hope you don’t get into situations. It’s not life-threatening or anything its just painful. I’ve had MRI’s and everything else after these things and everything looks fine. It’s just some spasms that go on. You’ve just got to calm that down but it doesn’t just calm down by itself in a day. It really does take a couple of weeks.”

Watkins Glen Race Postponed until Monday

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) – The NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen International has been postponed because of rain and rescheduled for Monday.

A thunderstorm hit the track about 2 p.m. Sunday when drivers were about to start their engines. The course takes at least two hours to dry. Rain was still falling at 4 p.m, making it too late to complete the 90-lap event before sunset.

The track stretches nearly 2 1/2 miles around 11 turns and has several elevation changes.

NASCAR rescheduled the race for noon Monday. Last week’s race at Pocono also was moved to Monday because of rain.

Watkins Glen Race Information

Race: Sunday, August 9, 2009 in Watkins Glen, NY
Track: Watlins Glen International
Title Sponsor: Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips
Scheduled Green Flag (approx): 2:18pm/et
NASCAR Sprint Cup Race  #22 of 36 for the 2009 season

Jeff’s in-car audio page for this race can be found here.

Television Coverage/Re-air/TV Team

NASCAR Countdown: ESPN – 1:00pm/et

Television Race Coverage: ESPN, 2:00pm/et

SPEED’s NASCAR Raceday Pre-Race Show: 11:00am/et with John Roberts, Jimmy Spencer, Kenny Wallace

Scheduled Race Re-Air Dates/Times:

Monday, August 10 at 2:00am/et on ESPN2
Monday, August 10 at 1:00pm/et on ESPN Classic
Wednesday, August 12 at 12:00pm/et on SPEED

Announcers: Dale Jarrett, Andy Petree, Dr. Jerry Punch

Pit Reporters: Dave Burns, Jamie Little, Shannon Spake, Vince Welch

Studio: Allen Bestwick, Tim Brewer, Brad Daugherty, Rusty Wallace

TV Listings, Links and Info:

Jayski’s TV Listings Page
NASCAR on TV
Race Fan TV

Radio Coverage/Shows/ Team

This Week – Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius XM Satellite Radio
mrnradio.com
sirius.com

Practice Dates/Times/TV

Practices:
Friday, August 7, 11:45 am – 1:20 pm/et, TV-SPEED
Saturday, August 8, 12:00 – 12:45 pm/et, TV-SPEED

Happy Hour ‘Final’ practice: Saturday, August 8, 1:20 – 2:20pm/et, TV-ESPN2

Qualifying Information/Times/TV

Qualifying Draw: Friday, August 7, 11:00am/et

Qualifying: 2 laps for positions 1-42, Friday, August 7 at 3:10pm/et, TV-ESPN2, no re-air scheduled;
AND live via radio at MRN Radio and Sirius XM Satellite NASCAR Radio.

Live Leaderboards

Fox Sport’s Racetrax
Nascar.com Leaderboard
Yahoo.com Live Chat and Leaderboard

In Car Audio

Nascar TrackPass:
Scanner
PitCommand
RaceView

Sirius Satellite Radio Driver Feeds:

#14  Tony Stewart       Ch. 121
#42  Juan PMontoya  Ch. 125
#48  Jimmie Johnson Ch. 126
#18   Kyle Busch           Ch. 127
NASCAR Off.        Ch. 113
#?? Fan’s Choice          Ch. 130

Voting for the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at The Glen closes Friday at 5 pm ET.

Scanner Frequencies

Going to the race this weekend?
Full field Sprint Cup Frequencies are found here.

Here are Jeff’s frequencies:

Primary:	467.0625
2nd:	465.8625
3rd:	468.2125
4th:	469.4875

Need a scanner?
ProScan C-100-24 Jeff Gordon 100-channel Trackside Scanner with Noise Reducing Earmuff

Blurb from Gordonline.com

August 8 – - It’ll be a long way to the front for Jeff Gordon in Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen after he qualified in the 31st position — his worst career starting spot on the upstate New York road course. Since 2002, Gordon has finished 22nd, 33rd, 21st, 13th, 13th, 9th, and 21st in six races on the upstate New York circuit. Despite testing at a road course earlier this year, and running strong at Infineon Raceway in June, Gordon will need a Herculean effort to see the front during Sunday’s race.

source: gordonline.com

Jeff’s comments on Sunday’s pre-race show:

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courtesy of ESPN