Brickyard 400

As the 16th Brickyard 400 began...

Jeff Gordon went for his 5th win at the Brickyard.
Jimmie Johnson looked for his 3rd win.
Mark Martin desired to become the oldest Brickyard winner.
Juan Pablo Montoya wanted to add a Brickyard win to his Indy 500 win.
Tony Stewart tried to get the 14 back into victory lane.
Rookie Joey Lagano ran his first Brickyard race of his career.

With so many story lines, this race promised to be exciting, especially since last year's race was ruined due to bad tires. Goodyear brought much better tires this year, and the cautions were drastically reduced, causing many green flag runs today.

The race began with Gordon, Johnson, and Lagano way back in the pack. But as the race continued, these 3 began working their way back to the front, where they belong. But no one had anything for Montoya's 42 car. With less than 30 laps left it appeared as if Montoya would pull off the win of his dreams. But in the last pit stop, Montoya was penalized for speeding through pit road. This sent him to the back of the pack, and when Jr. blew an engine, Montoya got one last chance.

However, with only 24 laps to go when the race restarted, Montoya did not have enough time to work his way back to the front, leaving Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson to fight for the win. Johnson got the lead on the restart, and despite Martin's attempts to run him down, Martin had nothing for Johnson.

Johnson held him off in the final turn and won the race, making it two in a row for Johnson at the Brickyard. Johnson also became the first to ever win the Brickyard back-to-back, marking his wins up at 3, only 1 behind Gordon's 4 Brickyard wins. All in all, this was an exciting, non-controversial race. I can only hope that Pocono is just as exciting next Sunday.

Matt