Pete Pistone distributes this week’s checkered and black flags following the weekend of racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Checkered Flags
Kevin Harvick
A two-time Brickyard winner after leading 118 laps on Sunday. Harvick said he did not feel it was a statement win but the fact is he’s now won three of the last seven races this season and comes into the playoffs on a very high note.
Bubba Wallace
A pleasant surprise Sunday was Wallace bringing home a third-place finish for Richard Petty Motorsports. While it wasn’t a career finish for Wallace, it was still a ray of sunshine in an otherwise challenging season for the No. 43 team.
Ryan Newman
Raise your hand if you had Newman on your Playoff Grid this season. Fact is outside of Newman and the folks at Roush Fenway Racing, there more than likely aren’t too many hands in the air. But the reality is Newman deserves major kudos for taking a car that had lost its way the last few years back into the post-season.
Kyle Busch
He is batting .500 in Indianapolis Motor Speedway Xfinity Series races with his fourth win in eight events coming on Sunday. Throw in Busch’s record in NXS and Gander Outdoors Truck Series races this season where he won nine of 12 races and Saturday’s race was a major cherry on a successful sundae.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Both days of racing delivered again at Indy, a track that is much-maligned by a segment of fans for a variety of reasons. But the bottom line is about the on track product and this weekend’s racing including Sunday’s Brickyard 400 for a third straight year was memorable.
Black Flags
Jimmie Johnson
His perfect record of making the playoffs came to an end Sunday when a late race crash took out Johnson. It ended a streak of 15 straight playoff appearances and a mark that most believe will never be equaled.
Daniel Suarez
He missed the playoffs by the slightest margin of just four points. An early encounter with the wall that took away any chance of collecting stage points turned out to be the dagger that ended the Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s post-season aspirations.
Kyle Larson
He left Indianapolis with a 33rd-place finish thanks to an accident late in the race. Larson certainly wasn’t alone on the list of drivers who crashed on Sunday but it certainly again highlighted the kind of up and down season the Chip Ganassi Racing driver has had in 2019.
Brad Keselowski
The Team Penske driver was another involved in an accident on Sunday and Keselowski was lucky to not be injured after his car made hard impact into a tire barrier protecting an inside wall. The crash will hopefully prompt some changes to that area of the race track and a wall reconfiguration to lessen the possibility similar incidents.
Kyle Busch
You won a race at one of the most iconic sporting venues in the world. It’s okay to smile and celebrate after taking the checkered flag, something that seemed to escape Busch after he won Saturday’s Xfinity Series Indiana 250.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Motor Racing Network.
