Sunday's New Hampshire 301: A day of justice served for all those Sonoma crashes? The Payback 500?

  Jeff Burton calls the Sonoma 350 'horrendous,' with 'unacceptable' behavior by NASCAR's Cup drivers. What will he have to say about the New Hampshire 301 -- if it turns out to be a Payback 500? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   LOUDON, N.H.
   Maybe a lot of these guys have simply given up on the championship chase, have all but abandoned any hopes of toppling the Jimmie Johnson-Chad Knaus juggernaut, or any hopes of catching up with those streaking Joe Gibbs drivers Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
   How else to analyze last weekend's wild, mean and crazy Sonoma race...coming just a couple weeks after that stunning final hour at Pocono, where so many NASCAR drivers were racing like it was the last race of their careers.
   The boys in the 'Boys, have at it' have taken that thing to a strange new level. Jeff Gordon got caught up in the thick of it all; heck, he created a lot of the mayhem. And even Mark Martin got carried away.
   The chase? The Sprint Cup championship?
   That appears the last thing on anyone's mind.
   Well, maybe rightly so. Last season only two of the top-12 coming out of this event failed to hold onto a spot in the playoffs (Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth), and the year before only one man (Kasey Kahne).
   So maybe all this stuff right now is just good ol' summertime fun-and-games, and the tone will change significantly when we return here in the fall to kick off the 10-race title run.
  
  
  

   Ford's Kasey Kahne: on the Loudon front row, and looking for his first win since Atlanta last summer (Photo: Autostock)
  

   Domination? Jimmie Johnson, Hamlin and Kyle Busch have won 11 of the year's 16 races. (Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman are the other winners so far.)
   And the list of 0-fers is somewhat surprising.
   Juan Pablo Montoya, on the pole for Sunday's 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway: 0-for108.
   Clint Bowyer: 0-for-78.
   Dale Earnhardt Jr.: 0-for-73.
   Greg Biffle: 0-for-60.
   Jeff Burton: 0-for-57.
   Carl Edwards: 0-for-52.
   Matt Kenseth: 0-for-50.
   Jeff Gordon: 0-for-45.
  
    All those have gone well over a year or more without a tour win.
    Others looking to break a more modest drought: Kasey Kahne (last win, Atlanta last summer), Tony Stewart (last win, Kansas last fall), and Mark Martin (last win, Loudon last fall).

  Greg Biffle: Ford's most talented road racer? That's what crew chief Greg Erwin says. He had a shot late at Sonoma, but got knocked off the course and finished 7th. Payback coming? (Photo: Autostock)
  
  

   If promoter Bruton Smith can't sell tickets now to next June's Sonoma 350....
   Burton was one of last weekend's many victims, getting abused late by an angry Marcos Ambrose: "I'm not one of those guys that, every time something happens to me, I store it away and try to go get them back," Burton says. "That's a terrible way to live. 
    "He needs to give me the respect that I give him, and he recognizes that he made a mistake.
   "Marcos called me Sunday evening...when I was on the ground refueling, and I didn't get to talk to him then. But I'll see him.
    "He was frustrated. He had a great chance to win and didn't.  He made a mistake, and we paid the price for that. 
    "He recognizes that, and I'm sure it won't happen again." 
     Ambrose himself? "You have to wait a week for the next race...and it's been a tough week, no doubt about it. 
   "I spent some time with the family and just tried to balance my life out a little bit. 
    "You take this racing thing so seriously, you think it's the end of the world when you make a boo-boo like I did Sunday. 
     "It's really not.  It's a race. 
     "I've just had a great week with my family -- just forgetting about racing for a little bit.  I think it helps you. 
    "And I've come here with a better attitude, a more relaxed attitude...and we're running better."

   So, was Sonoma just an anomaly? A once-in-a-blue-moon crash-fest?
    Nope, Martin says: It's like that nearly every week this season.
   Burton called the driving at Sonoma "horrendous."
   And he called "the behavior...completely unacceptable. 
    "If our sport is going to become that, then we need to change it from racing to demolition cars, because that wasn't racing."
    Maybe it the tricky road course layout, with few good passing zones.
    Maybe it's the frantic double-file restarts.
   Maybe it's the fall-off in tire speed over a run.
   Burton concedes Sonoma "is very difficult." And he suggests changing turn seven, the 90-degree flat right-hander at the head of the esses. That's a high-speed corner-entry, and a low-speed exit to the esses. It's a bruiser of a corner.
    Indeed, there have been suggestions that drivers need to put some input into modifying that course, to make for better passing zones.
    Regardless, Burton points out "ultimately it's the drivers' responsibility to have some respect for each other.
   
   

    Okay, Marcos. Show us what you've got. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
   

   
   "The last 10 laps of that race we didn't look like we were the best drivers in this country; it looked like we were some of the worst drivers in this country," Burton went on.
    "It's just ridiculous. 
   "Jeff will readily admit he hit way too many people last week...but I know exactly why he did it: if he slowed down as much as he really needed to slow down, he was terrified the guy behind him was going to run over him.
    "That race has just turned into a demolition derby.
     "It has to do with respect. Everybody knows how to use the brake pedal and throttle and steering wheel.  Yet people chose not to do it correctly -- because it was either in their best interest to run over the guy in front of them, or they were trying really hard to keep from getting run over from behind. 
    "It's just not acceptable. 
    "There is nothing wrong with hard racing. It takes skill to race and not wreck somebody; it takes zero skill to run over top of anybody. 
    "What we saw wasn't about ability, it was about lack of willingness to do the right thing.
   "When you're running 60 mph, and the guy in front is running 30 because there's a corner he's got to make, there is an opportunity to make a move: 'I'm willing to stick my nose in here, even though I'm not real sure what the outcome is going to be.'"
    Burton says it's all just another big example of "the negative to the 'Have at it, boys' philosophy.
    "I don't want NASCAR policing.
   "And by the way I can count on one hand the number of times drivers have been penalized for rough driving. 
    "Matter of fact -- I challenge you to give me five in the last fifteen years, for just rough driving. 
    "This sport doesn't have a long history of penalizing driving." 
    And today will we all here see the other half of 'Boys, have at it' – the 'self-policing' by drivers themselves?
    Well, maybe better here than at Daytona next week....

      The starting lineup for Sunday's Lenox 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway
   

    [Note: You can use Twitter as an easy headline service for mikemulhern.net stories, with our instant Tweets to your mobile as soon as our newest NASCAR story is filed. And mikemulhern.net is mobile-friendly for viewing. You can also use the orange RSS feed button as a quickie headline service on your laptop or home computer for mikemulhern.net stories, by creating a Live Bookmark RSS feed on your web browser's toolbar. Or you can create a Google Alert for mikemulhernnet.]

    

   
   

    Unsung heroes: crew chief Richard 'Slugger' Labbe (R) is quietly turning Paul Menard into an accomplished racer (Photo: Autostock)