NASCAR Cup Series

Kentucky Speedway, Goodyear get big thumbs up for exciting race

Published Jul. 11, 2016 4:30 p.m. ET

foxsports

If you take Daytona and Talladega's races, after their repavement was completed, out of the picture, the race Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway has to rank right up there with one of the best one's I've seen in a long, long time. The drivers could race side by side. Yes, it did get a little treacherous at times.

I know Goodyear got beat up a little bit about the tire combination they brought for the race weekend. In their defense, Goodyear did exactly what they had to do and what they needed to do. They tested the new Kentucky pavement with 14 teams after the Michigan race. They found they were blistering tires, so they came back with a very hard right side tire.

If I were in their shoes, I would prefer to hear drivers complaining about a hard tire as opposed to tires blowing out from blistering. So from that standpoint they did all they were expected to do in my book.

We all documented pretty well all the interesting twists going into that race. You had a new surface with a reconfigured Turn 1 and Turn 2. In addition, you had the low downforce package being run only the second time of the year. One thing I don't think any of us saw coming was the fact it came down to a fuel mileage race.

It still was pretty darn exciting to me. Everyone was on the edge of their seats of whether Brad Keselowski was going to make it to the end or was Carl Edwards going to catch him.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of race cars torn up, but like I've said numerous times, race fans seemingly like to see that. The restarts were just as exciting as we had anticipated. We had 11of them due to the 11 cautions.

Hendrick Motorsports for the second consecutive week didn't have at least one of their four drivers finish in the Top 10. I know there has to be some concern over there since they haven't won since Auto Club Speedway back in March.

All in all, though, I really enjoyed the race. I think we all should give Kentucky Speedway, Goodyear and everyone involved a big thumbs up on Saturdays race.

It definitely shook up the points for those four or five drivers that are back there trying to make it into the Chase on points. It was great to see Tony have another great race and Greg Biffle with his second consecutive top 10 finish.