Let's take a quick glance at some of the Richmond post-race storylines:"We lost the brakes."
Jimmie Johnson, as Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway proved, isn't the racing robot with a switch stuck on "Dominate" we've come to think he is after three-straight Sprint Cup titles. Nope, not even at a track where he's won three of the last four events before Saturday night's race.
In fact, it was an all-around miserable night for the No. 48 after brake problems caused him to spin once, get caught up in another crash and then race the rest of the way with a damaged race car. Unfortunately for the rest of the competition, his 36th-place finish won't be a barometer of his 2009 season.
McMurray still leads Roush short track attack
I've pretty much beat the statistic saying that Jamie McMurray's 10th-place Bristol finish was the highest for any Roush-Fenway car at a short track this season to a pulp, but the Missouri driver led the the RFR pack again Saturday night with his 7th-place finish.
"I joked around and said, 'I don't want to have bad luck. I want to have some great luck,' and tonight we got to have some great luck with the way the cautions fell," said McMurray. "It couldn't have went much better for us."
That enthusiasm followed a night where McMurray got wrecked with teammate Carl Edwards, lost a lap, got the free pass and ended up in the Top-5 at one point.
Edwards struggled home to a 26th-place finish with teammates Matt Kenseth in 13th, Greg Biffle in 17th and David Ragan in 23rd.
Hornish Jr. knows how to start the month of May
Almost as if he's turning up the wick before the illustrious Month of May in Indianapolis ahead of the Indy 500, Sam Hornish Jr. has turned in some very nice results lately, including Saturday night's 400-lapper at Richmond.
Hornish, despite a tangle with Kevin Harvick in the middle of the race, drove to a 6th-place finish that included passing a fading Jeff Gordon in the closing laps.
Last week at Talladega, Hornish stuck out the race despite not feeling well at all before getting caught in the second "Big One" and finishing 34th. A week before, he was 9th to earn what was then his only Top-10 finish.
Don't think this is a start of any Hornish-to-Indy speculation, though, as he'll be heading to Charlotte with what promises to be a good outlook. In fact, before getting loose and wrecking in a Nationwide race there last year, he led early.
Sadler: "Lot of work ahead of us"
You could nearly throw a blanket over the Richard Petty Motorsports cars on Saturday night as they crossed the finish line and that, unfortunately, wasn't a good thing.
Reed Sorenson led the team with a 20th, A.J. Allmendinger in 21st, Elliott Sadler in 25th and Kasey Kahne in 29th.
"It's disappointing," said Sadler. "We got behind early and had to battle the entire night trying to get it back. We were back there with our teammates, so there's a lot of work ahead of us."
Right now, that team is a long way from keeping Kasey Kahne and Budweiser around.
