LONG POND, Pa. (AP) -- Jimmie Johnson's White House visit will have to wait. So will the start of the Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway.
Steady rain postponed Sunday's race and it has been rescheduled for 12:15 PM Monday.
Heavy rain hit the track Sunday morning. It let up about an hour before the scheduled 2 PM start and the sky brightened for driver introductions. The rain returned about 3:30 PM and soaked the surface again. There was light rain the rest of the afternoon, forcing the postponement.
Let me say that again: David Ragan is 46 points away from the making the Chase for the Sprint Cup!
Yes, the driver with one of the coolest hometowns (Unadilla, Georgia -- it just rolls off the tongue) in all the NASCAR racing that got less than a ringing endorsement from Tony Stewart when he entered the Sprint Cup Series in 2006 ("a dart without feathers" according to Smoke) is very quietly making a name for himself in the Sprint Cup garage.
In the past four races, the driver of the Roush Fenway Racing No. 6 Ford has a worst finish of 14th at Indianapolis with three Top-10s, including two 5th-place finishes at Daytona and at Pocono last Sunday.
A finish of 40th at New Hampshire wasn't indicative of how well he ran there, as it was instead the result of teammate Jamie McMurray failing to see Dale Earnhardt Jr. which lead to a chain reaction crash that took out Ragan.
Most importantly, though, is that Ragan has established himself as a major player for one of the final Chase spots with just a handful of races left until the cutoff at Richmond. Ragan, as stated above, is just 46 points away from the cutoff spot of 12th, and just 35 points behind teammate Matt Kenseth in 13th.
Mark Martin had a terrifically fast car for the second week in a row at Pocono Raceway Sunday afternoon.
Pit problems, though, kept him from battling his No. 8 DEI Chevrolet for its first win of 2008 in the closing laps of the Pennsylvania 500.
Martin started second in Sunday's race and jumped out to the lead early on as part of his race-high 55 laps led in the 500-mile event, but a problem with the socket on the air gun that removes the lug nuts from the tires early in the race got put Martin further and further back on two consecutive pit stops.
Crew chief Tony Gibson seemed a little flabbergasted after Martin started second and seemed to have the car to beat.
"You can't run the same socket all year long," Gibson said. "You've got to eventually change it because it will break. Something about it hung up on a nut. It wasn't [the crew's] fault. They didn't do anything wrong.
"It kind of threw us out of our gameplan and got us off sync on fuel. But, hey, we had the car to beat here today by far, and that was a good day for us. I wish we would have won it. Should have won it. But it didn't happen."
The team's new gameplan involved Martin staying out while the rest of the leaders came to pit road just before the red flag came out on lap 128 for rain.
Note: As of 5:40pm/ET, the race is back under green with more weather looming in the distance.
With 69 laps left at Pocono Raceway, rain was brought the action on track to a halt in the 500-mile event.
Before the rain stopped on-track activities, Carl Edwards was leading after grabbing the top spot from pole-sitter Jimmie Johnson. Edwards has led 36 laps in the event, with Johnson just behind with 33 laps led.
For many of the past race weekends, Penske Racing's departing driver has been a man of few revelations, even as the NASCAR media continually cites sources saying he has a done deal to drive alongside Tony Stewart at Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009.
The worst secret in the NASCAR garage is one step closer to becoming reality.
Ryan Newman has reached a verbal agreement with Stewart-Haas Racing to drive the No. 4 Chevrolet starting next season, sources told FOXSports.com.
Nothing has been signed and nothing is official, but a deal is close and a formal announcement is expected to take place in the next 4-5 weeks.
Among the details pending is a sponsor for Newman. Burger King is a likely candidate for at least partial sponsorship.
Burger King is one of those sponsors that nearly makes too much sense for Newman. Can't you just him in a commercial with the awkward "King" character in the passenger seat at the local Burger King?
FanHouse's Geoffrey Miller is on-location at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Sunday's 15th Running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.
Jimmie Johnson was the fastest man during Saturday morning's qualifying session for Sunday's Allstate 400, but Mark Martin backed up what he said at Pocono in June -- that he's a contender for this race.
Martin qualified second to Johnson's pole-winning lap of 181.793 mph in his No. 8 DEI Chevrolet.
Generally, Martin isn't one to make bold predictions about how well he could run, but after the June event at Pocono Raceway he told the media "I'm planning on winning the Brickyard 400 in the No. 8 car."
Busch, who has pulled triple duty in all three of NASCAR's top divisions on a couple of race weekends in 2008, has been quite a busy guy while riding trains, planes, and automobiles to get to each race on those adventuresome weekends. (OK, maybe he's not been on any trains, but you get the picture.)
And Carpentier doesn't want any of that business, so he's decided to focus all of his efforts on winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Montreal on Aug. 2 instead of skipping back and forth between that event and the Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway.
The road course event in Montreal is essentially what got Carpentier into Gillette Evernham Motorsports' No. 10 Sprint Cup ride one year ago after he nearly won the event in his first NASCAR start and sat on the pole.
It was quite an impressive effort for the former open-wheeler, and his first full-time season in Sprint Cup has had about as much success as one would expect from a true stock car rookie. He sat on the pole at New Hampshire and recorded his best finish of 14th at Daytona just three weeks ago.
The No. 10 currently sits 39th in owner point standings.
Juan Pablo Montoya certainly wasn't expecting Clint Bowyer to spin out in front of him Sunday at Pocono Raceway, but I would imagine he was expecting a little more help from his friends in red jump suits once his flaming No. 42 Dodge stopped.
Yep, it's time to play "armchair safety worker" with Juan Pablo's marshmallow roast of a crash on lap 82. Watch below and you decide at 0:33 when JPM gets his car stopped and he scrambles out if the response was adequate.
After the TV announcers jumped on the case of those safety workers that were plainly in view of Montoya's car, NASCAR made sure to note that those workers -- the ones in the red suits with fire extinguishers -- were not responsible for going on to the race track.
Team Red Bull, this is your official welcome to NASCAR.
The mood around the TRB shop should be way, way up this week after a very impressive performance by both of its drivers A.J. Allmendinger and Brian Vickers Sunday at Pocono Raceway. After their weekend, TRB can definitely take a foothold as the second-best Toyota team on the Sprint Cup circuit behind Joe Gibbs Racing.
Vickers -- who left Hendrick Motorsports at the end of 2006 to be the lead driver at the startup TRB -- turned in his best finish with a solid second-place run on the steamy afternoon at Pocono. Allmendinger brought his Toyota home 12th for his career-best finish.
Pocono wasn't the first time this season that TRB has made its presence known among the leaders. In fact, it was more of a continuation.
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) -- Jimmie Johnson's White House visit will have to wait. So will the start of the Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway.
Team Red Bull
