The Backstretch Blog: Who will be lucky in Kentucky?

June 29, 2012|By HEATHER WILLIAMS | Eyewitness Sports

The Kentucky Motor Speedway is hoping it is them. Last season, thousands of fans never even made it into the track to see the first cup race there. So the state of Kentucky and Bruton Smith threw millions at increased lanes, a pedestrian tunnel and more parking. We will find out on Saturday night if it will actually work.

As for actually racing, Kyle Busch was the winner last year the one and only cup race at Kentucky.

"It was a great race for us last year," said Busch I remember just being pretty quick right off the track and being able to have a fast car during the test that we had and during the practice session. Qualifying got rained out and then we still got to start up front because of the practice speeds. Feel good about it again this year."

Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and and Ryan Newman could also be contenders Saturday night under the lights. Those three were all in the top five one year ago.

“It’s the roughest and fastest track we go to; well, Atlanta is fast, but there are big swells and I still don’t feel like we’re driving as hard at Atlanta as we are at Kentucky," said Johnson "Kentucky, you’re driving it like a freshly repaved track. You have high frequency bumps and banking doing weird things. It’s a fun track for those reasons and it has a lot of character to it.”

Newman agrees, "“It’s got a lot of character because it’s pretty bumpy and I enjoy it. I enjoy the race there. It was interesting. That was kind of our first experience with going into a race track and getting more practice sessions and more time on the race track before we actually started our weekend. We learned a lot there about Kentucky, having not tested there for a while. I look forward to going back there; not just because we ran well there last year, but because it’s a fun race track.”

Look for Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart to also be possible contenders, based on their success on other mile and a half tracks.

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