NASCAR At Watkins Glen: Marcos Ambrose Wins First Sprint Cup Series Race In Wild Finish

Though it will most certainly be overshadowed by another scary wreck on the last lap, Denny Hamlin’s head-first collision with the tire barrier at Watkins Glen on Monday was one of the ugliest moments of the NASCAR season.

Hamlin blew a tire coming down the hill to Turn 1, which in turn cut his brake line. With no brakes and still at nearly full speed, Hamlin went straight for the barrier and hit head-on.

You’d think all Australians would cheer Marcos Ambrose’s first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory at Watkins Glen today. But nooooo.

Thanks to @nascarcasm, you can see that one of Ambrose’s fellow Aussies was not too pleased about the win.

Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards left Watkins Glen on Monday tied atop the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings – though Busch technically leads on a tiebreaker.

The Cup points lead isn’t the biggest news these days though. It’s all about the Chase and the wild card spot.

Boris Said was the driver who triggered a terrifying crash involving David Ragan and David Reutimann on the last lap of Monday’s NASCAR race at Watkins Glen, but that wasn’t what he most wanted to talk about afterward.

Said was more concerned with Roush Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle. Here’s what he told ESPN’s Ryan McGee after the race:

After a long wait and several heartbreaking setbacks, Marcos Ambrose is finally a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series winner.

Ambrose, the Australian regarded as NASCAR’s top road racing talent, won Monday’s delayed race at Watkins Glen, passing Brad Keselowski on the penultimate lap and dashing to the checkered flag as chaos ensued behind him.

If Kyle Busch holds on to win today’s NASCAR race at Watkins Glen, he’s going to have to hold off some of the world’s best drivers.

Busch leads with 15 laps to go at the Glen, but Denny Hamlin’s hard hit into the wall with 25 laps to go has put Marcos Ambrose into second place.

Halfway through the Watkins Glen NASCAR race, Kyle Busch is back in the lead following a caution that changed the race strategy for many drivers.

When Greg Biffle ran out of fuel, it benefited some drivers (such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Burton, who were on pit road at the time) and hurt others.

After a wild start to today’s Watkins Glen NASCAR race, the action has settled down for now as the drivers have just completed lap 20 of 90.

Kyle Busch currently leads the race, but he hasn’t made his pit stop yet; most other drivers have. Race favorite Marcos Ambrose led for awhile, but had some help from Kurt Busch to get the lead.

You’re at work and there’s a NASCAR race going on. And that really stinks.

Fortunately, you can still hang out here and chat about the race with SB Nation’s Jeff Gluck (who is watching at home but will keep you updated on all that’s going on).

Let’s try this again, shall we? It’s NASCAR race day at Watkins Glen (we hope) and if the rain holds off, the Sprint Cup Series race should be getting underway this morning.

Start time: Fingers crossed, but the start time for this morning’s rescheduled NASCAR race is 10 a.m. Eastern time. Hopefully, there won’t be any more rain delays.

I can’t make any promises or guarantees when it comes to the weather forecast. The forecast for Monday is more complicated than it was for Sunday. Unlike Sunday, when we had a large wave of rain move into the area, the threat on Monday is from more scattered to isolated showers and storms.

The only NASCAR winner at Watkins Glen today was Mother Nature.

Persistent rain postponed Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race and washed out officials’ valiant efforts to try and dry the track to get the event underway. Unfortunately, it never happened.

Due to rain, NASCAR has postponed the Watkins Glen race until 10 a.m. EDT Monday morining. Like I have been doing all week, here’s a look at the computer model forecast for Monday.

Rain is still in the forecast for Monday, and we have been seeing a glimpse of what Monday could bring over in Ohio. There have been scattered slow moving showers and storms.

As predicted here for several days leading up to the Watkins Glen race, rain has delayed today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series action in upstate New York.

The rain doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon, so NASCAR is either looking at a very late afternoon start time or the possibility of a Monday race.

I’ve included a live radar image above. I have moved up my time of arrival to between 11am to 1pm EDT. Rain will continue to move out of western Pennsylvania into southern and western New York as we head into the afternoon. Once the rain arrives it won’t be a short rain and then clear out, it is expected to continue through the afternoon and into the evening. Some paces in western New York, including Watkins Glen could see around an inch or more of rain by Monday.

All of this rain is part of an upper level system diving into the Ohio Valley. This system will slide through Pennsylvania this afternoon and evening before becoming a new storm off the east coast on Monday. Although rain is in the forecast for Monday the likelihood appears to be less and from my experience working and forecasting in western New York, a lot of times when these storms move to the east coast they take the bulk of their rain and moisture with them. This may be just enough of an opening that we could get the race in on Monday.

Fastest in Friday’s opening practice session, Kyle Busch was the final of 46 cars to make a qualifying run and after his lap shot to the top of the speed charts.

Knocking AJ Allmendinger from the top spot, Busch scored his first pole of the season and the first of his career at Watkins Glen. In doing so, he also shattered the previous track record with his lap of 69.767 seconds at 126.421 mph. A total of 15 drivers broke the previous record set by Jeff Gordon in 2003.

Kurt Busch took his turn at the Watkins Glen media center podium on Saturday morning and had a chance to respond to Jimmie Johnson’s harsh comments about Busch on Friday.

The back-and-forth between the drivers was more fallout from an incident at Pocono between Busch and Johnson. Busch defended his on-track actions and said he was “putting the ‘r’ (as in ‘rubbing’) back in racing.”

There has been only a small timing adjustment to the overall forecast this weekend, and it equals drier weather on Saturday. But Sunday still remains wet. Here’s a look at the same models I showed on Friday updated Saturday morning.

The forecast continues to call for two days of soaking rain from from Sunday into Monday. There is still a chance of a few isolated to scattered showers and even a thunderstorm late in the day Saturday, but my gut feeling is that this activity holds off until after the Nationwide race.

The forecast for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race is not improving. With each run of the models, the printout for rain is very high. Like I did with Pocono, I am going to let you see what I see when it comes to the computer weather models.

In Model No. 2, the rain is only slightly delayed but still raining at 2 p.m. EDT over Watkins Glen. The Friday afternoon computer models print out a precipitation probability of 75-to-100 percent of likely rain for the area on Sunday, with a better than 80 percent probability for Monday as well.

With three wins on the season, Kyle Busch sits third in the championship standings and is nearly a sure-fire lock to make this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup. Yet with five races remaining before the start of the Chase, it is consistency – not the number of wins – that has Busch confident about his championship hopes.

“We feel like we’ve been better prepared this year,” Busch said. “Certainly we don’t have the tally of eight wins (like in 2008), but we’re a lot more consistent I feel like; from pit stop to pit stop we’re a lot more consistent; from race to race we’re a lot more consistent.

Nine of Jeff Gordon’s 84 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victories have come at road courses – four at Watkins Glen, five at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma.

So perhaps it’s no surprise the four-time Cup champ believes a road course race should find its way into NASCAR’s championship Chase.

You know the rivalry between Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch? Well, it’s far from over.

Check out what Johnson had to say on Friday at Watkins Glen following his incident with Busch at Pocono last week.

Any time the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to the road course at Watkins Glen, Juan Pablo Montoya is mentioned among the favorites. Yet the defending race winner enters this weekend in a must-win situation if the No. 42 team has any hopes at making a run for the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

After a strong start to the season, Montoya has scored only two top-10 finishes in the last 15 races, falling from as high as third in the standings at one point in the season all the way to 21^st with only five races left before the 12-driver Chase field is set.

Marcos Ambrose has three straight NASCAR Nationwide Series victories at Watkins Glen and would figure to be the heavy favorite for Saturday’s race.

But there’s one problem: Ambrose won’t be there. Instead, he plans go fishing – far away from the track – and pretend the race isn’t happening.

Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International figures to have more impact on the Chase than ever before, thanks to the wild card.

With strategy a major factor at road course races, it’s entirely possible there could be yet another entrant into the ever-changing battle for the two spots outside the top 10 in points.