"Stupid'' NASCAR ruins Sunday night TV for so many

Or so you would be led to believe by looking at the comments on Twitter when Sunday's race ran long and caused "The Simpsons'' to be delayed 30 minutes.

"NASCAR ruinied my night ... "Stupid NASCAR threw off my Sunday Night cartoons. ... "Utter (garbage) ... Screw NASCAR and their pre-emption of new Simpsons episodes.'' and on and on it went on Twitter.

Hmm, this kind of sounds familiar.

Folks, whether you hate "Boogity, Boogity, Boogity'' or can't stand Digger or are just riled up about Fox for something else, you owe the folks at Fox a thank you.

This time a NASCAR race went long and didn't move to another channel. Unlike what happened in November when ABC moved the Phoenix Cup race to the ESPN family because the race was going so long. Now, let's be careful. These are two different circumstances. Still, Fox didn't move the race to Speed Channel and let a new episode of "Simpsons'' come on at 8 p.m. Eastern. So, go ahead and rip them for Digger, DW or something else, but you should thank them for staying with it Sunday night. You also owe them a thanks for asking winner Kyle Busch two questions in Victory Lane and also interviewing other top-five finishers before signing off. A big complaint I've heard from fans in the past is how a network went off after just interviewing the winner. Folks, you got it all from Fox on Sunday night.

Now, I know the first thing you'll say is Heck yes Fox should stay with the race since it started so late (4:46 p.m. Eastern time for green flag). Well, at least the Fox folks understand that if they start late this could happen and didn't panic and cut things off early as has been done before.

Don't worry, I'm sure many of you will find something to complain about Fox next week.  This week, they deserve your thanks.

On to the race:

# Kudos to Kyle Busch for winning at his hometown track at Las Vegas. The odds didin't seem so good entering Sunday since he had an engine change and would start at the rear and there were questions of if the Toyota engines would last after his was one of five Toyota engines that needed to be changed before the race. Turned out the Fords were the cars that had trouble with Matt Kenseth blowing an engine after six laps and teammate David Ragan blowing an engine after 72 laps.

Here's what car owner Jack Roush said after the race: "I think we misjudged how fast this tire was going to be and the engine turned more. It's the same spec on the engine that we had all of last year. It wasn't something new or experimental. I had great confidence in it. We had it in the last third of last year, but we saw more RPM with it in qualifying than we ever had and we saw more RPM in the race than we ever had. The tire didn't fall off as much as we expected it to, so the tire did a real nice job but we just over-revved the engine.''

# With how well Kyle Busch has run this season, Sunday could have been his second win of the year. Remember, he led the most laps at Daytona before he was collected in that big crash. He finished third last weekend at California and wins at Vegas. And, the series goes to Atlanta where he won the spring race a year ago.

# Jeff Gordon leads the points but do you see who is behind him? Clint Bowyer is unofficially second, 18 points behind Gordon. Matt Kenseth fell to third. Both he and Greg Biffle are 40 points behind Gordon. Lot of movement in the points.

"Three weeks in a row I've felt like we have the car that can win and that's quite a change from last year,'' Gordon said.

# Dale Earnhardt Jr. made it to the end and that was an accomplishment Sunday. He finished 10th (after once being a lap down) and climbed to 29th in the points standings. He's 192 points behind Gordon but only 79 points out of 12th, so no need to panic Junior fans.

"We really, really needed it,'' Earnhardt said of the 10th-place run. "We know that we need to put together about six or seven good weeks to give ourselves a shot at getting back into the battle for the Chase. We've got some good tracks in a row here where we can do that. We've just got keep our heads on straight.''

# Pit road proved to be a problem. Jeff Gordon missed it and then blew his left front tire, ending any chance of winning. Jimmie Johnson overshot his pit stall and ended up losing a lap, got stuck in the back and later wrecked at the end. Carl Edwards was penalized for a missing lugnut and couldn't completely recover.

Said Gordon: "I just was coming to pit road and saw the guys behind me, looked like they were coming down on me pretty hard, so I tried to get off on the apron and when I did it just locked the left front up and I missed pit road. And then locked the left front up and blew the left front.''

# Kudos for Richard Childress Racing for placing Clint Bowyer 2nd (after he came back from being a lap down) and Jeff Burton 3rd. Still, it looked to me that strategy more than horsepower helped them to the front. They showed some improvement over last week when most of the RCR teams weren't fast enough but things not gone their way, they likely wouldn't have finished as well. Think there's still more horesepower they need to find in the coming weeks.

# Mark Martin said his engine failure this week was not the same problem that caused his engine to blow last week at California. Those woes have knocked him down to 34th in the driver standings. Thank goodness for the Chase and needing to only be in the top 12 by Richmond or his return for a title run would have been over after three races.

# Did you see that David Reutimann finished fourth and Bobby Labonte placed fifth? Labonte called his finish "pretty freaking awesome.''  It was his first top-five finish since 2006. Reutimann's finish was his career best. Oh yes, did you see that rookie Joey Logano finished 13th? I would expect him to run better at the 1.5-mile tracks. Those tracks seem easier for the young guys and the Gibbs stuff is very good there. You knew his Daytona performance wasn't going to last the whole season. Reutimann admitted he was "kind of relieved, more than anything'' to get his first career top-five finish.

COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don't attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.