by Darrell Waltrip

Updated: August 7, 2007, 7:45 PM EST 50 comments

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Pocono is always considered to be sort of a compromise racetrack. You've got a banked Turn 1, and you've got the flat, 90-degree Tunnel Turn. Turn 3 is a sweeper so you're always going to "The Roval" with the mindset of coming up with some sort of compromise setup that works pretty well everywhere.

But if you go there with the mindset that you're going to have a car that's good in all three corners, then you get a performance like Kurt Busch had on Sunday. Crew chief Pat Tryson had the perfect setup. I saw it last year with Denny Hamlin in both races. Nobody could touch the No. 11 last year. He drove off and left the competition after every restart.

Penske Racing South found Hamlin's Pocono magic this year. Ryan Newman could have easily won the spring race if Mother Nature had cooperated. He had a fast car, and he was getting ready to pass Jeff Gordon. With Jeff's pit strategy, Ryan would have won that race.

Then Kurt came back last week. I'm sure he took a little bit of what Ryan had in his car in the first race, and Tryson perfected the cars with some of the things that he had learned through the years from other drivers.

It was absolute Pocono perfection. You don't see it very often, but when you do, you can stink up the show. If you get a car that handles well in all three turns, and you've got the kind of horsepower that the Penske cars have, then you're just going to leave everybody in your dust. I'd say everybody got dusted pretty good on Sunday.

Kurt did a great job. It's one thing to have a fast car, but I always think about what Jeff Gordon told me: "You can have a fast car, but the last time I looked, I'm the only one in here driving it." So you've got to take advantage of that fast car and get it to the finish line. The pit crew, Pat Tryson and Kurt all did a great job, and it was an impressive win. It may have been boring to watch, but if you're a racer, you long for days like Kurt had with that car. You strive to make your car perfect every weekend, and that car was pretty close to perfect.

I was also impressed with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his crew chief Tony Eury Jr. They were able to get out that magic wand — in this case it was a magic shock — wave it over that old No. 8 Bud car and fix that bad boy. That thing came on strong. For a while, it looked like Junior may have had a little something for Kurt, but when Kurt got ready to go, he held her wide open for a lap or two, drove off and left everybody.

Oh, by the way

The name of the this story is "Doing the right thing wrong always ends in disaster." I didn't get to see the Montreal race until the very end. I happened to get home from some errands just in time to catch the last five laps. I guess I didn't miss much, but I sure did see a lot in those last five laps. I almost couldn't believe what I was watching.

I saw Robby Gordon take the lead from Marcos Ambrose. Then, I saw the caution flag wave, and then Robby spun off of Marcos' bumper. The field was under caution, and Robby rejoined around 13th place. He immediately moved back up to 2nd place, drove alongside Marcos and let him know that he wasn't very happy about getting spun out.

Then, reading between the lines while watching the race on TV, it looked like NASCAR took a lap or two while they decided what to do. Finally, when they were coming to 1 lap to go before the restart, they told Robby to go behind the No. 33 car. Of course, Robby didn't know where the No. 33 car was, and he probably didn't even know who was in the No. 33 car so he elected not to get behind the No. 33 car.

At this point, a wrong was done. Robby wasn't in the proper position — according to NASCAR — and they restarted the race anyway. Now, am I the only one in the United States and Canada that knew what Robby was going to do? If you're Robby Gordon in 2nd place, and you just got spun out by the current leader, am I the only one that knew Robby was probably going to turn around Marcos? I think not. That's where the wrong was done.

When NASCAR restarted the race with Robby behind Marcos, it did two things. Robby had been cost the race by getting spun out, and now Robby was going to spin out Marcos so that the Australian rookie couldn't win the race. I wouldn't have restarted the race until I had gotten Robby off the track on a rollback because it cost Marcos Ambrose a win. You could say Marcos cost Robby a win by spinning him out, but Robby didn't heed the black flag. He had been told to get in the proper position, and he chose not to.

Folks, I fought the law, and the law. (I fought the wall, and the wall won, too.) But I know from experience that when that black flag is laid upon you, you have no recourse. You go to the pits, and you find out what the problem is. When Robby didn't acknowledge the black flag, he was getting in deeper and deeper trouble.

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If I had been Robby, I'd have restarted in 2nd place. He had a faster car than Marcos, coming up through the field pretty well to take the lead. This time, I would have made a clean pass on Marcos, and some of the harm that was done wouldn't have been so bad. But spinning Marcos and costing him his first win added insult to injury.

You know that old saying, Two wrongs don't make a right?" Well, in Robby's mind, NASCAR had done him wrong, but he did Marcos wrong. It was just an ugly situation, and it could have been handled a little bit better. It was the blind obvious that Robby was going to get into Marcos if he started behind him.

I hated to see it happen. I love Robby. He is a passionate racer, and he lets his passion get in the way of good judgment sometimes. That's what happened on Saturday. When NASCAR didn't enforce the rule, it cost Marcos a win. It cost Robby a win. And it allowed the Autozone car to win the NAPA race. It just turned out to be a Busch bash.

Oh, by the way, too

Sometimes, we think NASCAR's rule implementation is a little wacky, but what happened in Formula One last weekend beats all I've ever seen. The FIA, F1's sanctioning body, stepped in and said Lewis Hamilton's teammate, Fernando Alonso, impeded Hamilton's progress in the pits and kept the rookie from winning a pole. The FIA took the pole away from Alonso. If you applied that reasoning to the Busch race, then you could have taken the win away from Kevin Harvick and given it to Marcos Ambrose, Robby Gordon, Patrick Carpentier or somebody else. What the Formula 1 crowd did in qualifying on Saturday was bizarre.