Gear Up For Auto Racing’s Biggest Weekend

Auto racing's biggest day of the year is on Sunday with the Indy 500 followed by the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Team Penske has won all four IZOD IndyCar Series races this year and the team’s Ryan Briscoe has the pole on Sunday for the 96^th running of the Indy 500.

All three of Penske's drivers qualified in the top-six and they’ll be driving the new “DW12” car named in honor of the late Dan Wheldon – last year’s 500 winner.  Helio Castroneves is one of the other Penske drivers.  He’s a 3-time 500 winners and if he wins on Sunday he would join A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser as the only four-time winners of this race.

Friday is “Carb Day”, one last chance for teams to practice and fine tune their cars.

A short time after the race at Indy, NASCAR’s longest race of the year kicks off at Charlotte – the Coca Cola 600 and Jimmie Johnson is on a roll.  He won at Darlington, then took last week’s All-Star race and if he wins on Sunday he’ll become the first driver to win the back to back events at Charlotte twice in his career.

And how about Dale Earnhardt, Junior?  Last year he was half a lap away from ending his long winless streak when he ran out of gas on the last turn allowing Kevin Harvick to steal the win.  After a good showing in the All-Star race, maybe this is the week Junior finally ends that streak.

The Nationwide race is on Saturday night.