Joshua and Cheryl have been offering up their own personal sets of HeartRacers~HeartBreakers for each race. The moments that stirred them for whatever reason will fall in the HeartRacers category, and anything that makes them wince, cry, or throw stuff will be HeartBreakers. All cawsnjaws readers are invited to add on their own to share with everyone.

NASCAR fans everywhere were glad to see the sun shining in Atlanta, after the downpour that canceled qualifying. The ones in attendance at Atlanta Motor Speedway had their jackets on-hand, though, as temperatures were chilly.

HeartRacers:

  • ‘Wally’s World’ had no Wally this week. Instead, Bobby Labonte took pit reporter Dave Burns around the Atlanta track. Both were cool as cucumbers as they zipped around at high speeds, while conversing about why Atlanta has always been a good track for Labonte.
  • The Bass Pro Shops guys that gave the call to the drivers to start their engines jazzed it up a bit by adding a duck call to the pre-race ritual. We are betting that’s a first for that.
  • Dave Gilliland (No. 38 Ford) started 25th and finished 15th, his best finish so far in his Cup career.
  • We are thinking Greg Biffle (No. 16 Ford) didn’t throw any hoagies around after Sunday’s race. He started 13th, avoided the bad luck that’s been biting him lately, and finished a respectable fifth.
  • We would like to hand out two ‘how-did-they-do-that?’ awards: Dale Jarrett (No. 88 Ford) started 23rd, was involved in the bad wreck on lap 309, but ended up finishing in 11th and moving up two spots in the standings to 22nd. And how about Jeff Gordon (No. 24 Chevy)? On lap 169 he had a tire going down and was clobbered by Jamie McMurray (No. 26 Ford), then hit pit road numerous times to get things straightened out. He got penalized for pitting early, and for speeding on pit road. Yet he still finished sixth, and moved up two spots in the standings to seventh.
  • Despite reports that he wasn’t enjoying the performance of his car throughout the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (No. 8 Chevy) finished in third place, and moved up two spots in the Chase standings to fourth.
  • This is Josh’s official explanation of why Bobby Labonte’s (No. 43 Dodge) performance was in the HeartRacers category as opposed to a HeartBreaker: (And here’s a challenge to our readers: take a deep breath, and then begin reading along out loud. Say the whole paragraph quickly and without any pauses, just as Josh did. Let us know how many of you made it without messing up.) “Bobby started in 20th but worked his way up to the top ten. There was a restart about a quarter of the way through the race, and he had to make two unscheduled pit stops because his car was overheating. He was running almost 4 laps down in 41st place but the caution came out and saved him from going totally 4 laps down. Then with pit stop strategy he became only two laps down. Then for the remainder of the race he raced his way from 34th place to 20th, then 15th. With about 20 laps left he was in contention for the lucky dawg pass, and went to one lap down. He moved to 13th place, passed Mike Bliss (No. 49 Dodge) who’d blown an engine, and was the only car one lap down in 12th. So for all of that hard driving he deserves it to be a HeartRacer not a Heartbreaker.” Whew. It took a whole lot longer to type that than it did for Joshua to say it.
  • Well. Who said Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Chevy) was out of contention for the Chase this year? At the culmination of Sunday’s race, we find him in second place in the Cup standings, just 26 points behind Matt Kenseth (No. 17 Ford).
  • Who can whip up an audience of NASCAR fans better than a triumphant Tony Stewart (No. 20 Chevy) climbing the fence to get the checkered flag? He started the race in 11th, and the win pours more concrete on his 11th place position in the standings. We also bet that the fan that gave Stewart that fashionably beat-up No. 20 baseball cap that he wore throughout the post-race interviews will be glowing about that for a long time.
  • And one more HeartRacer’s cheer for that trophy for winning the race: How cool was that big ol’ bear that will now be sharing space in Tony’s new house?

HeartBreakers:

  • The helmet and gloves on pit road that memorialized jackman Steve Spahr, 48, of the No. 55 team who passed away this past week was a nice tribute to a man gone too soon.
  • Once again it didn’t take the dark clouds of bad luck to find Kyle Busch (No. 5 Chevy). On lap four he spun out, and finished the race in 27th place. He is now 249 points behind Cup points leader Matt Kenseth.
  • We award two ‘dad-gum-it-I-was-running-good-too’ awards to: Mike Bliss (No. 49 Dodge) was having a good day, until being black-flagged on lap 320 for billowing black smoke everywhere. He finished 26th. A wheel bearing gone bad ruined what could have been a great day for Martin Truex Jr. (No. 1 Chevy). It happened on lap 304, after his running a terrific race until that point (in the top ten). He finished a dismal 37th.
  • On lap 169, Jeff Gordon was trying to deal with his own troubles with his car, when Jamie McMurray came speeding up behind him with the sun in his eyes. He collided with Gordon, and basically destroyed the front half of his car. It was off to the garage for McMurray, and a 40th place finish for the team.
  • On lap 248, Kasey Kahne (No. 9 Dodge) and David Stremme (No. 40 Dodge) tangled and both wound up in the garage. In subsequent post-wreck interviews, they were both peeved with each other, despite Kahne taking the blame for the wreck. It was kind of hard to tell, then, why they were both still so mad. It was kind of like overhearing a marital spat.
  • Jeff Burton (No. 31 Chevy) was doing okay until he got into the wall on lap 281 and damaged his right-side tires. He may have started in fifth place, but he finished in 13th.
  • Kevin Harvick (No. 29 Chevy) had a lousy day, finished 31st, and fell four spots in the standings to sixth. We are betting that if he turned the corner anytime soon with his Reese’s peanut butter cup in his hand and ran into Tony Kanaan (IRL driver) with his caramel, instead of being happy about it he’d just knock Tony down and kick him.
  • Mark Martin (No. 6 Ford) is still smiling (at least on the outside), but after getting tangled in the wreck on lap 309, he finished in 36th place, and fell another spot in the Chase standings to eighth. With only three races to go, it seems his last chance at a championship has slipped away.