|| *Comments on the 2000 thatlook.com 300:* View the most recent comment <#40> | Post a comment <#post> Tweet 1. STbastien posted: 11.19.2004 - 1:29 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Driver Kenny Irwin Jr. died the day before the race in turn 3 while practicing. 2. Anonymous posted: 03.09.2005 - 11:22 pm Rate this comment: (3) (0) tony stewart gave the trophy to irwin's parents 3. Jake posted: 05.14.2005 - 4:35 pm Rate this comment: (4) (0) I realize people get on Tony Stewart about his driving and how he acts towards the media, but that right there shows the other side of him. Say what you want, but Tony's a good guy as well. Despite the fact that Tony and Kenny got together many times in their USAC days and that one time at Martinsville the year before, it was a nice thing for Tony to do. 4. Matthew Sullivan posted: 12.22.2005 - 4:02 am Rate this comment: (3) (0) It was fitting for Tony to win this race. 5. smoke20ri posted: 04.01.2006 - 2:54 am Rate this comment: (3) (0) I think Tony considered him a friend even though they had their run-in's. I've heard Tony say that back when he was coming up in the racing world drivers would fistfight on a Saturday night but then help each other fix their cars on Sunday. 6. nascarman posted: 05.14.2006 - 1:42 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Kenny Irwin's car got upside down after he hit the wall. 7. dalejrfan15 posted: 06.17.2006 - 2:22 pm Rate this comment: (1) (2) hans device...who would be next on the list without you?well doesnt matter we have it so yay for the HANS! 8. stockcar-race posted: 07.10.2006 - 7:22 pm Rate this comment: (0) (8) How would Kenny Irwin's carrer be if he didn't go to the 42 car? Would Joe Nemechek still be alive if he stayed at the number 42 car? Did this incident cause Felix Sabates to form with Chip Ganassi? These questions will never be answered. 9. dylan posted: 09.06.2006 - 9:05 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) RIP Kenny 42 10. myself posted: 02.20.2007 - 5:41 pm Rate this comment: (0) (2) I was @ the Seychelles Condo in Daytona when I heard of this. The entire town that night was very subdued & talking about it. One memorabilia merchant caught a lot of (deserved) flack b/c hours after the death was announced he raised the prices on all of his Kenny Irwin stuff by 400%! 11. Anonymous posted: 05.08.2008 - 12:54 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Those questions are tough to answer.... I always found it terribly ironic that Jow won the last race there so that team had a range of emotions about Loudon! 12. Rob posted: 11.12.2008 - 6:10 pm Rate this comment: (2) (0) Ken Squier was Grand Marshal for this race and gave one of the most somber commands when he said "In memory of their fallen comrads Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Gentlemen Start your engines and Godspeed" 13. myself posted: 08.19.2009 - 11:20 am Rate this comment: (2) (1) Kenny Irwin, when thrust into the 28, was built up as "Ford's Jeff Gordon." Never happened. 14. nascarfan posted: 02.19.2010 - 3:53 pm Rate this comment: (4) (0) Ricky Craven, dring the underfunded #50 car for hal hicks had his best run since leaving hendrick motorsports in 1998, after he qualified 5th and led a lot of laps early on, but slowly faded to finish outside the top 10. 15. Dodge posted: 09.14.2010 - 8:14 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) My dad and I were going up to watch practice and fortunately, we missed seeing the wreck. When we got there, we saw skidmarks and asked what happened and a lady that had worked for the track told us what happened and she told us that Kenny had passed but it wasn't announced till the rest of the days events were done. 16. Andre posted: 09.22.2010 - 10:14 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) To the comment by stockcar-race from oh about 4 years ago now... I'm actually pretty sure that Felix Sabates had announced that deal pretty much earlier that same morning Kenny was killed. Could be wrong, though... I do know his untimely death and the merger with Ganassi were back to back, however, one way or the other. 17. Anonymous posted: 12.27.2010 - 4:21 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Terry Labonte had a hard crash early in the race with Chad Little that caused a huge fire. I think after that wreck he had inner ear injuries (coupled with the wreck the previous week at Daytona), which caused him to use relief drivers for a few weeks. 18. nascarman posted: 07.09.2011 - 7:57 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Chip Ganassi did buy most of the team before Irwin died, as referenced in this article written by Marty Smith the day before he died. http://web.archive.org/web/20000823005145/http://www.nascar.com/news/2000/0706/1001795.html 19. Evan posted: 11.08.2011 - 9:58 am Rate this comment: (2) (0) Tony Stewart was a good guy for giving the trophy to Irwin's parents a nice classy gesture. I did not have a bad thing to say about Kenny Irwin, he had a good career going but Ford Racing built him up as their "Jeff Gordon" but that was too much hype to put on a young driver. I thought he was overhyped then, but I felt he could have some success. 20. JoeFan#87 (Ricky) posted: 06.24.2012 - 10:50 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Tony beat Joe under caution this race. Previous race, Joe beat Tony under caution. Always found that interesting. RIP Kenny. 21. Michael Schwartz posted: 06.29.2015 - 12:29 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Shouldn't Kenny Irwin be credited with the "Failed to qualify or withdrew" status? The team, car and driver were at the race, yet you don't know that without reading the comments section. 22. nascarman posted: 07.07.2016 - 3:18 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Thatlook.com was a pretty odd sponsor for a NASCAR race. It was "an experienced national service group assisting individuals to obtain affordable and convenient elective cosmetic surgery to improve their physical appearance." 23. 48johnsonfan posted: 10.06.2016 - 6:15 pm Rate this comment: (2) (0) Happy to say that almost the full race is on YouTube, but only a small handful of laps are missing, but the race is on YouTube. 24. Evan posted: 07.16.2017 - 8:25 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Sponsors #99 Jeff Burton Exide Batteries/Korean War Anniversary To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War, Jeff Burton ran a special decal on his hood for this race. Source: TNN spoke to Secretary of Defense Charlie Cragin during the rain delay. My grandfather was a Korean War veteran and it was great to find out they honored them in this fashion. 25. RaceFanX posted: 03.10.2018 - 12:58 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Joe Nemechek backs up his fall 1999 victory at NHIS with a runner-up performance in the next race there. 26. Anthony posted: 07.09.2018 - 11:23 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Kenny Irwin was disappointed when he found out that Felix Sabates gave the winning car that won Loudon to Joe Nemechek and had to settle with a brand new car that unfortunately took his life away. RIP Kenny Irwin, Jr. 27. Jacob posted: 07.18.2019 - 4:31 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) #22 Have to agree about the curious nature of the sponsor; and figured it obviously would become a casualty of the dot-com bubble bursting that by the time of the race was already underway, though it's hard to find much of anything on them 28. Corey posted: 11.29.2019 - 11:09 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Maine certainly made their presence felt in the beginning of this race. Newburgh, ME's Rick Craven led 63 of the first 65 laps. He was followed by Geoffrey Bodine driving Scarborough, ME native Joe Bessey's #60 leading the next 20 laps. 29. UnderdogFan89 posted: 07.07.2020 - 3:16 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) I remember being pulled into my parent's bedroom that afternoon and being told that Kenny Irwin had crashed and died. Still remember the look on my dad's face, as he also told us about Petty's death not that long before. I applaud NASCAR here for counting the #42 team (soon renumbered #01) as registering an attempt, despite the obvious withdrawal of the team. 30. Jesse posted: 11.21.2020 - 7:22 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Rusty's car was Very fast in 2000. This race completed a stretch where the 2 car recorded six poles out of eleven races, dating back to Martinsville in April. Wallace went on to finish the season with nine poles, more than double any other year of his career. 31. Mile501 posted: 03.25.2021 - 3:43 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Though overshadowed by Irwin's death, this race featured a lot of interesting strategy, aided by uncertainty as to when the rain would come. Ricky Craven was impressive early on, as was Geoffrey Bodine. Unfortunately, both would get burned by the third caution (explained below) and would never fully recover. All but 10 cars pitted during the second caution. Those who stayed out included the #50, #2, #12, #22, #28, #60, and #88. The third caution trapped these drivers a lap down, but all of them got their lap back under the fourth caution and then pitted while the leaders stayed out. This put these drivers (and a few others) in position to make it to the end on one more stop if the race went full-distance, but it did not. Rick Mast qualified well, fell to the back early on due to a spark plug issue, then drove all the way back up to finish 12th. This was one of the strongest runs that A.J. Foyt's #14 team ever had. Ken Schrader had a top 10 run going, but the #36 team gambled by taking 2 tires and just 15 gallons of fuel on their stop around lap 190. The rain didn't come as quickly as they'd hoped, however, and he had to pit again while running 5th shortly before the race ended. Schrader would never again finish in the top 5 in his career. Had the race gone full-distance, Mark Martin (using Roush's excellent fuel mileage to his benefit) most likely would have won. Two more random tidbits mentioned on the broadcast: - 12 different drivers exchanged the lead without a repeat leader until Stewart retook the lead on lap 219. This was near the record of 13 drivers (though they didn't say where or when that "obscure record", in Eli Gold's words, took place). - Bobby and Judy Allison got re-married during the week prior to this race. They had divorced after the tragedies in their family, but reunited after being affected by the Petty family tragedy. 32. Spen posted: 03.26.2021 - 9:47 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) I thought I posted this last night. Maybe I forgot to hit submit. Anyway, the race with 13 leaders before a repeat seems to be the 1982 Gabriel 400 at Michigan. Mainly thanks to a lot of people leading during the first pit cycle (even Tommy Gale!) 33. 52 posted: 03.26.2021 - 10:48 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Something i find wild also is that rhe twin 125s also had 2 different winners. So by this point there was 15 different drivers in victory lane. 34. Mile501 posted: 04.03.2021 - 5:29 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) @32 - Good find; thanks! That does appear to be the race, with 5 different leaders early on, then 7 more during the first round of green-flag pit stops, plus Bobby Allison who took the lead after pit stops and hadn't yet led. This race took a lot longer to reach that many different leaders, however. Now I wonder if that obscure record has been broken in the 20 years since this race. 35. Spen posted: 04.03.2021 - 9:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Not from 2000-2015 at least. Closest I saw was 11 at Chicagoland in 2004. 2016-present will be a bit harder to analyze, but considering the overall drop in competitiveness in the mid-2010's, I highly doubt it's been broken. 36. Spen posted: 04.03.2021 - 9:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Quicker than I thought, and as suspected, the answer is no. In the last five years, we usually have only one non-plate race a year that even has 13 different leaders, and the nature of plate racing means that early leaders tend to drop back on purpose to see how quickly they can regain the lead. With no bonus points given for leading laps anymore, I highly doubt we'll ever see this record fall. 37. ScottB posted: 04.04.2021 - 7:25 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) What a difference between this race and the Cup race here later in the season. That was the experiment that saw Jeff Burton lead all 300 laps. 38. Mile501 posted: 04.04.2021 - 7:25 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) @35 - I am curious what method you used to analyze all those races, especially prior to 2016. 39. Spen posted: 04.04.2021 - 10:23 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Sean Wrona's old race-database site has a number of neat features. One of them is that on each individual season page, it shows you how many drivers led in each race, in addition to lead changes. So since any race with less than 13 leaders was by definition not the one we were looking for, so I just clicked the ones with 13 leaders or more. Sean's site hasn't been updated since 2015, though. So for the recent ones, I used this site, and sorted each race by laps led. If there were less than 13 leaders, I went to the next race. 40. Rich posted: 04.13.2021 - 10:14 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Eli Gold along with Buddy Baker and Dr. Dick Berggren were the commentators. Glenn Jarrett along with Steve Byrnes and Ralph Sheheen were the pit road reporters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Post a comment:* Your comment may not appear immediately - all comments must be approved by the moderator. Name: Comment: