It wasn’t a total shock that there was great racing at Bristol because there always is but the Food City 500 had a little bit of everything.

On the very first lap previous points leader Jimmie Johnson cut a tire and ended up playing catch up all afternoon long. Johnson, who welcomed back crew chief Chad Knaus from suspension, finished 30th 13 laps down. That was the first point of intrigue on the afternoon.

You had your usual “beatin’ and bangin’” throughout the race and then the last 100 laps were fantastic. Tony Stewart doled out his usual punishment by punting Martin Truex, Jr. around.

Then with five laps to go Kurt Busch punted Matt Kenseth out of the lead. And then on the final lap Kenseth got back at Busch by punting Jeff Gordon out of third position. Busch of course went onto score the victory, his first with his new Penske racing team.

Then after the smoke had cleared as Kenseth was approaching Jeff Gordon to apologize for turning him around Gordon broke his choir boy character by blasting Kenseth in the chest with a good old fashioned two handed shiver.

The best thing about all of this action is that they head to Martinsville next weekend for another go-round on a short track so you can rest assured that there will be several cases of payback in store.

Kenseth overtook the points lead from Johnson and now leads Kasey Kahne by just nine points. Johnson fell back to third after dominating the early portion of the schedule with two victories in the first three races.

A couple of other random thoughts following yesterday’s race. First off, shame on the Fox broadcasting crew for not delaying the in-car audio transmission between Martin Truex and his crew chief right after he was wrecked by Tony Stewart. Truex’s crew chief used the “s” word in describing the condition of the car prior to the crash. I don’t find fault with the crew member one bit. It was in the heat of the battle and sometimes curse words happen. The bad thing about it is that the crew member will more than likely be fined by NASCAR for using the word over the airwaves.

In my opinion Fox erred in their haste to get the transmission on the air. I realize that listening in on a race team’s radio chatter is one of the real bonuses of attending a race but I personally think it is an intrusion. I am surprised more teams don’t use radio channels that are scrambled.

When you go to a Panthers game you aren’t able to listen in on what John Fox is saying to his coaching staff via their headsets. I realize that it is a tradition in NASCAR to allow fans to listen in but, again, I don’t think it is fair to the teams.

Also, hats off to Robby Gordon and his race team. Robby appears to be making a go of it in this his second year as a driver/owner. Robby had a decent 26th place finish at Bristol after a late race penalty but his finish has him 20th in the point’s standings.

The impressive thing about the standings in the points is that the top 35 in the points standings are guaranteed starting positions from here on out. Last season Robby missed 10 races due to not being in the top 35 in points. In this day and age of mega-car teams like Hendrick and Roush what Robby is doing is extremely impressive.