Sprint Cup N's & Q's: Pennsylvania 500

After a rain-soaked weekend at Pocono Raceway, here's some ramblings from the race that was the Pennsylvania 500.

David Reutimann took a big hit in his chances of making the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Pocono and Wednesday he was still "mad as heck" at Denny Hamlin for spinning the No. 00 late in the race.

"Everybody's capable of making mistakes," said Reutimann. "I'm a forgiving guy if he sincerely apologizes or says he was in the wrong. [...] In the end I'm still confused at why it happened. It wasn't just one shot. It was multiple shots."

At the time, Reutimann was running in the top-10, but finished 29th due to significant damaged he suffered after spinning into semi-teammate Marcos Ambrose thanks to the contact Hamlin provided coming off of turn 3.

The wreck resulted in Reutimann dropping three spots to 16th in the standings, and from 68 points from the Chase cut to 121 points out with five races until the cutoff.

Excessive levels of carbon monoxide nearly sidelined Richard Petty Motorsports driver Reed Sorenson from this weekend's road course event at Watkins Glen, but the team said today he'll be good to go.

Sorenson's car apparently allowed a good bit of the dangerous gas to enter his cockpit during the 500-miler at Pocono.

Prior to that announcement, though, former Formula 1 driver, Indianapolis 500 champ and part-time stock car driver Jacques Villeneuve was being eyed by RPM to fill his seat for the weekend.

Juan Pablo Montoya might be the scariest underdog we'll see in this year's Chase -- pending that he holds on over five races to his 169-point advantage over 13th place -- thanks to the way his team has been racing as of late.

They haven't been exactly aggressive in their setups, and instead, have been trying to find some consistency before "having fun", as Juan says, in the Chase.

If you didn't think Juan Pablo Montoya was going to be good in stock cars, just wait until 2010.

Bobby Labonte took a huge hit after getting hit by fellow Ford driver David Ragan in the later stages of Monday's 200-lap event. The No. 96 spun rear-first into the outside turn one wall at Pocono after Ragan's brown No. 6 nudged Labonte at the end of the frontstretch -- the longest on the NASCAR circuit.

It was quite similar to Jeff Gordon's crash at the same track a few years ago when he lost his brakes, but fortunately for Labonte, much of the impact was taken away from him thanks to the rear of the car crushing like a tin can. Gordon, on the other hand, slapped the outside wall with the driver's door.

Labonte was obviously frustrated with Ragan, but his sense of class and professionalism soon carried over when he was interviewed after leaving the infield care center as he never once trashed Ragan for the move or dropped a snarky, back-handed comment. Refreshing, if I must say.

Speaking of professionalism, Kyle Busch deserves a measured level of "atta-boy" for at least answering questions about his mediocre race on Monday.

I've criticized Busch before for leaving the talking about his team and his race up to crew chief Steve Addington when Busch is one of the focal points of every NASCAR weekend, so I certainly can't let it slide that he's talked two weeks in a row including last weekend's miserable finish at Indianapolis.

Granted, Busch didn't have a big part of the story on Monday at Pocono with his 16th-place finish, but he did offer a brief analysis of his day:

"We ended up on a little bit of a different strategy than some of the other guys and the cautions didn't fall right for us," said Busch. "We fought tight for most of the day, but it got loose on me trying to gain some spots after a restart. We just never really got the handling exactly where we wanted it. There at the end, we managed to salvage something out of a day that could have ended up much worse."

There's certainly a few Kyle Busch fans out there who care about that. Thanks, Shrub.