Andi mentioned to me back in Michigan that she noticed a special black seat on Dale Earnhardt Jr’s pit box for car owner Rick Hendrick.  I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to see it…until Sunday.  The above picture is of the seats on the Hendrick Motorsports 88 (Junior’s) pit box.  Each of the Hendrick Motorsports pit boxes have a seat labeled for Rick to sit on when he visits during the race.

I title the above picture…”Where are you going, TJ?”  For those that do not know the guy above in black, his name is TJ Majors.  He is Dale Earnhardt Jr’s spotter.  We saw TJ walk upstairs to the spotter’s stand high above the track.  A while later (and pictured above), he walks back by us toward pit road.  He disappeared back behind and reappeared a few minutes later with what, I swear, looked like a radio.  Crazy guy.

Brad Keselowski made his Sprint Cup series debut on Sunday.  He made me a tad nervous during qualifying but made the race on time.  He ended up finishing 19th in the race on Sunday.  I thought he did great.  He wasn’t just making laps (as another rookie appeared to be doing).  He was fighting for every spot and fought very successfully.  I’m looking forward to him getting to drive in more Cup races.

Speaking of Brad…He drove a 5th entry for Hendrick Motorsports on Sunday.  He drove the #25 GoDaddy.com Chevy.  Because it isn’t a normal entry for HMS, there were some oddities with regard to his team.  First, you’ll notice the pit box above is really the JR Motorsports 88 pit box from Brad’s Nationwide team.  (Funny side note…There were some “fans” in the pit very confused about this pit box.  They couldn’t figure out when Junior started being sponsored by the Navy.  I guess they missed Junior’s 88 National Guard/Amp pit box at the beginning of pit road.)  The other different thing is that Haas CNC Racing crew members were the crew for the team.  You can see the guy in the photo above has a Haas CNC shirt on.  Lance McGrew (from Hendrick Motorsports) was the crew chief, though, in case you were wondering.

Carl Edwards won his 8th race of the season on Sunday.  I was hoping to see a different winner than I’ve witnessed before (maybe Dale Earnhardt Jr…hehe).  Unfortunately, the gas mileage gamble Junior’s team made didn’t pay off and he finished 20th instead of 1st.

Click here to see the pictures I took on Sunday.