Expect the Same at Pocono

There is nothing that makes the schedule more of a grind than when the Sprint Cup Series travels to the tricky triangle in Pocono, Pennsylvania.

Pocono Raceway has been a place where people have to exhibit a lot of patience.

Experience is thrown out the window as long as you have three important traits: endurance, resiliency, and pure toughness. After a race at Pocono, these traits are needed.

Okay, that’s enough about the viewers.

For drivers, the race is one of the most challenging of the tracks they travel to.

All 3 turns are shaped differently, making it difficult to get the perfect balance on the car. The race seems to always come down to strategy and fuel mileage no matter what happens during the race, making it frustrating if your strategy doesn’t work.

And, simply put, the race is long. It takes forever to complete.

Despite some changes to the races at Pocono,  expect the same results in today's race.

For the first time since 1974, Pocono Raceway will not have a 500 mile race. It was trimmed to 400 miles after years of complaints from viewers and people involved in the sport.

If you thought the Coke 6 long 600 was long, a 500 mile race at Pocono seemed worse.

Will cutting it to 400 miles change anything? I highly doubt it. 

Another recent change at Pocono was the repaving of racing surface.

Yesterday, Joey Logano set a qualifying record with an average lap of 179.598, eclipsing Kasey Kahne’s 2004 record  by over 7 seconds.

Wow! That’s fast. The new pavement was needed for all the bumps.

The feat by Logano was great, but 35 other drives also beat Kahne’s 04 qualifying time. This means that once the green flag drops at Pocono, don’t expect anything out of the ordinary.

The repave will give us something that the 400 miles gives us… a faster race. As a viewer, I see no problem with this.

However, I expect the racing to be the same.

The restarts will be WILD, drivers going 4 and 5 wide will make your heart race at home. Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin will be hard to beat, but others who've had success here can rise up (5,16,24,99). And no matter what happens in the first 300 miles, the last hundred miles will come down to strategy for track position and fuel mileage.

The only hindrance would be another thing that has been known to drag on a race here, Mother Nature. Today's forecast is sunny with a chance of an isolated thunderstorms.

Start building your stamina. Endurance may be required even for 400 miles.

The views are expressed are those of the writer. Follow me and send your comments to Twitter:

@Dontae_Allen