Ron Levanduski

rlevanduski@stargazette.com | @SGRLevanduski

NBCSports.com reporters heap praise on 2014 Cheez-It 355 at The Glen

Event featured late-race duel between winner AJ Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose

Jimmy Zacharias to be recognized at NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Awards Banquet on Friday

While NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series is primarily an oval track championship, its road course race at Watkins Glen International has consistently stood out as one of the series' best events over the past several years.

This year's Cheez-It 355 at The Glen, which received a boost from a new Chase For the Sprint Cup format, was no exception. The event has received some high praise from journalists as the 2014 season recaps are beginning to show up.

AJ Allmendinger scored a popular first victory for himself and the JTG Daugherty Racing team after a riveting side-by-side duel with Marcos Ambrose over the final three laps.

NBCSports.com's Chris Estrada rated the Glen event as the Best Race of the Year in a post on MotorSportsTalk, where he has written since its inception in 2013.

His NBCSports.com colleague and a 30-year veteran NASCAR reporter, Jerry Bonkowski, chose the Cheez-It 355 at The Glen a "close second" to his top pick, the Daytona 500.

Watkins Glen and with Sonoma Raceway in California are the only two road courses on the 36-race Sprint Cup schedule. The road races, considered an unnecessary nuisance to some drivers a few decades ago, have grown to be very popular with drivers and fans alike.

The races have developed into some of the most exciting of the season. That is because of improvements in the drivers' road race skills and advancements to the Sprint Cup cars that make them just as capable to drive on the high banks of Daytona as they are in racing up through the right-left-right turns of the Glen's Esses.

The Glen's fast, 11-turn, 2.45-mile layout seems to be ideally suited to both car and driver at NASCAR's top levels. As a result, Watkins Glen's Sprint Cup race has been singled out by many racing insiders, including NASCAR, when it comes to year-end accolades over the past three years.

From this year forward, the Glen race has also taken on added importance after a change in NASCAR's 10-race playoff, the Chase for the Sprint Cup. A greater emphasis was placed on winning to qualify for the Chase.

With five races remaining in the regular season, the Cheez-It 355 at The Glen became a wild-card opportunity, especially for drivers with strong road-race backgrounds. Allmendinger, with his small one-car team, earned an improbable berth into NASCAR's postseason with his win.

Estrada cited the exciting finish and Allmendinger's comeback story, from a drug suspension in 2013, as helping to provide a measure of solace to the off-track tragedy that preceded the race the night before. That was when five-time Glen race winner Tony Stewart was involved in an incident in which sprint car driver Kevin Ward Jr. was killed after he was struck on the track by Stewart's car at Canandaigua Motorsports Park.

Estrada said, "One day after the horrible events involving Tony Stewart and Kevin Ward Jr., a pivotal wild card race to make the Chase took on a somber dimension. But in the end, we all got an uplift from a thrilling battle in the closing laps at The Glen."

Bonkowski cited the rain-shortened Daytona 500 not for its finish, but what Dale Earnhardt Jr's win did for Junior Nation, saying it "was one that race fans won't soon forget."

For the Glen race, Bonkowski said the strong point was Allmendinger's "neck-and-neck battle" with Ambrose.

Candor racer honored

For the fourth time in the past five years, Jimmy Zacharias of Candor is heading to the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Awards Banquet.

The third-generation driver earned his second consecutive Sunoco Modified track championship at Chemung Speedrome in 2014. His younger brother, TJ, is the only other Speedrome champion in the track's top division since 2010.

Zacharias will be recognized alongside champions from each of the 58 NASCAR-sanctioned tracks at the banquet on Friday in the Charlotte (N.C.) Convention Center at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 23-year-old Zacharias won six of 15 Sunoco Modified division races at the Speedrome in 2014. He had 13 top-five and 15 top-10 finishes and was ranked 148th among the top 500 NASCAR weekly racing drivers in the country.

Drivers who compete in more races have a better chance of finishing higher nationally, like this year's overall champion, Anthony Anders. Anders scored 30 wins in 51 starts between South Carolina tracks Greenville Pickens and Anderson Motor Speedway.

Last year, Zacharias was an eight-race winner in 17 starts and was the New York state NASCAR champion. He was ranked 20th nationally.

Ron Levanduski is a sports writer. He can be reached by email at rlevanduski@stargazette.com and followed on Twitter @SGRLevanduski.