Posts Tagged ‘NASCAR’

Denny Hamlin won the rain delayed NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Goody’s Fast Pain Relief at Martinsville Speedway.

Denny Hamlin, whose team made a questionable late-race pit decision, turned in some of the best driving of the season over the final two laps and won Monday’s Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.

The race ended with a green-white-checkered finish thanks to tight three-wide racing and contact that sent Kyle Busch into the outside wall with a lap to go in regulation.

Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman led the dash to the race’s final green flag. Hamlin, who had given up the lead to pit for four tires with nine laps remaining, stormed from fourth place to challenge for the lead almost immediately.

When Gordon got a bump from Matt Kenseth getting him loose into turn one on the restart, Kenseth slipped inside to push to the lead down the backstretch. But Kenseth’s momentum and a tap from Gordon carried him high in turn three and into the wall, and Hamlin was there to inherit the lead.

He stayed out front over the final lap to win for the first time since last season’s closing race at Homestead, Fla.

Hamlin and Kyle Busch were the only leaders to pit for tires with nine to go, leaving Gordon in the lead. When the green flag fell with four to go, Hamlin was ninth. He moved up to fourth quickly and then to first on the green-white-checkered.

“I can’t believe it,” Hamlin said. “I thought it was the end. That’s for all the people who doubt us. We’re still going to get this done before the year is over with.

“I had to bully my way through there near the end, but everybody was running like that. I somehow made it work.”

Hamlin was supposed to be undergoing surgery Monday.

Hamlin injured his left knee while playing basketball in January, and he had been scheduled to have reconstructive surgery Monday in Charlotte, N.C. When rain postponed Sunday’s race to Monday, the surgery was rescheduled for Wednesday.

Gordon, who finished third behind Hamlin teammate Joey Logano, was searching for his first win since April of last year at Texas Motor Speedway.

Gordon was pushing toward the win when Kyle Busch, racing three wide with Marcos Ambrose and Paul Menard, made contact with Menard and hit the outside wall, sparking caution as the leaders eyed the white flag.

“The real unfortunate part was that the yellow came out then,” Gordon said. “We had the thing wrapped up. On the last restart, I didn’t get a great start, but it was pretty decent. I drove into one trying to not overcook it. He (Kenseth) drove into the back of me so hard, but I made sure he wasn’t going to win the race after that.”

Hamlin survived a parade of caution flags, tire failures and typical short-track bump-and-thump racing.

Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Jeff Burton and Gordon had significant runs at the front, but Hamlin was the day’s top gun.

Hamlin and Burton battled over the final hundred laps as rain threatened to end the race early.

Burton lost his shot at a win with 18 laps to go when the right-front tire on his Chevrolet started losing pressure.
Burton eventually tapped the outside wall, causing the caution with nine laps to go.

Hamlin, then leading, surprised virtually everyone by giving up first place and pitting for four tires. In the end, the gamble worked.

Harvick had brake problems early in the race and gave up the seasonal point lead to Jimmie Johnson. Harvick fell to fourth.

Mike Hembree:
From Speed TV contributed to this report

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500- MARTINSVILLE

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For the second straight time Kevin Harvick won in the Truck series Saturday, dominating the Kroger 250 at Martinsville Speedway. He led 187 of the 250 laps.

Ron Hornaday Jr. survived a late-race altercation – and a post-race altercation – with Johnny Sauter to finish second and give Kevin Harvick Inc. a sweep of the first two spots. Brian Ickler, driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports, took third.

Hornaday sent Sauter into a spin as they battled for position 27 laps from the finish, and Sauter marched with intensity to confront Hornaday on pit road after the race, shoving a couple of crewmen who attempted to intervene.

Sauter yelled at Hornaday for about a minute as NASCAR officials and crewmen watched.

Also upset with Hornaday was Mike Skinner, whose truck was damaged when he slammed into the sliding Sauter. Skinner blamed Hornaday for the crash.

“I hate to see that,” Hornaday said of Sauter’s slide. “Johnny’s all mad, but that’s what short track racing is all about. He came down on me and I got into him.”

Asked if he planned to talk to Sauter later, Hornaday said, “There’s no talking to Johnny.”

Sauter would not discuss the incident after the race.

Timothy Peters, who finished fourth, led 39 laps in the middle of the race but couldn’t hold off Harvick.

“I pushed him as hard as I could to make him run hard,” Harvick said. “His truck would fall off after 15 to 20 laps. He started to get loose, and I got underneath him.”

It was a typical hard-knuckles afternoon of racing at Martinsville, with numerous trucks spinning out and the caution flag flying 11 times for 66 laps.

Narain Karthikeyan, a driver from India who formerly raced in Formula One, had an impressive debut in his first NASCAR major-series race, finishing 13th on the lead lap.

Mike Hembree at Speed Tv contributed to this report

RESULTS: KROGER 250- MARTINSVILLE

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Charlotte Motor Speedway will host two days of testing this week, which will be very important to the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

There will be two full days of testing Tuesday and Wednesday at Charlotte Motor Speedway to see how Sprint Cup cars behave with a rear blade spoiler instead of a wing at a fast, 1.5-mile track.

Sunday’s Food City 500 was the last race for the rear wing, which had been a on the new generation Sprint Cup cars since they rolled out in March 2007. But the wings never caught on with the fans and so earlier this year, NASCAR decided to revert back to the old-fashioned rear blade spoiler.

The new spoiler will be used for the first time Sunday at Martinsville Speedway and remain in use for the foreseeable future.

And with 16 of 36 races on the 2010 Cup scheduled on intermediate tracks between 1.3 and 2 miles in length, the Charlotte test will be very important.

“It’s been quite some time since we’ve had a test of this magnitude at any race track,” said NASCAR Vice President For Competition Robin Pemberton. “I think the teams will be working hard.”

The teams are curious about the effect of the spoiler and the Charlotte test should give them some insight about what to expect.

“Until we go out there and race, I don’t know,” said four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon when asked what he thought the impact

of the spoiler would be. “In the wind tunnel it’s not that big of a difference, but it might be huge in the racing aspect of it; I don’t know. We’ve never had a spoiler on this car, so you don’t know if this car is punching a big hole because of the greenhouse and the rear bumper, or just how it moves air over it, or if it’s the wing.”

Gordon’s teammate Jimmie Johnson agreed.

“Until we get out there and really have someone to chase and some lap times and can get in traffic and figure out what’s going on, I think we’re all on equal ground and hoping we have what we need,” said Johnson, the four-time defending series champ. “But nobody has a clear advantage at this point so it’s going to be different. The wing was put on the car to help with downforce for the cars behind. It was less sensitive to the pitch and attitude of the car and made the car more friendly. So with that stuff in mind, I’m assuming the car is going to be a bit more of a handful in certain situations. And we need to put the car in those situations to understand how to get that balance right.”

Kevin Harvick, the current Sprint Cup points leader, said no matter how much testing teams do, they won’t know exactly what they have until they race.

“I think the test is important but you still aren’t going to be racing around people (at the Charlotte test),” said Harvick. “I mean, you are going to be on the track at the same time, but there is just a difference between race conditions and how everything reacts in traffic. I mean, we all think we know how it is going to react, but you never know until they drop the green flag and you are side-by-side and have to pit.

“At Charlotte, are you going to do a 50-lap run? Probably not, I’m not,” Harvick said. “You have to do those things in the race. Are you going to have tire trouble? I don’t know. Do we have too much front down force in traffic? Do we have enough down force? There are just so many questions that have got to be answered.”

Speed Tv contributed to this report.

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Jimmie Johnson scored his 50th Sprint Cup victory of his driving career making his way to the front late to win the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Johnson led the final six laps after taking the lead from Tony Stewart.

The final 10 laps of the race were run under green. During the last caution period, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Stewart pitted for two tires; Kurt Busch and Johnson took four.

The four-tire cars were clearly stronger. Johnson sprinted from sixth to first in only three laps and beat Stewart to the finish by .895 of a second.

“We have worked so hard for this,” Johnson, a winner at Bristol Motor Speedway for the first time, said in victory lane. “I thought we were in trouble. But the four tires were everything.”

Kurt Busch finishing third after leading 278 laps was clearly dissapointed were he finished. On the final restart, he was bottled up behind two tire traffic and didn’t get a shot to challenge for first.

“We were solid all day,” Busch said. “We just got beat by the luck of the draw on the restarts. It’s luck on which lane is going to go. I thought we had them beat. I’d rather lose to any of the other 41 teams but that 48 team.

“I feel exhausted. I feel disappointed.”

With the win, his third in five races this season, Johnson tied Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett at 50 career wins. They are at 10th on the all time list.

Busch had a one second lead over Johnson with 18 laps to go when debris in the fourth turn caused the race’s last caution, putting teams in the difficult position of deciding between two tires and four.

Clouds framed the racetrack virtually all day, and brief rain showers forced a pair of caution flags.

A green flag on lap 412 ended the second rain caution and produced a brief battle for the lead between Penske Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Busch.

The race stage was scrambled on lap 343 when contact between former teammates Greg Biffle and Mark Martin sparked a 13 car wreck in turn three.

Racing in the top five, Martin tapped Biffle, causing both cars to slow. That created an accordion effect behind them not unusual thing at Bristol, and several other lead group cars piled into the melee. Among those impacted were Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Juan Pablo Montoya and Edwards.

The contact ruined a strong performance by Martin, who later returned to the track 91 laps down.

Montoya’s car had been particularly strong all afternoon, and he appeared to be on his way to challenging for his first NASCAR oval-track victory. Instead, he limped around in mid-pack with right-front damage and finished 26th.

Among those Dale Earnhardt Jr. was caught speeding, dropping him from the top five to the rear of the field after the seventh caution. It turned out to be a positive penalty for Earnhardt Jr., who possibly would have been a part of the 13 car wreck on lap 343 if he had been close to the front. He finished seventh.

The race, the fifth of the Sprint Cup season, developed in front of a crowd estimated at 120,000, the first time in 56 races BMS has failed to produce a sellout.

Race Day Notables:

Roush Fenway Racing:

Greg Biffle finished fourth; Matt Kenseth was fifth and Carl Edwards sixth for the organization in one of its best overall efforts of the season. Biffle led five times for 78 laps to boot.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.:

After working his way all the way up to fifth, Earnhardt Jr. was flagged for speeding on pit road on lap 326. As a result, he restarted the race 26th, but settled down and drove his way back to a solid seventh-place finish. The result gained him five spots in the point standings, where he’s now eighth.

Jamie McMurray:

After winning the Daytona 500, the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver finished 17th, 34th and 29th in the next three races. His eighth-place run at Bristol seemed to signal that the team has gotten its game back.

Kyle Busch:

Horrible in practice, just as bad in qualifying, and contact with the wall during the race seemed to just about sum up the weekend for Busch, who won both Cup races here last year. But somehow, the team rallied and Busch worked his way back into the top 10 late in the race to score a hard-earned ninth-place finish.

Speed Tv contributed to this report.

RESULTS: Food City 500 – BRISTOL

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Justin Allgaier was able to hold off his teammate Brad Keselowski in the closing laps of the Scott’s Turf Builder 300 to get his very first Nascar Nationwide win at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Keselowski, the pole-sitter who led 73 laps, finished second to give team owner Roger Penske his first 1-2 finish in the Nationwide Series.

It was a great day for Penske Racing Nationwide program. Allgaier took to the lead on a restart with 27 laps to go and stayed in front the rest of the way to get his first series victory.

“I’m happy for Justin,” Keselowski said. “There’s nothing like a first-time winner in NASCAR.”

Keselowski could have used the famous Bristol bump and run on Allgaier to take the lead towards the end of the race but chose not to. I think mainly because they’re teammates, and they are both are up top of the Nationwide Series points.

“On the restart there he ran me up pretty high, but I really had no room to be angry at him because I wrecked him here before,” Keselowski said. “I lifted and let him in. I thought I had a shot at getting it back, but I didn’t catch the right breaks as far as lapped traffic.

“I erred on the side of caution. The last thing I need is to wreck either one of us. It’s still a relatively new program. That’s the last thing we need.”

Allgaier called the win “unbelievable. That battle with Brad was awesome. I couldn’t be happier to see two Penske cars up there running for the win.”

Although Keselowski, chose not to push Allgaier from the lead in the final laps Saturday, Kevin Harvick had other thoughts in the fight for fifth place. Harvick pushed Joey Logano’s car in the left rear in the final turn on the final lap, sending Logano into the wall and dropping him from fourth to 14th.

“He kept chopping me and chopping me,” said Harvick, who had tried to pass Logano for a long series of laps. “I got into him a little bit. I hate that it happened. You got to do what you got to do.”

Logano clearly upset with the contact with Harvick stomped off after the race without comment.

On lap 91, contact between Scott Wimmer and Brian Scott resulted in a spin by Colin Braun, and Braun’s car was slammed in the rear by the following car of Steve Wallace. The impact shot Braun’s car into the air, and Wallace’s car came to a stop partially underneath it as fire erupted. There were no injuries.

A few laps later, James Buescher tapped Trevor Bayne’s car in the second turn, and both cars slid through the turn. Coleman Pressley spun out as

he slowed behind them.

Kyle Busch led 59 laps and finished third. Edwards came home fourth and retained the series points lead by 26 points over Keselowski. Allgaier is third in the standings, 31 points behind Edwards.

Speed Tv contributed to this report.

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