Saturday, May 03, 2008
Clint Bowyer Wins Richmond?! In a Wild, Wild Finish to What looked like a Denny Hamlin Runaway
Clint Bowyer celebrates an unexpected Richmond 400 victory Saturday night with a big burnout in Gil Martin’s Chevy
(Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
RICHMOND, Va.
Denny Hamlin had the car beat but got beat by a flat tire late.
And Kyle Busch may be the best racer in NASCAR, but he’s clearly not the most popular, and Saturday night he wound up in a controversial finish with stock car racing’s most popular – Dale Earnhardt Jr. – in an innocent mistake, but one that certainly won’t set well with Junior Nation.
The Busch-Earnhardt crash opened the door for Clint Bowyer to pull off a totally unexpected victory in the Crown Royal 400. “The fastest car doesn’t always win, and we weren’t the fastest car, but you have to be there to take advantage,” Bowyer said. “Richard (Childress, his car owner) kept saying ‘It’s going to happen, it’s going to happen,’ and it did.
“Those guys were really going at it. I told the cops who were escorting me in here that they ought to over there escorting Kyle.”
“He won by being there,” Childress said, beaming about Bowyer. “Clint just drove his butt off up through the field.”
“A lot of people may say we backed into that win, but we started 31st and had to charge up there, and we had to be there to capitalize on the opportunity, and Clint did, and we did,” crew chief Gil Martin said. “Things happen.”
Clint Bowyer was the last man standing in Saturday’s Richmond 400 bruiser
(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
The race was terribly boring for most of the night, Hamlin was so much better than everyone else.
However a slow-leaking flat tire in the final minutes doomed Hamlin after a dominating performance for nearly 3-1/2 hours. Hamlin led 366 laps of the scheduled 400, which went 10 laps overtime.
Hamlin’s tire finally blew with 10 laps to go, with 16 cars still on the lead lap. Hamlin stopped his car on the track, forcing NASCAR to throw a yellow; NASCAR responded by penalizing Hamlin two laps. Was that a move to give Busch, his teammate, then running second to Earnhardt, a shot at the win, or was it just that Hamlin couldn’t turn the wheel with that flat tire?
Whichever, on the restart with five to go, the race was between Earnhardt and Busch…with Earnhardt fighting to snap the longest drought of his NASCAR career, now longer than two years.
And in those final moments it was classic Saturday night short-track racing under the lights – and Busch wound up a villain after a collision with Earnhardt during a feisty battle for the win in the final miles, a collision that did not set well with the sellout crowd.
“We just took advantage of that misfortune at the end,” Bowyer said after his second career win on the Sprint Cup tour.
Clint Bowyer Stuns Everyone!
(Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Busch, who wound up second, and takes over the Sprint Cup championship lead, was apologetic about his incident; Earnhardt was dejected.
“I was up under Dale, and Junior and I raced hard into three,” Busch said. “It looked like he came down a little bit. But it was just good hard racing.
“I apologized to those guys.
“Everyone is driving around the track scared to death of wrecking Dale Earnhardt Jr. But to say I took a win away from him, well, that’s hard to say that. I hate it happened; we just didn’t give each other enough room getting into three. I didn’t think my car got loose; we just bumped, and when I corrected, he was gone.
“I probably could have gone down a little lower, and he could probably have gone up a little bit.”
Earnhardt: “I haven’t seen the replay, but Tony (Eury) Jr. (his crew chief) said it looked like Kyle got loose under me. And that happens.
“I wasn’t good on the bottom, so I moved up. And Kyle was good on the bottom.
“He got a great run on me off one and two but gave me plenty of room. So it wasn’t intentional, because he could have just run me into the fence off two.
“I’ve done that before. It happens when you get loose under somebody.
“We’d raced each other earlier and had no problems.
“The worst part about it is I’ve prided myself all season on running good. And I’ve been working for a win. And I ran hard and got wrecked. Had a top-three car and should have finished in the top-three.
“I was going for the win….just ended up on the hook.
“Whether it was fair or not, he’s going to need some extra security, we all are.”
Earnhardt of course is the man who was hired by car owner Rick Hendrick to replace Busch this season. And that has been a bone of contention, under the surface. But Busch has won seven NASCAR events this season with his new team owners, the Gibbs, while Earnhardt is still winless with Hendrick.
Whether any of that was at play last night, probably not. But Busch did point out two run-ins last fall with Earnhardt: “Last year we got wrecked twice, and that took us out of the championship.”
After the race, one of Earnhardt’s crewmen – the same crew that worked for Busch last season – confronted Busch on TV. “That he came down to confront me and ask ‘why did you did it?’ that was simple insane,” Busch said.
“It’s just an unfortunate situation: It’s unfortunate he didn’t get a win, and it’s unfortunate that I have to put up with it.”
That was not the night’s only controversy. Michael Waltrip was parked by NASCAR late in the race after he ran into Casey Mears.
The race was marred by 11 cautions, for 62 laps
Carl Edwards, who finished seventh, said he was surprised he managed to recover from an early crash: “It ended up a lot better than I thought it was going to. That wreck on the backstraight was terrible.
That 11-car accident, on lap 231, not only left Edwards with a damaged car but also Jimmie Johnson, who swept both events here last season at Richmond International Raceway but who had little punch in this 400.
“I think we had a car that could compete for the win,” Edwards said, “but to come back from that to finish seventh was great.
“The reason it was so wild is the tire is real slippery. It’s real hard to drive, first of all, and everyone is so competitive, and all the cars are so close that’s it’s just really, really ultra-competitive.
“It’s fun…it just makes the room for error virtually nil.
“I had to really, really focus. To me, that’s a really fun way to race. I like the new car (he’s won three times this season already). The harder the tires, the better….but with that are going to come wrecks, because it’s just a little harder to drive.”
In the day’s news:
—There has been no official word from either side, but it is becoming increasingly likely that Tony Stewart will indeed leave car owners Joe and J. D. Gibbs at the end of this season, to start up his own team, under the Rick Hendrick Chevrolet umbrella, possibly with Bass Pro Shops as his sponsor. If Stewart does depart, that would leave the Gibbs looking for a new driver. Joey Logano’s chances of getting the nod? Sunday’s Carolina 500 at Rockingham Speedway could offer clues. Logano is to start from the pole, and he could lap the field.
—Target, according to sources, may be reconsidering its NASCAR sponsorship. Target has been sponsoring Dodge owner Chip Ganassi for several years, though still without a major win.
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Richard Childress’ crew and crew chief Gil Martin high-five Clint Bowyer’s Richmond 400 win
(Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)
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