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Auto Racing
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Jimmie Johnson makes it two-in-a-row by winning Richmond, after Kyle Busch crashes
Tony Stewart (20) and Jimmie Johnson gave the 110,000 fans a heck of a show the final 40 laps at Richmond (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)
By Mike Mulhern
RICHMOND, Va.
Chevy’s Jimmie Johnson kept soon-to-be teammate Tony Stewart winless yet another week, with Sunday’s tense victory in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400, and Clint Bowyer hung on to take the 12th and final playoff spot for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup championship, which opens this week at Loudon, N.H.
“I was thinking ‘Hey, it’s Tony Stewart, and he’s winless, and I’m in the Lowe’s car and he’s in the Home Depot car….but he’s going to be our teammate next year,” Johnson said after his fourth win of the year, and his second straight, by just a couple of car lengths.
Peaking at just the right point in the season? “It’s hard not to feel that way,” a clearly jubilant Johnson said after his run in front of a crowd of 110,000 at Richmond International Raceway. “This team is ready for this championship chase.”
But for teammate Jeff Gordon it was yet another disappointing afternoon, and he too remains winless heading into the final 10 events of the season. Gordon was never a factor in the race, but at least he’s still in the playoffs.
“We had a great car, which we haven’t had enough this year,” Stewart said. “We just couldn’t get by him. We raced him clean. I wanted to race him with respect, the way he would me, and we just came up short.
“That’s probably one of the greatest races I think I’ve ever had here.”
(Left to Right - Back to Front) The Top 12 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, pose on stage after making the chase for the Sprint Cup following the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chevy Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway on September 7, 2008 in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images)
So the top-12 for the first event of the 10-race chase: Kyle Busch (who crashed Sunday while dueling for the lead with Dale Earnhardt Jr.), Carl Edwards, Earnhardt, Johnson, Jeff Burton, Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Greg Biffle, Denny Hamlin, Gordon, Matt Kenseth and Bowyer.
That’s three Toyota teams, six Chevy teams, and three Ford teams. Dodge is shut out.
The Sprint Cup standings for the start of the chase will be essentially ‘re-zeroed,’ to put all 12 in the hunt The new standings: Busch with 5,080 points, followed by Edwards (5,050), Johnson (5,040), Earnhardt (5,010), Bowyer (5,010), Hamlin (5,010), Burton (5,010), Stewart (5,000), Biffle (5,000), Gordon (5,000), Harvick (5,000) and Kenseth (5,000). Regular season winners get a 10-point bonus; Edwards was docked 10 points for failing post-race inspection after winning at Las Vegas.
Johnson hung near the front much of the race but didn’t get to the lead until lap 367 of the 400, which was slowed 14 times for cautions.
Busch and Edwards have dominated the season but both were involved in incidents Sunday that took them out of contention.
Bowyer held off David Ragan and Kasey Kahne for the final playoff spot.
“It’s been a rough summer, and a lot of things have happened within our team and our organization to get everyone distracted, but we’ve hung together,” Bowyer said after finishing 12th in the 3-1/2-hour event.
Jimmie Johnson does another burnout, after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chevy Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway on September 7, 2008 in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Ragan lost his playoff bid when he and teammate Matt Kenseth slid in some oil or grease on the track and tangled on lap 122. “A freak incident,” Ragan, 32nd, said. “Thought I had a tire going down.
“But after that the car just started going downhill. So it was just a long frustrating day, back there in the pack.”
Kahne’s disappointment was also a Dodge disappointment, and that marque will now be on the sidelines for the 10-race playoffs. Kahne, finishing 19th , said he had a rough day in the pits, where he had trouble dealing with nearby Jack Roush teams. Did Roush drivers intentionally try to block Kahne on pit road? “It’s hard to say,” Kahne said. “They made it tough on me.”
Jimmie Johnson, with 37 tour wins now, is quite adept at celebrating with champagne (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Busch got the worst of it in a tussle with Earnhardt while dueling for the lead midway through the race. Busch was leading and Earnhardt was making a move to the inside. They tangled, and Busch slid backwards into the wall. His car wasn’t badly damaged but he never got back into contention. Earnhardt got out of it unscathed and finished fourth.
“All I know is I got hit in the left-rear quarterpanel,” Busch said. “Was that revenge? (For an incident in the spring here). Who knows.
“I knew he was on my quarterpanel. But I was trying to leave enough room.
“We got tore up a little bit there, but nothing we could help with. We had to continue on, soldier on. The guys dug in there and got this thing repaired to where we could somewhat drive it.
“But it was hard to drive those last 200 laps.”
Revenge? “No…but it certainly is ironic,” Earnhardt said.
“We was racing hard, and I felt I was a little quicker. I was on the bottom tight, and I knew I couldn’t get by him like that, so I moved up the track a little.
“It was an accident…
“If I wreck somebody, I’m not going to leave ‘em in good enough shape to come back and get me later. I’ve never wrecked anybody on purpose.…well, I can remember a few times. But when I do it, I do it really, really good.
“He might have come down a little. But I had plenty of room.
“This is the deal—it’s the guy on the inside who has the responsibility to keep off the guy on the outside. It’s not his job to move out of my lap, even if I am on his quarterpanel.”
Edwards cut a tire, which put him behind, and he couldn’t rally. “This was a good example of how our team could work with a little bit of adversity, and under pressure,” Edwards said.
Edwards pointed out that Sunday’s race was somewhat topsy-turvy, and perhaps a hint that the championship chase won’t be cut-and-dried: “You look at how Tony ran, and Kevin (7th), and Jeff Burton (6th)…and a flat tire for me, and Kyle getting caught up in a wreck…..
“Anything can happen. A couple of races like this, and it could be a whole new field of people who weren’t predicted to be up front.
“I think the championship is going to be defined by your bad days…just like it usually is.”
Gordon says he’s just glad to still have a shot at a fifth title: “I’ve had big leads and seen that go away in the chase….now I’m on the flip side of it….and now we at least have a shot.”
Hamlin has clearly rallied after a bum summer: “Three thirds in a row, after that problem at Michigan. We have the momentum I feel we need. It’s a way to start off the chase on a good foot, by having these strong finishes.
“After Michigan we all knew we needed to be smarter with our decisions.”
Kenseth certainly can’t say that, and didn’t, after running 39th: “That’s one of the worst races I probably could have drove. So it was very frustrating and very disappointing.
“I’m glad we’re in the chase….but the way we’re operating I don’t think we’ll be a factor. We’ve just got to get rolling.
“None of our cars (on the five-man Jack Roush team) was very fast. We really missed it on the short-track stuff for some reason.
“When David spun, I think there was some oil up there. If he wouldn’t have spun, it would have been a different day. We weren’t that good, and we weren’t going to run with the leaders, but it was probably a top-15 car.”
Jimmie Johnson crosses the finish line to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chevy Rock & Roll 400 (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)
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