In a rain-filled race day fit only for the ducks, so much so that the race was postponed from Sunday to Monday, here is what else was surprising and not surprising from the 18th Annual Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Surprising: He may have finished second in the race, but Jeff Gordon achieved the top spot in the point standings, a position that he surprisingly has not held since 2009.
And with his runner up status, the consistent driver of the No. 24 No. 24 Axalta/Texas A&M School of Engineering Chevrolet scored his 12th top-10 finish at Texas and his fifth top-10 finish for the season.
“It was a great second‑place finish for me,” Gordon said. “I knew it was going to be hard to hold those guys off.”
“Looked out my mirror, those guys were racing hard behind me,” Gordon continued. “At that point I was thinking, I just want to finish.”
“I feel very fortunate to have finished second.”
Not Surprising: It was after all the Duck Commander 500 race, so it was not at all surprising for the seventh winner in seven races to capitalize on that duck theme.
“Obviously these wins are so important this year to get into the Chase and to have both Team Penske cars with a win already is big, so we feel good about that,” Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford, said after celebrating his first victory of the season. “You kind of start getting your ducks in a row for Chase time and making sure you get everything ready for then.”
“You feel a little bit more comfortable now that we have won than what we would have been.”
This was Logano’s first ever win at Texas Motor Speedway and he also became the youngest winner in TMS history at the tender age of 23 years, 10 months and 14 days.
Surprising: Brian Vickers had a surprisingly good run, in fact the best of his season in fourth place. The driver of the No. 55 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota also climbed four places in the point standings to crack the top-10 in points, currently sitting in the ninth position, 54 points behind leader Jeff Gordon.
“Really proud of everyone on this Aaron’s Dream Machine team,” Vickers said. “Just really proud of the effort. We probably didn’t have a car to win, but we made the most of it.”
“We’ll learn from this and we’ll move on to the next race and we gave it our best there at the end.”
Not Surprising: The ‘Kyle and Kyle’ show continued its run at Texas, with Kyle Busch battling young Rookie of the Year contender Kyle Larson yet again for a top-five finish.
Busch, who scored third place in his No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota, posted his eighth top-10 finish in 18 races at Texas while Larson, behind the wheel of his No. 42 Target Chevrolet, finished fifth as the highest finishing ROTY candidate.
“It was a good afternoon for us,” Busch said. “Just drove the hell out of it there those last two laps and got all she could and come home third. Good, deserving finish for us here today.”
“We were really good today, pretty much good from the start,” Larson said. “Our Target Chevy was average on a short run, but long runs I thought we probably had the best car.”
“Just kept sticking with it, got it better and better each run,” Larson continued. “Put ourselves in position there on that last restart to get a good finish.”
Surprising: Two drivers were surprisingly up in smoke early in the race, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. hitting the grass and exploding in flames on lap 13 while Kevin Harvick’s engine expired in a huge puff of smoke just 27 laps into the race.
“Something happened with the engine right after that restart,” Harvick said. “The Jimmy John’s Chevrolet was really fast.”
“It’s frustrating. I don’t know what else I can say,” Harvick continued. “I didn’t get any indication that anything was going wrong.”
“We’ll take it back to the shop and figure out what happened. But that’s a disappointing end to the day.”
Earnhardt Jr.’s day also ended up in flames and smoke but for a very different reason.
“Just didn’t see the grass. Didn’t know the grass was down there,” Junior said. “With the way the A-post is on these cars you can’t really see that good to that angle. I just didn’t have a good visual of where the apron and the grass was and got down in there pretty good.”
“You can’t run through there the way they have these cars on the ground like that,” the driver of the No. 88 National Guard Chevrolet said. “Just a mistake on my part. I just didn’t know I was that close to the grass, and made a mistake.”
Not Surprising: With rain in the air and the track changing throughout the race day, it was not surprising that gremlins in the flaps and hoods reared their ugly heads. In fact, because of the force of air from the jet dryers, at least four cars had hood flaps popping up, including the cars of Brad Keselowski, Ryan Newman, Danica Patrick and Justin Allgaier.
“I was definitely wondering what happened,” the driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford said on seeing his hood flap pop up. “I knew it was the jet dryer that caused it, but it was one of those freak deals.”
Surprising: As much as the race fans wanted to see the sun, it was surprisingly not Tony Stewart’s friend as his car fared better in the gloomier conditions.
“We had a really good racecar for what the track conditions were most of this weekend,” the driver of the No. 14 Mobil 1/Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet said. “I think we showed that with getting the pole on Saturday and then leading all those laps at the first part of the race.”
“But the track changed a lot and the setup we had didn’t really change with it.”
In spite of handling struggles late in the race, Smoke led 74 laps and did manage to finish top-10 for the day, advancing one position up in points to fourteenth.
Not Surprising: Along with his heavy heart on the untimely death of his brother-in-law due to a sky-diving accident, Jimmie Johnson had heavy damage to match, unfortunately being the recipient of the mud and debris from his teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s foray into the grass and wall.
Johnson finished the race with a disappointing 25th place run in his No. 48 Lowe’s Spring is Calling Chevrolet.
“It’s kind of surreal what happened,” the six-time champion said. “Junior hit the grass there and something off his car like a splitter or something just destroyed my windshield and then something hit the nose of the car too.”
“We were in a good position and were running decent lap times when the right rear blew,” Johnson continued. “It was a day of bad luck. We had a fast race car, so there was a little silk lining in it, but it was a terrible finish.”
Surprising: The third time was not a charm for Kurt Busch, previous race winner at Martinsville, who suffered not one, not two, but three tire failures in the Duck Commander 500 and finished 39th.
“That was a very disappointing day after having a fast Haas Automation Chevrolet all weekend,” Daniel Knost, Busch’s crew chief, said. “We brought out a backup car after a wreck early in the weekend due to a tire issue.”
“We took a little too aggressive setup today, and it cost us,” Knost continued. “I hate that we had a day like this, but we’ll continue to learn and get better each week.”
Not Surprising: While Aric Almirola and his Eckrich sponsor granted wishes for a local veteran injured in Afghanistan, the driver of the No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford, had his own wish for improvement in his point standings come true as well.
“The car was loose all day,” Almirola said. “Our intermediate track program is still not where we want it to be, but this was a good improvement.”
“We hung in the Top-15 all day, and hopefully, a 12th-place finish will help us in the points.”
Almirola and his team indeed moved up four spots in the points standings to 22nd as he and his fellow Cup compatriots head into the night race this upcoming weekend at Darlington Raceway.
