Texas in the Rear-View

It’s time to put a nice little bow on everything that happened in the Lonestar State.

I’ll just say up front that the AAA Texas 500 wasn’t a good race, but I’ve long since given up hope of ever seeing a good race at Texas Motor Speedway. So it played out exactly as I expected and after the last three weeks, I have no problem with a controversy-light race.

Here’s what I thought were the biggest stories of yesterday’s race.

In my preview of the race, I said that Jimmie Johnson would win this race. While not the dominant drives we’ve seen the last few years at Texas, it was still a win.

Speaking to the media after the race, he said that it was “a big day for the Lowe’s race team. Summer didn’t go as we wanted. There were some good races in there, but no trips to Victory Lane. To start the Chase, we had two good races, then Dover happened. From that point on, we had to swallow that pill, and certainly disappointed that the hopes for the championship were gone.”

Johnson also stated that he wished that his team “were in the Chase, still fighting for the championship. But getting a win here does a lot for everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. Couple that with Jeff’s win last weekend, his hopes to go to Homestead and become the champion, we definitely have a very excited 600 plus employees back in Charlotte, North Carolina. Good stuff.”

With this win being his 75th career victory, Johnson is now one victory away from tying Dale Earnhardt for seventh on NASCAR’s all-time wins list. While five other drivers had finished ahead of the late driver of the No. 3 car, only Jeff Gordon has surpassed it since Earnhardt’s last career win.

Now for those of you who are new to NASCAR, that win was a big deal for Gordon and not just because it moved him up the NASCAR wins list. When he came into the sport in 1993, Earnhardt was toward the tail-end of his career. Gordon was this upstart kid with the mullet and mustache who was coming off a fourth-place finish in the points in the ’92 XFINITY Series season.

Over the next eight years, he and The Intimidator became dear friends, business partners and competitive rivals. After Gordon was tearing up following his first career win in the 1994 Coca-Cola 600, Earnhardt allegedly went to Gordon’s house the next day and made it clear to him that he can’t be crying every time he wins a race. As Gordon began succeeding at the expense of Earnhardt, the fans began to turn on the new guy (especially in the South).

Fast forward to 2007, Gordon wins his 76th race at Phoenix International Raceway. A crew member hands him a No. 3 flag that Gordon held while doing a victory lap of the circuit.

While Johnson never raced against The Intimidator, he said that tying and moving past him on the wins list “would be huge. Hard to even put it into words. I came into this sport hoping to win a race. To have 75 of them is mind-blowing. If I’m able to tie Senior, it’s something I would be just extremely proud of.”

Speaking of Gordon, he was asked about his favorite memory of racing against his car owner/mentor/teammate of the last 13 years. He said it was “the championship battle we raced for in ’08 (it was actually ’07) comes to mind. I guess a particular race, it’s somewhere in that area, as well. Raced him for the win at Martinsville. He was trying to move me out of the way the last lap. We were door-to-door to the finish line at Martinsville. It would be between those two thoughts, memories.”

One last note about Johnson comes from the NASCAR America Post-Race Show. He was talking about Gordon receiving two Shetland ponies for his kids from Texas Motor Speedway general manager Eddie Gossage. He said he wished NBCSN didn’t show the footage again because his kids were probably watching at that moment and would beg daddy to get them ponies too. He then said that it’s a good thing “Jeff lives near us so we can go visit him and his new ponies.”

Next we move to Brad Keselowski who led 312 of the 334 laps and finished runner-up. That’s a new NASCAR record for the most laps ever led in a race and that driver didn’t win the race.

He said in his media availability that “it was a good race at the end. We led a lot of laps. A lot to be proud of. Came up one spot short, which is unfortunate. But still we had a great day. Just one step short of having the awesome day we needed to have. But we know if we keep running like we have the last two weeks, you know, we’ll win races. We need to win the next two. I understand that. But I think we have a great opportunity to do it, as well.”

Given that he now trails the fourth-place Chase cutoff by 19-points and goes to Kevin Harvick’s playground of Phoenix, the odds don’t seem to favor the 2012 Sprint Cup Series champion.

It was a wild day for Kevin Harvick. He had a flat left-rear tire early in the race and a flat right-rear tire with 53 laps to go. For the final 100 laps, he was driving the car with just his left hand and using his right to hold the gear shifter in place.

“I was more worried about it popping out of gear,” Harvick said. “It hadn’t missed a gear or jammed a gear or anything like that. It shifted smooth all weekend. I was just going along like normal. One lap, all of a sudden, it just pops out of gear in the middle of the straightaway. So, I don’t really know. That’s happened to us several times, so we definitely need to figure that out.”

He leaves Texas third in the points, trailing Jeff Gordon by three. He controls his destiny going to the track that’s become his playground Phoenix International Raceway. I’ll give you the stats that make it so this Thursday when I preview Phoenix.

I’ll wrap this up with Joey Logano. In case you missed it, this is how his day went.

The situation for the reigning Daytona 500 champion couldn’t be more against him. Trailing the Chase cutoff by 63-points, Logano must – I repeat – MUST win at Harvick’s playground this Sunday to make it back to the championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.