Surprising and Not Surprising: AAA Texas 500
As the race for the six shooters and black cowboy hat moved from afternoon into evening, here is what was surprising and not surprising in the ninth annual AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Surprising: Although no one could argue about the strength of Jimmie Johnson’s performance and victory at Texas, when it came time to discuss the Chase and the battle with Matt Kenseth, now seven points behind Johnson, there were some fighting words involved.
“I have been watching a lot of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighting lately, and you’ll fall into a rhythm and think that somebody has got the fight won, and it doesn’t end that way,” Johnson said. “That’s how this is going to be.”
“Matt didn’t have maybe the best day and still finished fourth,” Johnson continued. “This thing is going to go to the last lap at Homestead.”
“I think this is just going to be a dog fight there,” Rick Hendrick, Johnson’s team owner, said. “I think it’s going to be the last lap at Homestead because the teams are that close.”
“It’s going to be a war,” Coach Joe Gibbs, Kenseth’s team owner, said. “And I just hope we all survive.”
Not Surprising: Dale Earnhardt Jr. acknowledged Jimmie Johnson’s dominance best, telling his crew chief Steve Letarte that his car won even though he finished second for the third time to his five-time champion teammate.
“He (Johnson) was in a class of his own,” Dale Junior said. “We were joking that he won the DP but we were first in the GT class.”
“They were super-fast and I was super, super impressed with those guys’ car,” Earnhardt Jr. continued. “I’m happy to have a good effort and looking forward to the last couple of races.”
“Hopefully we will get us a win,” Junior said. “We keep getting close.”
Surprising: Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, went from hero, sitting on the pole, to zero, getting knocked out of the race at Texas due to engine failure. Yet even in his disappointment, Edwards surprisingly was still able to pull off a plug for his erstwhile sponsor.
“I think a valve spring broke,” Edwards said. “We don’t usually have a lot of engine trouble.”
“We had such a great weekend going,” Edwards continued. “Aflac has coverage for just about everything but I don’t think they cover sick engines which is too bad.”
Edwards was not the only one with a sick engine as Ford mate David Ragan also lost one, as did Timmy Hill and Bobby Labonte.
Not Surprising: While speeding penalties are costly enough to the average driver, they were especially costly to two of the Chase competitors, particularly Matt Kenseth, whose penalty no doubt cost him the point’s lead, and Kyle Busch, who battled not only the speeding penalty but also an early crash to finish 13th.
“We were just being too aggressive,” Kenseth said. “That speeding penalty got us behind — we definitely didn’t need that.”
“If I wouldn’t have messed up, maybe we could have ran second.”
“Kyle (Busch) feels horrible because he sped on pit road late in the race,” Dave Rogers, crew chief of the No. 18 Snickers Toyota, said. “He was giving us all he had to give us the best possible finish and we took a little bit more that what was there.”
“This is a team and we’ve got his back.”
Surprising: While Texas provided a surprising venue to showcase the strength of Penske Racing, with two top-ten finishes, both drivers, however, acknowledged that neither of them had what it took to be stronger than team 48.
“From the start of the race, we moved our way forward,” Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 AAA Ford said. “Overall we can’t be disappointed with a third place finish but the 48 car was just ridiculously fast.”
“I thought we had decent speed,” Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford, said. “We were leading at one point and the yellow flag came and we pitted and came out ninth, which ended our shot of being able to derail Jimmie if there even was one.”
“His car was so much faster than the field,” Keselowski continued. “It was pretty embarrassing to be quite honest.”
Not Surprising: The pattern of inconsistency for team No. 24 and driver Jeff Gordon continued, with the win at Martinsville last weekend being negated by the hard hit into the wall after a tire went down at Texas.
“I hit the wall hard,” Gordon said “I just know the left front went down as I was going down the front straightaway.”
Gordon finished 38th, close to 200 laps down, his worst finish since Watkins Glen.
Surprising: Parker Kligerman made a surprisingly good debut in the Sprint Cup Series for Swan Racing, finishing top-20.
“Although 18th doesn’t sound that great, for a rookie and this team, it’s a great finish and it’s one of the best finishes for these guys,” Kligerman said. “It was a long tough race but the team persevered and everyone fought hard.”
Not Surprising: Since Greg Biffle never, ever forgets, his love tap of Jimmie Johnson in the waning laps of the Texas race was not the least bit surprising. It did not, however, help him to feel at all better even though he finished twelfth in the race when the checkered flag flew.
“That was a tough one,” Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, said. “The car wasn’t very good in traffic.”
“We didn’t get it until it seemed like about 20 to go or whatever that last stop was,” Biffle continued. “We just weren’t where we wanted to be.”
Surprising: While most, if not all eyes were on the Chase race between Johnson and Kenseth, there were other drivers in the field who literally paid no heed as they were marching to the beat of their own drummers.
“We actually made a lot of gains throughout the weekend,” Danica Patrick, drive of the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet said after finishing 25th. “We never quite got it, but we certainly made progress.”
“I’m excited to get to Phoenix next week,” Patrick continued. “GoDaddy is based out there, so it’s a big race for us.”
With her 25th place finish, Patrick also gained three spots in the point standings to 25th as well.
Not Surprising: Problems continued on and off the track for Juan Pablo Montoya as he winds up his NASCAR career and prepares to return to the IndyCar Series.
Montoya brought out one of the few race cautions on track due to a tire issue, which was a shredded right front tire according to Crew Chief Chris ‘Shine’ Heroy. JPM was able to soldier on to finish in the 20th place at Texas Motor Speedway.
But off track, Montoya also has problems as Forbes reported that he is in trouble with the US taxman. The IRS is alleging that the driver owes $2.7 million in additional taxes and penalties due to some interesting and complicated deductions, many of which were made prior to his coming to NASCAR and to the United States to live with his family.
Montoya has just two more races in the NASCAR Series and then will return to IndyCar racing but this time to drive for Roger Penske and serve as teammate to Penske driver Helio Castroneves.
Surprising: After a challenging season of his own, Kasey Kahne actually surprised himself with a top-five finish at Texas Motor Speedway.
“We had a pretty good Time Warner Chevy today,” Kahne said. “We were seventh to tenth most of the race and we worked our way to fifth there at the end.”
“I’m glad we were able to have kind of a flawless race and race all day and make a little bit of ground up at the end.”
Not Surprising: Kurt Busch’s quest to finish off his season with Furniture Row Racing with outstanding performances is proving most difficult.
“Nothing good to say about this race,” Busch, driver of the No. 78 Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Chevrolet said. “That’s all we had and it was a struggle all weekend.”
“We definitely need a turnaround in the final two races because it has been too good of a year to end on a struggling note.”
Chad Knaus contributes test to win, sticking with game plan moving forward
Sometimes you have a test that doesn’t go anything like you hoped. Other times, you have a test and everything goes that way. That was the case for Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus and the No. 48 team as the test they had following Talladega at Texas paid off for them.
“IWe were able to really kind of break down what the race car was doing,” Knaus commented. “Jimmie was able to go out there and kind of explore a little bit and find the nuances of the racetrack in kind of a more calm environment. I think it paid huge dividends for us from a lot of different levels, and it was good.”
The pay-off was huge as Johnson dominated the 500 mile race at Texas on Sunday, leading 255 laps on the way to victory.
One of the things that they noticed in the test was the fact that tire wear would be a concern, but Knaus says it was nothing out of the ordinary for his team.
“We saw that while we were here testing,” Knaus said, speaking of tire wear. “We really focused on the longer runs. 15, 20 lap runs here at the test to make sure we’d get the tires to last as long as what we needed. Not so much worrying about the short run speed and the three, four, five laps.”
Knaus says in using the strategy they did, the test allowed them to get the car to run fast on the long run and keep the tires on it. Translating that to the race weekend, Knaus said they didn’t have to change their strategy much.
“We were very fortunate that as we were going through that, we knew there were going to be tire problems,” Knaus said. “The key is to not be the first one with the tire issue, and fortunately enough, we weren’t.”
While everyone focused on the tires and whether Matt Kenseth would blow another tire like he did during the test session, the 48 team kept to their game, getting their car right.
“We just came here and just did our thing,” Knaus said. “I think that’s pretty Classic 48. We worry about us and just kind of let everything else go the way it should.”
Going into the final two events, that is the game plan as Knaus adds they’ll do what they do best and see where the chips fall. Last year, it was a tire failure at Phoenix that cost them the championship.
The question is: will they be able to get the sixth championship, or will something happen once again?
“I’m looking forward to it,” Knaus said. “I really am. I think we were in great shape last year. I think we’re in as good or maybe just a pinch better shape this year, though I do feel the opponent is a little more formidable than what we had last year. So I’m excited. I really am.
“I love this time of year. This is what we live for. This is what we want to do. We want to go out there and do everything we can to try to win Phoenix.”
The Final Word – After Texas, Gordon is done, and so might Kenseth be after Phoenix
So, what did we manage to accomplish at Texas this past week? Well, not much.
There was the bursting of the bubble that had Jeff Gordon as an actual Cup contender. When his tire blew, when his car slammed into the fence, when he left with just a couple of points to his credit, that fantasy came to an end. To be honest, even if he had ran tenth, it would have mattered little.
Jimmie Johnson finished first. Matt Kenseth finished fourth. What the rest did was of little consequence at Texas. The seven point lead Johnson has over Kenseth can be made up at Phoenix and Homestead. The 40 point deficit faced by the now third place Kevin Harvick can not. For Johnson, it marked his 66th career win and, most importantly, his 6th of the season. That leaves him just one back of Kenseth in that tie breaker category, should it come to that.
As for the other events from last Sunday, we had Gordon kill his car by hitting the wall. Kyle Busch flattened out his right side earlier, yet still finished 13th. Carl Edwards blew up just past the mid-point to claim 37th. Dale Earnhardt Jr and Joey Logano finished a distant second and third on the day. Other than that, they turned left a lot and we had a couple of debris cautions and another to clean up some oil. For excitement, I did check out some of the NFL action when I had caught up to the live feed on my PVR. Still, it was better than watching soccer, though just barely.
Rating Texas – 5/10 – I do not really have to explain this, do I?
As for Phoenix, Kenseth has run a hundred more laps in two extra races (22 – 20). Jimmie has 4 wins, including a string of three straight, compared to Matt’s one. Johnson is up 13 to 5 in Top Fives and 932 – 212 in laps led. Five Time’s average finish is 6.4, Kenseth is 17.2. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Jimmie has the advantage this weekend. Enjoy the week.
