Marcos Ambrose says he ‘came from Mars’ to earn best Darlington finish
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[/media-credit]After weeks of giving away top 10 finishes with great cars, Marcos Ambrose took a bad one and went about earning a good finish at Darlington the hard way.
Ambrose finished ninth in his No. 9 Stanley / DeWalt Ford for Richard Petty Motorsports after starting 28th. Fighting a loose condition and a lack of grip, Ambrose quickly found himself a lap down and out of contention early as the race went into a lap green flag run.
When the first caution flag flew, Ambrose wasn’t in position to get his lap back and soon he was two laps down and meeting the Lady in Black. Luckily while earning his Darlington stripe the car didn’t suffer any major damage.
He did however, make the highlight reel as he continued to fight his loose car.
As the laps clicked away, still unable to get his laps back, Ambrose and company continued to work on their car. Then, nearing the races 300-lap mark it paid off as he was running as fast as the leader and his optimism was returning.
“At lap 200 I was about ready to hang myself and by lap 260 I was ready to go to the front and show the boys what I had,” said Ambrose. “I’m just proud of my team. I’ve got to thank DeWalt and Ford for believing in me and the King [Richard Petty]. It was just a good night for us.”
Ambrose finally got one of his laps back on lap 299 when the caution flew for the fourth time. Crew chief Brad Parrott elected to keep him on track and take the wave around and Ambrose then went and raced his way into the ‘Lucky Dog’ spot by the time the next caution flew on lap 317.
Suddenly Ambrose was sitting pretty. He would restart 18th but quickly found himself inside the top 10 thanks to more pit strategy and rash of yellow flags.
“We got the wave around but we were already making the car better and holding our own,” he said. “From there we knew we had a good car, we just had to play the strategy and get the ‘Lucky Dog.’ We raced our way back to the ‘Lucky Dog’ and got back on the lead lap.
“It was just a good night. We’ve given away a lot of easy top 10s and that one was really earned, so I’m proud of my team and I’ve got to thank them.”
According to Ambrose his team should be off to a better start this season then they are. He blew an engine at Phoenix with 18 laps to go, he had been running third. Even in Bristol he felt he could have had a strong day but crashing at lap 25 while running 10th didn’t help.
Or in Texas while running sixth he ran out of fuel and last weekend in Talladega he was running sixth at the green-white-checkered before shuffling to the back.
Saturday he wasn’t the strongest car in the field but the team never gave up and fought until the very end. Earning back some of the points they’ve lost.
The finish was also his first top 10 of the season, coming in his 130th career race. He moves up three spots in points to 18th entering the All-Star weekend. And it wasn’t lost on Ambrose afterwards where he came from to earn his best career Darlington finish.
“I came from Mars,” he said laughing. “I re-entered orbit around lap 260 and the last 80 laps was a lot of fun. We were two laps down and just fought our way back. Our team didn’t give up. They didn’t give up on me and I didn’t give up on them.
“They just kept working on the car and making it better. We finally got ourselves some track position and got back on the lead lap and drove our way to the front.”
Surprising and Not Surprising: Darlington Bojangles Southern 500
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[/media-credit]With the NASCAR moms getting the race started with the command, here is what was surprising and not surprising from the 63rd annual Bojangles’ Southern 500.
Surprising: Only one of three women to compete at historic Darlington, Danica Patrick achieved her goal of finishing the race.
And although the driver of the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet finished 31st, she surprisingly finished better than at least one veteran driver, Jeff Gordon, whose bad luck, this time tire trouble and mechanical failure, continued to plague him yet again.
“I know I didn’t have a great result, but I accomplished all the things I wanted to accomplish,” Patrick said. “My goals were to be respectable out there and I think I held my own all right.”
“I earned my stripes anyway.”
Not Surprising: As he took in the moment of celebrating his 200th win with his driver Jimmie Johnson, it was no surprise that Mr. Hendrick twice paid tribute to those that were lost in the plane crash and who helped build the team to have achieved that milestone.
“I had to get away,” Hendrick said. “They said that we were going to make it (on fuel), but I don’t believe them, you know?”
“I’m kind of numb, but I’m glad it’s over,” Hendrick continued. “I think we’re going to win a few more now.”
In fact, Hendrick whispered that plan to the driver of the No. 48 Lowes Chevrolet in Victory Lane as he bear hugged him several times.
“You’ve got to love that man,” Johnson said of his boss Mr. H. “He said,’ Two hundred is great, but let’s go get 250.’ So, that tells you where his head is.”
“Oh, man, what a day,” Johnson said simply.
The 200th victory for Hendrick Motorsports makes them only the second team, next to Petty Enterprises with 268 wins, to accomplish such a milestone.
Surprising: It was certainly surprising to see so few cautions at the beginning of the race on a track whose moniker is ‘Too Tough to Tame.’
In fact, the yellow flag did not fly for the first 172 laps in Bojangles’ Southern 500, allowing the drivers to make three green-flag pit stop cycles in that run.
Not Surprising: As is so often the case, it was not surprising that the last caution, late in the race to set up the green-white-checkered finish, set off some sparks.
The melee started when Kurt Busch, behind the wheel of the underfunded No. 51 Phoenix Construction Services Chevrolet hit the wall, which caused Ryan Newman, in the No. 39 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet, to not only check up but get turned into the wall by Aric Almirola, in his No. 43 Verifone Sail Ford.
After the race, Newman and Busch had a confrontation, as did some of their crew members. But all was resolved, especially after intervention by the NASCAR officials.
“It’s crazy,” Tony Gibson, Newman’s crew chief, said. “Things happen and everybody’s emotions run high.”
“It’s a hot night,” Gibson continued. “Everybody settled down and talked about it. We’re all good.”
Newman put it more simply, “It all went bad there at the end.”
Surprising: The Dodge team had a surprisingly rough night at the historic track, with both drivers encountering their own struggles. Brad Keselowski, in the Blue Deuce, battled back to score a 15th place finish, while A.J. Allmendinger, in the battered No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge, finished 33rd.
“I think we had a top-15 Dodge; I just tore it up early in the run,” Keselowski said. “I got loose and hit the wall pretty good.”
“We just struggled all night going from one extreme to the other, from so tight to just wicked loose,” Allmendinger said. “We could never find a happy medium.”
“The car was just a handful all night.”
Not Surprising: The Toyota drivers had a surprisingly good evening with the ‘Lady in Black’, especially since the majority of them scored in the top-10 finishing order. Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Sport Clips Toyota, finished second to earn the status of highest-finishing Toyota driver.
Kyle Busch, in the No. 18 Wrigley’s Doublemint Toyota, finished fourth with Martin Truex, Jr., in the No. 56 NAPA Auto Parts Toyota, in fifth. The driver of the No. 20 Dollar General Toyota, Joey Logano, rounded out the top-ten for the manufacturer.
“It was a good day for our Sport Clips Toyota,” Hamlin said. “We just didn’t have quite the winning car today.”
“We wanted to win the Southern 500, but second isn’t too bad.”
Surprising: Tony Stewart, reigning Champion, surprisingly still has not tamed that Darlington track, which is one of two where Smoke has not won. The driver of the No. 14 Mobil 1/Office Depot Chevrolet came close, however, scoring a hard-fought third place finish, his best ever at the storied 1.366 mile oval.
As with several drivers, Stewart battled fuel mileage at the end. But he had the added complexity of a clutch problem as well, making re-starts a challenge.
“I broke the clutch with about 85 (laps) to go there,” Stewart said. “And the fuel pressure light was blinking when we got the one-to-go signal.”
“We just got better as the night went on,” Smoke continued. “We weren’t good enough to win the race but I’m still pretty happy to come out of here with a third tonight.”
Not Surprising: The Fords ran steady and consistent at Darlington, to no one’s surprise especially with the Ford of Greg Biffle scoring the pole for the evening. Matt Kenseth’s No. 17 Zestfully Clean Ford, finished sixth, with Carl Edwards, in the No. 99 EcoBoost Ford, finishing 7th.
Marcos Ambrose, in his No. 9 DeWalt Ford, overcame adversity and damage to finish 9th and pole sitter Biffle brought his No. 16 Ford to the checkered flag in the 12th spot.
Although the good run of team Blue Oval is not surprising, Marcos Ambrose’ post-race comments were most surprising. When asked where he came from after being two laps down to finish top-ten, the Aussie said, “I came from Mars.”
“At Lap 200, I was about ready to hang myself and by Lap 260, I was ready to go to the front and show the boys what I had.”
“I re-entered orbit around Lap 260 and the last 80 laps were a lot of fun.”
“Our team didn’t give up.” Ambrose said. “It was just a good night for us.”
Stewart ‘pretty pleased’ with third place after frustrating performance
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[/media-credit]Considering the two have won the last seven NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships, it was only fitting that it came down to the two of them to settle who would take home another one of NASCAR’s prestigious trophies on Saturday night.
The final 15 laps of the Bojangles Southern 500 at Darlington saw a dominant Jimmie Johnson leading but a charging Tony Stewart behind him. On the line for Johnson was his first win of the season, No. 200 for Hendrick Motorsports. On the line for Stewart was his third win of the season but very first at Darlington.
Johnson was able to pull away on the green-white-checkered finish with Stewart falling to third. While he came ever so close again to crossing another track of his winless list, Stewart wasn’t about to complain about the finish he and his No. 14 Office Depot / Mobile 1 team had to fight for.
“I was pretty frustrated about halfway through because we just kept fighting the same issues on the respective ends of the track,” said Stewart afterwards. “We just kept fighting loose and couldn’t get it tightened up in one and two and couldn’t do anything. Because we were trying to tighten it up in one and two, we didn’t really have the opportunity to try to free up three and four.
“It’s hard and frustrating when you got two different conditions going on. We basically fought that loose condition in one and two since we unloaded [Friday]. It just kind of was frustrating that we couldn’t find anything and couldn’t hit on it. After the first couple of runs of the race, having two or three chances to take a stab at it didn’t seem like we were making the direction. It was frustrating.
“It’s why we won a championship last year, too. We never give up. Steve [Addington, crew chief] kept me positive. He was calm the whole time. He kept saying, I’ll work on it; I’ll get it fixed. It just kept me calm. Sure enough, we finally got it to do one thing and then we could work on it from there and try to get it the rest of the way.”
Stewart bounced between the top 15 and the top 10 for the first 100 laps. The defending NSCS champions only able to make adjustments on the car during a fast paced race and green flag pit stops.
Finally the first caution flew on lap 172 for debris and soon cautions were flying often. By the races 200-lap mark Stewart had climbed to the top five and started to make his presence known. When the fourth caution flew on lap 298 Stewart pitted with the leaders but had to give up his fifth place position as the team took a look at his clutch and transmission.
It didn’t take long for Stewart to rebound. He quickly climbed back into contention and into Johnson’s rearview mirror for the finish.
“It ended up really good, I was really proud of Steve Addington and all of our crew,” Stewart said, noting how difficult the car was in the first half of the race. “Really proud of Addington. He just kept throwing things at it to try and get a direction. Once he got on what it was like, it got a lot better at the end there. We got both ends at least to do the same thing and we could balance it out from there.
“I broke the clutch with about 85 to go, came into the pits, they jacked it up and looked at it and figured out we could keep going. But we came in because we looked at it, took the option to come back in and top it off with fuel, just basically got the opportunity the next caution. When everybody came in, we got up to eighth, had two really good restarts after that got us up to second.”
Before the restart however, Stewart suffered another scare. He told the team he had only 20 pounds of fuel pressure and he wasn’t sure what to do. Without hesitation he was told to stay on the flat of the racetrack and Stewart was able to tell the team the pressure was building back up.
In the end though he just didn’t have enough for Johnson who drove away on the restart, Hamlin then getting around Stewart for second. The 14 just got too tight when he was behind Johnson and Stewart was hoping Johnson would spin his tires on the restart so he could have a shot at the win.
But the track Too Tough To Tame now has Stewart sitting winless in 20 career attempts and he remains seventh in the NSCS points.
“Coming to the green, we actually lost fuel pressure, with one to go and that’s why we were on the apron trying to get it back to the pickups,” said Stewart. “Got it back, but then lost it again coming off four to the green. Coming down the front straightaway on the restart it kind of laid down a little bit, that dropped us back to third.
“Considering the hurdles of the day, I’m pretty happy with a third-place run.”
