Gordon finally ends winless streak at Phoenix
Jeff Gordon dominated Sunday’s Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway leading 138 of the 312 laps run. This was Gordon’s first Sprint Cup Series win since April 5, 2009 at Texas Motor Speedway.
“Are you kidding me? Pinch me man, pinch me.” Gordon said.
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[/media-credit]Gordon passed Kyle Busch with eight laps remaining and stretched his lead from there, ending his winless streak at 66 races.
“I drove in deep into (Turn) 1 and got to him and I could tell he was having to really get after it right then; and then I got underneath him and got off of (Turn) 4 and I knew coming down the front straightaway that he was going to kind of pinch me down into (Turn) 1 and he did and I got a little loose. Then I just drifted up the track and I didn’t know what was going to happen at that moment but when they said we were ‘clear’ then I just went.” Gordon said of the pass for the lead.
“I don’t really care how we do it, we just want to get to victory lane. But to do it that way and to see the fans reaction. I mean we beat Kyle Busch. We were the only one’s to beat Kyle Busch this weekend and he’s so tough to beat. What a race car. Just so thankful.” Gordon said.
Gordon also ties Cale Yarborough with 83 wins, fifth on the all-time list.
“Oh, my gosh. I’m such a huge fan of Cale’s. And one of the first conversations I ever had with anybody when they came to the Cup series was Cale Yarborough. He wanted me to drive his car and I actually tested his car. A lot of people don’t realize way, way, way back. He’s just an amazing race car driver. I’ll be honest. I didn’t know if we were ever going to get past 82 (wins).” Gordon said.
Busch finished second, Jimmie Johnson third, Kevin Harvick fourth and Ryan Newman finished fifth.
“I think he was on a mission today, that’s for sure and when Jeff Gordon has a good car and he has the opportunity to beat you, he’s going to beat you so. There’s no doubt about that. He’s my hero and I’ve always watched him and what he’s been able to accomplish over the years. It’s no surprise that he beat us.” Busch said.
On lap 50, the Daytona 500 champ Trevor Bayne gets into the wall. Bayne’s no. 21 car suffers a lot of damage to the rear and headed to the garage. Bayne finished 40th.
“I don’t know what happened. We were battling with the 13 car a little bit and I don’t know if it was the 38 car behind us or who, but something happened. Either I came up or he poked his nose in there at the last second on the top of us getting into one. After that, there was nothing we could do. I tried to stay in the gas and keep it turning, but it just backed into the wall.” Bayne said.
On lap 59, Carl Edwards gets into the wall after contact with the No. 18 and also collects Kevin Harvick, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened. I’ll have to talk to Kyle about it. I thought at first he was just frustrated and he turned left to get back in line and he didn’t know I was there, but I watched the tape and I think he really did get loose. He hit me hard and I was left with nothing. I got rammed to the infield.” Edwards said.
On lap 67, a huge wreck broke out on the backstretch, bringing out the red flag. Matt Kenseth, Brian Vickers, Jamie McMurray, Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton where some of the drivers involved in the 13-car accident.
“17 just wrecked us. Door-slammed us coming out of the corner of Turn 2, 67 laps into a very, very long race. Felt like it was unnecessary and sure it will come back to haunt him.” Vickers said.
“Just stupid. Driving like it’s the last lap, it looked to me like. Man, we keep this up we’re going to have about four cars at the end of all these races.” Bowyer said.
“I didn’t know there was an incident. I was surprised when I got out of the car and everybody said he was mad at me. I’m not sure for what. Maybe I’ll watch the replay and see something different, but from where I was he kind of held me close to the middle of the corner on the restart, which you should, and I came off the corner and I never even felt us touch.” Kenseth said.
The series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Kobalt Tools 400 on March 6th.
Unofficial Race Results
Subway Fresh Fit 500, Phoenix In’tl Raceway
February 27, 2011 – Race 2 of 36
| Pos. | St. | No. | Driver | Make | Pts. | Bon. | Laps | Status |
| 1 | 20 | 24 | Jeff Gordon | Chevrolet | 48 | 2 | 312 | Running |
| 2 | 4 | 18 | Kyle Busch | Toyota | 43 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 3 | 28 | 48 | Jimmie Johnson | Chevrolet | 42 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 4 | 17 | 29 | Kevin Harvick | Chevrolet | 41 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 5 | 14 | 39 | Ryan Newman | Chevrolet | 40 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 6 | 3 | 4 | Kasey Kahne | Toyota | 38 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 7 | 18 | 14 | Tony Stewart | Chevrolet | 38 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 8 | 2 | 22 | Kurt Busch | Dodge | 37 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 9 | 15 | 43 | A.J. Allmendinger | Ford | 35 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 10 | 35 | 88 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | Chevrolet | 34 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 11 | 12 | 11 | Denny Hamlin | Toyota | 34 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 12 | 24 | 17 | Matt Kenseth | Ford | 33 | 1 | 312 | Running |
| 13 | 23 | 5 | Mark Martin | Chevrolet | 31 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 14 | 7 | 56 | Martin Truex Jr. | Toyota | 30 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 15 | 9 | 2 | Brad Keselowski | Dodge | 29 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 16 | 30 | 9 | Marcos Ambrose | Ford | 28 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 17 | 13 | 27 | Paul Menard | Chevrolet | 27 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 18 | 27 | 13 | Casey Mears | Toyota | 26 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 19 | 22 | 42 | Juan Montoya | Chevrolet | 25 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 20 | 10 | 16 | Greg Biffle | Ford | 24 | 0 | 312 | Running |
| 21 | 21 | 47 | Bobby Labonte | Toyota | 23 | 0 | 310 | Running |
| 22 | 29 | 34 | David Gilliland | Ford | 22 | 0 | 310 | Running |
| 23 | 39 | 9 | Bill Elliott | Chevrolet | 21 | 0 | 309 | Running |
| 24 | 36 | 32 | Mike Skinner | Ford | 0 | 0 | 308 | Running |
| 25 | 42 | 37 | Tony Raines | Ford | 19 | 0 | 306 | Running |
| 26 | 25 | 31 | Jeff Burton | Chevrolet | 18 | 0 | 276 | Running |
| 27 | 16 | 33 | Clint Bowyer | Chevrolet | 17 | 0 | 260 | Running |
| 28 | 1 | 99 | Carl Edwards | Ford | 17 | 1 | 252 | Running |
| 29 | 26 | 0 | David Reutimann | Toyota | 15 | 0 | 246 | Running |
| 30 | 19 | 83 | Brian Vickers | Toyota | 14 | 0 | 238 | Running |
| 31 | 41 | 71 | Andy Lally * | Chevrolet | 14 | 1 | 237 | Running |
| 32 | 31 | 7 | Robby Gordon | Dodge | 12 | 0 | 236 | Running |
| 33 | 6 | 20 | Joey Logano | Toyota | 11 | 0 | 213 | In Pit |
| 34 | 5 | 78 | Regan Smith | Chevrolet | 10 | 0 | 213 | Running |
| 35 | 8 | 1 | Jamie McMurray | Chevrolet | 9 | 0 | 126 | In Pit |
| 36 | 11 | 6 | David Ragan | Ford | 8 | 0 | 125 | In Pit |
| 37 | 38 | 46 | J.J. Yeley | Chevrolet | 7 | 0 | 72 | Out |
| 38 | 37 | 60 | Landon Cassill | Toyota | 0 | 0 | 68 | In Pit |
| 39 | 40 | 38 | Travis Kvapil | Ford | 0 | 0 | 66 | Running |
| 40 | 33 | 21 | Trevor Bayne | Ford | 0 | 0 | 49 | Running |
| 41 | 34 | 66 | Michael McDowell | Toyota | 4 | 1 | 43 | In Pit |
| 42 | 43 | 36 | Dave Blaney | Chevrolet | 2 | 0 | 27 | Out |
| 43 | 32 | 87 | Joe Nemechek | Toyota | 0 | 0 | 22 | Out |
Kevin Harvick Says KHI Team Has Work to do Even After Third Place Finish
Kevin Harvick may have finished third in Saturday’s Bashas’ Supermarkets 200 but he wasn’t thinking that way.
“We needed a do-over,” said Harvick, “we got our butt whipped today. We were at best the third best car.”
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[/media-credit]Harvick credited his team on pit road for keeping him in contention. That in itself is quite the change from Harvick being frustrated every week with their performance. This time he chalked it up to the driver being a hindrance.
Harvick admitted that in practice he didn’t get the car set up where it needed to be. Saying he didn’t know and was nervous with where the balance needed to be and that the swing wasn’t what he expected.
The mistakes he said hurt their effort in the beginning of the run.
“I got the car so that I couldn’t drive it in the corner,” Harvick said. “I couldn’t make any time like those guys were doing to get a good run through the center and up off and pointed in the right direction.”
On one hand it’s easy to see where Harvick’s coming from. Not just himself but all of the competition got spanked on Saturday when Kyle Busch led every lap and won the race. He now goes two-for-two on the weekend and will look for the second ever triple in NASCAR history on Sunday afternoon.
On the other hand, finishing third and coming off a victory with Tony Stewart in the Nationwide Series race last weekend in Daytona, as well as second place with Clint Bowyer, keeps KHI in their rhythm. They’ve picked up where they left off from last season.
Phoenix was no different. On Friday night Bowyer drove a KHI truck to the pole and a second place finish behind Busch.
But with the Saturday domination by Joe Gibbs Racing, it led the owner in Harvick to say they had work to do. It wasn’t a bad day by any means he said but they have a plan going forward.
Any team would be lucky to have a third place finish, even if they felt like they were out to lunch most of the race. A company however, that’s accustomed to leading laps and challenging for wins is not willing to settle for being more then nine second behind the leader and never having a chance at second place or the win.
Harvick found himself in that position Saturday driving his No. 33 Menards Chevrolet.
“My fault,” said Harvick. “Hopefully we learned something today, we’ve got a little bit of work to do and we’ll go home and do that.”
There isn’t too much concern for Harvick however. When the Nationwide COT was introduced last season he won with it at Richmond. In NASCAR though, things are always changing and everyone is always learning.
Harvick knows his KHI team is quite capable of running how Busch ran on Saturday.
“I feel like we have enough resources to do the job we need to do to put the cars together,” he said. “We build good racecars we just didn’t put all the pieces together correctly today as far as the set goes and didn’t really give ourselves a fair chance.”
Harvick then revealed that during the race he had a chance to check out the competition and how a repeat of what Busch accomplished on Saturday and only having 12 cars on the lead lap can be avoided in the future.
“Driving around as we were lapping some of the cars, it’s not funny, but you could just see that it’s different the way that the cars work,” he said.
“Some of the cars looked like they had sway bars and things not on them, they were really rolled over and I think that’s just a product of trying to figure out exactly what you need to put underneath the new car,” he continued.
“It’s just going to take some time for the information to trickle to those guys. The camber and things are obviously different with the way these cars ride and the difference in travel and things and it’s just going to take time.”
That’s the competition, which has a lot of work to do. Harvick though, will bring his KHI team back to the shop on Monday and tweak on their mistakes so that in the future they’ll feel comfortable with a third place finish and know they did all they could.
Dale Earnhardt Drive unveiled; Repaving PIR, what will we come back to?
Due to Phoenix International Raceway’s (PIR) racing surface being “used up its life expectancy”, following Sunday’s Subway Fresh Fit 500 the track will undergo a complete makeover.
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Marty Flugger, the same engineer charged with the repaving of Daytona International Speedway, determined that changing the banking should also maintain the side-by-side racing that has made PIR so exciting at times.
PIR will also widen the front stretch from 52 to 62 feet, reconfigure pit road with the installation of concrete pit stalls, push the dog-leg curve between Turn 2 and Turn 3 out 95 feet and tighten the turn radius of the dog-leg from 800 to 500 feet.
The repaving project should be complete by September. Goodyear plans to hold a tire test prior to the November race.
“It’s going to change the whole outlook when we come back here for a Chase race with two to go in the fall. It’s going to be a roll of the dice and I think it’s smart on NASCAR’s part to shake up the Chase a little bit with a new race track.” Kurt Busch said.
Dale Earnhardt Drive
The City of Avondale named a street in the new Avondale City Center Dale Earnhardt Drive. It’s the first of its kind in a Phoenix metropolitan area.
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The north entrance to the new Avondale City Center will bear the name Dale Earnhardt Drive.
“This is a special honor for my family, and we want to thank the city of Avondale, Mayor Rogers, and the entire Avondale community for recognizing my dad this way.” Earnhardt Jr. said.
“The city of Avondale is proud to be home to Phoenix International Raceway, which hosts two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races every year. Dale Earnhardt’s legacy was very much felt in Avondale as it was throughout the country. We’ve also had the pleasure of watching Dale Jr. carry that legacy forward at PIR. Avondale wishes to pay tribute to the Earnhardt family achievements, as well as recognize the huge economic significance of NASCAR and PIR to the metro-Phoenix region.” said Mayor Rogers.
