NASCAR’s final race before the championship finale began around 9:30 p.m. Sunday after a rain delay at Phoenix worldwide Raceway.
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“I was real concerned until I looked at the scoreboard and I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to be fine, ‘” he said. It relegated Harvick to his record-tying 12th second-place finish in a single season. “I’m just really proud of everybody and we’re going to go down there and just do like we’ve done and race as hard as we can”.
“We were working our way back up and we’re in the mix now”, Kurt Busch said before the race was called. And sometimes you’re on the right side of it and sometimes you’re on the wrong side of it. “But, in the end, the big picture is what it’s all about”. (3), Kurt Busch (2), Jeff Gordon (1) and Martin Truex, Jr. (1). The win marked Earnhardt’s 26th career victory in the Sprint Cup Series and the third-generation’s third win of the 2015 season, following victories at Talladega, Alabama in May and Daytona Beach, Florida in July. In the race at Phoenix in March, Joey Logano started second to Kevin Harvick. Busch did more than that. After missing the first eleven races of the season, he caught fire in the summer to win four races in five weekends and quickly remind the racing world of his position as a contender, but in the time since, he has cooled down considerably.
As a cold mist and drizzle continued to drape Phoenix worldwide Raceway, they tried to downplay their own chances of coming out on top next week at a presumably sunny and warm Homestead-Miami Speedway.
He had a strong run at Phoenix, putting himself in position to win, right behind Earnhardt and Harvick. Worsham beat playoff rival Jack Beckman in the semifinals to secure the season title and join Kenny Bernstein and Gary Scelzi as the only driver to win championships in both nitro categories. “(Today’s race) actually went a little better than we anticipated. “We feel like we have the team to do it and the speed to do it, and that’s what it’s all about”. “We’ll go do the same thing next week”.
WHO ELSE HAD A GOOD RACE: Obviously, it was a great race for Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Harvick – not so much for where they finished, but because they all stayed above the points cutoff to advance to the championship finale at Miami along with Gordon. “You just want a chance”. “We had many opportunities to try to get ourselves to the font, we just weren’t as fast (as Harvick)”.
In this topsy-turvy second season of NASCAR’s new championship format, it was only fitting that the race to set the final four ended in an empty, unsatisfying way.
“We had an idea that the rain was in the area, but all the circumstances that played out at the end of the race are just kind of luck, I think”, Earnhardt told NASCAR.com post-race. “It is a rain-shortened race and I know there are a few guys in the field that would love to see this thing get going again and get an opportunity to race into the last round”.
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The start of the race was delayed for approximately seven hours due to rain and the race was stopped on lap 219, which was 93 laps short of the 312 that were scheduled. When asked by the NBC broadcast team about how his team had managed to potentially advance to the Championship Round for the NASCAR Chase, Truex matter-of-factly said, “It’s all about putting our best effort on the racetrack”, referring to his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team based in Denver, Colorado.
