He’s back for only one reason: Earnhardt continues to battle concussion-like symptoms and has not yet been cleared by doctors to climb back into the auto. Each of them came of racing age in IN near the beckoning shadows of the Speedway, Gordon in Pittsboro, and Stewart in Columbus.
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Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was supposed to be a going away party for retiring IN favorite Tony Stewart.
“I know that you don’t want to be recognized”, he said.
“I couldn’t think of a better guy to share that moment with than Jeff”.
Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon celebrated their day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway after the checkered flag flew.
“I just wish we could do Lap 3 one more time and could have kept it off the apron in turn four”, he said. I wanted to run one more lap, and Jeff was around us.
The most memorable moment of Sunday’s Brickyard 400 was the final lap.
Gordon, a four-time Cup champion and five-time Brickyard 400 victor who retired after the 2015 season but was back at Indy subbing for injured Dale Earnhardt Jr., was not about to turn down Stewart’s invitation. It was embarrassing. While I will fill-in for Dale Jr., and I hope he’s doing good, I needed a fill-in on restarts. “And I think it’s only fitting that all of us in this room, along with the millions of fans around the world, recognize what you’ve brought to this sport and congratulate you on all you’ve done… and say, ‘Thank you'”. “To see what he’s done and how tough he is as a competitor; I’ve always know what a great guy and what a great race vehicle driver he is, and now I know more about who Tony Stewart really is”. “It was fun to win this race twice, but it was stressful to do it. For some reason this weekend, Drew Brown and Eddie Jarvis and everybody with us just made my schedule as open as they could to let me enjoy it, and we did. We wanted the race to go green until the end, we had a really good long-run auto …and then we had all those restarts and you never know what’s going to happen”. That move was his race’s highlight.
Busch was never passed on the track throughout the race.
In his last race at IMS, Tony Stewart saw a strong run come to an end during a caution period on Lap 121 when he sped on pit road dropping him a lap down but the team recovered to finish 11th, helped by the late caution flags. Stewart was on pit road when David Ragan crashed on lap 117 and ended up staying on the tail end of the lead lap.
Johnson said the last restart benefited the team’s effort because he was seventh with two laps remaining. (9) Jamie McMurray, Chevrolet, 170. 20.
Carl Edwards climbed into the second place about a third of the way into the race, and stood just a few seconds behind Busch for much of the middle portion of the race. “Got through the gears fine and got in position, just couldn’t do anything when I got there”. Running in unusually high temperatures and humidity – even for a Midwest summer day – Sunday’s race at the Brickyard was a hard sell for the thousands of fans that used to flock to the 400-mile event.
UP NEXT: Pocono Raceway, July 31.
“The repeatability was something I was not looking forward to”, Busch said. “When we were up in 12 and [crew chief Greg Ives] made an excellent call to come in a little early”. Got us a lap down. “We had a lot of fun this weekend from start to finish”.
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The past tracks with heat races (Bristol, Richmond and Dover) had more dicey main events, in part because teams had a chance to work on their cars briefly between the heat and the main.
