But Sadler held strong through the final turns and crossed in front to earn the checkered flag at Darlington for the first time in 32 career starts – 18 in Sprint Cup, 13 in Xfinity and one in the truck series.
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Jeff Gordon checks out his vehicle before NASCAR Sprint Cup auto racing practice at Darlington Raceway Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016, in Darlington, S.C.
“I couldn’t be more excited to win at Darlington – the Southern 500”, Truex said. Despite winning two weeks ago at Bristol Motor Speedway, Harvick says his team needs to step up with the Chase for the Championship looming on the horizon.
“With the team we have and the way we’ve been running, we could honestly be sitting here with seven, eight, nine wins”, Truex said. But just a big weekend for us to – we’ve had a bad string of back luck. They took a lot of heat from last week with what happened. After one slow pit stop, Harvick’s team exchanged air guns with Danica Patrick’s team in an attempt to ensure no further problems would occur. Three consecutive slow stops cost him dearly in the last third of the race.
“Did we just lose this race?”
Harvick was asked how he balances the positive and with tough criticism for his team. Ryan Newman, who now is 15 points behind Jamie McMurray for the final Chase spot on points, was fifth fastest at 174.519 miles per hour.
Then there was Harvick, who had the fastest auto for most of the night, but was left with a frustrating second-place finish. And that No. 78 team gave him 11s on pit road all night long. The most damaging came in the seventh of 10 caution periods, when he entered pit road in the lead and left in 12th place. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver had to come from traffic in order to get back to the front and was able to rally back for a second place finish. He battled back toward the top, but could not chase down Truex.
The rest of the top five was made up Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. Klutt, who races in NASCAR’s Pinty series, won in Bowmanville last season on his way to rookie of the year honors.
On Lap 203, Brian Scott was four laps down when Stewart attempted to pass him. “Just the dominant vehicle and just three bad pit stops on pit road”.
“He took me around in a ride-along vehicle, and I sat in the passenger seat and he came out with his old race suit on, open-face helmet, bubble goggles, and I got to sit in the passenger seat with Cale Yarborough driving around Darlington”, Logano said.
When that didn’t work at first, Stewart looked like he nudged Scott’s bumper and sent him spinning.
“I wish we were down there today and the weather was nice so we could see some of those beauties”, Logano said of the throwback Sprint cars.
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“Obviously, I wasn’t watching racing when he was racing – I wasn’t alive – but re-watching races and reading a lot about the history of the sport and what he’s meant to NASCAR racing, it’s neat that he’s still so involved and he still cares about the sport”. He has always raced me really clean. “But this is definitely my favorite”, said Stewart, who’ll make his final start at Darlington.
