Kyle Busch, Martin Truex, and Joey Legano were all holding on for the top positions in the race to who would become the Windows 10 400 champion, but nobody expected the lapse of judgment as they lost to Kenseth because of an empty fuel. Debris flew behind the wall, but there were no injuries. As part of the opening ceremony, Team Fastrax™ will be performing their fan favorite, patriotic American Flag Demonstration jump, along with red, white and blue streamers and smoke. He’s won four of the past five Sprint Cup races, including the last three in a row. Kevin Harvick’s point lead fell to just 39 over Logano. Four laps into the race, Kasey Kahne experienced a brutal wreck coming off of Turn 3 and slammed into the pit road wall. But while leading on lap 21, his engine went up in smoke.
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Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Trevor Bayne, Sam Hornish Jr., and Kurt Busch were among the other drivers headed for the garage earlier than expected.
Will Power qualified second and Sebastien Bourdais was third. His Hendrick Motorsports Chevy ended up ramming the pit wall.
The 2015 season hasn’t treated A.J. Allmendinger very kindly thus far, but that could certainly change when the series makes the trip to the New York road course this weekend. All of Keslowski’s crew member were uninjured. There were eight total in the June race. With stops completed, Truex was a distant third, six seconds behind the two front-runners. So essentially that would seem like Kyle Busch will not be in victory lane since he is in a Toyota for the race.
But he also didn’t expect the rest of the race to be caution-free. But then they both had to pit on Lap 39, putting Logano out front until he came in for fuel and tires on Lap 52.
Those were the drivers racing in the top five at the time. But it was all for naught, with Logano running out of fuel with less than two laps to go, and Busch running out with about half a lap remaining. But when lapped cars started passing Busch in turn 1, it was clear he, too, had run out of fuel. Numerous drivers, including Matt Kenseth, elected to stay in fourth gear, rather than downshift through the turns, to save fuel. While that’s not a huge setback in the circumstances – Burton had in any case been set to start from 38th place on the 43-car grid – the fact that he wasn’t able to run any laps or give a proper shake-down outing to the backup vehicle will be a biggest hurdle to overcome.
At Pocono, laps at the 2.5-mile track can take so long that drivers can pit under green flag conditions without losing a lap.
In Kahne’s previous four Sprint Cup races, he finished 32nd, 27th, 19th and 24th. “I’m glad we were in a really good position”. He’s retiring at the end of the season and perhaps the wind down to his career has added some extra pressure.
“Today is a first”, said Kenseth, whose 33rd career victory was his first at Pocono. Kenseth won at Bristol in April.
The difference between Logano and Busch is Logano already is in the Chase. However, while Logano could afford the risky strategy, Busch could not. He returned in May for the All-Star race, after missing the first eleven events.
It also kept him out of the top 30 in the point standings.
That made Kenseth, who had finished 22nd or worse in five of his last six Pocono races, the improbable victor.
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“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to drive for a proven winning team like Joe Gibbs Racing”, Wallace said.
