It’s 10 races, three rounds of elimination, and every man for himself.
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“Early in the race (Newman) ran into me and cut down across my nose”, Stewart said. He has career highs in every category but laps led, and a top-10 finish Saturday would secure his berth without help from any other drivers. Those 12 laps led in Pennsylvania are the only laps Buescher has led this season.
Hamlin was one of the fastest cars in both practices before qualifying.
But along the way, particularly in the second half of the race when the air was filled with yellow flags, the start-and-stop nature of the race threatened to turn the event into something completely different.
“That’s what’s so special about it”, Virginia native Hamlin, who started from the pole and led the last 86 laps (189 total), said of his third win at the.75-mile track and the 29th of his career.
“On that last restart (with 3 to go), I really concentrated a lot on getting everything as hot as I could because it was going to be a tough restart”.
Because of the high number of cautions (16, a new record at the track), teams had to pick and choose when they would come in for new tires or whether or not they would have to reuse tires taken off the auto from the last pit stop. Crew chief Mike Wheeler vetoed that and Hamlin held off hard-charging Larson by about 6/10-of-a-second. A great call by him. Both finished in the top 10, and Newman is now just outside the top 16 in the Chase.
Realistically, only the final two spots were on the line.
Sunoco rookies Chase Elliott and Chris Buescher both weathered some tense moments to qualify for NASCAR’s 10-race playoff, the first time two rookies have ever been included in the Chase field-and the first time any rookie has made the Chase since Hamlin accomplished the feat in 2006.
Stewart claims he never saw Ward until the last moment. There are three spots available tonight – four if Buescher falls below 30th – and a first-time race victor would snag one of the open slots.
Hamlin was able to survive the caution-filled race and crossed the finish line first as the checkered flag waved.
“He’s got issues, and we all know he’s got issues”, said Newman, who drove at SHR for six seasons before leaving for Richard Childress Racing in 2013.
“I guess he thought he was in a sprint vehicle again and couldn’t control his anger”, Newman said. “Didn’t want to control his anger”.
“You just try to think of dotting every I and crossing every T because that’s what it’s all about, and you have to get everything out of every person that touches everything on that auto at another level to win this deal”.
Newman went on to add that the reason for the crash was Stewart “being bipolar and having anger issues”. Any time you can win going into the Chase, it really gives you a huge momentum boost.
And so the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship begins Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway with 16 drivers laser-focused on the big prize. Five drivers will start with 2003 points for winning once: Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, three-time champion Tony Stewart, who won his most recent title in 2011, the 2003 champion, Kurt Busch, and Chris Buescher.
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The regular season ended on a insane note in Richmond, giving the sport a lot of momentum headed into the racing world’s version of the playoffs. “I think if we don’t have that mentality as a team and as a group and as an organization we should have just let the guy behind us get in”. For as much as we had going on, I know David (Ragan) is bummed to get caught up in a wreck and that isn’t how we wanted to clinch it but it made it easier in that sense. “I can’t believe how many cautions we had”.
