It’s been made perfectly clear that this is his final season at the wheel, and through 32 races he stayed competitive, but winless.
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A jubilant Gordon scored his first victory of the season and qualified to run in the Championship round at the Homestead-Miami Speedway later this month, which will be the final race of his Sprint Cup career.
CLICK: Full NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race results from Martinsville Speedway.
There had been early concerns about the weather, with rain in the morning leaving the Air Titans busy drying off the half-mile track in time for the scheduled start of the race.
Other Chase drivers in final practice were: Joey Logano (seventh), Martin Truex Jr. Logano skittered out of his vehicle hopping mad. After Logano passed Kenseth on Lap 454, Kenseth knocked Logano’s Ford into the Turn 1 wall. But the caution flag flew again on Lap 430, enabling Harvick to bring his auto to pit road for repairs.
Speaking after the wreck Logano said he was surprised and said today’s incident was not like the one at Kansas.
Keselowski was able to open up a gap of more than eight seconds back to Logano during the race’s longest yellow-free period, but that was eradicated when Kyle Fowler went into the wall on lap 378. “Brad wiped me out for a few reason”.
“I look at Texas as a track where we haven’t been where we want to be with the No. 2 auto, but my teammate, Joey Logano, has been really fast”, Keselowski said.
When in doubt, NASCAR needs to return to its default resource of what is right and what is wrong in racing: what they do at the hundreds of short tracks across the nation.
“There’s people that say a lot of things”, Kenseth said. “We were running third with a set of fresh tyres, and 70 laps to go”. You don’t even have to really know what’s going on. Gordon has a chance to retire at the top of the NASCAR world if he can win the Sprint Cup, and become the number one retired driver on Social Media.
Kenseth, who himself was vying for the lead a handful of laps earlier, was involved in a wreck that he felt was triggered by Logano’s Penske Racing teammate Brad Keselowski.
“It’s definitely a zone”, Gordon said.
Logano claimed it was just hard racing, but for the veteran Kenseth, who didn’t win a single race in 2014, it was legacy-altering. “We were racing for the win and he blocks (me) a few times and then we raced hard and he blocked me the last time and he spun out; that’s what happened (at Kansas)”. That’s what happened there. He said Kenseth was “a complete coward” and called it a “chicken” move to take him out. Here, he was a complete coward…. Each of those two was taken out of contention by the late-race incident.
“We’ll go to Texas and try to win”, Logano said. Kenseth was parked for the accident, which was a moot point since the wreck punctured the radiator and the damage was too much to continue anyway. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t think they could get any better, but to win here at Martinsville in front of this crowd that stuck around”, Gordon mentioned in the Fox Sports report.
The second ranked driver on social media is Jeff Gordon. After his 93rd career victory, one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers will be seeking to win a fifth championship and the first under the Chase format first run in 2004.
“What an incredible battle that was”.
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“I love Brian France, but when he says that drivers are ‘doing what they have to do, ‘ it seems like he’s promoting this type of racing”.
