Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano crashed the championship by sweeping the front row in qualifying Friday for the NASCAR finale Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
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In talking about what makes something “quintessential”, France talked about Brad Keselowski’s move that resulted in contact with Jeff Gordon late in the race past year at Texas, a move that resulted in a cut tire, a Gordon spin and an eventual pit-road brawl.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the 2003 Sprint Cup Series champion defended his move – which occurred while running multiple laps and with Logano as the leader - and insisted he had no regrets about dumping the Team Penske driver, who in spinning Kenseth at Kansas ruined Kenseth’s best chance to advance in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. But France’s larger point is he feels comfortable with how drivers police themselves on the track, including in Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400, a race that will decide this season’s Chase championship. “I think there’s certain things that have happened in the past where you wouldn’t”.
Gordon was fifth in qualifying for the final race of his career. “Obviously, when you get great racing, you’re going to get great moments, we love great moments as anybody in sports does”.
“We had a good conversation about what had happened and what the thinking was or whatever you want to call Matt’s actions, and we talked about that”, France said. “I think I could have run a tenth faster than we ran”.
The feud between Logano and Kenseth is one of several instances that have emerged as a byproduct of a Chase structure that eliminates four competitors every three races.
“I definitely hoped we had something more to race for”, said Hamlin. You go through a few tough things.
Kyle Busch rolled out on the track at the seven-minute mark and shot up to second with a lap of (176.546 mph). He is the only championship finalist who will not start in the Top 10. He’s very talented. This is his first shot for a championship in the series, too. I think we have respect for each other’s stories, how we got here, what we have on the line, and for the most part on the racetrack we all respect each other as well.
“It’s still going to be a hell of a battle”. It’s not going to be like that at all. “We saw what was coming, which is an escalation”. Despite topping the first round, he fell at the second hurdle when he was edged out by just two thousandths of a second meaning that he will start from 13th place on Sunday alongside Richard Petty Motorsport’s Aric Almirola.
Truex qualified 11th and with Gordon’s run in the second round, he prevented Harvick from advancing to the final round of qualifying.
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“Round 1 was really good for us, and then we went to round 2 and just really, really tight in the next two runs that we made”. You can expect us to lift up that particular penalty. Two drivers missed qualifying for the race completely, those were Jeb Burton and Reed Sorenson.
