The eighth and final caution erupted on Lap 91- from there the race was on.
Advertisement
Matt Kenseth asked members of his pit crew a simple question as he blasted out of turn 3 and down the straightaway at Pocono Raceway. Kahne was ok, although a piece of his vehicle did become embedded in the wall near pit road. Debris flew behind the wall, but there were no injuries. The penalty was assessed at the end of the race and he finished 20th. The standings: Defending series champion Kevin Harvick leads the standings, 69 points ahead of Joey Logano. “But here, if someone pits a lap or two early and they are within two or three seconds they will jump you and get in front of you”.
The final 63 laps came and went without incident, which caught everybody – especially the crews – by surprise. Crafton returned and finished 28th. Kyle Busch’s dominance has overshadowed how well Harvick had run. That crash put Stenhouse out of the race. Logano and Busch each claimed radio communication with their pits led them astray.
Caution Flags: 5 for 16 laps. One of the tires rolled across pit road, bringing out yet another caution.
Keslowski was involved in a similar accident in Kentucky three weeks ago. They’d need to run 36 laps to get to the end of the race without another stop. The first 30 laps of the race alone, took an hour to complete, mostly due to the 15-minute red flag.
But he also didn’t expect the rest of the race to be caution-free.
Kurt Busch led the field back to green on Lap 33.
During the final Happy Hour session, the four JGR Toyotas were all in the top eight.
Martin Truex Jr. would have swept Pocono for the 2015 season if he’d had two or so more quarts of fuel.
It’s pretty much a done deal these days for Busch. Numerous drivers, including Matt Kenseth, elected to stay in fourth gear, rather than downshift through the turns, to save fuel. “I knew our fastest lap needed to be the last time on the race track, so I knew that we had done a good job”.
Today at Pocono Raceway, the JGR quartet will look to continue their hot stretch in the Windows 10 400.
Little did he know he’d go into lap 159 about 20 seconds off the lead and still take the checkered flag a lap later for his first Pocono win, or that the decisions that wound up deciding the race were ones nobody ever thought would.
Kenseth and Keselowski had already won races this season, essentially clinching Chase berths.
Another driver looking for his first Pocono win is Harvick.
It was a blow to Busch’s Chase chances but likely not a serious one. However, while Logano could afford the risky strategy, Busch could not.
He has had plenty to enjoy this season since his return from a broken right leg and left foot suffered in an Xfinity series race the day before the Daytona 500. He returned in May for the All-Star race, after missing the first eleven events.
But what Gordon would really love to wave goodbye to is the zero in the win column that would force him to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship on points. He now stands in 33rd place, only 13 points back from 30th.
Besides Earnhardt, the entire Hendrick team is in a bit of a slump with just one top-five finish in the last three races.
Among all this strangeness, there was no mystery about the performance of Joe Gibbs Racing – unless one considers the team’s Toyota engines not only have more horsepower, but are also very good on fuel.
Advertisement
NASCAR goes to Watkin’s Glen worldwide next Sunday for the Cheez-It 355.
