Hamlin will start on the pole for the Irwin Tools Night Race. He continues to lead the Sprint Cup Series points standings, however, by 43 points ahead of Logano.
Advertisement
“I’ve just got to thank everybody on the Jimmy John’s/Budweiser team for just doing what they had to do to stick this out”, Harvick said. “We were so good”.
“I was just hoping (Buescher) would run out of gas and obviously that happened”.
Edwards mentioned the previous race at Michigan when he led but Austin Dillon beat him on a restart.
Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan Newman completed the top ten finishers. After repeated issues, the most notable of which being an unscheduled stop for a suspected loose wheel from the top 5 with about 200 laps to go, he finished 24th, 4 laps down.
“He’s been given a really good prognosis on his health, he’s responded to the treatment really well and beyond the expectations”, Marcus Smith said. “It was interesting how many cars were up front, but the Shell/Pennzoil Ford stayed up there consistently the whole day, and our team just executed”. “That’s what we did and that’s what we do every week”. If you give us a little room out there as drivers, we are going to try to take it. We don’t want the sport ran so loosely.
“To race Kevin Harvick hard and clean like that at the end, it was a lot of fun”, Logano said.
With Harvick taking the high line on the track, Logano would watch his pursuer pull within striking distance in the corners and fade back on the straightaways.
NHRA: Jack Beckman had the quickest amusing vehicle run in NHRA history for the third straight event, powering his Dodge Charger to a 3.901-second pass in qualifying for the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd worldwide Raceway in Brainerd, Minnesota. He was leading with 148 laps to go, battling Joey Logano for the lead. NASCAR granted Busch a waiver after he missed the first 11 races of the season recuperating from serious leg and foot injuries. Busch was poised to start back to third on the final restart before a speeding infraction sent him to the back of the lead pack. “In clean air, we were probably a bit faster, but that didn’t matter”.
In the Bristol drivers meeting, Clint Bowyer told NASCAR if officials would call a penalty once in awhile – as they did in Wednesday night’s Camping World Truck Series race – it would force Cup drivers to respect the rule.
Once the eighth warning of the competition dropped with five laps Buescher was top.
The Sprint Cup Series will visit Bristol this Saturday for the second race there this season.
Saturday, Logano held off the skilled and experienced Kevin Harvick over the race’s final 25 laps to win for a third time this season.
That resulted in Sprint Cup Series director Richard Buck getting peppered with questions in the pre-race drivers meeting at Bristol. Since coming to the Penske team, Logano has won nine races and six poles.
Advertisement
Jeff Gordon, who raced his iconic “Rainbow Warrior” paint scheme, was looking for a win in his last race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
