The attention may be on the four drivers who will race for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship Sunday, but Friday belonged to non-Chase driver Denny Hamlin.
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Busch’s story of resilience is sandwiched between the feel-good spin of the retiring Gordon’s last Cup ride and Truex’s improbable rise after an also-ran season in 2014.
Jeff Gordon has equilibrium, the kind that results from the inner ear as opposed to the old saw about the seat of the trousers.
“Woo, it wasn’t easy”, Gordon said. It’s pretty awesome to get top five.
“I don’t think anybody has done anything different”, he said.
Given the focus on the four contenders, Hamlin introduced himself as “Mr. Irrelevant” when he took the podium for the pole winner’s press conference. The next week at New Hampshire, with his team firmly believing he could reach the finish line, he ran out of gas and was seemingly out of contention.
Oddly enough, Earnhardt and Gordon became fast friends – a friendship that survived Gordon putting the black No. 3 Chevy on its roof at Daytona en route to his first Daytona 500 victory, making the Man in Black wait yet another year to get his first. By winning at Martinsville to put us in this, that was just incredible.
“Something I’ve always cherished”, Gordon tweeted along with a picture of the clip. Harvick had just enough points to qualify for the Eliminator Round. But Harvick said he wasn’t concerned about starting behind the other Sprint Cup finalists, pointing out that he qualified 15th before winning at Dover, Del.
This Sunday is far from another race.
“If you win, nobody else can do anything to change your outcome”, he said, adding, “It would shock me if it doesn’t take a win to take this championship”. His last championship was 14 years ago.
“I disagree with Kyle”, said Gordon, who recovered from a lackluster opening lap in the first round of knockout qualifying to earn the fifth starting spot. And while his numbers were less eye-popping than previous seasons, they were still tops in the series in the three biggest categories: wins (six), top-fives (18) and top-10s (24) as the series expanded its slate to 36 races.
“For us to get an extension on our contract with (Mars) and then to get Kyle wrapped up in that, it’s a huge deal for us”, Gibbs said.
“I need three clutch laps like that to close this race out on Sunday”, he said, laughing.
Other notables in Sunday’s field include Kurt Busch (15th), Matt Kenseth in his first race back from a two-race suspension (19th), Danica Patrick (35th) and Tony Stewart (36th).
Kenseth has been apologetic about intentionally wrecking Logano at Martinsville, Va., as payback for an incident two weeks before at Kansas. The Furniture Row Racing driver was 11th fastest in all three qualifying sessions and will start on the inside of Row 6 for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series finale. Of course it is. You know, we just never really recovered from what we did in the first round to make it repeat. Petty told him he has one more dollar in his motor coach. One says, “We’ll never outrun that bear”.
In the 50-minute final NASCAR Sprint Cup practice Saturday, Logano topped the board with a lap of 175.404 miles per hour around the 1.5 mile Homestead-Miami Speedway. Ryan Blaney will be the driver. Busch posted four victories, despite missing the first half of the season due to a broken leg. NASCAR gave him a waiver to the Chase based on points and victories in the short season.
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“I think this past year our performance has been where it needed to be and I think we are ready to make the next step”, team co-owner Len Wood said. The Woods are the oldest existing team in NASCAR and have 98 victories since 1950.
