Matt Kenseth's 'Last Car Running' Pocono Win Caps Off Bizarre Day in NASCAR
The tortoise won at Pocono Raceway, not the hare.
Matt Kenseth, who boasts a famously calm head on his shoulders, captured the Windows 10 400 because he was able to make the fuel in his Toyota last until the end, and the hottest driver in NASCAR, Kyle Busch (among others), could not.
Pocono’s second Sprint Cup race was bizarre from start to finish. The nature of the odd occurrences varied, as oddities often do. Nascarcasm shared an oddity as it relates to fuel-conservation races:
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
“Jason (Ratcliff, his crew chief) just told me to keep saving [fuel],” Kenseth said afterward. “We had talked about it a little bit before the race and just saved as much as we could.
“It was nerve-wracking. I really didn’t think the (No.) 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was going to make it, but I still really wanted to be in front of him. Once I got in front of him, I started saving as much as I could. … I saw the 22 (Joey Logano) drop (off the pace), and I was, like, ‘Well, the 18 (Busch) is going to get another one,’ and then they said he was off the pace off the tunnel (Turn 2).”
When Busch took the white flag, Kenseth was 16 seconds behind.
With three laps to go, Logano led, but then his Penske Racing Ford expired. He finished 20th. Busch’s Toyota ran out of gas on the Long Pond Straight (second of three) on the final lap. He was 21st.
That put Kenseth in Victory Lane and Brad Keselowski second. The top 10 finishers combined led a total of nine laps. Logano led 97 laps and Busch 19.
“I never thought it would come down to a fuel-mileage race,” Ratcliff said. “I thought we were saving fuel to get a top-five (finish) out of it, and the last three laps, I’m still trying to catch my breath over that.”
“I guess our numbers, from what Todd (Gordon, his crew chief) said, were good enough to make it (to the end) by half a lap,” Logano said on the NBC Sports telecast. “I was saving fuel just to cushion it. I thought it was going to be good, and then I started running out and knew we weren’t going to make it. It was tough.”
| Track | Kenseth | Busch |
| Sonoma | 21 | 1 |
| Daytona | 23 | 17 |
| Kentucky | 5 | 1 |
| New Hamphire | 6 | 1 |
| Indianapolis | 7 | 1 |
| Pocono | 1 | 21 |
Logano and Busch were trying to conserve, too. Both slowed since they were comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. Second place would have put Busch in the top 30 in points, which is where he must be in order to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Twenty-first place left him 13 points behind the current occupant of that position, David Gilliland, with an ample five regular-season races left to catch him.
Gilliland does not have a top-five finish in 21 races. Busch, who missed the season’s first 11 races due to injury, has four victories and five top 10s in 10 tries. Sunday hurt him but not much.
Insufficient fuel cost Busch a chance to become the first NASCAR driver to win four consecutive races in eight years, but Kenseth’s efficiency gave the team owner, Joe Gibbs, four in a row.
Kenseth said it was the first of his 33 career victories captured as a direct result of fuel conservation.
“Today is a first,” he said. “I checked two things off the list. I won at Pocono. I didn’t think that would ever happen, and I won a fuel-mileage race. I didn’t think that would ever happen.”
“I was probably like a lot of people,” Gibbs said. “I’m looking at Joey (Logano) and Kyle (Busch) thinking, hey, one of those two guys is going to have the best chance. I knew Matt (Kenseth) was in there somewhere close, but I wasn’t sure.
“Then, when I see Joey run out, I figured, hey, we’ve got a chance with Kyle. Kyle runs out, and when I looked up, all I saw was that yellow (Kenseth’s Camry), and I was thrilled. It was a big deal the way everything played out.”
During his celebration, Kenseth thanked his crew chief, Adam Stevens, for "building fast cars," according to USA Today's Jeff Gluck:
Gibbs’ weekly thrill was a great ending to a day filled with big deals.
Before he had completed the sixth lap, Kasey Kahne lost control of his Chevy at the head of the main straight and skidded into the pit area, where heavy impact sent crewmen scurrying out of the way, and the damage to the pit wall required the race to be halted for nearly 15 minutes while repairs were made.
Kevin Harvick was leading the race when the engine in his Chevy exploded on Lap 20, relegating the points leader to 42nd place, ahead of only Kahne in the results.
“Coming around Turn 2, I knew [there were] some issues, but I didn’t realize they were going to be that big,” Harvick said. “The car was fast. You’ll have days like this.”
Kahne’s mistake puts him in a perilous spot where the Chase is concerned. He is winless and sits 15th in the point standings at the head of the regular-season’s stretch drive.
“I’m not sure why it happened and what happened so quickly there,” he said. “I don’t know what the deal was right there. … It’s really bad for our team to lose a car that quickly into the race, and the last month has been really bad. … I just lost it. Late exit. Got loose. Spun.”
The eight caution periods, slowing the field for 32 of the 160 laps, were unusually high for Pocono, a sprawling 2.5-mile track where the fields are usually strung out. Six crashes occurred, involving a total of 10 cars. Three prominent drivers–Kahne, Harvick, and Kurt Busch, who crashed on Lap 66—finished outside the top 35.
Keselowski toppled a couple of crewmen on pit road—both were merely shaken up—en route to his runner-up finish.
Jeff Gordon, who snuck into a third-place finish in his final Pocono race, said, “I’m not exactly sure where I started on the final restart, but it was like, 15th, 16th, and I can’t say I passed many cars.
“I thought we were trying to get maybe 10th or 12th, and all of a sudden, they said, "You’re third,’ and I think I was probably the most shocked person out there when I found that out. I knew cars were peeling off, but I just didn’t realize that many were either running out (of fuel) or coming to pit road.”
The last time a Pocono race ended so strangely, Gordon won it.
On June 10, 2007, a thunderstorm struck at the entrance of the Tunnel Turn just as Ryan Newman was catching Gordon. Newman’s car couldn’t get past as both drivers fought in the cloudburst for control. The race never resumed and was declared official just six laps past the required halfway point.
“I enjoyed the challenges of this race track from the very beginning,” Gordon said. “The shifting, the three unique turns and how you have to set up the person you’re racing each and every corner and try to get that momentum off the corner.
“It makes for frustrating moments at times, but also a lot of fun when you complete it. I’ve had some great victories here over the years.”
Gordon has won six times at Pocono. It was Kenseth’s first.
“I’ve never been able to explain it after all these years,” Kenseth said, “but no matter what race I’ve ever won or how I’ve won it, or what position we’ve been in, there’s no feeling in the world like when you come off the corner and know you’re going to win a Sprint Cup race.
“I wish I could bottle it up, or explain it more, but it’s just one of them things you can’t really explain.”
On this particular occasion, the mystery was widely apparent.
Follow @montedutton on Twitter.
All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
