NASCAR at Martinsville: Winners and Losers from the Goody's 500
He finally did it.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Martinsville on Sunday.
“We’ve been trying to win here for so many years,” Earnhardt Jr. told a national television audience. “And this place is so special to me. I’ve wanted to win here so bad.”
It came too late for his championship this season, but it was just as satisfying.
Junior had to keep his teammate, four-time champion and eight-time Martinsville winner Jeff Gordon behind him to capture the checkers.
It was an emotional win for the 40-year-old Earnhardt Jr.
"I ain’t worried about points no more. I’m trying to get trophies. I’ve wanted that grandfather clock ever since I was a little boy, and I got is today."
It was a tough afternoon for Chase drivers Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski.
Gordon was the runner-up followed by Chase driver Ryan Newman, who continues to move forward in the championship despite being winless so far this season.
They were just some of the winners and losers from the 66th running of the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500.
Winner: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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According to crew chief Steve Letarte, every time he and Dale Earnhardt Jr. discussed Martinsville, the subject always turned to the grandfather clock.
"Well, he brings it up basically anytime Martinsville is in the conversation,” said Letarte in the post-race press conference. “Man, we led this race; I can't remember what year it was, under 10 laps to go, and we just weren't good enough; we got beat.
“This place, he talks about it a lot. Whenever we talk about coming to Martinsville, I think Martinsville is a high conversation at our company. We prepare for this race like most people prepare for the Brickyard.”
Earnhardt Jr. was very aware of the Hendrick Motorsports history associated with Martinsville. He had watched as teammates Gordon (whom he beat to the checkers on Sunday) and Jimmie Johnson won at Martinsville a total of 16 times.
He needed to deliver one of his own to the man they all call “Mr. H.”
It also served as healing for a team that just the week before found out that its run to the Chase would come to an end.
“This Chase and the disappointment in this Chase beat all that success and all that mojo and all that pride, all that excitement out of these guys,” said Earnhardt Jr. in the post-race press conference. “We all enjoy working together. It was unspoken. It's not conversations that we had. But everybody knew it was very disappointing where we were at coming into this weekend.
“So to win today sort of reminds the team, more importantly than myself, I think it reminds the team, the engineers, that what we got is a good thing.”
The win was Earnhardt Jr.'s fourth of the 2014 season.
Loser: Kevin Harvick
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Kevin Harvick had been able to keep out of trouble for six of the 10 Chase races. He even left Talladega last week virtually unscathed.
On Sunday, his luck ran out.
In what could best be described as simply a racing incident, Harvick was hit by fellow Chase driver Matt Kenseth on Lap 228 as both drivers drove their cars hard into Turn 1. Harvick ended up spinning into the wall. The impact heavily damaged the No. 4 Chevrolet and forced the Stewart-Haas Racing driver to take it to the garage for lengthy repairs.
Harvick remained positive about his situation.
“The good thing about this format is you have two more weeks and two race tracks that we can win on,” Harvick told a live television audience. “Everybody was so worried about us starting in the back, and we wrecked at the front. Unfortunate.”
Harvick had a poor qualifying effort and started 33rd. Ironically, that’s where he finished, 43 laps down from the leaders.
The next race is at the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway. Harvick is winless there. However, he has done well on the 1.5-mile tracks this season. And the following week is Phoenix, where Harvick won earlier this season.
Winner: Jeff Gordon
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Based upon how easily he moved up through the field all afternoon, Gordon may have had the best car in the field.
When he was caught speeding on pit road midway through the race, Gordon’s team used a combination of strategic pit stops and its driver’s experience on the .526-mile Martinsville track, and Gordon sliced and diced his way to the front.
"It was a great performance and a really good finish," Gordon told a national television audience. "I about threw this one away on pit road. I made a mistake there and was speeding. So that’s a great comeback. I thought we had the car to beat. There at the end we were kind of stuck on the outside on one of those restarts, and those guys got out there on us."
Gordon’s runner-up finish has him sitting atop the driver standings, a critical position for him and a down payment on an insurance policy should he not win a race in this, the penultimate round of the Chase.
Gordon has one win at Texas; two at Phoenix. Given his history at those two tracks, points are especially important for him to make it as one of the top four drivers vying for the title at Homestead in three weeks.
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Loser: Brad Keselowski
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Having made it to the Eliminator Round of the Chase by winning in the final race of the preceding round, Brad Keselowski had a lot to lose and little room for error.
At Martinvsille, that little room disappeared.
His No. 2 Ford had a mechanical malfunction as the green flag flew on a restart on Lap 438. The result was a huge wreck that affected many cars, including those of Kasey Kahne, Danica Patrick and Martin Truex Jr.
The damage was so widespread that NASCAR ended up stopping the race for just over 11 minutes to clean up the mess.
“It’s not the day we want by any means, but the guys did a great job,” Keselowski told his manufacturer representative. “We were doing the things we needed to do. We were surviving. We were gonna probably have ourselves a fifth- or sixth-place day, which is certainly something we could be proud of and move forward with, but this kind of puts us in a position now where we need to win.”
Not a bad place for him to be in, considering he did it last week at Talladega.
This team has had its moments of being beaten and bruised this season. Keselowski had an early win at Las Vegas and then went several weeks before showing a good result. He and crew chief Paul Wolfe are championship material. Their success at 1.5-mile tracks this season should have them optimistic about the remaining two weeks of the Eliminator Round.
“This Chase lends itself to those moments (having to win),” he continued, “and we’re a team that’s capable of them, so we’ll try to be as positive as we can and move forward with two more opportunities to do just that.”
Winner: Joey Logano
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On some race weekends this season, Joey Logano's Ford has been the class of the field, as proven by his record of five wins and 16 top-five finishes.
Then there are weeks when Logano is just good enough.
On Sunday at Martinsville, it was the latter.
Logano’s No. 22 was fast, but he was not able to fend off the likes of race winner Earnhardt Jr., Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer and several others who were able to maneuver their race cars better, especially in the drive off the corner.
“It was a solid points day,” Logano told his manufacturer representative after the race. “It’s good the 88 (Earnhardt Jr.) won and not the 24 (Jeff Gordon); that’s a good thing. We just weren’t fast enough with our Shell/Pennzoil Ford. We didn’t have the lateral, forward drive that I needed off the corner, and every time we tried to fix that the center didn’t turn. We just couldn’t get the handle on it all day.”
Now it’s off to Texas Motor Speedway for the next race, a track where Logano won in the spring.
Loser: Kyle Larson
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Kyle Larson admitted before the start of the weekend that Martinsville was still a track that he had yet to feel comfortable on.
His qualifying position, 16th, wasn’t too bad, but Larson struggled during practice and never found the speed he needed to be running up with the leaders.
As a result, he was racing in the middle of the field, a dangerous place when you’re racing at Martinsville. It’s where much of the action and fender rubbing occurs.
On Lap 190, Larson found himself spinning into the Turn 1 outside wall, causing damage to his No. 42 Chevrolet.
"I was terrible all day. I'm just not very good at this track,” Larson told his manufacturer representative after the race.
In the late stages of the race, Larson tried to help his teammate Jamie McMurray and ended up battling with Marcos Ambrose.
“The No. 9 (Ambrose) was holding up my teammate, and every time Jamie would go to pass him, he would block him,” explained Larson after the race. “He finally raced hard and Jamie got by him. I got to the No. 9 and he tried to do the same thing to me.
So I wasn't going to lift, and he ran me all the way down to the apron, and I locked it up and got sideways. I'm not sure how I knocked the radiator and the oil pan out, but that is what ended the race for us.”
Larson ended the day with a heavily damaged race car and a 30th-place finish.
Winner: Ryan Newman
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Ryan Newman could be the 2014 Sprint Cup champion.
Yes, it could happen. If the Richard Childress Racing driver continues a somewhat “flying under the radar” Chase effort, he may yet win the title after going winless this season.
Even with an ill-handling race car and a speeding-on-pit-road penalty that put him at the tail end of the field, Newman managed a third-place finish behind Hendrick drivers Earnhardt Jr. and Gordon.
“I put us a bit behind there with that pit-road penalty, which is something rare for me to do,” said Newman in his post-race media release. “But, we managed to race our way out of that and get back to the top 15 and top 10 and then put us in a good place for this finish. Those last five laps were pretty intense, and I'm glad we came out of it how we did; it could have been big there, and I was expecting another caution.”
I’m sure Newman would love to win the championship and have a race win to go along with it. But, the way the rules for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship are set up, he could have one without the other.
Loser: Carl Edwards
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Like Newman, Carl Edwards appears to be moving forward in the Chase using smoke and mirrors.
Although Edwards does have two race wins this season (Bristol and Sonoma), the Missouri-native’s final season with Roush Fenway Racing has been remarkably forgettable.
Edwards has not been a serious contender during many of the races this season. With only seven top-five finishes and 13 top 10s, the only races where he has been a contender were the ones he actually won.
“Pretty frustrating,” Edwards told his manufacturer representative after the race. “We planned on running a lot better than that, but at the end of the day we still came home 20th, and we could have lost our minds there. It’s not what we wanted.”
In his defense, Edwards was caught up in several incidents on Sunday that caused damage to his No. 99 Ford.
Edwards will need to either win or find some real performance gains in the remaining two races of the Eliminator Round as he sits sixth in points.
“We’ll go to Texas and go for the win. We’ll go to Phoenix and go for the win there, and that’s all we can do.”
Winner: Matt Kenseth
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While Matt Kenseth may not have made many friends on Sunday, he did score another top-10 finish, his 20th of the season.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was at one point described by Allen Bestwick of the ESPN television announcing crew as, "a pinball, he's been bounced around by so many this afternoon."
"It was a long day—it was one of the lowlights of my career honestly,” said Kenseth after the race to his manufacturer representative. “I'm glad we got that finish even though we've got the car all banged up and all the extra stuff going on. At the end of the day, I'm glad we got the finish, but it was a rough day."
And to reinforce the class act whom he is, Kenseth owned up to his wreck with Harvick, which put the Stewart-Haas Racing driver many laps down and eliminated any chance he might have had to win on Sunday.
“It was a mistake—he was an innocent bystander and was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kenseth added, after the race. “I totally understand how he feels, and I totally understand why he would say that. I totally get it. He knows it was a mistake too, but that doesn't really help him. I don't really blame him. He got taken out of the race for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Harvick didn't take well to Kenseth's apology. He had some choice words for the 2003 champion.
"Yeah, he won’t win this championship. If we don’t, he won’t," Harvick told his manufacturer's representative after the race, obviously still upset by his being hit by Kenseth.
Kenseth sits fourth in points by way of his sixth-place finish on Sunday. He also remains winless this season.
Loser: Kurt Busch
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Kurt Busch had been optimistic before Sunday’s race. Martinsville was where he had scored his only win this season, back on March 30th.
Since then, however, Busch has had an up-and-down season, much of it down.
On Sunday, it was another one of those down days.
After several bumps and bangs and finding himself working his way from the back of the field to the front (quite successfully, I must add), Busch’s day came to a fiery end when his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet ruptured an oil line and literally caught fire.
“I think we ruptured an oil line,” Busch told a live television audience. “That’s what I’m hearing. Whether it was the fitting or the line itself, I don’t know. But we had a really good run. We were in the mix.”
After this race, Busch and Danica Patrick will swap crew chiefs and teams, and Busch had hoped to give them a better send off.
“It’s very sentimental,” he added. “We won here early in the year, and we wanted to build that consistency. Today you could feel exactly what we’ve built all year long. We can’t give them a grandfather clock, but we just had one of those mechanical failures that pops up and bites you. We’ll give it our best these next three weeks.”
Winner: Tony Stewart
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Tony Stewart hasn’t had much to smile about this season, especially while at a Sprint Cup race track.
On Sunday, it was different.
Stewart finished the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 in fourth place, which equaled his best finish of the season, at Bristol in March.
Stewart led 18 laps, and near the end of the race, he was in position to win. But before the final restart, most of the field dived onto pit road to take tires and fuel, while Stewart’s crew chief Chad Johnston made the gamble to stay out.
When the green flag fell, Stewart became a sitting duck for the drivers with four fresh tires. Nevertheless, Stewart defended his crew chief after the race.
It was an emotional time for Stewart, who was all smiles while being interviewed on live television on pit road following the race.
“If we had to do that 100 times over, we’d do the same things,” Stewart told a live television audience. “We didn’t have anything to lose. It was worth the gamble. Where we were at, in fifth, you didn’t know who was going who was going to do two tires or what could happen. Something could happen on a pit stop.
“There are just a lot of variables that could have gone wrong there. I’d rather have taken the chance and had to fight at the end like that. We still ended up a lot better than we were before the caution came out. I think that’s about all you can ask for on this Bass Pro/Mobil 1 Chevy and (crew chief) Chad Johnson and all these guys. They did an awesome job.”
All quotes are taken from official NASCAR, team and manufacturer media releases unless otherwise stated.
Bob Margolis is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association and has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, the NHRA and Sports Cars for more than two decades as a writer, television producer and on-air talent.
On Twitter: @BobMargolis
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