NASCAR at Bristol 2015: Winners and Losers from the Food City 500
The story early in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was rain and lots of it. It just so happens it was also the story late.
Fog and rain crept into the coliseum of NASCAR and Bristol chewed up the cars like gladiators. “Are you not entertained?!”
Drivers got up and then had to let the air out of the tires.
“It’s that anxiety,” said Darrell Waltrip on the Fox Sports 1 broadcast. “You get up, you’re ready to go, you’re geared up to drive 500 miles. It takes you out of your routine.”
If you stuck around for the 10 hours it took to go from green to checkered, you were rewarded with a strong finish.
Shake off your poncho and read on for the winners and losers from the Food City 500.
Loser: Team Penske
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It took only 22 laps to effectively eliminate Team Penske from contention. Brad Keselowski got loose on a relatively slick track, losing control of his Ford.
The wreck involved one other car: his teammate Joey Logano. Keselowski told Jamie Little during the Fox broadcast:
"It’s been raining since we started the race. It’s been a light sprinkle. Just barely dry, the rain was coming in and out. The car just took off on me. When a car gets that far sideways, there’s a reason for it. I just really hate that I tore up my teammate in the process. That’s really a bummer. I felt like I had a normal line and it flew sideways on me. It’s a bummer at Team Penske to tear up both cars.
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Logano took the brunt of it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The red flag came out and neither team could work on the cars. By the time he returned to the track, he was 52 laps down.
Logano and Keselowski, who already qualified for the Chase, finished 40th and 35th respectively and will regroup when they head to Richmond, Virginia, for next Saturday's Toyota Owners 400.
Winner: Jimmie Johnson's 'Junk' Car
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Bristol hasn’t been Jimmie Johnson’s best track, and he knows it. He qualified 28th, and it didn’t look like he’d be able to contend.
He was mixed in a number of spin-outs and other precarious situations throughout the night.
“This has just been a tough track for me,” Johnson said in Allen Gregory's Bristol Herald Courier story. “I feel like what it takes to drive here would really fit my driving style and suit me. But it just really hasn’t over the years, even when I go back to the Xfinity car that I raced here.”
Even Fox Sports 1’s Darrell Waltrip spared no niceties when talking about Johnson’s qualifying car.
“That car was junk all weekend,” he said during the broadcast.
He had a winning car—certainly a top-five car—but then Bristol grabbed him by the collar and shook him loose.
He got into a little mess with Kurt Busch and lost ground, but stayed on the lead lap. Then Jeb Burton's No. 26 drew the impatient ire of Johnson, which caused a chain reaction that cost David Ragan and Kevin Harvick their days.
On the final restart he blasted free from the third position and into second place for a second consecutive top-two finish.
"That was a wild night," Johnson said during the television broadcast. "I have to thank my crew. They burned the midnight oil on Friday night to turn this around."
Loser: Denny Hamlin
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According to Denny Hamlin, he started feeling serious discomfort in his neck at about Lap 12. Over four hours later Hamlin took himself out of the No. 11 car.
“That’s can easily happen here,” Fox Sports 1’s Darrell Waltrip said during the broadcast. “Your body goes through a beating here. This place is brutal.”
Hamlin then told Fox Sports 1’s Jamie Little during the broadcast:
"I just pulled something my neck to upper back. I started going backward at that point. The pain was bothering me quite a bit. I’m not100 percent. This [playoff] format is all about winning. It was doing my team an injustice to run a bunch of laps and it was best to have Erik [Jones] come in here and run laps.
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The format is all about winning and, thankfully for Hamlin, he already won at Martinsville and secured a spot in the Chase.
"We just didn’t have a race-winning driver," Hamlin added. "It’s something that will go away. I just pulled it. I’m going to try and win Richmond next week."
The loss of Hamlin gave 18-year-old Erik Jones a his first career “start” in a Cup race. The points and laps go under the Hamlin's banner, but the experience was all Jones', and he finished a clean/dirty 26th. Thankfully, Hamlin's issues aren't serious, but any time a driver has to give up his ride, because of injury or anything else, it's disappointing.
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Winner: SAFER Barriers
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SAFER barriers have made headlines for their absence along certain walls at certain tracks. It’s their presence at Bristol that saved Landon Cassill from what could have been a gruesome result to a nasty crash.
Kyle Larson stormed his No. 42 Chevy up on the bumpers of the lap cars. Cassill made a move to get out of the way, ceding the outside lane. The problem was Jeb Burton (who, as a lap car, caused the traffic that bumped Johnson, Harvick and Ragan from contention), who set a pick on the inside.
Cassill pinballed head-on into the wall, crunching up his front end. Moments later he climbed out of his car.
“I’m fine,” he told Jamie Little during the Fox Sports 1 broadcast. “I clearly came down on the 42. I knew he was back there. He must have had a huge run on me. I hope the 42 didn’t get any damage. I hope it works out for him.”
Larson suffered no damage from this hiccup.
Fox Sports’ Jay W. Pennell tweeted, “Think SAFER barriers are important at a short track like [Bristol]? Go ask [Landon Cassill] after tonight.”
Loser: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Loose Wheel
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. was at one point inside the top 10, then he swerved up too high and cut his right rear tire on teammate Kasey Kahne’s splitter (What’s the deal with teammates getting up in each other’s business this race?).
Pitting put Junior down two laps. Barely 10 minutes later, the No. 88 car radioed in a loose wheel, and he had to pit again under green, putting him down another two laps.
That’s Bristol.
“I like to think of it like being put in a blender,” Fox NASCAR analyst Darrell Waltrip said during the broadcast. “You put 43 cars in, turn it on and God only knows.”
His teammate, Jeff Gordon, also suffered a loose wheel but wrestled for third. Johnson coped with his problems and took second.
As for Junior, who finished 16th, it’s only a matter of time before he and first-year crew chief Greg Ives win a race and get into the Chase. When he’s been good, he’s been a top-five car. When he’s bad, he can be in the proverbial ditch.
Winner: Jeff Gordon
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At one point during the race, Jeff Gordon had a loose wheel and was two laps down. Through persistence, patience and experience, Gordon was on the front row for the final restart.
His tires weren’t as fresh as those behind him and he got beaten off the line by Matt Kenseth and Gordon’s teammate Johnson, but hanging for third was his best finish of this young season.
“That was tough on such old tires,” Gordon said during the Fox Sports 1 broadcast. “You have to carry a little momentum there and not spin the tires. I thought I got a good restart, as good as I could on that bottom lane.”
Gordon avoided some carnage when Carl Edwards got up in his business on Turn 1 late in the race. Edwards spun out, but Gordon endured.
“That was just chaos,” Gordon said on the broadcast. “We had the loose wheel, had to come from behind. I didn’t think we had the best car on that long run. We were building a top five out of it.”
Gordon finished ninth at Martinsville and third at Bristol. Heading to Richmond could mean another top-five—or even a win—at the next short track, where he has two wins.
Loser: Kevin Harvick
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“You have to make the right adjustments,” Kevin Harvick said in his car when racing resumed earlier in the evening. “We’ll just have to see how the race track goes.”
The track was just fine for the most part. What wasn’t was the incredible run the invincible Harvick was on. After finishing in the top two in all but one race this season, Harvick, who finished 38th, finally ran into some bad luck.
Lap cars caused a lot of problems tonight. Jeb Burton’s first tango at Bristol resulted in a frustrated Johnson, who spun Burton out. David Ragan smashed Burton, leaving Harvick nowhere to go but into the mutilated Camry once piloted by Ragan.
This was bound to happen sooner or later. Good for Kenseth that it happened, because Harvick led a typical Harvickian amount of laps: 184.
Onward for the No. 4 team.
Winner: Race Winner Matt Kenseth
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The race day itself was long, and the wait was even longer for Matt Kenseth.
It had been 51 races since Kenseth parked the No. 20 car on Victory Lane, and he finally did it with a volcanic restart on the green-white-checkered finish at Bristol.
“It means a lot,” said Kenseth on the Fox Sports 1 broadcast. “I’ve got a great race team. Not winning last year was tough and not winning this year so far has been tough. We’ve been putting ourselves in position. Our pit stops have been great.”
Kenseth won seven races in 2013 and none in 2014. He still pointed his way into the Chase in 2014, but winning means so much more.
“You know what this proves?” asked Fox Sports 1’s Darrell Waltrip during the broadcast. “It’s not over till it’s over. When you run 500 laps here you have no idea what’s going to happen until that checkered flag falls.”
It was an equally big win for Jason Ratcliff, Kenseth’s crew chief. Fox Sports 1’s Larry McReynolds noted a huge call Ratcliff made. They took one step back in order to move 10 steps forward to Victory Lane.
McReynolds said during the broadcast, “I think about Jason Ratcliff, and how much he needed this. Remember, just past the halfway, he pulled the belts tight and made that huge chassis adjustment to the left rear. Gave up track position, but it paid dividends for that No. 20 car.”
On the two short tracks this year, two Joe Gibbs Racing cars have won: Kenseth and Hamlin. Maybe this means Carl Edwards, who wrecked late at Bristol, will get his turn come Saturday night in Richmond.
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