NASCAR at Pocono 2015: Winners and Losers from the Axalta 'We Paint Winners' 400
Martin Truex Jr., the driver who led the most laps for four straight weeks, finally notched that elusive win dominating the Axalta "We Paint Winners" 400 at Pocono Raceway.
The single-car team was powerful on the restarts and held off, who else, Kevin Harvick for a most special win for Truex and his crew chief Cole Pearn.
"I'm just happy for Martin," Pearn said during the television broadcast. "It's been a tremendous amount of effort to build it into what it is today."
The No. 78 Chevy was the big winner on the day, but there were a fair share of losers too on a beautiful day in eastern PA.
Read on for the ups and downs at Pocono.
Loser: Jeff Gordon's Handling
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Jeff Gordon, the all-time leader in wins at Pocono with six, couldn't handle the Tricky Triangle all day long. He led one lap early in the race before slipping all the way back into the foreign country of mid-pack.
Through the halfway point of the season, Gordon is still winless. There are only 12 races to go to clinch a spot in the coveted Chase. The pressure is on for the No. 24 team.
Gordon needs to get back on track at Michigan, a place at which he has won three times. A driver doesn't want to leave it up to points if he or she can help it.
That said, it probably feels like a missed opportunity to go winless at Dover and Pocono, two tracks where Gordon has a combined 11 wins.
Winner: Jimmie Johnson Staying on the Lead Lap
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Fox Sports 1's Jamie Little was giving her mid-race report predicting that Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 would power through and win the race.
Then he cut a tire and Little adjusted on the fly with aplomb and almost as much skill as Johnson's pit crew. They were able to change the tire and keep him on the lead lap. As a result, Johnson was able to pick his way through the field and ultimately finish third at Pocono.
"Never giving up I guess," Johnson told Little afterward on the broadcast. "I think the No. 78 and the No. 4 had more pace than anyone else. To lead the next group of cars with a car with the right side knocked off it, splitter missing up front, a good result. Plenty of challenges of today with our team."
For the time being, Johnson is just racing to fill notebooks and racing for Lowe's and all his other sponsors. With four wins, he can moonwalk into the Chase and really get serious.
Loser: Ryan Newman's Battle for Seventh Place
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Ryan Newman took the high line trying to get by AJ Allmendinger for seventh place. The No. 47 car drifted ever so slightly as Newman passed him. Allmendinger, as a result, clipped Newman's left rear quarter panel, and it sent the No. 31 into the wall.
The car came apart like string cheese, and Newman went from a potential seventh-place finish or better to 39th.
Newman is desperate for points. Right now he's 16th on the Chase grid and that hold is tenuous at best.
After his team's failed tire audit following the Fontana race, his team was docked 50 championship points, and nobody knows how important points are more than Newman. He finished second in the Chase last year without winning a single race.
It's becoming more and more likely that Newman will have to win a race to get into the Chase. Losing all those points at Pocono made winning all the more important going forward.
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Winner: Kurt Busch's 'Fairly Well' Afternoon
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Kurt Busch started on the pole and never led a lap all day, but he grinded the entire afternoon to notch another top-five.
"I think we did everything fairly well, we just didn't do anything exceptionally well," Busch said after the race on the broadcast. "The car was a little bit of a handful on cold tires. It took about lap five, then we were pretty good."
Like Harvick, Busch couldn’t get his car chugging on restarts. He often backed up his lane and allowed Truex to keep opening up lengths on the field within 30 seconds of the green flag.
"Restarts, yeah, we didn't get the transmission right," Busch said on the broadcast. "It's a matter of teamwork and figuring out what we can do at this point to be strong when you come back here in August."
Busch remains a wild card to win the Cup this year. His car runs as good as Harvick's in spurts, and if he can ball up that momentum for one concerted run in the fall, he could be an unsung threat to dethrone Harvick, upset Johnson and win his first Cup since 2004.
Loser: Kevin Harvick's Third Gear
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Kevin Harvick earned his 10th top-two of the season and he's a loser? Hey, the bar is super-high for this team, but this second-place finish feels more like a failure than a victory.
Harvick had nothing on the restarts. After each caution—and there were many late in the race—Harvick got blown off the front row but battled back on the long run.
We just couldn’t go on restarts," Harvick said after the race on the broadcast. "We’d lug real bad in third gear and just go into defense mode. Things aren’t lining up to win races right now."
But he's already won two races, and he’ll be more than happy to trade wins now for wins when it actually matters.
"If you're going to lose to a person today, [Martin's] a good person to lose to," Harvick added on the broadcast.
Winner: Joey Logano's Speeding Penalty Recovery
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Early in the race, Joey Logano, this year's Daytona 500 winner, earned himself a tasty little speeding penalty.
Those have an ugly way of ruining an entire day, especially when you have a Ford engine that has struggled of late to keep pace with the demigod Chevy engines. Logano picked up Brad Keselowski's (17th) slack and represented Team Penske by placing fourth.
"Those guys, the No. 78 and the No. 4, they were rocket ships today," Logano said during the broadcast. "We did a good job recovering, making our car a top-five car."
Team Penske scarfed up two wins in the first five races but have struggled to keep pace with the resurgent Toyotas and the ubiquitous Chevys. Logano's effort at Pocono could be an indication that this team is trending to another peak.
Loser: Carl Edwards
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Carl Edwards swiped the lead from pole-sitter Kurt Busch on the first lap of the race and led for 16 laps. He looked powerful and confident in the turns.
Then the Chevys got under his hood and he trended backward for the remainder of the race.
Edwards, a two-time winner at Pocono, just lost speed over the course of the day while his other teammates Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin finished in the top 10.
The new addition to Joe Gibbs Racing finally earned his first win of the season, which has otherwise been a very mediocre season, to lock up a spot on the Chase. If he doesn't clean up his game, the Challenger Round may be his last dance in the postseason.
Winner: Martin Truex Jr.'s Single-Car Team
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It had been 69 races since Truex last won a race. That was in Sonoma in 2013. There have been a few ups, but mainly downs of late for Truex.
All last year his girlfriend dealt with cancer. This past Wednesday his grandmother died of cancer. On Sunday, he led the most laps for the fourth race in a row and won his first race of the year.
He said after the race on the broadcast:
"The last year and half has been tough. This feels pretty dang good. I knew we were going to get one. Everybody kept asking, when are you going to get one? When are you going to get one? I knew we had the team and I knew we had what it took. We just need to get things to play out the way we needed them to.
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Truex notched his 13th top-10 out of 14 races. His amazingly consistent No. 78 car is the surprise of the year. This single-car team is not just running with the four-car teams, he’s whipping up on them.
After the race, Michael Waltrip, Truex's former owner back in 2013, relayed an anecdote about Edwards that applied to Truex:
"[Edwards] said now we can just focus on winning a championship. We can test, we can practice, we work our way toward the Chase knowing that we’re in. That's where Truex is right now. If they get any more performance out of that single-car team, they're going to be hard to beat.
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Truex's crew chief earned his first career win and was congratulated by Chad Knaus and Rick Hendrick afterward.
"This has got to be one of the most popular victories in a long time," Darrell Waltrip said during the broadcast.
And it likely won't be his last. His car has been the most steady all season and, with the win, it may free him in ways we haven't seen yet.
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