NASCAR at Charlotte 2015: Winners, Losers from the Bank of America 500
The Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway was, on the whole, somewhat uneventful. There were few passes and few lead changes. Eventual race winner Joey Logano led for 227 drama-less laps.
“It’s a pretty special feeling,” crew chief Todd Gordon said during the NBC Sports broadcast. “We were able to do this last year. Kansas was the first race of this section of the Chase. We did it again this year. An awesome driver we’ve got this year.”
Indeed Logano is, but a few other awesome drivers had what you might call unpredictably bad days out in the North Carolina sun, including Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Most notably, Matt Kenseth had such trouble that he went from dominant (73 laps led) to undriveable (completed just 236 laps).
One race is done in the Contender Round, and as you’ll hear, there’s the looming specter of Talladega two races from now putting all the more pressure to lock down that win next week at Kansas.
So let’s see who won and who lost at Charlotte before the Sprint Cup Series heads to Kansas.
Loser: Kasey Kahne's Right-Front Tire
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Kahne had one of the more disappointing years in recent memory and failed to have his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy’s splitter and spoiler painted Chase yellow.
Kahne, fourth on the HMS depth chart, did little to inspire confidence on the track this year, and things didn’t improve at all at Charlotte. Such was the case when he kissed the wall on Lap 42.
Twenty laps later, he smashed the wall so hard he required a visit to the garage, where he told NBC Sports during the broadcast, “The first time I was just coming out to the wall and felt my right front drop. The second time I was in the center of the corner trying to get past Kenseth to get a lap back, wide open throttle, obviously we’re doing something wrong to have two tire problems.”
The crashed ended his day.
Something was off all season for the No. 5 car, but these last few races still hold value for him and all non-Chasers. Thirty-one other drivers don’t roll over for the 12 Chasers, yet Kahne failed to use this race (at a track where he’s had prior success) to further his case as a top-notch driver from a historically great garage.
Winner: The Elder Hendrick Motorsports Driver
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Jeff Gordon, who started back in Danica Patrick territory in 22nd, didn’t appear to have the initial position to make any lasting impact at Charlotte.
But Saturday night’s race under the lights moving under the Sunday sun was a stroke of luck for him and, as a result, for Hendrick Motorsports too (beyond Gordon’s eighth-place finish, the other HMS drivers finished 28th, 39th and 43rd).
Gordon said on the NBC Sports broadcast:
"I think the day race helped us. At night this place gets so grippy and fast. It’s hard to get multiple grooves. During the day, the sun being out all day losing a bit of grip, it didn’t move around a lot, it moved around enough so we could maneuver through traffic and work our way up on the track and a little bit on pit road.
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While other teammates were cutting tires (Kahne), hitting oil slicks (Earnhardt) or blowing out oil pumps (Johnson), Gordon clawed his way up through the field. He said:
"I’m really proud of this team. We didn’t even start this race good, let alone starting 22nd. They made some incredible adjustments, and our pit crew was rock solid on pit road. Overall it was a great team effort. Everybody wants to be sitting there where the No. 22 is. It’s a good place to be especially with Talladega looming.
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Can the winless Gordon make it to the Eliminator Round? He sits seventh right now and is plus-two on eighth place on the Chase Grid. Those four drivers outside the top eight are Ryan Newman, Kyle Busch, Earnhardt and Kenseth.
Sometimes the best course of action is to play it conservative, not do too much and let the others fall out of the tree.
Loser: The Best of Times and Worst of Times for Matt Kenseth
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Kenseth started the second round of the Chase on the pole for the Bank of America 500 with confidence abound. His No. 20 Camry was on rails throughout the first quarter of the race, as he sped to the early lead. He even led 73 laps, all of that early in the race.
But he started to slide back through the field when crew chief Jason Ratcliff called for four tires while most took two. Then he overshot his pit box during another stop, delaying his exit and moving from 12th to 20th.
Soon thereafter, while Kenseth tried to float from the middle of the pack to the front, he drifted up the track and caught Ryan Newman’s left-front quarter panel.
The collision kicked his right rear hard into the wall. Smoke, and lots of it, signaled the end of his once-competitive car.
"I really look at it one race at time—do the best you can every week. If this is the best I do it’s amazing I have a job," Kenseth said during the NBC Sports broadcast. "It wasn’t good when we got into the back of the pack. It’s a down day. We’ll get her gathered up and onto Kansas."
During the Challenger Round, Kenseth proved he was one of the favorites to win the Sprint Cup. Such a designation is only as good as the current race. With this Chase format, the chance encounters drivers have with cut tires, tire rub and contact with each other or the wall can plummet a contender from the top of the field to the bottom, from a secure spot in the next round to having that Chase-yellow paint stripped from your car (see: Jimmie Johnson).
Good thing for Kenseth that this poor effort came with two to go in the Contender Round. Unfortunately, Talladega looms, and no one wants to bet his or her future in the Chase on a restrictor-plate race.
That makes Kansas (two wins for Kenseth) the race Kenseth needs to keep his Cup hopes alive.
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Winner: Finding the Right Setup
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Martin Truex Jr. was inconsolable, despondent about the way his car ran during practice and qualifying. He started 15th but hated his car in practice. He was 15th in the final practice.
Despite that, he and his team managed to place third in the race, proving he may be the sleeper to keep plugging his way straight through the Chase to Homestead.
“Hard work and a never-give-up attitude,” Truex said during the NBC Sports broadcast. “We were talking from yesterday before the race about the setup, what to do. I was nervous going into the race. I figured we’d be lucky to run 15th with the car we had in practice.”
But Truex, like many other drivers, sees the black cloud that is Talladega’s restrictor plates and the drafting that leads to the Big Ones. Those crashes mean anyone can win, and, for Chasers, anyone can go from within the Eliminator Round to just another car in the field driving in circles.
“We did it today, and we still need to do it next week,” Truex said. “Talladega still looms. It still makes us nervous.”
Truex simply needs to drive clean. Many drivers are doing too much, digging holes. This war could go to the one who lasts the longest and who remains the most steady throughout. Truex fits the bill, but eventually he will have to find the speed to win a race.
Loser: The Kyles Around the Commitment Cone
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Here’s a math equation. Solve for X: One top-five car + one top-five car + late indecision = X.
No multiple choice necessary; for Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch, the answer turned two cars competing for the win into two cars decidedly not.
Larson made a last-millisecond, hard left turn at the commitment cone. What he didn’t see was Busch making a hard right to avoid pit road. The two collided, making Rowdy say, as Jeff Gluck of USA Today tweeted, “The f--- was [Larson] thinking?”
After the race, Busch was asked what happened. Pulling out all his vocabulary and milking his air time, he replied during the broadcast, “I don’t know,” before quickly deflecting the conversation to how well his crew performed to repair his car and ensure he’d finish where he did (20th).
“Can’t pass anybody; [it was] a single-lane racetrack. Then you put oil down on the top lane to make anything happen and you put yourself in the fence. Thanks to NASCAR for cleaning that up. Just every single year, keeps going the same way.”
Crashes earlier in the race laid down a coat of fluid that kicked several drivers at different times into the fence.
Sunday’s race had the makings of a breakout day for Larson, who led three laps at Charlotte. Larson, who finished 21st, to his credit, admitted his fault in the acceded, as Gluck reported via Twitter. Larson was told to “pit, pit, pit” at the last second, and in that last second Busch was in his way.
The incident could affect Busch’s ability to reach the Eliminator Round. As it stands, he sits in 10th place, 10 points out of the cut line of eighth place.
Winner: The King of the Runner-Up
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Kevin Harvick dodged a bullet in the Challenger Round. Or maybe the more apt description is that he was the bullet in dominating at Dover to advance to the Contender Round.
He parlayed that into yet another winning effort (despite not leading a lap) to finish second in the BofA 500. The runner-up performance was his 11th of the year.
“We could hang with [Logano],” Harvick said during the NBC Sports broadcast. “I would just lose him every once in a while in traffic. It was just extremely hard to pass. All in all we weren’t good all weekend. The guys were really good on pit road. They made our car better throughout the day.”
Harvick may be the driver to beat, but you can’t Velcro his nameplate to the Eliminator Eight just yet. In the standings, spots No. 2 through No. 6 are separated by three points. Three.
What we saw at Charlotte means that drivers cannot bet on pointing to the next round. Kenseth and Johnson are the cautionary tales alerting them how valuable a win is.
It could be that Harvick's teammate, Patrick, may have cost him a chance at the lead. During the final green-flag stop, she effectively blocked Harvick coming off pit road. It stopped him from getting the requisite momentum he needed to catch Logano, slowing Harvick down just enough that he couldn't keep pace with Logano.
“If those are the off days we’ll be just fine,” Harvick said. “It doesn’t change anything. We’re just going to Kansas and keep grinding away.”
They all know the value of wins, especially with the unpredictability of other drivers and whatever happens under the hoods of these massive, powerful machines.
Loser: Oil Slicks
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Junior, Busch and a few others got intimately acquainted with the wall, leaving the right sides of their cards forever tattooed by Charlotte Motor Speedway.
First Junior hit the wall after Carl Edwards tagged him...or when Junior came down and tagged Edwards. Who knows, really? Something triggered Earnhardt’s first soiree with the wall, sending him to the bowels of the leaderboard at 28th.
“I lost count how many times we hit it today,” Junior said during the NBC Sports broadcast. “We had a pretty decent car. Carl got a good run on me in the frontstretch. I have to look at that to see if that was a racing deal or whatever. That put us in the wall the first time.”
What snowballed his misfortune and Busch’s were oil slicks that weren’t adequately dried.
“They didn’t clean up the oil and we hit the wall again,” Earnhardt said. “There was a lot of oil up there. I went around the Speedy Dry where they put it down on the track. I flew into the fence. Maybe the shadows were giving them a hard time to clean it up.”
Shadows or no shadows, fluid on the track is an unacceptable hazard. After all, it was a different kind of fluid that postponed this race to begin with Saturday night when it rained all night.
This failure on NASCAR’s part is on par with some of its worst lapses in safety. We all learned the value of SAFER barriers earlier this year and certainly catchfences. Failure to clean up something as simple as fluid can lead to another catastrophe that NASCAR can’t afford to clean up.
Winner: Making Talladega Easier
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For the second straight year, Logano won the opening race of the Contender Round.
Throughout the broadcast, the announcers noted how difficult this round is—500 miles to start at Charlotte, a recently paved Kansas track and then, of course, Talladega serving up plates.
So, for Logano and the No. 22 team to get this win, they avoid the pressure of having to win at Kansas and, yes, avoid the cluster that ’Dega represents altogether.
“This makes Talladega way easier,” Logano said during the NBC Sports broadcast. “I know that was on everyone’s mind when this round started. Last year we were able to win Kansas when this round started. It helps us sleep the next couple of weeks.”
Logano won his fourth race of the year while leading 227 laps. More importantly, he was able to keep Harvick caged behind him.
“I think everyone saw how fast he was [at Dover], and he made a lot of people nervous,” Logano said. “We know we can beat them. This helps us recharge our batteries and get us ready for the next round so we can come out swinging in that one.”
With the success of Joe Gibbs Racing, Logano was forgotten as a Sprint Cup threat. But let’s not forget: He won the Daytona 500 and was in the Championship Round a year ago.
This is a driver primed to win if he can keep the other dogs leashed and receding in the rearview mirror.
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