NASCAR at Phoenix 2016: Winners and Losers from the Good Sam 500
The Good Sam 500, an ode to the metric system, was the most uneventful race of the season.
Only four drivers led laps: Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Each finished in the top five.
Anyone who withstood the relative monotony of the first 309 laps was rewarded by a thrilling finish between Harvick and Edwards.
There was no shortage of bumping as the fresher-tired Edwards and the aged-tired Harvick battled through Turns 3 and 4. The result was the closest in the history of Phoenix International Raceway and the eighth win for the undisputed king of cacti.
"Boys," said Darrell Waltrip during the broadcast, "That was a pretty amazing finish. Take a bow. You deserve it, buddy."
"It is hard to beat Kevin Harvick," said Jeff Gordon.
"How he held Carl Edwards off...I don't know how he did it," said Waltrip.
How he did it, and more, in this week's renewal of winners and losers.
Loser: The Melted Beads of Richard Childress Racing
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Richard Childress Racing hasn't won a race since 2013 and hasn't won a race with a driver not named Kevin Harvick since 2011.
That 2011 win came when Paul Menard hit Victory Lane at Indianapolis.
Dale Earnhardt Sr. isn't stepping into that No. 3 car to save the day for RCR. Only Austin Dillon steps through the window of the No. 3 car, and he appears to be the silver lining on the RCR cloud.
That was most certainly the case in Phoenix.
Ryan Newman blew a right-front tire. That kicked him into the wall where only a hauler could move his car off pit road.
Fifty-three laps into the next green run, Menard also lost a right-front tire where only a hauler could move his car off the track.
The verdict? Melted beads, according to Goodyear (via NASCAR Talk's Dusting Long).
All Childress could do was look on in disbelief as the slump continues.
Winner: The Brothers Dillon
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Sure, Childress will look at Newman and Menard and be like super disappointed, but if he looks at his kin, he'll be tickled Dow-chemical red.
Austin Dillon, RCR's third driver, finished a respectable ninth, while his other teammates melted in the desert.
Ty Dillon, Austin's brother, filled in for the injured Tony Stewart driving the No. 14 car to a top 15, one of its best finishes of the entire season.
Austin seems on the cusp of a breakthrough season. Through four races he has three top 10s and an average finish of 8.5. That has the markings of the Chase written all over it.
Sure, Childress' team had a sour day, but looking at his grandkids should be the silver lining to a bad day in Phoenix.
Loser: The Ineffectuality of the No. 15 Car
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Clint Bowyer continues to prove his ineffectuality.
Barely 20 laps into the Good Sam 500, Bowyer felt something amiss with his right front. The mechanical failure put him down two laps and took him out of contention.
Bowyer, who qualified for the Chase in 2015 on points alone (barely), drives like someone indifferent to the idea of winning.
Take the first three races of the season. Bowyer's average start is 31.3 with an average finish of 30.0.
Here's where people get into trouble when they say they want to be more “consistent.” Bowyer is hella consistent with finishes of 33, 35 and 22, consistently bad. He would be the first to admit it.
Tony Stewart, who plans on handing the keys of the No. 14 to Bowyer in 2017, must be biting his nails during rehab because Bowyer's early performance doesn't inspire visions of Sprint Cups.
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Winner: Rebounding Rowdy
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Nobody see-sawed from winner to loser and back to winner like Kyle Busch.
He led the first 75 laps, but it was a botched pit stop that dropped from 14 spots in the middle of the race that nearly cost him a respectable finish.
Rowdy said during the Fox broadcast:
"I screwed us up on pit road and got us behind the eight ball. We were able to rebound through that and get ourselves back up front. Barring some different circumstances on the final restart with two old-tire-cars in front of me and restarting fifth that hurt me. If I had restarted fourth, I might have had a shot at it.
"
He drove all over the apron for the lead, but he was too far back, with that stumble on pit road putting him a little too far back.
"[The car] was good enough to lead a bunch of laps early in the race," Busch said. "As the runs got longer, we seemed to fade. We've got to work on some long-run stuff and how you do that I don't know because you can never get a long run during practice."
The fourth-place finish was his eighth in a row—a career best for Busch. He's the only driver with top fives in all four races.
A win is near for Rowdy.
Loser: Brad Keselowki's Right-Rear Tire
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Brad Keselowski was riding in 10th and looked like he was set to parlay his Las Vegas win from a week ago into a top 10 at Phoenix.
But the bug that bit Newman, Menard and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. dug its teeth into the right-rear tire of the No. 2 Ford.
Yes, melted beads did Keselowski in moving him from 10th to five laps down.
There's no worry for this team since the win in Vegas vaulted it to the Chase, but it's still a loss for Keselowski this week.
Now he heads to Fontana—the site of his lone win from 2015.
Winner: Carl Edwards and the Two-Tire Move
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Edwards came to pit road for two tires—a new set of cleats—to try and run down Harvick.
Thanks to a late pit call, Edwards had the best run on the final, overtime restart.
Starting in Row 2, Edwards blasted past Earnhardt and got right up on Harvick's door, panel, well, everything. It was like a Vegas nightclub.
The final contact Edwards imparted on Harvick gave Harvick enough thrust to get his splitter to the yellow line first.
"I should have wrecked him!" Edwards said through a gleaming, Mr.-Nice-Guy smile on the Fox broadcast. "We were faster so I thought I'd just move him out of the way and get by and I just didn't move him far enough."
Had he moved him too far Edwards would have spun out Harvick and there would have been another round of Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano talk heading into the next week.
Edwards pushed the boundaries, got physical, but still managed to keep it in context, realizing he'll get his over the next 22 races.
"I wanted to win that thing," said Edwards. "You win some, you lose some. It was a good race."
Well, yes, the final three laps were good.
Loser: Greg Ives' Call
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NASCAR got itself a late caution in what was an uneventful race.
The big question became: Would Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr., first and second, pit for tires?
No, they did not pit.
It helped one (Harvick) and hurt the other (Junior). The call, made by crew chief Greg Ives, turned Junior into a fifth-place car—a drop-off from second.
"I don't care about the call," Earnhardt said during the Fox broadcast. "I don't dislike the call to stay out."
But he should have disliked it (and likely did between his ears). Even two tires would have allowed the No. 88 to keep pace with the top cars. Instead he watched as Edwards—with two fresh rights—blow past him eventually coming within 100th of a second from Victory Lane.
It's not as if Earnhardt fell out of the top 10, but the call against tires cost three spots and maybe a win.
Winner: The King of Cacti
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Enter the King of Cacti, a title, I'm sure, some Western or Australian botanist longs for.
Harvick was the favorite, having won four of the last five, so let's make it five of the last six and his eighth overall. His 1,484 laps led at PIR is also a record. Harvick is the Phoenician GOAT, and he showed it holding off Edwards.
"I knew he was better through [Turn] 3 and 4," Harvick said during the Fox broadcast. "That was not the car I wanted to see behind me. I tried to protect the bottom. All in all I knew I was going to be on defense down there. I got up too high and wasn't able to stay on the bottom. Then he got into me like he should have."
The West Coast Swing is Harvick's playground, and the win marks the fourth different driver from the fourth different team to qualify for the Chase.
To quote Forrest Gump, Harvick and Phoenix are like peas and carrots.
"It's one of those places where I feel like I can move around and find something to make our car work," Harvick said. "We struggled this week to get the balance where we wanted to."
They found enough, a few centimeters over 500 kilometers, to get the win.
All stats came courtesy of Racing-Reference.info.
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