CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY > THE MECCA OF MOTORSPORTS
They come from all over to this hallowed ground, Charlotte Motor Speedway. “The Greatest Place to See the Race” and home of the world’s largest HDTV looms majestically on the horizon and beckons its fans to worship. The October air was crisp; the beer, icy cold. Thousands of OctoberFast fans were eager to will their driver to the Winner’s Circle.
The nearly full moon smiled down on the perfect-weather weekend for no-holds-barred night racing. It was time to pay homage to this magnificent racetrack’s rich heritage of motorsports and celebrate the skills and courage of today’s NASCAR elite.
Fans fired up their BBQ grills and partied atop their RV’s to launch the official start of the Bank of America 500. With only a few points separating the Chase leaders, it was game on.
The track went green as temperatures cooled. Tony Stewart, who smoked Thursday’s qualifying with a lap of 28.131 seconds at a speed of 191.959 mph, launched the race from his privileged starting position.
The first 300 laps were stunningly uneventful. Drivers marveled at how difficult it was to pass; and even cars as fast as the race leader had difficulty lapping slower cars once they caught them.
Jeff Gordon, who scored his first career NASCAR Cup victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1994 and stills holds the track record Sprint Cup 500-Mile Race Record 160.682 set 10/10/99, radioed his team saying he’d never seen condition this bad in all his races at CMS. 500 miles later, Gordon finished 21st.
Dale Jr’s fans groaned in frustration when his pit crew error, a loose lugnut, cost NASCAR’s most popular driver to pit under green. Dale Jr finished 19th and is now 60 points behind the lead.
“It’s very costly” he said. “You want to finish as high as you can in the points, no matter where that is. You want to do the best you can. And we’re not doing the best we can. It’s disappointing and frustrating”.
Jr continued “I believe in these guys. Every time I come don pit road, I’m excited about the group that’s going to put tires on my car. We just made a mistake, and I’m sure he won’t let it happen again.”
All of a sudden, with only 34 laps to go, momentum finally picked up and a series of late-race cautions kept the field jumbled. Shortly after a restart, Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle made contact and both sustained damage. Each accused the other of causing the collision.
Track position remained critical and several drivers had to gamble to get to the front, changing leads only 16 times among 10 drivers the entire night. Kyle Busch led most of the second half of the race and appeared to own the track, in typical Kyle Busch style.
Then, with 19 laps remaining, the most unexpected thing happened; Jimmie Johnson wrecked.
The five-time champ suffered his worst Chase finish since the infamous Texas wreck with Sam Hornisn Jr. in 2009 after bashing head-first in a stunningly hard hit into the second turn wall. Johnson nearly saved his car after Ryan Newman spun him loose, but ultimately couldn’t hold it. He emerged from the incident uninjured, but was emotionally shaken from the hit he took in points. Johnson finished in 34th place and fell to eighth in the point standings. Now 35 points behind the points leader, he faces an uphill battle to defend his title.
The quiet and unassuming Matt Kenseth, after putting his car on the outside of the front row and leading the race three times for 46 circuits, took the final lead from Kyle Busch on the last restart of the evening with fewer than 15 laps to go.
Matt’s unpretentious win of the 52nd running of the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway is his third win this season and the 21st victory of his career. He now sits third in points in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chase for the Sprint Cup and the media is finally beginning to take notice.
“It was an awesome win for us,” Kenseth said in the Media Center after the race. “We had a pretty decent car all night. I felt like we had a car that probably during the last 150 laps or so, that if we could get it to the front it would be hard to beat. But it was just really hard to pass tonight, especially if you had about 20 laps on your tires. You had to get it done right away and we got a little behind that one time and got back to fifth or sixth and, honestly, it took that last 150 laps or whatever to get back to the lead. It was a good race. I had fun racing with Kyle there. We had a pretty decent restart, the second-to-last one, and got by Denny and Carl and ran Kyle down. It was tough to get by him and I’m glad we could make it happen because it was challenging.”
Holding off a late race challenge by third-place finisher, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch finished second. It was a hard fought battle and Carl Edwards had some words for Kyle Busch afterwards, leaning into the cockpit of No. 18 expressing his frustration at how Busch came across his nose going into Turn 3 late in the race instead of leaving room and driving to the high side.
“I just let him know that next time that happens, I’ll just stay where I’m at and he can drive across my hood and wreck himself,” Edwards said. “We should definitely be racing each other hard” Edwards continued. “It’s just there’s a difference between racing hard and then cutting across the guy’s nose.”
“It just started steering and kind of free-wheeling, so I just let it go” admitted Busch. “I ran him a little tight.”
The extremely difficult passing created more of a 200 MPH Saturday night single-file parade. Fans, faithful though they are, expressed frustration at the lack of competitive action.
Carl Edwards, now leading the Chase by five points over Kevin Harvick, was asked after the race what he thought would help make the competition better at Charlotte.
“It would be fine with me if they took the spoilers off and the splitters off and we didn’t have any downforce," said Edwards. “The cars are so close that the difference between them is smaller than the difference when you’re following somebody. NASCAR has done a really, really good job of making sure that the rules are close and we’re all about the same speed, but then when you’re going that fast and relying on downforce, it makes it really tough. This track is probably one of the toughest ones to pass on, but it’s overall tough almost everywhere we go.”
The Chase continues at Talladega … and these guys are revved up and ready.
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NASCAR CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY RESULTS
- Matt Kenseth
- Kyle Busch
- Carl Edwards
- Kasey Kahne
- Marcos Ambrose
- Kevin Harvick
- AJ Allmendinger
- Tony Stewart
- Denny Hamlin
- Ryan Newman
- David Ragan
- Joey Logano
- Kurt Busch
- Juan Pablo Montoya
- Greg Biffle
- Brad Keselowski
- Paul Menard
- Jeff Burton
- Dale Earnhardt Jr.
- Brian Vickers
- Jeff Gordon
- Travis Kvapil
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Clint Bowyer
- Regan Smith
- David Reutimann
- Jamie McMurray
- Landon Cassill
- Bobby Labonte
- Mike Bliss
- Trevor Bayne
- Casey Mears
- Hermie Sadler
- Jimmie Johnson
- Dave Blaney
- David Gilliland
- Mark Martin
- Robby Gordon
- Michael McDowell
- JJ Yeley
- David Stremme
- Andy Lally
- Joe Nemechek
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