June 22, 2009
By Ron Felix
In the final 33 laps of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway, Kasey Kahne drove his Richard Petty Motorsports Dodge like it was stolen and he was headed to Mexico. Tony Stewart and Marcos Ambrose were in hot pursuit -- but Kahne kept a level head and a steady foot to hold them off and win his first ever road course race.
Photo Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images
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Kasey Kahne Doing Doughnuts
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“It’s crazy," said Kahne. "We qualified really well here the last couple of years and it feels good to qualify well here, run out front, and to hold off Tony Stewart, that’s awesome. That guy (Stewart) is as good as it gets on any type of race track and we were able to go hard with our Budweiser Dodge Charger. It’s unbelievable to win here. To win any race and to win at a road course for me is crazy. It feels really good."
It also was Kahne's first victory this season and the 10th of his 196 race career.
Kahne delivered the first win for Richard Petty Motorsports.
“It has been a long time, but when we joined with the Gillett crowd in the fall, I guess, or spring this year, wintertime, we knew they had a good team," said Richard Petty. "So we just brought in three or four different people and trying to look at things different.
But there's not a whole lot of changes. We've got the same cars and the same crews. You change a few people, but they've got a good organization."
Kahne's 38 laps led were the most of any driver. The race came down to a green-white-checkers finish and restart after restart (5), Kahne was keen enough to get the jump on Stewart and Ambrose and drive away from them.
“My biggest thing was don't spin the tires, work on getting into Turn 1 there and just being beside him at the top of the hill and hopefully hold him off there," Kahne explained. "A few of the times we were able to jump the start and beat him into 1 no problem. So that was it was tough.
“That new restart deal is tough. For the last three weeks I've been…I think every weekend I've had some good ones and some bad ones as far as the restarts go. Today we were able to pick where we wanted to be, and it worked out really good for us, and we were able to hold him (Stewart) off. But yeah, two to go, another restart, I was like, ‘I can't believe this.’”
Stewart scored his fourth runner-up and eighth top-five finish of 2009. Stewart had intended to only make two stops, that was the plan, but he was not getting the fuel mileage that he had hoped for and it changed his strategy to a three stop race. Despite the slight change in strategy, Stewart found himself in a tremendous battle throughout the final 33 laps of the event with Kasey Kahne, Marcos Ambrose, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jimmie Johnson.
“It made it exciting all day,” Stewart said. “To have three or four of us at the end that had a shot to get up there if anybody made a mistake, that’s an awesome road course race. The restarts were awesome. They were fun. The fans had to enjoy that and it was a good race.”
Ambrose thought the final laps were pretty intense.
“Intense. It's no fun. I mean, we had like the downhill to go before the white flag, and we were going to finish it, and then the caution comes out for the green-white-checker," Ambrose said. "You know that you can go from 3rd to 33rd with one mistake after putting in all that effort all day. I think all of us just wanted to bring it home somehow, and you know, I really wanted to attack Smoke (Stewart), but he deserved second. I wasn't going to take it off him unless I had a clean pass. I just couldn't get to his bumper bar in time. Jimmie was peppering my bumper. Just bring it home; that's all I was thinking."
Jimmie Johnson, who was penalized for speeding on an early pit stop, battled back to fourth place.
"Yeah it was a good finish. Unfortunately we were speeding on pit road earlier and I had to come back from that," Johnson said. "I passed a lot of cars so very proud of the effort, very proud of the race car. Unfortunately I got together with the No. 2 (Kurt Busch) getting into the esses and got him into the wall so I had to find him and apologize. It was just a racing deal nothing more. Left a bruise on the left front but other than that it was a good day."
Denny Hamlin led 33 laps but had to settle for fifth spot.
“It was a solid day," said a pensive Hamlin. "We started back there pretty far so all in all it was a good day for our FedEx Office Camry. I led some laps and we had a car to contend for the win, just had a slow pit stop right there on the last one. It could be a couple things, slow pit stop or me getting on pit road slow. We need to figure out where we lost five or six seconds there and that was the race for the win."
Juan Montoya finished sixth followed by A.J. Allmendinger, Clint Bowyer, Jeff Gordon and Elliott Sadler to round out the top ten.
With a runner-up finish at Infineon Raceway, Tony Stewart, No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Impala SS, extended his lead in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings, With one win, eight top-five finishes and 12 top-10s in the 16 races run to date, Stewart holds the top spot by 84 points.
Max Papis was the Raybestos® Rookie of the Race in the June 21st Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway. Papis scored a 12th-place finish.
“We had a fantastic race. We fought all race long and I improved in every restart I got some position," said Papis. "On the green-white- checkered I attacked and went up to seventh and I’m not so sure who punted me from the back. They punctured my right rear getting into turn one with one to go and that cost me my three or four spots. I achieved the goal I wanted, I wanted to improve my best ever finish so far with this team and we did it. This is as much of a team effort as anything else because they put me up there from the back -- the team put me up there with the strategy -- and I finished it off with being aggressive.”
The next race on the Sprint Cup schedule – the 17th event of 36-races for the 2009 Sprint Cup Championship. The Lenox Tools 3000 will be on Sunday June 28th, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire. The race begins at approximately 12:30 PM. eastern time -- with live, high-definition coverage provided by TNT beginning with its pre-race show at 12:00 p.m. eastern time.
The race will also be broadcast live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio Channel 128 and MRN radio.
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