October 12, 2008
By Ron Felix
CIA Stock Photo
|
Burton Wins Bank of America 500
|
|
Running short on fuel and fending off a fast closing Kasey Kahne, Jeff Burton was up on the wheel and driving hard in the final twenty laps in Saturday night's Bank of America 500. Burton won the race by 0.946 seconds over Kahne, who was going for his third straight win at Lowe's. It was Burton's third victory at Lowe's Motor Speedway -- his second win this year in the Cup Series and the twenty-first of his 506 race career.
Burton also jumped up in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standing to second place, 69 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson.
"It's just an incredible feeling when you turn into victory lane, we're halfway," Burton said of this year's title race. "There's a long way to go. I keep telling everybody that, but they keep wanting to give somebody the trophy right now. All those other guys have a tremendous amount to lose. We've got nothing to lose."
Kahne made up a lot of time on Burton in the final laps but ran out of time and had to settle for second.
"I tried catching him and just came up a little bit short," said Kahne, who rallied after losing a lap in the first half of the race. "It was a fun run. The track is great -- you can move all over."
Kurt Busch, who was using the new R6 Dodge engine, finished a strong third.
“Man, we had a good run. I’m real surprised by it," Busch said. "We mixed the 77 (Hornish) set up with the 12 (Newman). We tested so poorly here with the Miller Lite Dodge …we couldn’t run what the 2 car had. It feels real good to have team communication and bring all this together. This is the first time for the new engine, the R6 in the top five. We were pushing hard trying to get numbers on it (the new engine) for next year. It’s just a big rebound from where we were in Kansas a few weeks ago."
Kurt Busch's little brother Kyle finished in the fourth spot and Jamie McMurray had an excellent run to secure fifth place. Jimmie Johnson was sixth followed by Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and David Ragan to round out the top ten.
Carl Edwards had a horrific race and week. He was getting ready for a restart after an early pit stop when his engine quit running. A tow truck pushed him back to his pit area and the rest of the field went green. Edwards and team had a heck of a time making the right diagnosis. Eventually they replaced all the ignition electronics (both systems) and the car fired back up -- but at that point Edwards was sixteen laps down in 33rd place.
“There’s only one thing to do and that’s to learn from everything this week. That’s for sure," said Edwards, referring to the run-in and shoving match with Kevin Harvick. "I can guarantee you that if I had the week to do over again, the last seven days would be a lot different. But you just have to do what you think is right at the time and move on after that. Today’s race didn’t help at all. That car right there is a great race car. I don’t know if we’ve ever had the problem that we had there, it was something with the ignition system, so it’s very frustrating but nobody got hurt at least, I guess.
"I switched all the switches. I tried everything I could. When that tow truck was pushing me, I tried a bunch of different stuff. I thought it might be something as simple as that ignition switch right there, but it wasn’t. It was something in that tray that houses all the MSD boxes and the coils.”
Jimmie Johnson led four times for a race-high 67 laps to earn WIX Filters Lap Leader of the Race honors. Johnson has taken the honor in four of the last five races and has led 1,369 laps in 25 races this season.
It looks like the Chase hope are over for Dale Earnhardt Jr. Earnhardt Jr. was scored in the 36th finishing position after a blown tire send him hard in to the turn two wall on the 104th lap. Earnhardt Jr. dropped two positions in the standings to 10th place. Earnhardt Jr. was a little testy following the race when asked if he knew there was a problem -- leading up to the tire failure.
“Well, hell no! I would have slowed down if I knew the tire was going to blow," Earnhardt explained. "I was riding. I was taking it way, way easy. I wasn't running real hard at all. I was actually taking it pretty easy. It just popped. I don't know. There had been a couple of wrecks in that corner. No telling what might have been laying under there. We just have had such bad luck. I am just ready to shake it."
Sam Hornish Jr. scored a 22nd-place finish and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the eight time this season. He grabbed the honor for the first time since the 3M Performance 400 at Michigan International Speedway (race No. 23). Hornish Jr. was the top Raybestos Rookie in both races this season at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. He scored a 13th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 (race No. 12), the best by a freshman driver this season.
"We started off way too tight and kind of ended up getting freed up by somebody else and got into the wall," said Hornish. "I sped on pit lane and that killed us. If I hadn’t have done that we would have probably been able to be on the lead lap and running in the top-15. It was a good night, though. All the guys on the team worked really hard. We came back and did what we needed to do after we were already in trouble. Now we’re learning how to do that better. Now we’ve got to figure out how to not get into trouble to start with.
Hitting the exit of the Turn 4 wall about five times probably didn’t help straighten anything out. The good thing about it was that we were able to keep going and make adjustments to the car and make it better. The backup car ran real well. We’re just too loose to start on some of the runs and then we got a little bit too tight. We just need to work at evening that balance out so that we don’t get ourselves in trouble too early.”
The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule – the sixth race of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup – is the October 19th, Tums QuikPak 500 at Martinsville Speedway. The race begins at 1:30 p.m. EDT with live, high-definition coverage provided by ABC beginning with its pre-race show at 1:00 p.m. The race will also be broadcast live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio Channel 128 and MRN radio.
For full final race results...
(Insider Racing News)
For top-40 Sprint Cup drivers points...
(Insider Racing News)
You can contact us at .. Insider Racing News
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
