TALLADEGA, Ala. — Recap by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman — Chris Graythen/NASCAR via Getty Images photo —
All it took was one moment Sunday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway to leave one driver jubilant and a nation of fans wishing for one more attempt.
On the only attempt at a green-white-checkered finish during Sunday’s CampingWorld.com 500, reigning series champion Kevin Harvick could not get up to speed in the pack and clipped Trevor Bayne’s left rear quarter-panel, sending Bayne spinning into the pack and causing a multi-car crash — officially ending the sixth race of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup under caution and freezing the field in the process.
At the head of the pack, it was Team Penske’s Joey Logano with a bumper out in front of perennial fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr., meaning Logano was awarded his third consecutive Sprint Cup victory and sixth of the season after one of the most thrilling and controversial finishes in Talladega history.
In a stunning departure from the norm at the 2.66-mile Alabama track, the opening 131 laps of the race ran under the green flag, the longest green stint to start a Sprint Cup event in the entire 2015 season. With 20 lead changes between 13 drivers and three rounds of green flag pit stops among the racing action, the event was about minimizing mistakes and staying as close to the front of the pack as possible in order to have a chance at victory.
Major problems for two Chasers shuffled the points picture early on, as Denny Hamlin had to pit twice for a broken roof hatch that relegated him to 39th, two laps down, and race-long dominator Earnhardt — who led 42 of the first 122 laps and 61 laps overall — was bitten with a pit road penalty for crew members over the wall too soon that shuffled him out of the draft and saw him all but go a lap down before the engine expired on Justin Allgaier’s No. 51 Chevrolet, slowing the pace for the first time with 56 laps to go.
That first caution of the afternoon would save both Earnhardt and fellow Chase contender Martin Truex Jr., who received the free pass and became the 27th driver on the lead lap, as pit strategy (in the form of a no-tire call from crew chief Jason Ratcliff) put Joe Gibbs Racing’s Matt Kenseth out front for a restart coming at lap 140 — 49 laps left to decide the final outcome and the eight Chasers moving on to the Eliminator Round at that point.
On the restart, Kyle Busch surged around Kenseth to assume the lead, but behind him, Earnhardt was charging. In an exhilarating span of just under 30 miles, Earnhardt flew forward, using the bottom of the race track down the backstretch to pass Busch on lap 151 and then beginning to to play defense as his Hendrick Motorsports teammates worked the field behind him. However, on his final pit stop, Earnhardt smoked the tires getting onto pit road and forced him to play catch-up again with just 18 laps remaining in the event.
Following the final cycle of stops, it was Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski leading the pack with Earnhardt chasing — but it was Greg Biffle leading the way 38 seconds ahead of the field trying to steal the victory on fuel mileage for Roush Fenway Racing. Biffle’s brave gambit would be aided by the game-changing second caution of the afternoon, coming with five laps to go when the motor blew on Jamie McMurray’s Chevrolet and setting up the show-stopping green-white-checkered finish, but would come up short when he had to pull to pit road for a splash of gas at the one-to-go signal.
The dash attempt would be waved off just before the pack reached the line after Jimmie Johnson went spinning off the bumper of Martin Truex Jr., pushing the green flag until lap 194 and leaving the race leader furious before the final run to the finish.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Logano fumed over the team radio. “The green flag waved — that’s an attempt!”
Needless to say, he was much more content with the outcome the second time around, with the race extended to 196 laps in total due to the overtime finish.
“I was confused after the first one, truthfully,” Logano said in victory lane while celebrating his 14th career Cup victory. “I saw the green flag fly and I was like, ‘The green flag flew, I thought that was an attempt?’ But, we just had to do it again, which is cool. We play by NASCAR’s rules — we’re in their sandbox. We played by (those rules) and at the end of the day, we’re just thankful it all worked out for us.”
Logano becomes the first driver to win three Sprint Cup races in a row since Johnson won four races in a row during the 2007 Chase, and become the first driver to sweep a three-race round of the elimination-style Chase since its inception last season.
“I really can’t believe it,” the Middletown, Conn. native grinned. “This team is unbelievable. Three [wins] in a row, can you believe that? How does that even happen?”
“What an amazing team we’ve got here, though. We came to play this year, that’s for sure.”
Earnhardt Jr., who ultimately finished second, fell 15 points and one position shy of advancing to the Eliminator 8. As heartbreaking an end as the day was for the driver of the No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Chevrolet, he was as calm and poised as ever upon exiting his race car following the checkered flag.
“I couldn’t believe [Logano] gave me the bottom; I’m like, ‘Man, this is a gift!'” Earnhardt explained after the race. “I was going to win the race for sure, I thought, but that caution came out and you know, it is what it is. The 22 had a hell of a round, winning all three races, so if he wins the championship he can look back here on this round as the one that set him up [to win the title].”
“I’m proud of what we did today though — [we] did everything we needed to do. Just fell a little short. It was about the width of the splitter, and you all know how much I hate that splitter. [This is just] another reason [to hate it].”
Despite NASCAR’s reduction of the green-white-checkered attempt rule from three to one for Talladega, Earnhardt said he was still behind the sanctioning body for making the change.
“I’m fine with the new rule. Everyone’s going to debate it. I personally thought before the start of the race that they (NASCAR) made a good change on the green-white-checkered [rule] to go [down] to one, and I still feel that way. Per the rules, we ran second, and I can live with that.”
“If we’d been green another hundred yards I’d have been in the lead, but NASCAR makes the calls. They’re the governing body and I have 100 percent faith in the decisions that they make. I’m not going to be too upset about it. I did everything I could. I’m proud of myself and I’m proud of my crew. We did everything we could do. It’s disappointing, but we really worked hard and we did a hell of a job today.”
After a lengthy post-race video review, Gordon, Keselowski and Carl Edwards were officially declared to be the balance of the top five finishers.
Meanwhile, for those behind them, the final outcome was far more disappointing as Ryan Newman, Hamlin, Earnhardt and Kenseth were the four drivers officially eliminated from championship contention.
“This was a pretty tough ending for us,” Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion, said of his Talladega effort. “The 4 (Harvick) knew he was blowing up, and he told everyone he was going to stay in his lane. He did that, and [Trevor Bayne] got outside of him and he caused a wreck to finish the race.”
“We got tore up two weeks in a row trying to make it in. It’s disappointing. It wasn’t really racing, just a lot of games going on. You can hardly blame a guy for doing it — he’s either going to make it if he does that and wreck some people going slow or he’s not going to make it if it goes green for two laps. It just feels like we lost control of the situation, so hopefully next week we can get back to racing and just have people going fast and fighting for the win.”
Both Kenseth and Hamlin shared the same opinion after the event — accusing Harvick of sparking the wreck that ended the event intentionally.
“Harvick could only run about 30 miles per hour, so I think he saw people coming and he knew he was probably going to be 30th (and) the last car on the lead lap, so he caused a wreck,” Hamlin, who officially finished four laps down in 37th, said during his post-race interview. “We had a self-inflicted day, though. It took us four times [of coming to pit road] to get our roof fixed, and it’s unfortunate.”
“I feel like I did everything I possibly could do to advance, but one bad race in a three-race season takes you out of it. It’s frustrating, knowing we could have won next week. I can’t spin any positives on this one.”
Harvick did not offer comment after the event, and advanced to the Eliminator Round seventh in points. Kyle Busch was the last driver to make the eight-man cut, three points ahead of Newman.
“I’m just numb,” Busch said. “It is what it is. That’s the mentality we came into the race with, is perform and race and let it play out there on the race track. I can’t say enough about our team though. We’ve fought all day long and all year on, so we’ll take this and move on to the next round. I’ve said it from the beginning — if we could make it through this round, the next round would be pretty easy for us and we could take that on to Homestead, so we’ll see what happens now.”
After the race, NASCAR Vice Chairman Mike Helton addressed the media, talking over both NASCAR’s view that Harvick did not intentionally trigger the final caution as well as the determination to abort the first restart before the official attempt at a green-white-checkered finish.
“As of right now, after reviewing what we did and viewing it with a couple of teams that questioned it, we’re comfortable with the way we handled everything,” Helton said. “We believe procedurally we did everything correct and the 4 car (Harvick) did nothing wrong. We don’t see anything there that is suspect — so far. Historically, we have been and would be prepared to make a decision if something came out of the woodwork different than what we’ve already seen.”
Helton added that because no drivers officially crossed the start-finish line on the first restart before the caution flag waved again, that in effect, a restart never actually happened.
“It wasn’t a first green-white-checkered because no one had crossed the start-finish line when it started getting out of kilter. For all practical purposes we stopped the attempt at that point so we never had the attempt. Then we lined them back up and came back. On the second one, race cars had passed the start-finish line and that is an attempt. So we feel like we had the one attempt.”
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series returns to action on Sunday, Nov. 1 for the first round of the Eliminator Round at Martinsville Speedway. Earnhardt won the Martinsville race a year ago after being knocked out of the Chase at Talladega.
Logano, Edwards, Gordon, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Harvick and Kyle Busch will be the eight drivers still in contention for the Sprint Cup heading to that event.
RESULTS: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series; CampingWorld.com 500; Talladega Superspeedway; October 25, 2015
- Joey Logano
- Dale Earnhardt Jr.
- Jeff Gordon
- Brad Keselowski
- Carl Edwards
- Paul Menard
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Clint Bowyer
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Kurt Busch
- Kyle Busch
- Ryan Newman
- Michael Waltrip
- Austin Dillon
- Kevin Harvick
- Aric Almirola
- Sam Hornish Jr.
- Jimmie Johnson
- Kasey Kahne
- Greg Biffle
- Trevor Bayne
- Cole Whitt
- Bobby Labonte
- Kyle Larson
- Tony Stewart
- Matt Kenseth
- Danica Patrick
- Michael McDowell
- Josh Wise
- David Ragan
- Casey Mears
- David Gilliland
- Alex Bowman
- Landon Cassill
- Travis Kvapil
- A.J. Allmendinger
- Denny Hamlin
- J.J. Yeley
- Jamie McMurray
- Matt Dibenedetto
- Timmy Hill
- Justin Allgaier
- Ryan Blaney
About the Writer
Jacob Seelman is the Managing Editor of Race Chaser Online and creator of the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network. Seelman grew up in the sport, watching his grandparents co-own the RaDiUs Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series team in the 1990s.
The 21-year-old is currently studying Broadcast Journalism at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and is also serving as the full-time tour announcer for both the United Sprint Car Series and the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series.
Email Jacob at: speed77radio@gmail.com
Follow on Twitter: @Speed77Radio or @JacobSeelman77
Email Race Chaser Online: news@racechaseronline.com
Follow Race Chaser Online: @RaceChaserNews
