Harvick rallies to win in Phoenix

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Jimmie Johnson survived a close call and a succession of less-than-stellar restarts.
 
Matt Kenseth couldn't overcome handling problems that kept his car mired in traffic.
 
And Kevin Harvick, meanwhile, took advantage of Carl Edwards' fuel shortage to win his fourth race of the season in Sunday's AdvoCare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, keeping alive his faint hopes of winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in his final season with Richard Childress Racing.

The net result? Johnson, who finished third, widened his lead over the struggling Kenseth, who ran 23rd, and took a giant step toward his sixth series championship.
 
Johnson expanded his advantage in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings from seven to 28 points over Kenseth entering next Sunday's season finale atHomestead-Miami Speedway. Johnson can clinch the title with a finish of 23rd or better, 24th if he leads one lap and 25th if he leads the most laps.
 
By winning and leading the most laps on Sunday, Harvick, third in the standings, narrowed his deficit to Johnson from 40 to 34 points and is still within range of the title, should Johnson have issues at Homestead.
 
The victory was Harvick's fourth at the one-mile track and the 23rd of his career. He led 70 of the 312 laps to clinch the 200th win for the Childress organization in NASCAR's three national series. It came as a sudden surprise, as Edwards slowed on the final lap.
 
"Well, I think we were all pushing it on gas there to try to just put enough in it to get to the end, so that we could gain all the track position we could under green," Harvick said of his final pit stop on Lap 267. "I saw him slowing with about maybe a lap and a half, two laps to go. (Team owner) Richard (Childress) came across the radio and said he was slowing down. I'm like 'Dang, we might still be in this thing.' "
 
Kasey Kahne ran second, followed by Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kurt Busch. Edwards, who ran out of gas while leading on the final lap, finished 21st. Edwards slid up into Johnson's car on Lap 163, dropping Johnson back to 24th after Harvick took them three-wide entering Turn 1. Johnson made a spectacular save and spent the rest of the race working his way toward the front.
 
Johnson started from the pole but, thanks in part to Joey Logano's dive to the inside, failed to launch at the green flag, a tendency that would plague him all afternoon. Trouble on restarts may have kept the five-time champion from winning the race, but they didn't prevent him from recovering nicely when the incident with Edwards left him back in the pack.
 
"At two different points, as I saved it, the car pointed back at the fence, and I thought I was going to hit it," Johnson said. "Thankful that that didn't happen, clearly. [It] certainly worried me, and then we were mired in traffic after that, and I didn't know what that was going to mean for us."
 
Kenseth, on the other hand, could make little progress with a balky car whose handling deteriorated throughout the race, despite the best efforts of his crew to correct the problem. Worse, a miscommunication on a 164th-lap stop under caution resulted in a dramatically sluggish trip to pit lane that lasted nearly 26 seconds and dropped Kenseth from seventh to 29th in the running order.
 
"Obviously, it didn't drive good or we would have been up there with the front group," Kenseth said. "I just did all I could with it, which wasn't much."

Though Johnson enjoys a hefty advantage approaching the season finale, he was far from ready to lay claim to the title.
 
"Yeah, everybody is so eager to predict the champion, but you've got to play the game," said Johnson, who has finished 32nd and 36th in his last two races at Homestead. "You've got to run the race, and stuff happens. There’s so many variables in one of our races -- I think more variables than any pro sport out there.
 
"We have all 43 teams playing, driving, racing, all the mechanical components on the race car, pit stops, other issues on other cars that can take you out … tires. There's a lot of variables, so we don't take any of these weekends lightly. Even with a nice points lead I'm not going to take any week any differently. There's still a lot of pressure to get the job done, and it's no lay‑up at all."
 
Johnson, Kenseth and Harvick are the only three drivers with a chance to win the championship.Kyle Busch (fourth in the standings) and Earnhardt (fifth) were among those eliminated at Phoenix.

Biffle gets first win of season at Michigan

 
He took the lead for good on a late restart and ran away from the field in the closing laps to win Sunday's Quicken Loans 400. The No. 16 Ford driver won his second straight race here and the 19th of his career. Four of those victories have come at MIS.
 
"It's definitely a special day," Biffle said after delivering Ford Motor Company its 1,000th victory in NASCAR's three national series. "Just super-excited for Ford and sure excited to be No. 1,000."
 
The win secured Biffle a berth in the 2014 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and moved him up a spot to eighth in the standings.

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Second a week ago at Pocono, Biffle led the pack to the restart on lap 173 and outran Martin Truex Jr. to stay out front. He led a race-best 48 laps.
 
Owner Jack Roush's operations center is in suburban Detroit and he considers MIS his home track. He was beaming almost as broadly as his driver.
 
"We expect to be at our best when we come to MIS and I am glad we could pull it off," Roush said. "I was a little nervous for a minute there, but I am glad it worked out and glad we could give Ford its 1,000th win."
 
Sprint Cup Series points leader Jimmie Johnson was gaining on Biffle in the final laps but a cut right-front tire took him off the track with two laps to go.
 
Kevin Harvick finished second and Truex, Kyle Buschand Tony Stewart rounded out the top five.
 
Johnson took second a few laps before his misfortune and Harvick backed out of the throttle to hold on to at least a third-place finish.
 
"It was the third set of tires we had and they felt a little wobbly," he said. "We just wanted to hold our track position."
 
Biffle still was impressed with Johnson, whom he finished second to a week ago at Pocono.
 
"The guy was 10 (on the restart) and was catching me with 10 to go," Biffle said. "That's a fast race car.
 
"We beat the 48 today and that says a lot. He was really, really fast."
 
Johnson ended the day 28th to wrap up a tough day for Hendrick Motorsports. None of the racing giant's four entries cracked the top 25.
 
Pole winner Carl Edwards, who trailed Johnson by 51 points at the start of the race, cut 20 points off the deficit by finishing eighth.
 
Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead near the halfway point and appeared strong, but a blown engine ended his race on lap 131.
 
"It made a lot of damage there when it broke," he said after leading 34 laps at the track where he ended his 143-race dry spell a year ago. "I'm not sure they're going to be able to figure out what happened."
 
Jamie McMurray led 21 laps but fell out of contention when he blew a right-front tire on lap 167.
 
The day's worst-looking wreck came shortly after the midway point when Kasey Kahne struck the wall near turn 2. The car caught fire as Kahne was getting out, but he stuck his arm back inside to trigger the fire-suppression system. He was not hurt.
 
Kurt Busch started on the outside of the front row and led the first 21 laps but spun and smacked the turn 2 wall two laps later.
 
Stewart ran his streak of top-seven finishes to four straight races and jumped from 13th to 10th in the standings.
 
There were showers after Saturday's Nationwide Series race and NASCAR gave crews a competition caution 20 laps in to assess tire wear on the clean surface.
 
The Sprint Cup Series continues next Sunday when drivers run the first road course of the season in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway in California.

R.I.P Jason Leffler

Despite rising to the NASCAR national level, Leffler never forgot his roots on dirt tracks

Jason Leffler competed in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, and all three national levels of NASCAR. But he never forgot where he came from -- the dirt tracks and open-wheel cars where he first made his name.

So when a ride in NASCAR didn’t materialize for the 2013 campaign, Leffler knew right where to look. The affable Southern Californian retuned to his roots for this season, signing with Tom Buch Racing to pilot a No. 13 winged sprint car on dirt circuits primarily in Pennsylvania and the northeast.

"He was one of the most versatile race drivers in America."

--Doug Boles, COO Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Which is why Leffler was driving Wednesday in the “Night of Wings” event at Bridgeport Speedway, a five-eighths mile high-banked dirt track in Swedesboro, N.J. It was there where Leffler’s car crashed during a heat race. He was extricated from the vehicle and transported by ambulance to a local trauma center, where according to the Associated Press he was pronounced dead shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time.

Leffler, a 37-year-old native of Long Beach who leaves behind young son Charlie Dean, was well-liked in a NASCAR community where he had been a fixture since 1999. His death hit many hard, particularly those with their own backgrounds in the U.S. Auto Club, where Leffler was a star before moving into stock cars.

“Can’t believe it,” Brad Sweet, a former USAC driver who now competes on the Nationwide Series, wrote on Twitter. “Things just won’t be the same without you Lefty. You were an awesome friend and a great dad.”

The return to open-wheel cars was something Leffler seemed to embrace, although he had never before driven winged sprint cars. But he had piloted just about everything else, starting over 400 events across NASCAR’s three national divisions, racing in the Indianapolis 500 in 2000, and winning a combined four titles in USAC’s midget and silver crown ranks.

“He was one of the most versatile race drivers in America,” said Doug Boles, chief operating officer of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Taking to the winged sprint cars, it seemed, was only a matter of time.

“I’ve got a lot of learning to do,” Leffler said before this season. “It’s cool to be able to race three times a week and figure things out. I’m really looking forward to racing at the historic places in Pennsylvania, and racing some of the best sprint-car drivers out there.”

The plan was to race between 50 and 60 times this season in the No. 13 car, beginning with events in February at Volusia County and Ocala speedways in Florida, which coincided with NASCAR Speedweeks activities at Daytona. The learning curve was evident -- competing primarily in the World of Outlaws and the All-Star Circuit of Champions, Leffler recorded his first two top-10 finishes of the season in April.

“Getting in the ball game now!” he tweeted after a top-five finish in May.

Wednesday night’s sprint-car event at Bridgeport was to be another step in that progression. According to the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., Leffler hit the wall head-on in a heat race after something broke on his car. The rest of the evening’s racing program was canceled, and New Jersey state police were investigating the incident.

Leffler scored two Nationwide victories, including the first NASCAR win for Toyota with Braun Racing at Lucas Oil Raceway in 2007 at Indianapolis. He also won in 2004 at Nashville for Haas-CNC Racing, and earned a Camping World Truck Series event for Jim Smith’s Ultra Racing team in 2003 at Dover. Leffler drove on the Sprint Cup tour for Joe Gibbs and Chip Ganassi, and piloted a Truck Series entry forKyle Busch for the first half of last season before being released.

Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway, where Leffler finished 43rd driving for Humphrey Smith Racing, was his first NASCAR event of this season. But his dirt-track roots were never far behind -- Leffler flew to the race with Hendrick Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne, another former star in the USAC ranks.

“We talked sprint cars, Cup cars, and Charlie Dean,” Kahne wrote on Twitter. “He loved racing & he loved his son!”

And those who came from dirt-track backgrounds loved him.

“Makes you sick to your stomach when you hear about something like this,” Truck Series driver Ryan Blaney, son of sprint-car legend Dave Blaney, wrote on Twitter. “Unbelievable. Praying for his family.”

Stewart nicks victory from JPM at Dover

Tony Stewart admits he would never have predicted the resurgence that brought his Stewart-Haas team victory in the Dover NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
The three-time Cup champion has been struggling for form in the early stages of this year's campaign, and between the fourth round at Bristol and the 11th at Darlington never came home higher than 15th.
Charlotte brought some light with seventh from 25th on the grid, then last weekend at Dover he surged up the order and ultimately into the lead just three laps from the end.
"Last week was a step in the right direction, and a bigger step than I possibly could have imagined," Stewart said of Charlotte.
"This week [Dover] is a step in the right direction; it gives us hope.
"I'll be 100 per cent perfectly honest, I was preparing for a very long day.
"But I'm proud to be sitting here saying that I was very wrong, because this was not a little bit of tweak here, a little bit of tweak there.
"This was going and really sitting down and saying, OK, we may have to abort everything that we are doing to try to come up with a new package."
NOT FIXATED ON CHASE QUALIFICATION
Although he now sits 16th in the championship, Stewart's Dover win means he currently qualifies for a wildcard entry into this year's Chase.
He insists however that properly rectifying his team's issues is far more important than a token offering across the final races.
"I've done this enough and been in the Chase enough that being in [it] is not a novelty for me," he explained.
"To me it's a bigger deal to me to get our programme turned around. Our goal is not just to make the Chase; our goal is to be contenders.
"I would rather miss the Chase and the effort to be in the process of building our programme to where we have an opportunity to not just be in the Chase, but have an opportunity to win it.
"I want to get this whole programme turned around to where all three drivers go to the racetrack every week and feel like they have an opportunity to have a good result.
"As much as this is a great win and a great victory for us, and great momentum builder for our organisation, one win won't change our direction."

Kevin Harvick denies Kasey Kahne in gruelling NASCAR race

Kevin Harvick snatched Charlotte NASCAR Sprint Cup victory from Kasey Kahne at the end of a gruelling 600-mile race interrupted by two red flags.
Kahne had led 156 of the 400 laps and was as much as six seconds clear of the field at times in his Hendrick Chevrolet.
But he was wrong-footed by a caution for debris with 16 laps to go.
While Kahne stayed out, every other car on the lead lap pitted for at least two fresh tyres.
At the restart, Harvick's Childress Chevrolet got the jump on Kahne and pulled clear to win by a second and a half.
Kahne hung on for second, fending off Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano.
Third was a case of what might have been for Busch. He was leading when a violent tangle between Jeff Gordon, Aric Almirola, Mark Martin and Ricky Stenhouse Jr brought out the second red flag of the night.
Busch struggled to restart afterwards and had to pit for a new battery, rejoining at the tail of the lead lap pack.
His brother Kyle Busch suffered even worse luck.
The Joe Gibbs driver, Kahne and Matt Kenseth had taken turns to dominate in the opening half of the race.
Busch was at the centre of the bizarre first stoppage, when the cable for an overhead TV camera fell onto the track, damaging his and several other cars.
NASCAR stopped the race so that those affected could carry out repairs without losing position.
That kept Busch's patched-up car among the leaders, but it later suffered an engine failure.
Kenseth's chances faded when he was caught up in a late tangle involving Jimmie Johnson, Juan Pablo Montoya and Paul Menard.
There were several other big incidents in a race that took over five hours to complete.
Dale Earnhardt Jr's engine blew at the same moment as Busch's, dropping an oil slick that sent Greg Biffle, Travis Kvapil and Dave Blaney into the wall.
Champion Brad Keselowski tangled with Danica Patrick while they ran three-wide with Stenhouse.
That left Keselowski classified 36th, while Johnson was only 22nd, allowing 11th-placed finisher Carl Edwards to gain a little ground in the points.
Among those that stayed out of trouble, Ryan Newman and Tony Stewart gave the struggling Stewart-Haas squad some encouragement with sixth and seventh.
Waltrip duo Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr were lead contenders at times before finishing eighth and ninth, ahead of Marcos Ambrose, another man whose car was struck by the camera cable.

Johnson claims record fourth All Star race win

Christa L.Thomas/Chevrolet - Jimmie Johnson won the NASCAR All-Star race on Saturday night for a record fourth time.

Well, what will NASCAR, Sprint and Charlotte Motor Speedway come up with next? What will the best minds in racing do to slow the Jimmie Johnson-Chad Knaus juggernaut in NASCAR's annual All-Star race? What diabolical format can they conjure to give the rest of the field a shot?

The answer: perhaps nothing short of locking the gate will keep the No. 48 Chevrolet team from victory lane in the exhibition race.

Johnson and Knaus took advantage of last year's somewhat lazy format to win the $1 million-plus race. This year, with a new format designed to force teams to race harder in all five segments, Johnson and Knaus won again, this time by leading only the final 10 laps. (They also won in 2003 and 2006 with a different format and different rules. Johnson thus passed teammate Jeff Gordon and the late Dale Earnhardt for career All-Star wins.)

This year's format was fairly simple: four 20-lap segments and a final 10-lap shootout to decide the overall winner. There was a mandatory four-tire stop between the fourth and fifth segments, and drivers would enter pit road based on their average finish in the earlier segments. The harder you ran (the thinking was), the closer to the front you'd enter pit road for the mandatory stop.

Johnson started 18th on the 22-car grid and briefly looked like anything but a contender. He finished 15th in the first segment, then rallied to finish fourth, third and third in the next segments. He entered pit road fourth and came out second, finally where he needed to be. He quickly took the lead from Kasey Kahne on the final restart and drove away to a 1.722-second victory.

“I didn't do us any favors in (Friday night) qualifying,” Johnson said after becoming only the second driver (behind the late Davey Allison in 1991 and 1992) with consecutive All-Star wins. “I was fearful we wouldn't be on the first or second row for the final restart, and I felt the winner would come from up there. We didn't finish very well in the first segment, but we chipped away at good finishes the rest of the night. And the pit stop put us on the front row for the last 10 laps, right where we need to be.”

Johnson won easily over Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Kahne, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Sprint Showdown winner Jamie McMurray, Matt Kenseth and pole-winner Carl Edwards. The rest of the 22-driver field: Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Showdown runner-up Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Marcos Ambrose, Clint Bowyer, David Ragan and fan favorite Danica Patrick. Mechanical problems sidelined Mark Martin late and Brad Keselowski early.

The Busch brothers won four of the five segments, but Johnson won the only one that truly counted. Second-starting Kurt Busch led all 20 laps of the first segment -- interrupted by a 43-minute red flag for rain -- ahead of Kyle Busch, Bowyer, Edwards and Kahne.

Kyle Busch won the second segment, leading the final 12 laps after Bowyer led the first eight. Bowyer, Edwards, Kurt Busch and Johnson finished top five in that segment. Kyle Busch won the third segment by leading laps 44-60 after Bowyer had led 41-43. Kurt Busch was second, then Johnson, Earnhardt and Logano. Kahne then led laps 61-71 in the third segment, but Kurt Busch charged by and led the final nine laps in beating Kahne, Johnson, Kyle Busch and Logano.

The race turned dramatically in the pits. Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch went in first and second, then Kahne, Johnson and Logano. When they came out, Kahne was ahead of Johnson, Kyle Busch, Logano and Kurt Busch. But Johnson took the lead on the last restart and easily beat the rest of the field.

“This is incredible, especially the way we had to go about it,” Johnson said. “Through a lot of aggressive driving, a great handling car and a lot of different things – like Chad's strategy at different times to have us on better tires than some cars around us – we were able to keep clicking away at good finishes through the second, third and fourth segment. That got us to fourth (entering the pits) and our guys had an awesome top. We were on the front row and that's what we needed for 10 laps.”

For Kurt Busch, fifth-place was an especially difficult result. “We were one click slow on the pit stop and one click off on the final adjustment,” he said after his bittersweet night. “We came out fifth and got stuck in traffic, and I couldn't race back through it. We weren't perfect, but we're happy. To win some segments and be in position in the All-Star race shows the strength of this team. These guys put me in position with the best average finish through the first four segments, but we were just a shade slow on pit road. Even if we'd come out first, though, it would have been tough to hold off those guys.”

Kyle Busch felt he had the best car overall – it was hard to argue that point – but the pit stop ruined his night. “It came down to pit road, where my guys always prove their worth,” he said. “Unfortunately, we didn't have the best stop and came out third. That was the race right there. You've got to be on the front row if you're going to win this thing. It was just another missed opportunity with the best car and me behind the wheel, and not come home with a win.”

Johnson took a post-race swipe at critics – he didn't get specific – who often say his success is more luck than talent. The question was whether he and Knaus have reached a point where they don't worry about the All-Star format or the rules or how the race is run.

“No, we just get lucky, man,” Johnson said. “That's what people say. There's no talent involved… we just got lucky tonight.”

Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20130519/nascar01/130519814#ixzz2TvgZU4uS 

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Kenseth tames the "Lady in black"

Unsinkable Matt Kenseth capped a banner week for unsinkable Joe Gibbs Racing with a victory in Saturday night's Bojangles' Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway with a substitute crew chief on his pit box-the unsinkable Wally Brown.

The past four days could hardly have been better for JGR, with Wednesday bringing a substantial reduction in penalties on appeal for an engine infraction Apr, 21 at Kansas. On Friday, Gibbs cars ran 1-2-3 in the Nationwide Series race at Darlington, and the organization followed that Saturday with a 1-2 finish from Kenseth and Denny Hamlin in the 11th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race of the season.

Kenseth took the lead from JGR teammate Kyle Busch on Lap 355 of 367 and pulled away to win by 3.155 seconds over Hamlin, as Busch faded to sixth. Hamlin also had much to celebrate in his first full race back from a compression fracture to his first lumbar vertebra, sustained during a last-lap crash at Fontana, Calif., in late March.

It was a race of significant numbers. Jeff Gordon finished third in his 700th Cup start, all consecutive. Jimmie Johnson ran fourth and extended his series lead to a massive 44 points over seventh-place finisher Carl Edwards. In a race that saw just four drivers pace the field, Kyle Busch led 265 laps but faded to sixth at the finish, thanks to a cut tire on the final 30-lap green-flag run.

Journeyman Brown won his first race as a Cup crew chief, after serving with four different drivers before his one-week shot on the pit box with Kenseth, who will get regular crew chief Jason Ratcliff back next week at Charlotte after Ratcliff's six-race suspension for an underweight connecting rod was reduced to one event on appeal.

But the day belonged to Kenseth, whose resilience under trying circumstances was emblematic of the organization he joined this season.

"Honestly, I've only dreamed about winning the Southern 500," said Kenseth, who notched his first victory at Darlington, his third of the season and the 27th of his career. "This to me probably feels bigger than any win in my career. I really feel bad that Jason isn't here. This is obviously his team and his effort, but Wally did a great job filling in.

"We had a fifth- or sixth-place car, fighting loose, (and) those last two adjustments (on pit road) were just awesome."

For Hamlin, second place was the best he could have hoped for, given the strength of Kenseth's car in the closing laps.

"For me, we kept grinding away," Hamlin said, clearly tired from the effort of his first race back at one of NASCAR racing's most demanding tracks. "Pit crew picked us up some spots, obviously, throughout the night.

"It was one of those days where we got our car better, pit crew picked us up positions, took us to the most optimum spot we could get to-and that was second."

From a physical standpoint, Hamlin admitted the race took its toll.

"Really, it's just like starting your season over," he said. "To start it back over at Darlington for 500 miles, there's some muscles that have gotten weak. I've gotten pretty sore and tired, mentally tired as well. We'll have a couple of weeks really to rest until the next long event (Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte), and we'll be good to go then."

A caution for Regan Smith's spin off Turn 2 on Lap 302 of 367-only the second yellow of the race-interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops. After Juan Pablo Montoya took a free pass as the highest scored lap car, and Harvick availed himself of a wave-around, there were 11 cars on the lead lap for a restart on Lap 309.

By then, Kyle Busch had led 218 laps and had dominated the race ever since he wrested the lead from his brother, polesitter Kurt Busch on Lap 74. But the pit stops on Lap 303 put the lead-lap cars on the edge of their fuel windows.

They need not have worried. On Lap 311, Casey Mears tangled with Kurt Busch and reigning series champion Brad Keselowski off Turn 4 to cause the third caution. All but the top-four cars came to pit road for fuel under the yellow, leaving Kyle Busch, Kenseth, Kasey Kahne and Gordon out front on slightly older tires.

Johnson was first off pit road with new tires and quickly moved to third. Busch fended off a challenge from Kahne right after the restart and held a lead of .850 seconds when an accident involving David Reutimann and Josh Wise brought out the fourth caution and gave the lead-lappers a chance to pit for tires.

Kahne briefly took the lead after a restart on Lap 333, but one lap later, Kahne's Chevy slapped the wall near the apex of Turns 1 and 2 and the race went yellow for the fifth time.

The result was the same. Busch pulled away after the restart and opened a comfortable advantage, this time over Kenseth, only to have Kenseth run him down and pass him on Lap 355.