Race No. 3 in the “Chase for the Sprint Cup” at Kansas Speedway was similar to the previous two races. Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards were competing for the win, Greg Biffle had yet another Top 5 finish, Kyle Busch continued to have bad luck and at least one Chaser finished poorly.
Now, I could be wrong, but it does not look as if Kyle Busch will win the Championship, as many thought at the beginning of the summer. He added yet another not so good finish Sunday.
Early in the race Busch radioed to his crew that he thought he had some sort of problem. During the communication between Busch and his team, it appeared that it may have been a fuel filter issue. After a few pit stops, he radioed back to say the problem seemed to be gone. However, he was a lap down. He was able to get his lap back but before the conclusion of the race, he’d go down a lap a second time and wouldn’t be able to make it up. He finished 28th and still sits in 12th position, 311 points behind the new leader, Jimmie Johnson.
Johnson seemed to have all the good fortune. He originally qualified second for the race, but after Juan Pablo Montoya’s No. 42 Dodge failed post-qualifying inspection, Johnson “captured” his fifth Coors’ Light Pole of the season. He led off and on throughout the entire race, but it wasn’t until the end when excitement flared up.
After starting 34th, Carl Edwards had incidents on pit road that could have cost him a good finish, but it was a video game that would cost him the win.
He managed to make his way to the front, leading twice for 31 laps, and was second behind Johnson with 47 laps to go. His speed was the fastest on the track and he was able to catch Johnson. With one lap remaining before Johnson was to cross the finish line, Edwards shot past Johnson on the low side of turn three with enormous speed. He slid up the track and bounced off of the wall, slowing down enough for Johnson to retake the lead and get his fifth win of the season.
Edwards said during a post-race interview that he planned on hitting the wall, but didn’t plan on the wall slowing him down as much as it did.
“In video games, you can just run into the wall and run it wide open,” said Edwards. “That’s what I did, but it didn’t quite work out the same as the video game.” He finished second, and slipped to second in points, 10 behind Johnson.
Even though Greg Biffle wasn’t able to win for the third straight time, he did finish in the Top 5, or rather Top 3. He was able to pass Jeff Gordon on the final lap to take over the third position on the track with what he considered an ill-handling car. He’s still third in points, 35 behind Johnson.
The other Chasers minus Busch and Tony Stewart fared pretty well in the race. They all finished in the Top 13 and either stayed where they were before the race or moved up one or two spots in the standings. Some did have minor problems early on, but nothing was bad enough to completely falter their eventual finishing position.
Stewart, however, had yet another unfortunate series of events, but this time he wasn’t able to overcome the situation like the weekend before.
During one of the early cautions, Stewart, who was pitting behind Brian Vickers’ Toyota, had a pit road incident with Vickers’ crew in which one crew member ended up on his hood. After the crew member was able to get off , a few crew members kicked Stewart’s car as he vacated his pit stall and left pit road.
It was not certain, if he was still angry with the incident, or if Vickers’ was, but around lap 120, coming out turn four, Stewart and Vickers make side-by-side contact. Stewart was sent through the grass, and pit road, in what looked like a wild-ride.
The ride through the grass bent Stewart’s spoiler and it had to be fixed later in the race. He finished the race 40th and three laps down to drop four spots in the standing to 11th, 255 points behind the leader. He sits between fellow teammates, Busch and Denny Hamlin.
Now, it’s on to Race No. 4 at Talladega Superspeedway, “the biggest, fastest, most competitive motorsports facility in the world.” The only superspeedway on the Chase schedule, it is known to be the “wild card” for the Chase, where anything and everything can and usually does happen.
Don’t miss:
From Talladega
- Sprint Cup qualifying, Saturday at 1 p.m. on SPEED
- Mountain Dew 250 (Craftsman’s truck race), Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on SPEED
- Amp Energy 500 (Sprint Cup race), Sunday at 1 p.m. on ABC
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