Photo Credit: Jonathan Moore/Getty Images for NASCAR
“We’re going to Homestead!” Jeff Gordon exclaimed as he got out of the car in victory lane at Martinsville Speedway.
When the dust cleared after some late race contact, Jeff Gordon would find himself at the front in the lead. More importantly, Gordon solidifies himself as one of the four drivers fighting for the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“This is the sweetest, most amazing feeling,” he commented “I am so proud of this team. You want to talk about holding back emotions; right now man, wow, we’re going to Homestead! I can’t believe it. What an incredible battle that was. We just stuck with it all day long and I was just trying to protect those rear tires and then that incident with the No. 22 (Joey Logano) and those other guys….
“Those last couple of laps, I give a lot of credit to Jamie McMurray. He raced me hard and clean there. Oh, man, I’ll tell you it’s just never over. What a battle. What a team. People don’t give this team enough credit and we seized an opportunity right there. I don’t think this opportunity would present itself the next couple of weeks. We’re going to take advantage of this one and I don’t have to worry about that.”
Contact would happen ahead of him taking out then-race leader Joey Logano. Gordon would then lead the field down pit road under the yellow flag with 46 laps to go, with the exception of Denny Hamlin and A.J. Allmendinger. Gordon came off of pit road first, getting by Hamlin, followed by a pass on Allmendinger with 22 laps to go.
“I got a pretty good start and he can drive so deep in the corners. I knew I couldn’t let him get too far ahead of me getting into the corners, so I raced him hard and clean just like he raced me,” Gordon commented. “I really appreciate that. We had a lot on the line and I squeezed him a little bit, he squeezed me, but at the end of the day we were able to get out front. I felt pretty good coming off Turn 2. It’s so dark out there I could hardly see. I think I overdrove it into Turn 3 a little bit and I slid up the race track. I kept hearing my spotter, 3, 2, 1 and then I got in the gas and got the corner and knew we had it at that moment. I am sorry I didn’t do a burnout. I was going to, but I got so excited that I just got out of the car. I just wanted to waive to everybody and say thank you.”
While Gordon hasn’t had the season that he has wanted, the contact up front opened the opportunity, and now there’s a window of opportunity to possibly win his fifth series championship in his last season behind the wheel.
“It’s just like we did today. We’ll grind it out,” he commented. “We’re going to give it something to think about. First, we’re going to improve our race car a little bit for Homestead. Don’t count us out. We’ve proved that during this entire Chase and we certainly proved that today. This team is fired up; we’ve got some momentum now!”
Jamie McMurray would run solidly up front throughout the race en route to finishing second, while Hamlin fought back from a pair of pit road speeding penalties and a spin to finish third. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch would round out the top-five. Busch, one of the final eight fighting for the championship, fought back after a spin at lap 171 when he spun due to moisture down by the curb in turn one.
“I screwed us up early in the race and touched that water down there in turn one and spun out with the 3 (Austin Dillon) car so that was my bad,” Busch commented. “I bent up the front end of the car and it was just never right from there on out, but we persevered and we just made the changes that we needed to make for this car for our conditions that we had. The M&M’s Crispy Camry there at the end was good enough for a top-five so I’m glad we finished there. Everybody is so equal here and when it’s those last sort of restarts like that you are just going for everything you’ve got – whoever’s in front of you, get them out of the way. All in all, good day for us. Real proud of this team and everything that we’ve been doing this year, hopefully we keep it going.”
Fellow Chaser Martin Truex Jr. finished sixth, followed by non-Chaser Ryan Newman, Chaser Kevin Harvick and non-Chasers Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart.
Four of the eight Chasers would fail to finish in the top-10 as a result of on-track incidents during the day.
Carl Edwards finished 14th with heavy front end damage after making contact with Allmendinger in trying to avoid Busch’s spin.
Brad Keselowski led 143 laps, but finished 32nd after contact with Matt Kenseth on a restart with 65 laps to go. The pair would bounce off of each other, resulting in both cars spinning, resulting in Keselowski having to spend some time behind the wall.
“I got hit from behind and pushed me into the 20 and my right-front wheel hit Kenseth’s left-rear and it just broke the right-front suspension off the car,” Keselowski commented. “The car wouldn’t turn and just kept going straight until I couldn’t do anything and I started wrecking everybody. I just didn’t have any steering wheel left.”
When Kenseth went across the track, he would catch Kurt Busch, causing heavy damage to his entry. As a result, he would finish 34th.
“I got clipped by everybody and it was just collateral damage off turn two,” he said. “Our Monster Energy Chevrolet SS was where we needed to be. We were running third with a set of fresh tires, and 70 laps to go. And who knew that restart was going to get that crazy. When you are an innocent victim of collateral damage it’s tough. We put in a solid year and this is a fantastic team, this 41 team. We were debuting a new sponsor in Monster Energy today. Thanks to Gene Haas, Haas Automation and everybody at Stewart-Haas. We are down but we’re not out. We can go to Texas and win, we can win at Phoenix, and we want to get an invite to Homestead.”
Meanwhile, Joey Logano had the dominant car and led 207 laps, but was taken out of contention as a result of contact from Kenseth with 46 laps to go. Kenseth commented post-race that he had a tire go down.
“Well it’s a really disappointing day,” Kenseth commented. “I thought we were going to have a shot at the win there and they were jacking up the restart real bad to let each other in as teammates which is fine and I probably went in there and I got on the other side of Joey (Logano) and I was going to try to race him for the win and Brad (Keselowski) wiped me out for some reason. I’m not really sure why. And then we had so much damage on the right front I should have probably just put it in the garage and just got into (turn) 1 and couldn’t get it to turn and ran Joey over. So, disappointing ending for sure.”
Logano wasn’t set to accept Kenseth’s explanation for the contact, seeing the contact as revenge from Kansas when Logano spun Kenseth for the lead with five laps to go.
“I think what happened at Kansas is a completely different deal,” Logano shared. “We were racing for the win and he blocks you a few times and then we raced hard and he blocked me the last time and we spun out. That’s what happened there. Here it was just a complete coward move, especially for a championship race car driver and race team. Just a complete coward. I don’t have anything else to say. It’s a chicken-you-know-what move to completely take out the leader when your race is over. We’ll move on. We’re gonna work hard and we’re gonna get our car back out there hopefully, We’ve just got to go win.”
