Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
In a career marked by milestones, Jimmie Johnson added a new milestone to his Hall of Fame resume on Sunday Afternoon at the Atlanta Motor Speedway by winning the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 for the second consecutive year.
Johnson’s win tied him with the late great Dale Earnhardt for seventh place on the all time wins list with 76 career victories. The significance of the win and the call his crew chief Chad Knaus made late in the race to get him the lead was not lost on Johnson post race.
“Chad made the call to short pit and told me to drive the wheels off of it,” Johnson said. “I just felt like it was going to take too much out of the tires. But it worked. I got this Lowe’s Chevrolet working around the top and reached victory lane. So happy for everyone at Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet.
“It’s such an honor. With the chaos at the end and the crash, I kind of lost sight of that, and had to pay respect to the man with three fingers out the window. I have a void in my career as I never got the chance to race against him. At least I was able to pay respect to the man and tie his record there.”
Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. made it a one, two Hendrick sweep on Sunday. Earnhardt gave NASCAR’s new aero package rave reviews following the race.
“I loved it”. Earnhardt said. “The fans probably thought it was a boring race, but we were sliding around driving the hell out of it – it was a blast. It was so much fun. I post pictures online of the 80s/90s, and they say that’s when racing was good, and that’s what we saw today. Fun, hard hard to drive. I’m glad that we didn’t have a ton of restarts today. They don’t show the true ability to the car and its’ whether you’re in the right line, or getting lucky. Just like at the end there, we got lucky with some moves. I’ve been on the other end of it and frustrated. Those cautions were true, legit cautions. That was a great day”.
Kyle Busch would finish third for the second consecutive weekend followed by Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Harvick led the most laps throughout the race and restarted second on the final restart, but fell back to sixth due to spinning his tires.
Matt Kenseth was up front throughout the early portion of the event, though found himself trapped two laps down after a pit road penalty. At lap 126 when Kenseth made a green flag pit stop, he was busted for “improper fueling”, breaking rule 10.11.1.1. of the rulebook which states “fueler will not be permitted to perform any adjustments or other pit stop procedures while the fuel can coupler is engaged”. While Kenseth’s crew chief Jason Ratcliff argued the call on the radio, Kenseth was showed the black flag with the white cross, meaning that he would be not scored if he didn’t hit pit road. Kenseth hit pit road a couple laps later, losing a lap for ignoring the black flag with a white cross and another one on pit road. He finish the event in the 28th spot.
