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Game over.
The race never returned to green flag conditions, ending under caution more than three-and-a-half hours after it started.
“I thought we’d lost the race,” Kenseth said. “We just got really, really lucky. (Marlin and Labonte) slowed down. I had a run off corner and held it down to the line. We were never perfect, but what we usually do wrong is rest. I really tried to think today.”
Kenseth now has two victories in his NASCAR Winston Cup Series career, the other coming in May 2000 in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte. Kenseth's Ford was found to be a quarter-inch too low in the post-race inspection. The win will stand, but the team face possible penalties on Monday.
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Ricky Rudd tries to get his engine restarted after it shut off on pit road. |
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Labonte and Marlin -- who leaves Rockingham with the series points lead by 18 points over Daytona 500 champion Ward Burton -- claimed the oil slick in Turn 4 marked their collective demise.
“We had a great run at the end of the day,” Labonte said. “We just had a great run at the end, but got into some oil on the track at the end. Me and Sterling slid up into it, but Matt went low and probably missed it all. It was still a real good run for us.”
During a similar late race caution last weekend at Daytona, NASCAR called for a red flag stoppage of the event. This week, they chose to end the event under the yellow flag, leaving all to ponder the discrepancy.
NASCAR president Mike Helton did his best to explain the puzzling issue, saying that a lack of remaining laps, and therefore the subsequent inability to allow teams to pit before the 393 laps ran out, was the reason that the red flag didn’t fly Sunday.
“Ever since we started using red flags, we said that, if there’s enough time when the caution comes out, we’ll red flag the race so we can clean the track and finish under green,” Helton said. “Today, the caution came out at the completion of lap 389, past the point where the (pace) car picks up the field.
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Buckshot Jones' car rests against the No. 7 Dodge of Casey Atwood after a wreck on lap 156. |
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“So the leader was picked up by the pace car on lap 390. Had we stopped on lap 390, cleaned up the track and rolled off, we would have opened up pit road on lap 391. That would have given them the one-to-go on lap 392. The race ended on 393, so there wasn’t enough time to red flag it and finish under green. So we ended up finishing it the way we did.”
Both Marlin and Labonte were vocal Sunday that, right or wrong, NASCAR should come up with a uniform late-race caution procedure.
“A lot of series’ have started going to the green, white, checkered (finish on cautions),” Labonte said. “I don’t really like that many times. I’m not very good on just three laps, so I don’t like that. But at least if they said this way, or that way, either one or other would be fine.
“It’s better than not knowing and doing it different every time. It don’t matter if its right or wrong, just stay consistent.”
Kenseth was consistently strong Sunday, leading a race-high 152 laps. While that is impressive, the fact that Labonte was even in position to win is equally noteworthy.
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Joe Nemechek's spin brought out the first caution of the day. |
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Battling an ill-handling car, Labonte got a lap down early in the race. But when then race leader Dale Jarrett blew a motor on lap 144, he got his lap back. From there, he surged through the field to finish third. Marlin was up front all day, running in the top-10 in all 393 circuits.
Tony Stewart quietly finished fourth, while Bud Pole winner Ricky Craven finished fifth after a late-race gamble not to pit when everyone else did under caution.
Jeff Burton finished sixth, and Jeff Gordon somehow rolled home seventh.
Gordon started 33rd - by far the worst start of his career at Rockingham -- but quickly battled his way into the top 10. By lap 180, when the caution flew for Michael Waltrip’s stalled car at the entrance to pit road, he had one of the fastest cars on the track.
The leaders pitted under the caution, and as Gordon targeted his pit stall, the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet spun completely around, the result of a Stewart love tap. Subsequently, Gordon was forced to perform a forward/reverse dance until he was in position to pit.
He entered the pits in seventh position. After the mishap, he restarted in 21st. Upon returning to the track, he nearly wrecked when Ward Burton pushed up the track. All said, he finished in the top 10 for the second-consecutive week.
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Jeff Gordon overcame an early spin in the pits to finish seventh. |
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Gordon wasn’t the only former Winston Cup champion to suffer a headache-filled afternoon.
NASCAR’s new mandate forcing Winston Cup teams to use just one motor the entire weekend resulted in the assumption by many that motor-related attrition might be prevalent Sunday. Few, if any, however, would have guessed that a Yates motor would be the first, and just one of two overall, to fail.
While leading Sunday’s event on lap-145, the engine in Jarrett’s No. 88 Ford failed, ending his day prematurely. Jarrett, who started the race in fourth position, snagged the lead from pole-sitter and early-race dominator Craven on lap 127. He extended his lead by the lap before, on lap 144, the motor let go.
“It didn’t give any warning,” said Jarrett, who was adamant that the one-engine rule had nothing to do with the situation. “The temperature was okay, we didn’t run too many RPMs. Something just let go. As hard as we race, pieces and parts break sometimes, it just doesn’t happen much in our camp. I had a top-10 car, maybe a car (capable of getting a) win.”
At present, Jarrett ranks 30th in the series points chart. His teammate Ricky Rudd ranks 27th. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is 31st.
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