Short-track race breaks out on Infineon's road layout

SONOMA, Calif. -- The Sprint Cup garage looked like a triage area. Denny Hamlin's car sat in its stall, the back end punched in, pipes and rods dangling from beneath. Large, jagged chunks of Martin Truex Jr.'s vehicle lay scattered on the ground. A mechanic attending to Regan Smith's disabled machine yanked free the radiator, which immediately spilled its greenish contents on the concrete. Crewmen wielding saws clustered around the front of Sam Hornish Jr.'s car, so tightly shoulder-to-shoulder it seemed as if they were trying to revive a patient in cardiac arrest.

Race Video

From start to finish, the beating and banging from Infineon.

• Forcing the issue early
• Hamlin's hood flies open
• Gordon gets into Ragan
• Gordon gets into Truex
• Wreck causes red flag
• Closing laps, close calls

And the race was barely halfway over. A strange thing happened Sunday at Infineon Raceway, the technical road course amid the rolling caramel-colored hills of Northern California wine country. A short-track race broke out, complete with cars scuffed and scraped up to the driver's side windows, takeouts and vows of revenge, even harsh words exchanged after the race. The surroundings spoke of a more genteel style of racing, of graceful arcs through sweeping chicanes, right down to the wine casks and plastic grapes that decorate Victory Lane. The competition said Bowman-Gray Stadium after dark.

"You just had to race there so hard at the end," said Jeff Gordon, who emerged with a fifth-place finish. "Guys were throwing people off the raceway, getting into the back of them. It was like a short dirt track."

Gordon would know. On an afternoon with enough confrontations to fill a Las Vegas fight card, nobody came away on more enemies lists than the four-time series champion. He rumbled with Truex. He rumbled with Juan Montoya. He rumbled with Kurt Busch. He rumbled with Clint Bowyer. He rumbled with Elliott Sadler, who walked down pit road after the race and stuck his head into the No. 24 car to share a few words with his adversary. The day was full of scenes like that, recriminations ranging from a shouting match between the teams of Boris Said and Tony Stewart in the garage area, to Truex threatening outright revenge the next time the cars take to the track.

"It's all right," he said of Gordon. "We'll get him."

To an extent, we knew it was going to be like this. Perhaps nowhere has the implementation of double-file restarts stoked more outright aggression than on road circuits, which simply give mid-pack competitors more turns in which to gouge, shove, ram, and spin one another. Earlier in the weekend, Stewart compared the end of races at Infineon to no-holds barred wrestling matches. Jimmie Johnson, who earned his first road-course victory Sunday after leader Marcos Ambrose was placed back in the field for stopping under caution to try and conserve fuel, labeled them cutthroat. (Continued)