RELATED: Charlotte race results | Updated series standings
CONCORD, N.C. — The conversation was brief and casual, a “congratulations” of sorts for how well his Toyota teams appeared to be performing this season, particularly as NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup rolled ahead.
“We said all along we hoped to have as many as five teams in the Chase, and hopefully to still have at least two when we go to Homestead,” David Wilson, President and General Manager for Toyota Racing Development, USA, said before Sunday’s rescheduled Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway got underway.
But, he cautioned, with the elimination-style Chase format, officials don’t look any further ahead than the race at hand. “You just never know what can happen,” he said.
Hours later, the fortunes for two of the more dominant Toyota entries, both from Joe Gibbs Racing, had taken a turn for the worse.
Matt Kenseth, five times a winner this season, was in the garage, his day undone by multiple issues in the opening race of the Contender Round of the Chase.
His 42nd-place finish left Kenseth, the pole winner at CMS, 12th in the Chase standings. Two opportunities remain — at Kansas and Talladega — to win or climb back inside the top eight and advance to the next round, which is the Eliminator Round.
“These are never the kind of days you want to have,” said Kenseth, who led 72 laps in the 334-lap race. “We’re real fast up front and we’re real tight in traffic.”
A four-tire stop dropped Kenseth from the lead to 13th for a Lap 81 restart while contact with Ryan Newman (Richard Childress Racing) sent him into the wall following a later restart. The team made numerous pit stops under ensuing caution periods to make repairs, but when Kenseth bounced off the wall at lap 240, his day was done.
“We got behind on that first pit deal and then didn’t catch the cautions right … I overshot my pit (stall) and put us in the back so it’s just like one thing led to another and led to another,” he said. “We shouldn’t have been back there to start with. My mistakes cost us today so we’ll just move on from this and get ready for Kansas.”
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Teammate Kyle Busch had a day worth forgetting as well, but the winner of four races this season was still on the track when the checkered flag waved.
Busch had qualified second, ran in the top five for much of the race, and was third when contact with Kyle Larson during a Lap 195 caution occurred.
“What the (expletive) was he thinking?? Busch asked crew chief Adam Stevens via radio after the incident. “He was never going to make the commitment cone anyway.”
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Busch had dropped low as if to enter pit road, then made a move back toward the track. Larson, running second, had made a late decision to dive onto pit road, and the two cars collided.
Larson said afterward that his team had instructed him to “do what everybody around me was doing, and the No. 22 (of race leader Joey Logano) was staying out, so I was committed to staying out.”
At the last minute, he said, his crew instructed him to pit.
“I hung a left and Kyle was there,” Larson (Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates) said. “I feel really terrible to ruin their day and hopefully it didn’t hurt their chances of transferring through this round. I know they deserve a top-three finish for sure. I felt awful immediately and still do. I hate it.”
While Kenseth and Busch had their issues, JGR drivers Denny Hamlin (fourth) and Carl Edwards (sixth) escaped the opening race of the second round relatively unscathed.
Hamlin’s No. 11 survived battery issues that threatened to take him out of contention.
“I ran on the wrong battery all day,” he said. “… My mistake.”
Edwards said track position was the key at CMS, noting that, “I tried everything I possibly could there at the end. I got about 35 feet from the 41 car (of fifth-place Kurt Busch) and that was as close as I could get.”
In spite of the turn of events for his teammates, Edwards said JGR is as strong as ever.
“I feel like any one of us could win at Kansas, and any one of us could win at Talladega,” he said. “There’s no telling what could happen. We all ran well (at times) and that’s the key, having that little bit of speed.”