Moments that changed the course of the 25th race of the 2014 season
KAHNE’S STRONG RESTART EARNS WIN, CHASE BERTH
In a race that went 10 laps beyond its scheduled distance of 325 laps, Kasey Kahne surged past Matt Kenseth on the second attempt at a green-white-checkered-flag finish to win for the first time this year and the third time at the 1.54-mile speedway.
Kenseth finished second and clinched a Chase spot on points, leaving just two of 16 positions in NASCAR’s 10-race playoff available in Saturday’s regular-season finale at Richmond International Raceway.
After streaking into the lead on a restart with 24 laps left, Kahne held the top spot until a caution for a fracas between Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. slowed the field with less than two laps left.
With four fresh tires to Kenseth’s two, Kahne overtook the No. 20 Toyota after he and Kenseth battled for a lap after the restart and pulled away to win the 17th race of his career by .574 seconds.
“We were all over the place during the race, but the guys stayed with me and worked hard,” Kahne said. “On those restarts — I didn’t know what would happen, because I had great restarts all night, and I struggle with restarts a lot.
“That’s big, because that is one of the things you have to be good at, and it worked really well tonight.”
It also took a huge weight off Kahne’s shoulders, as the end of the regular season approached.
“Yeah, we are locked in, and I hate that it comes down to this Atlanta or Richmond just about every year for me,” Kahne said of the pressure to make the Chase. “Sometimes we are in, sometimes we are out. But thankful that now at HMS (Hendrick Motorsports), I’ve been in all three years now. We have the pressure all the way to Richmond, but we made it again — thankful for that.”
HARVICK CRASHES ON LATE RESTART AFTER DOMINANT NIGHT
On the first attempt at overtime, a multicar wreck in Turn 1 wiped out the dominant car of polesitter Kevin Harvick, requiring a second attempt at a two-lap shootout.
Harvick, who sought a weekend sweep after winning Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race, led seven times for a race-high 195 of 335 laps. He restarted fourth behind Paul Menard, who spun his tires and backed up into Harvick. Kurt Busch and Menard caught Harvick in a sandwich in Turn 1, and the No. 4 car wound up in the wall. He wound up 19th, the last car on the lead lap.
“We all probably could have given each other more room,” Harvick said. “I knew the No. 27 (Menard) was going to get a bad restart and I tried to time it to where I could get on the outside of him.
“I got on the outside of him and he just kept coming up and I wasn’t going to let off the gas; I knew the No. 22 (Joey Logano) was up there. The No. 27 kept coming up and just came up until we all wrecked.”
STEWART HITS WALL TWICE, FINISHES 41st
Tony Stewart‘s return to competition took a rough ride on Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway as he blew a right-front tire and exited the race after hitting the wall in Turn 2 on the 172nd of 325 laps. This came on the heels of making contact with Kyle Busch‘s car and the outside wall near the midpoint of the race.
Stewart, making his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start since the Aug. 9 incident that claimed the live of sprint-car driver Kevin Ward Jr., had just taken the green flag on a bottled-up restart and was on the high side of Busch in the 121st of 325 laps. The two collided in Turn 2, pushing him up the race track and into the outside retaining wall.
“We just got run over, big time,” Stewart said over the radio back to his crew. “Yeah, that was pretty hard there.”
After Stewart reported that the steering wheel was knocked an inch to the left, crew chief Chad Johnston had him come in for multiple stops to fix the scraped-up car’s alignment.
“We were just kind of biding our time and taking care of our stuff and got into an incident there off of (Turn) 2 and knocked the tow out of it and had some pretty heavy right side damage,” Johnston said. “We ended up blowing a right-front (tire) because of it.
“Not the end of the day that we wanted. We thought we had a shot at winning, and with two races to go to get into the Chase, this was one of the two chances obviously left to get it done and to get into the Chase. We will just have to lick our wounds and go onto Richmond and see if we can’t do it there and if so it will be pretty exciting.”
The NASCAR Wire Service contributed to this story.