Posted on by Kathy Sheldon

RELATED: Race results | Johnson wins at Atlanta, ties Earnhardt

HAMPTON, Ga. — It’s only appropriate that a win putting Jimmie Johnson in a tie with “The Intimidator” for career premier series wins came with a challenge.

 

The radio waves turned blue as a spin by Ryan Newman‘s No. 31 Chevrolet created an overtime situation at the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 after the first two-thirds of the race had been caution-free at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

 

The No. 48 team used a “gutsy” short-pit strategy to take the race lead with 45 laps to go, meaning Johnson’s tires were already on the edge of unraveling at the conclusion of the scheduled 325 laps. And challenger Kevin Harvick‘s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Chevrolet was getting low on gas.

 

Johnson held on for the win, tying Dale Earnhardt with 76 career Sprint Cup Series wins. Fittingly, Dale Earnhardt Jr. followed his Hendrick Motorsports teammate across the finish line in second.

 

“It’s such an honor,” Johnson said of the tie with Earnhardt. “With the chaos at the end (of the race) and the crash and wondering about overtime and how it worked these days, I kind of lost sight of that. I remembered it on my victory lap coming down, and I had to come by and throw a ‘three’ out the window to pay my respects to the man. There’s a huge void in my career that I never had a chance to race with him, but at least I was able to tie his record.”

 

Earnhardt Jr. said he was pleased for Johnson upon reaching the milestone, emphasizing that Johnson doesn’t get the credit he deserves for several things, including staying humble, driving hard and never complaining about a loose-handling car. 

 

“Knowing Jimmie Johnson and the way he operates, Dad would have loved Jimmie,” Earnhardt Jr. said.  “How can you not like Jimmie? He’s just a good guy who never stepped over the line with anything he’s ever said or anything he’s ever did.”

RELATED:  Junior, industry react to Jimmie’s 76th | Where Johnson stacks up


As for superlatives, Junior agreed that Johnson has a claim to the mantle of best driver of his generation.

“When he won five championships in a row, yeah, you figured he was pretty good,” Earnhardt Jr. said with a chuckle.

 

The elder Earnhardt’s penultimate win came at Atlanta, his final victory later in 2000 at Talladega’s fall race.

 

Johnson rattled off four wins in the first 13 races of the 2015 season. He struggled a bit in the middle of the season, but captured career win No. 75 at Texas in November. The No. 48 wheelman gave credit to crew chief Chad Knaus for bringing home No. 76.

 

“Yeah, definitely a gutsy call. It was just a great team effort,” Johnson said. “The No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) car was awfully tough and it was going to take some strategy to get by him. When he told me to whip it as hard as I could there, I just felt like I was going to take too much life out of the tires. But it worked. And I got rolling around the top and got to where I got this Lowe’s Chevy in Victory Lane. I’m so happy for Hendrick Motorsports and for everybody at Chevrolet.”

 

Team owner Rick Hendrick expects more wins to follow from his No. 48 driver. “I’m so glad we got this new package. I think it’s right in Jimmie’s wheelhouse.

 

“It’s going to be interesting to see how many races Jimmie and Chad can win together,” Hendrick added. “With this many wins and six championships, you’ve got to consider him to be one of the best drivers ever.”

 

Looking back through those 76 wins and 13 years in the premier series, both Hendrick and Knaus admitted they couldn’t have foreseen this kind of success.

 

“When we started this thing in 2002, I never thought we’d be here with 76 victories. It’s pretty impressive,” Knaus said, passing along credit to everyone at the Hendrick Motorsports shop and continued support from sponsor Lowe’s. “Jimmie’s pretty awesome, isn’t he?”

Posted on by Kathy Sheldon

RELATED: Ratcliff seeks rule clarification

HAMPTON, Ga. — Matt Kenseth had heartbreak at the Daytona 500 and heartburn at the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500.

 

Kenseth was black-flagged after a penalty on pit road in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, but he didn’t know it. He stayed out after receiving a black flag with a white cross from NASCAR officials, signifying the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota would no longer be scored as completing a lap.

 

The confusion began when the No. 20 pit crew was penalized because the gas man placed a tool on the rear of Kenseth’s Toyota Camry, which is illegal. According to the NASCAR rule book, “The Fueler must be in control of the fuel can at all times when fuel is being added to the vehicle. The Fueler will not be permitted to perform any adjustments or other pit stop procedures while the fuel can coupler is engaged with the vehicle-mounted adapter.”

 

Even after crew chief Jason Ratcliff brought Kenseth in to serve his pass-through penalty, confusion remained. Neither Kenseth nor Ratcliff could determine why they were scored two laps down.

 

Kenseth said, “I’m gonna blow a gasket if we got black-flagged and you didn’t tell me to pit.”

 

Ratcliff replied, “I can’t see the black-and-white flag when I’m out of the pit box arguing the case.”


PitTalks: Penalty as seen by those on pit road


Kenseth’s Camry had been strong, much as it was at Daytona. He led 47 laps at Atlanta before the pit road trouble began on Lap 170. He had led 40 laps at Daytona and was contending for the win when a bold move by teammate Denny Hamlin led to the No. 11 winning and the No. 20 shuffling back to finish 14th.

 

Kenseth finished Sunday’s race 19th and even after the race was still unclear exactly how the mistakes had happened. But the bottom line was he couldn’t do anything about the black flag he didn’t see.

 

“I couldn’t see the flag stand,” Kenseth said as the team rehashed the situation during a caution period on Lap 210. He told fill-in spotter Curtis Markham, “If we ever get in that situation again, you gotta, gotta, gotta tell me. …. I would’ve pitted before the cross. I can’t help it if I don’t have any information.”

 

Ratcliff remained adamant that the team shouldn’t have been penalized for the fueler taking a tool to and from the car, saying, “We’ve always done that. We’ve been doing that forever. But suddenly today it’s a penalty.”

 

Kenseth was less concerned with that and emphasized there’s a better time and place to argue. “Regardless, whether we’re right or wrong, we’ve only got so long to respond to the flag or we’re screwed.”

 

After the race, Kenseth said he understands the black flag rule. “No one had to explain it to me.”

Posted on by

Dear RaceView subscribers:
 
We wanted to alert you to a potential issue with the NASCAR RaceView Mobile app in advance of today’s Sprint Cup Series race in Atlanta (1 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
 
Yesterday, we released a new version of the app into the app stores (version 5.0.4) to improve issues some users experienced during the Daytona 500. There are two things you should be aware of from that update. First, it was inadvertently labeled “RV Dev”, though the app icon will be the same. Second, in testing, we identified that some users may need to force close the app (possibly more than once) if the application won’t load content after several minutes. To force close on iOS devices, double-tap the home button on your device and slide the RaceView screen up. The application should perform as expected from there.
 
If you have any issues, you can access NASCAR RaceView on your PC or contact customer service at 1-800-630-0535.
 
We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you enjoy the race.
 
Sincerely,
NASCAR Digital Media

Posted on by Nascar

HAMPTON, Ga. — Every 1.5-mile track likely won’t produce the sort of action that took place Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where NASCAR Sprint Cup teams got their first crack at the 2016 lower downforce base rules package.



But if those races at those venues, and there are many, are merely close?



It could be quite an entertaining season.



A shorter spoiler and slight changes to the front splitter and extension panel showed promise a year ago when used for races at Kentucky Speedway and Darlington Raceway. Now, teams and officials are hoping those promises are legit.



That would seem to be the case. Following Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, some folks were downright giddy.



Still, it’s just one race. And it’s Atlanta, where the surface hasn’t seen a fresh coat of asphalt since 1997.



And Goodyear built a tire that had “Eagle” emblazoned on the side but should have read “Goldilocks.” Not too hard, not too soft, but just right.



“I loved it,” runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “We were sliding around and driving the hell out of the car. I had a blast.”



The Hendrick Motorsports driver had himself quite a tussle, battling with fellow competitors Brad Keselowski (Team Penske) and defending series champion Kyle Busch (Joe Gibbs Racing) for position during the second half of the race.



“Man, it was so much fun. I post old pictures online all the time of the ’80s and ’90s and that’s when racing was racing. That’s when it was good. That’s what they saw today,” he said.



Keselowski, ninth in the final rundown, said he “loved the way the cars drove. 



“I understand that it takes more than my opinion to make the sport go round, but I thought it was awesome,” he said.



Busch was no less impressed with the package, but as did the others, made clear that the cars were now much more difficult to handle.



“We were just battling back and forth and slide jobbing one another and high lane-ing it and cutting each other off and everything, so it was pretty fun,” Busch said of his battle with the others. “This package lends itself to that.



“Pretty good race I felt like — a lot harder than some of us may want it to be, but that makes it good for the drivers and the crew chiefs to have to work together to come out here and build a good package for themselves and a comfortable race car.”



There were 28 lead changes among eight drivers, although the bulk of those did come as teams cycled though green-flag pit stops. A lack of cautions kept restarts to a minimum; thus, preserving one’s tires through the course of a run became paramount.



Still, there were passes for the lead on the track as well. Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas Racing) and Martin Truex Jr. (Furniture Row Racing) put on quite a show, exchanging the top spot several times near the halfway point of the race.



Joey Logano, Keselowski’s teammate, said the real test would come next week, when the series travels to Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Another 1.5-mile track, but less punishing on tires and perhaps less finicky.



But Logano noted of the package at AMS, “I thought a faster car (could) pass the car in front of them, no doubt.”



“We started 27th and we drove up into the top-five without a caution, so you could show how fast our car was by how we were all capable of passing out there,” he said.



Just how the package does at Las Vegas and other similar tracks will be known soon enough. Until then?



“They just need to keep taking more (downforce) away,” JGR driver Carl Edwards said.



“This is real racing. We’re driving hard. You can see the guys out here just digging for everything they’re worth. I’m worn out. That’s a tough race and just a lot of fun.”

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Full race results

HAMPTON, Ga. — For the third consecutive season, and the fourth in the last five, Kevin Harvick had a dominant car at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

 

Also for the third consecutive season, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver did not come away with the victory at the 1.54-mile track.

 

Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race was a series of long green-flag runs, interrupted on only three occasions late by the caution flag.

 

A slower-than-typical pit stop by Harvick’s pit crew with less than 50 laps remaining and a late caution that put him on the outside for a green-white-checkered restart were hurdles he and the crew chief Rodney Childers-led team were unable to overcome.

 

Harvick led nine times for 131 laps. He finished sixth.

 

“We had issues about the last three runs,” the 2014 Sprint Cup champion said. “I had to start driving the car different. It just required a little bit different handling.

 

“And then we had a slow pit stop there. We got way behind and the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was way out front and I had to drive the car really hard and got the right rear burned up.

 
“We just didn’t execute today but everybody … hung in there all day, and we’ll keep at it.”

 

Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. (Furniture Row Racing) had a spirited battle during the second half of the race, swapping the lead eight times during a stretch of nearly 100 laps.

 

But while they were racing, crew chief Chad Knaus was studying, and when he pulled six-time champion Jimmie Johnson to pit road for the final time earlier than most, the Hendrick Motorsports driver was suddenly a player.

 

Harvick pitted a few laps later, and his stop lasted a few seconds longer. Most felt that the fresher tires would enable him to eventually catch Johnson, but the gap between the two remained constant as the laps disappeared.

 

When the caution came out for the second time, setting up a two-lap dash, Harvick and a handful of others had one final shot. But Johnson was driving away when a second accident unfolded, effectively ended the event.

 

When starting on the outside, as his driver did, Childers said, “You don’t have a chance. That’s just part of it.”

 

“It sucks to have that good of a car and not win, for sure. But I didn’t feel like we could pit when the 48 pitted. I just didn’t think our tires would last that long,” he said.

 

“And then we had the mishap on pit road and lost a bunch of time. Then we were just too loose on that last run. It’s one of those things — you don’t want to beat yourself but we definitely did it today.”

 

Another 1.5-mile venue in Las Vegas — the first of three races in the West Coast swing — is up next, and Sunday’s run offers promises of better days ahead for the No. 4 team, which won back-to-back at Las Vegas and Phoenix last season.

 

“I feel good about the speed we had all weekend,” Childers said. “The car drove good; it was nice to get everybody in a rhythm, have our new engineer here, he had the flu the last two days … but it still worked out OK.”

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Full Atlanta race lineup

 

HAMPTON, Ga. — With two drivers qualifying in the top five, and all three of Roush Fenway Racing‘s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams starting inside the top 15, it appears things have taken a positive turn for the longtime organization.

 

Trevor Bayne will start third in Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (1 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will start fifth. And veteran Greg Biffle, typically the most consistent of the group, will go off from the No. 14 position.

 

The last time three RFR cars started inside the top 15 for a non-restricted Sprint Cup race? It’s been awhile.

 

The organization, founded by co-owner Jack Roush in 1988, hasn’t been to Victory Lane since 2014 when driver Carl Edwards was still a team member.

 

None of its three drivers qualified for last year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, a first, regretfully, for an organization that won back-to-back titles in 2003-04 and nearly won it all again in 2011.

 

With a lower downforce rules package in play — similar to that used at Kentucky and Darlington last season — has an organization that has won 135 times in NASCAR’s premier series finally rediscovered its footing?

 

“It was one qualifying session in the first race of the year with this rules package,” Robbie Reiser, general manager at RFR, said Saturday at AMS. “But, it’s obviously better.”

 

Reiser’s been around — he won 17 times as a crew chief at RFR before moving off the pit box. So he’s lived the ups and downs that come and go so frequently in the series.

 

The proof for RFR, of course, won’t come until Sunday, when 39 cars take the green flag for the series’ second race of the season. Or more likely much later, after the series rolls through Las Vegas and Texas and Kansas and Charlotte.

 

“Last season wasn’t a reflection of work ethic at all, it was a reflection of being a little bit behind,” Bayne said. “This season, we’re really looking forward to this low downforce package. We felt like our best races were at the low downforce tracks (last year), Kentucky and Darlington, so everybody that’s wondering what’s going on at Roush Fenway Racing, a lot of hard work and a lot of attention to detail.”

 

Bayne, a former Daytona 500 winner, is paired with crew chief Matt Puccia, Biffle’s former crew chief, for 2016; veteran Brian Pattie is calling the shots for Biffle while Nick Sandler returns to oversee the No. 17 of Stenhouse.

 

“I thought we had probably another tenth in it … so I feel really good about the speed the guys brought down in this car and all their hard work,” Stenhouse said after his qualifying effort. “Hopefully, it can continue in race trim tomorrow and making sure we have something that will run good on the long run. That’s going to be tough here at Atlanta with the low downforce and sliding around with the soft tire, so I felt good about it.”

 

Stenhouse was 13th on Saturday as teams made final race preparations.

 

“We had a meeting last week talking about execution,” Bayne said. “Everybody’s intentions are right. Everybody wants to go fast. Everybody wants to win races, but now we’ve got to execute and make sure we make these fast Fords last.”

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full race results

 

It was an emotional Sunday for both Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as “Six-Time” tied Dale Earnhardt for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victories with a total of 76.

 

The son of “The Intimidator” met his Hendrick Motorsports teammate in Victory Lane to offer his congratulations and kind words.

 

Junior also took to Twitter to show his support and voice how proud he was to come up short to the No. 48 Chevrolet.

 

Here’s what else Earnhardt Jr. said of the milestone win:

 

• “Knowing Jimmie Johnson and the way he operates, Dad would have loved Jimmie. How can you not like Jimmie? He’s just a good guy who never stepped over the line with anything he’s ever said or anything he’s ever did.”

 

• “I don’t have a problem calling him the best of this generation, even as a competitor of his and having to go out there and race against him. Obviously he will credit his crew chief and his team. That all has been real consistent throughout his career, and they do deserve some credit, but Jimmie is just a phenomenal talent.”

 

• “I told him on a couple occasions that when he tied daddy, he’d better say something cool, and he’d better tell them that it’s awesome for him to tie him, because I know Jeff (Gordon) had the flag and all that, so that was awesome when your competitors and peers recognize your father like that.”

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Dale Jr.’s reaction | Full race results

 

Sunday’s win at Atlanta Motor Speedway was the 76th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory for Jimmie Johnson, a milestone that saw him match the win total of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt to tie him for seventh all-time on the wins list.

Only seven other drivers have reached at least 76 wins in the sport’s history.

“It’s such an honor,” Johnson said in Victory Lane after the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500. “… There’s a huge void in my career that I never had a chance to race with him, but at least I was able to tie his record.”

 

Next up in Johnson’s sights: Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip.

 

An asterisk below denotes that driver is still active.

All-time NASCAR premier series wins

Driver Wins Starts Titles
Richard Petty 200 1,184 7
David Pearson 105 574 3
Jeff Gordon 93 797 4
Bobby Allison 84 718 1
Darrell Waltrip 84 809 3
Cale Yarborough 83 560 3
Jimmie Johnson* 76 509 6
Dale Earnhardt 76 676 7
Rusty Wallace 55 706 1
Lee Petty 54 427 3
Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Junior: ‘Dad would have loved Jimmie’ | Johnson wins at Atlanta

 

Six-time Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson tied seven-time champ Dale Earnhardt’s mark of 76 career premier series victories by virtue of his overtime win at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon.

 

NASCAR Nation took to Twitter to congratulate “Six-Time” for reaching such a historic and revered mark.

 

Posted on by Staff Report

Richard Childress Racing‘s three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars had trouble in pre-race inspection Sunday.

 

After multiple trips through the line, NASCAR pulled the Nos. 3 of Austin Dillon, 27 of Paul Menard and 31 of Ryan Newman out of inspection and confiscated the braces in the right rear corners of their respective vehicles.

 

According to NASCAR, the parts in question were optional braces (brackets) in the rear-wheel area of the cars. NASCAR officials had them removed and will take the parts back to the R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina.

 

No penalties — such as a loss of starting position — are expected today or post-event, according to NASCAR.

 

Mike Dillon, general manager of Richard Childress Racing, said the team didn’t replace the parts due to time.

For the race, Dillon finished 11th, while Menard finished 18th and Newman finished 24th.

 

Kenny Bruce contributed to this story from Atlanta