Posted on by Staff Report

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."

UPS

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.

Posted on by Zack Albert

The Stewart-Haas Racing driver rallied from a 27th-place start

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HAMPTON, Ga. — A buoyant Danica Patrick was fresh from a drive she said felt like 700 miles Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Perhaps it was because of the way the race — actually 515.9 miles in length — played out like chapters in a good book, with the story getting better and more involved by the end.

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Patrick’s story was one of success in the Oral-B USA 500 as she rallied from a 27th-place starting spot for a sixth-place finish, her career-best in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The result marked the best finish by a woman at the Georgia track, besting the 10th-place effort that Janet Guthrie achieved here in March 1978.

Patrick’s previous best was a seventh-place run at similar Kansas Speedway this May. While her performance on intermediate-sized tracks has improved in the races since, she attributed another unique factor for the performance uptick. 

"Well, I got that in-car camera out of the car and I’m pretty sure that’s why we had a good weekend because we had it for four weeks in a row," Patrick said. "We were all right some of them. No, I’m kidding — it’s good to have that, but that was my joke at the beginning of the weekend. Since that solid run like this at Kansas, I mean honestly we’ve been so much faster and qualified much better. It’s just whether something fails or I make a mistake or there’s an accident or something like that, there were just so many things that kept putting us out of contention and wrecking our weekends.

"This weekend, we just didn’t have that and we fought hard at the beginning and were at a good place at the end. … We’ve all been looking for a really good weekend after what we’ve been going through lately." 

Patrick fought a tight handling condition in the early going, falling a lap down twice because of the rapid pace set by early race leader Kevin Harvick. She received the free pass back onto the lead lap in two of the first three caution periods, then began her march toward the front, her car’s handling improving as the night went on.

"Then from there on out, it was smooth sailing and the car was really good," Patrick said. "Man, I had one run where I felt like I was playing a video game out there. I was just driving around the top side of everybody. It was a little more human-like after that." 

Her closing kick brought her to as high as fourth place in the running order and within a hair of her first-ever top-five right behind former Atlanta winner Carl Edwards. She remained in contention thanks to a quick 12.2-second stop from her Stewart-Haas Racing crew on her final trip to pit road, and managed to avoid the chaos from the pair of green-white-checkered finishes at the end. 

"Solid, solid finish," Patrick said. "I was hoping for a top-five right down there at the line with Carl, but sixth place is definitely something to be happy about, and I was hoping for a solid top-15, so that’s much better."

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Posted on by Zack Albert

Pole sitter led a race-high 195 laps but ran into trouble on late restart

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HAMPTON, Ga. — It’s difficult to tell what exact color a dark cat is when approaching it at close to 200 mph, but for Kevin Harvick, it may as well have been bad-luck black.
 
Short of walking under a ladder on the way to driver intros or eating peanuts in the car, Harvick couldn’t have had a more telling omen that Sunday night would not be a normal one than the cat that ran in front of his car within the opening 20 laps of the Oral-B USA 500. Besides the squirrel that emerged near the track’s apron a handful of laps later, fans nearly needed a roster to keep track of the race’s growing wildlife preserve.
 
"That was a cat. The cat ran across the backstretch," Harvick said after his early close call. "That would have been a big mess."

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The planets seemed to be in alignment for a convincing weekend sweep at Atlanta Motor Speedway after claiming the Coors Light Pole Award in Friday qualifying, then romping to victory in Saturday night’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race. But come Sunday night, by now familiar problems on pit road surfaced and Harvick’s forward progress was stemmed. The setbacks put his Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Chevrolet in position for havoc on the race’s next-to-last restart, which left his car damaged and relegated him to a unpalatable 19th-place finish as the last driver on the lead lap.
 
In what’s become a season dotted with ominous signs along the way, it marked the third time this season that Harvick has led the most laps without winning the race.
 
"Our cars are really fast and doing all the things we need to do but we lost control every time we came to pit road tonight," Harvick said.
 
After losing ground on pit road on a regular basis to the Joe Gibbs Racing duo of Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth and their well-oiled crew and high-whirring air guns, Harvick said mid-race that he was tired of relaying the same message over his team radio, but that the pit service was "absolutely unacceptable." By the time the race was forced to overtime, circumstances again conspired to foil his shot at a third win of the season.
 
Harvick lined up fourth for the first attempt at a green-white-checkered finish right behind two drivers that gambled with two tires for the final restart — race leader Kenseth and second-place Paul Menard. When the green dropped, Menard lost grip fast right in front of Harvick, who tried to work the high line around his former teammate. But as he inched up, he made contact with Joey Logano‘s fast-closing Ford and both cars slapped the wall.
 
"We knew they were going to get a bad restart," Harvick said. "I got on the outside of the 27 (Menard) as soon as I could. I tried to time it to where I could get on the outside of him but he kept coming up and, I think, the 22 (Logano) was still on our outside and it just got crazy there and we all wrecked. I think we all could have given each other more room but we just wrecked. It’s just everybody going as hard as they could at the end. You can’t control all the circumstances out there like tonight."
 
Harvick’s status for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs didn’t change after Sunday night, but the gremlins that kept one of the best-performing teams out of Victory Lane again have clearly taken a toll. His two regular-season wins (Phoenix, Darlington) secured his spot in the postseason by springtime, but Harvick has come oh-so-close to amassing more wins, finishing second five times — six, if you count the non-points NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race.
 
Harvick made it clear that the team needs to fix its issues to regroup and return to a championship caliber before the Chase begins Sept. 14 at Chicagoland Speedway, all the while hoping that unforeseen adversity — wayward cats included — manages to find another target.
 
"Well, you just have to ride through it and do the best that you can," Harvick said. "You can’t control all the circumstances like tonight. It’s just unfortunate for everybody on our Jimmy John’s Chevy that everything went the way that it did, but what do you do?"

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Three-year extension for Fifth Third Bank, Roush Fenway Racing

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HAMPTON, Ga. — Roush Fenway Racing rounded out next season’s sponsor lineup for the No. 17 Ford and driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr., announcing Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway that Fifth Third Bank will return to the team for the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series campaign and beyond.

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Fifth Third, which has partnered with Roush Fenway since 2012, will sponsor the team for an undetermined amount of races next year. The deal runs through 2017.

"We’re thrilled to announce that we have a three-year renewal with Fifth Third to be a critical partner with Ricky Stenhouse on the No. 17 program, and we hope that the next three years are just a continuation of a long-term relationship," Roush Fenway Racing president Steve Newmark said at 3:53 p.m. ET — a nod to their partner’s namesake. "They’ve come in and basically been integral with everything that we do on a daily basis."
 
The news comes on the heels of last weekend’s signing of Ortho Insect Control to sponsor the No. 16 ride for Greg Biffle in approximately half of next season’s 36 Sprint Cup races. Biffle and the team debuted the new paint scheme last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway in conjunction with the announcement.
 
Stenhouse Jr., who captured Sprint Cup Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in 2013, is a two-time NASCAR Nationwide Series champion after winning back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012. The 26-year-old will make his 66th career Sprint Cup Series start this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with a career best finish of second earlier this year at Bristol.

"It’s been a great partnership the last two years. I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of the employees — over 21,000 employees," Stenhouse Jr. said. "Got a few more years to try to meet all of them. Really excited about that. Fifth Third plays a huge role in organizing our organization’s business side and to let the competition side do their thing as well and they also do a lot for me on my personal financial side."

Currently on the outside looking in with two races to make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field, Stenhouse Jr. hopes that in addition to the postseason berth, he’d get with a win in Sunday’s Oral-B USA 500 (7:30 p.m. ESPN) and a nice fat payday along with it.

"Hopefully by the end of the night we can use the Fifth Third Mobile Banking to deposit a big check," Stenhouse Jr. said. "That would be nice."

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Pair has had its run-ins but praise is evident after hard-fought finish

BOWMANVILLE, ONTARIO — If there was bad blood between German Quiroga and Ryan Blaney coming out of Bristol, the Chevrolet Silverado 250 would have seen a similar finish to last year’s inaugural event, when Chase Elliott nudged leader Ty Dillon out of the way and into the wall in a finish that directed a lot of unkind words to the race winner. This year, fans saw one of the most exciting displays of clean racing the sport can offer.

On the final lap at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, a 10-turn road course just outside of Toronto, Blaney was looking for his first win of the season. Quiroga, still chasing his first win in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, was just behind, leading eight laps himself and staying bumper-to-bumper with the No. 29.

"Blaney was in front of us and I tried really hard to pass him; I tried to make him do a mistake, and he didn’t, I tried to pass him in several corners, clean, and just couldn’t," Quiroga lamented after the race.

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Yet in the final lap, as they traded the lead in the race’s waning turns, Quiroga or Blaney could have cemented a trip to Victory Lane by sending the other off the track. The checkered flag flew, however, with Blaney barely holding onto the lead, and both trucks remained on track and intact.

"We had a problem last week at Bristol, and fate would have us racing each other for the win this weekend," Blaney said. "That’s awesome right there, that’s the way racing needs to be and it was so fun racing with him and battling it out with him."

After the white flag fell, Blaney, who led a race-high 34 laps, looked in prime position to take the checkered. But a few missed turns allowed Quiroga to get into position going into Turn 9, and it looked like Quiroga would be the one with the win.

"I drove it as deep as I could — I actually passed him in Turn 8 — and in Turn 9 he got a really good drive off the corner and just beat us by half a truck length."

Quiroga’s disappointment at another near-win was evident, as the driver didn’t even fake a smile post-race.

"We tried hard. We came close again. We came in second," he said of his finish. "It’s so bad for me not to be able to win yet in the series. I’ve been trying for a year and a half now, and the win doesn’t come."

When asked why he didn’t send Blaney spinning, Quiroga had a semi-serious response.

"A call from NASCAR," he said, laughing. Coming out of Bristol, where Blaney and Quiroga finished 13th and 14th, respectively, both drivers had to speak with NASCAR to ensure that the problems between the two wouldn’t continue.

The last, and according to Blaney only other time they had problems at the track occurred in the 2013 season.

Last July at Iowa Speedway, Quiroga’s No. 77 got into the back of the Blaney’s No. 29 truck while racing in the top 10. Blaney ended up taking a hard hit into the wall, finishing the race in 26th, five laps off the lead pace. That wreck didn’t leave a lasting impression, nor did the problems between the two last week.

"I was over it after Bristol," Blaney said. "I wasn’t going to come here with the top priority to mess the 77 up; I race everybody the same. I wasn’t going to spin him out for the win. I don’t wreck people for wins."

In last year’s event, Ty Dillon was leading into the final corner of the race when Chase Elliott got into him and sent the No. 3 spinning into the outside barrier. Dillon finished 17th as the rest of the field passed by.

"He just doesn’t have any respect," Dillon said after the race. "It was going to be an awesome points day for us, and I was racing hard, but man, you don’t just go through the grass and wreck somebody. Killed our truck. Killed our day. It’s just, here’s the point: You gotta be smarter than that when you run these races. You gotta earn respect. Next time, I hope he runs Iowa, ’cause he won’t finish the race."

This year’s race highlighted the exact sort of respect that Dillon was looking in the inaugural event at the Ontario road course. Neither Blaney nor Quiroga had bad things to say about the other coming out of it, just praise for a finish that was as exciting as it was clean.

"We raced really, really hard and really clean, and that’s how racing should be," Blaney said.


"We talked before the race, and I think that’s how we want to race," Quiroga recalled. "I told him, ‘I wish one day we can just battle for the win,’ and it was today. Unfortunately for me, we came in second."

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Blaney scores first Camping World Truck Series victory of 2014

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In a dramatic finish, Ryan Blaney drag-raced German Quiroga off the last corner at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park to the start-finish line to win Sunday afternoon’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chevrolet Silverado 250.
 
The two drivers duked it out for the win following the final restart, but a pass for the lead by Quiroga in Turn 8 on the final lap would be short lived, as Blaney set up his crucial move exiting the final turn allowing Blaney to score his third career series victory by 0.049 seconds.

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"That was a ton of fun racing with German," said Blaney. "We raced really, really hard and really clean and that’s how racing should be. We had a problem last week (at Bristol) and just fate would have us racing each other for the win this week. That’s awesome. That’s what racing needs to be, it was so fun racing with him and battling it out with him."
 
Blaney’s teammate Alex Tagliani led the field from the pole in his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut and held the point until he strategically made a green flag pit stop on Lap 8 with Gray Gaulding inheriting the lead. The NASCAR Next driver would control the field for five laps before he headed to pit road and handed the lead to Canadian Andrew Ranger.
 
When Ranger pitted on Lap 16, Blaney assumed command on Lap 17. Utilizing a one-stop strategy, he stayed out until Lap 29, when Quiroga shuffled to the top spot.
 
With the lead exchanging between Quiroga, Cole Custer and Johnny Sauter, crew chief Chad Kendrick’s early-race pit stop call would prove to be beneficial for Blaney, as he climbed from outside the top 10 to reclaim the lead from Sauter on Lap 44.
 
Blaney’s healthy lead over Quiroga would be diminished when the first full-course caution would wave on Lap 48 for the No. 8 of John Hunter Nemechek, who lost an engine in Turn 1. Under the yellow, the leaders elected to stay out, setting up for a restart twelve laps from the finish.
 
Quiroga couldn’t make the pass on Blaney on the restart, but he would get another chance when the second and final caution of the day waved on Lap 55 for Tagliani, who stalled on the track in Turn 5.
 
On the final restart, Blaney got a strong jump on the field and was able to clear Quiroga, but the Mexico City, Mexico native reeled him back in over the last eight laps before making his move in the Esses.
 
Coming out of Turn 10, Blaney made the crossover move to win his first race of the season. Quiroga matched his career-best finish in 42 starts.
 
"We tried hard, we came in second. I’m going to keep on trying," said Quiroga. We were really, really fast on long runs. Everyone at the shop worked really hard to build a road course truck and that’s how we arrived. I think we were on the right path, just strategy and how things played out, Blaney was in front of us. I tried really hard to pass him, tried to make him make a mistake, he didn’t. I passed him in Turn 8, and Turn 9, coming off he got a really good run off the corner and beat us."
 
Erik Jones was third followed by Gaulding and Ranger to close out the top five.

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Kahne earns first victory — and Chase berth — with thrilling finish

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HAMPTON, Ga. — It was Tony Stewart’s return to racing that dominated the headlines before Sunday night’s Oral-B USA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but it was Kasey Kahne who stole the show — and a berth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

In a race that went 10 laps beyond its scheduled distance of 325 laps, 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.

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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.

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.

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."

Denny Hamlin ran third, followed by Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. Danica Patrick finished sixth, beating by four positions the best previous finish by a female driver at Atlanta (Janet Guthrie was 10th in 1978).

The race that turned the season around for Kahne provided little solace for Stewart.

Starting a Cup race for the first time since his involvement in the fatal sprint car accident that took the life of Kevin Ward Jr. on Aug. 9 at Canandaigua (N.Y.) Speedway, Stewart charged forward from his 12th-place starting position and ran as high as fourth in the early going.

But Stewart’s race came undone moments after a restart on Lap 123, when Kyle Busch‘s Toyota pinched Stewart’s Chevy into the outside wall off Turn 2, significantly damaging both cars. On Lap 160 Matt Kenseth, then the leader, passed Stewart to put the No. 14 a lap down.

Twelve laps later, a blown right front tire sent Stewart hard into the Turn 2 wall, forcing him to the garage and out of the race. Credited with a 41st-place finish, Stewart has one more chance—on Saturday at Richmond—to take advantage of a NASCAR dispensation that kept him eligible for the Chase.

Having missed three races, Stewart must win at the .75-mile short track to qualify for NASCAR’s 10-race playoff.

After exiting his car, Stewart declined requests for interviews, but crew chief Chad Johnston spoke to reporters in the garage.

"I went into today with some pretty high hopes of finishing well and possibly coming out of here with a win, but it just didn’t work out in our favor," Johnston said. "We got into a little trouble with the 18 (Busch) and got into the outside wall, knocked the toe out of it, and a lot of heavy right side damage.

"We were just trying to fix that and salvage what we could out of the day but then we blew a right front there right before that caution came out."

If Stewart had issues on the track, so did one prominent driver on the Chase bubble. The shifter on Clint Bowyer’s No. 15 Toyota broke, preventing him from getting the car into high gear. Bowyer lost 22 laps in the garage as his team made repairs. He finished 38th, leaving his chances to make the Chase on points in dire jeopardy.

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Winner of 40 races, championship discusses new role with Roush

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Jimmy Fennig, the crew chief for the No. 99 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team for Carl Edwards and Roush Fenway Racing, will leave the pit box at season’s end, according to an ESPN report during the Oral-B USA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

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With two wins this season at Bristol Motor Speedway and Sonoma Raceway, Fennig will end his career with a shot at the championship as part of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Those victories have brought his career total to 40.

Fennig began his career as a crew chief in 1986 with Mark Martin and was Martin’s pit boss from 1997-2001 before working with Kurt Busch for four seasons, including a championship campaign in the first Chase in 2004.

The Milwaukee native earned his first two career wins with NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Allison in 1987 and 1988. He won 14 races with Martin and 14 more with Busch. Before teaming with Edwards last season, Fennig worked with fellow Wisconsin racer, Matt Kenseth, for three years and six wins.

The ESPN report indicated Fennig was speaking with the Roush Fenway Racing about a new role within the organization.

Team president Steve Newmark said at Indianapolis last month that Fennig’s future wouldn’t be discussed until later in the year.

"All of our crew chief decisions, engineer decisions, as you guys know, they’re made much later in the fall when Robbie Reiser and Jack (Roush) sit down with those guys and they have a dialogue about what 2015 will look like," Newmark said.

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See who is in NASCAR’s playoffs with one race to go

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RELATED: Full coverage of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format changes | Official news release | Changes explained | Chase Facts and FAQ

In the Oral-B USA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kasey Kahne clinched his spot in the Chase Grid with a win, and Matt Kenseth clinched based on points as they qualify for the final regular season race at Richmond International Raceway in the Federated Auto Parts 400 (Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).

Heading into Sunday night’s race, 12 drivers had clinched spots in the 2014 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup:

AJ Allmendinger, Aric Almirola, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano    

After the 25th points race of NASCAR’s regular season, here is how the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings look:

2014 Chase Grid Outlook

 
Pos.
Drivers
Wins
Points
Chase Bonus Pts
1
 Jeff Gordon
3
872
9
2
 Dale Earnhardt Jr.
3
851
9
3
 Joey Logano
3
791
9
4
 Brad Keselowski
3
782
9
5
 Jimmie Johnson
3
766
9
6
 Carl Edwards
2
755
6
7
 Kevin Harvick
2
748
6
8
 Kasey Kahne
1
708
3
9
 Kyle Busch
1
657
3
10
 Denny Hamlin
1
636
3
11
 Kurt Busch
1
614
3
12
 Aric Almirola
1
594
3
13
 AJ Allmendinger
1
590
3
14
 Matt Kenseth
0
794
0
15
 Ryan Newman
0
747
0
16
 Greg Biffle
0
728
0
Outside Looking In
17
 Clint Bowyer
0
705
0
18
 Kyle Larson
0
704
0
19
 Paul Menard
0
675
0
20
 Austin Dillon
0
674
0
21
 Jamie McMurray
0
666
0
22
 Brian Vickers
0
650
0
23
 Marcos Ambrose
0
628
0
24
 Casey Mears
0
583
0
25
 Martin Truex Jr.
0
561
0
26
 Tony Stewart
0
540
0
27
 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
0
538
0
28
 Danica Patrick
0
500
0
29
 Justin Allgaier
0
443
0
30
 Michael Annett
0
393
0
 
Green = Locked into the Chase, provided they attempt to qualify for the remaining four races
 
Orange = No wins, Inside the current Chase Grid’s top 16 – Currently in the Chase, not locked in
 
Red = Inside the current top 30 in points, outside of the Chase cutoff

 

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Posted on by Staff Report

Kentucky entrepreneur founded company in 1966, also owned raceway

David Garvin, the founder of Camping World, died Saturday at his home after an accidental fall, according to a report in the Bowling Green (Kentucky) Daily News.

Warren County deputies responded to a call to his Bowling Green home after Garvin slipped while working on his roof. The 71-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, and authorities considered the death accidental.

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At the age of 23 in 1966, Garvin started a small store and mail-order business that sold camping products and supplies. He grew the mailing list to nearly 7 million names and eventually opened 100 stores with 5,000 employees.

Garvin and his family also owned the Beech Bend Park and Raceway, hosting carnival rides as well as motorcycle and auto races.

NASCAR released the following statement on the passing of Camping World founder Gavin:

"NASCAR offers its deepest condolences to David Garvin’s family and friends. An innovator well ahead of his time, Garvin started Camping World as a small local store, and grew it into an enormous business. Camping World is a valued NASCAR partner, and our thoughts are with its thousands of employees."

"I am stunned," Marcus Lemonis, the Camping World CEO, told RV Daily Report. "In my opinion, he was one of the greatest pioneers in the RV industry."

Of the 2009 inductee into the RV Hall of Fame, Lemonis also tweeted:

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