Kyle Busch will be looking to back up his spring Nationwide victory
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It’s the 11th consecutive distinction for Chevrolet
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Jeff Gordon’s win on Sunday clinched the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup manufacturers’ championship for Chevrolet. It’s the 11th consecutive season Chevy has won the title, and this time it was clinched with three races still remaining in the season.
"To wrap it up with a win with a great, exciting finish, battling it out with a Toyota (the No. 20 driven by second-place finisher Matt Kenseth) is awesome. I know how much that means to Chevrolet," Gordon said.
It was the 16th victory of the season by a Chevy-driven car, sealing Chevrolet’s 37th manufacturer’s title.
KESELOWSKI KEEPS IT CLEAN
Defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski has struggled much of the season, but was pleased to emerge from Martinsville with a fourth-place finish.
Keselowski surprised himself by staying out of trouble on a day that included 17 cautions for a total of 111 laps.
"It’s a short track and by definition there is not a lot of room to race,"Keselowski said. “With 43 cars here, there are a lot of cars on top of each other and eventually you’re going to make contact and wreck each other and make someone angry. I don’t think I made anybody angry (Sunday) and we had a decent showing, so I guess we’ll move on."
POLE-SITTER HAMLIN HANGS ON
It’s been a difficult year for Denny Hamlin and Sunday was no different.
After sitting on the pole, he was involved in a wreck with Kasey Kahne and others that caused a caution to come out on Lap 183. Hamlin suffered heavy damage to his No. 11 Toyota. But after getting the nose and other parts of the car wrapped heavily in black tape, he quickly returned to the track and remained surprisingly competitive the rest of the afternoon.
He even regained the lead briefly after the accident, and led a total of 14 laps on the day.
"We really had about a 25th-place car," Hamlin said after finishing seventh. "I took a pretty good shot to the wheel and the steering was off just a little bit, and here that’s usually a pretty big deal. … We had a lot of damage from that early wreck. I’m proud of this whole team for fixing it, and the pit crew did an awesome job. They kept picking me up spots on pit road."
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Victory is eighth at Martinsville for veteran; Kenseth, Johnson tied atop standings
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Who is Mr. Martinsville now?
Jeff Gordon once appeared to own sole possession of that title, but he ceded it to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson several years ago. Gordon took a large step toward reclaiming it Sunday when he earned his first win of the season, and the eighth of his career at Martinsville Speedway, by capturing the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 powered by Kroger.
Gordon made what proved to be the winning pass on Matt Kenseth with 21 laps to go and held off the rest of the field for the victory. It moved him into third place in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings, 27 points behind Matt Kenseth and Johnson, who are now tied for first with three races remaining in the season (Kenseth owns the tiebreaker).
"I’m just so proud of my team for never giving up. We’ve shown it all year long and we’ve been through a lot. But this is making it all worth it, to get this huge win at Martinsville," Gordon said in Victory Lane. "Man, what a great race car."
Kenseth was attempting to win for the first time in 28 career starts at Martinsville, where he typically has struggled.
"Jeff’s experience got me. I just don’t have that much experience running up front here," Kenseth said. "I had something that was working, but I was hurting the rear tires and ended up hurting the front tires, too."
Johnson, who also has eight career wins at Martinsville, finished fifth. He said he wasn’t surprised Kenseth bucked past history and tightened the Chase points race.
"It’s been a great battle with the 20 car (driven by Kenseth) and the 24 team (of Gordon) has shown it wants to be a part of the championship battle as well," said Johnson, who owned a four-point advantage heading into Sunday’s race. "It’s going to be a fight to the end. It’s what I want to see and I know it’s what the fans want to see, too. We’ll keep digging hard."
Kenseth appeared in command but ended up barely holding off Clint Bowyer to finish second after Gordon made his nifty pass to the inside going into Turn 1 on Lap 479 of the 500-lap event. He and Johnson spent much of the day sparring, trying different strategies as numerous cautions — a total of 17 for 111 laps in all — continued to mount on the only short track on the 10-race Chase schedule.
At times, Johnson and Kenseth took turns running up front. Then one would fall back, only to rally again.
Gordon, meanwhile, kept lurking in the vicinity of the Chase leaders. Now he can be called one of them, as he at least injected himself into the championship conversation heading to Texas.
"I think anyone within a race (or 43 points of the lead) is still in it," Kenseth said.
Using that criteria, that would also include Kevin Harvick, who is in fourth and 27 points back; and Kyle Busch, who is in fifth and 36 back heading into next Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.
It appeared heading into Martinsville that Johnson would have a huge advantage over Kenseth at the storied paper clip, where NASCAR races have been held since 1949. While Johnson entered with eight career wins, 16 top-fives and 20 top-10s in 23 career starts at the track, Kenseth had never won and had registered only three top-five and eight top-10 finishes in 27 career starts. To put it in even better perspective, Johnson entered the day having led a total of 2,327 laps in his career at Martinsville; Kenseth had led a total of 169 out of more than 13,000 laps he had run there.
Those numbers meant nothing when it came right down to it Sunday.
Kenseth said that Kasey Kahne, another of Gordon’s teammates at Hendrick Motorsports, helped Gordon catch him.
"When the 5 (driven by Kahne) blocked us in there or whatever, we lost a lot of momentum and Jeff got to me. From that moment on, I had a hard time holding him off," Kenseth said. "All the lapped cars up until that point were so courteous and you could roll right by them."
Regardless, Gordon was stalking Kenseth for several laps and carefully plotting his course of action.
"I was thinking, ‘What would Jimmie Johnson do?’ Or better yet, ‘What would Richard Petty do?’ "Gordon said. "The tires really went away on us there at the end. I knew his car was good on the short runs, and he was putting together a really good run. But every time I saw him slip a tire, I just tried to conserve my tires and drive real straight into the corner and off the corner. … I finally started seeing where he was struggling on the exit (from the corners). I dove in there a couple times and couldn’t make (the pass).
"Matt really drove a first-class race. I didn’t know if we were going to get him. But it was awesome when we finally did."
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Moments that changed the course of the seventh race in the 2013 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup
GORDON MAKES LATE PASS FOR FIRST WIN OF 2013
Jeff Gordon once appeared to own sole possession of that title, but he ceded it to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson several years ago. Gordon took a large step toward reclaiming it Sunday when he earned his first win of the season, and the eighth of his career at Martinsville Speedway, by capturing the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500.
Gordon made what proved to be the winning pass on Matt Kenseth with 21 laps to go and then held off Kenseth and the rest of the field for the victory. It moved him into third place in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, 27 points behind Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson, who are now tied for first with three races remaining in the season.
"I’m just so proud of my team for never giving up. We’ve shown it all year long and we’ve been through a lot. But this is making it all worth it, to get this huge win at Martinsville," Gordon said in Victory Lane. "Man, what a great race car."
KENSETH LEADS MOST LAPS, FINISHES SECOND TO CATCH JOHNSON
Kenseth was attempting to win for the first time in 28 career starts at Martinsville, where he typically has struggled.
"Jeff’s experience got me. I just don’t have that much experience running up front here," Kenseth said. "I had something that was working, but I was hurting the rear tires and ended up hurting the front tires, too."
Johnson, who also owns eight career wins at Martinsville, finished fifth. He said he wasn’t surprised Kenseth bucked past history and tightened the Chase points race.
"It’s been a great battle with the 20 car (driven by Kenseth) and the 24 team (of Gordon) has shown it wants to be a part of the championship battle as well," said Johnson, who owned a four-point advantage heading into Sunday’s race. "It’s going to be a fight to the end. It’s what I want to see and I know it’s what the fans want to see, too. We’ll keep digging hard."
Kenseth appeared in command but ended up barely holding off Clint Bowyer to finish second after Gordon made his nifty pass to the inside going into Turn 1 on Lap 479 of the 500-lap event. He and Johnson spent much of the day sparring, trying different strategies as numerous cautions – a total of 17 for 111 laps in all — continued to mount on the only short track on the 10-race Chase schedule.
At times, Johnson and Kenseth took turns running up front. Then one would fall back, only to rally again.
Gordon, meanwhile, kept lurking in the vicinity of the Chase leaders. Now he can be called one of them, as he at least injected himself into the championship conversation heading to Texas.
"I think anyone within a race (or 43 points of the lead) is still in it," Kenseth said.
Using that criteria, that would also include Kevin Harvick, who is in fourth and 27 points back; and Kyle Busch, who is in fifth and 36 back heading into next Sunday’s AAA 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
HARVICK GETS INTO NEWMAN BUT STAYS IN TITLE CONTENTION
After getting spun out in Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, Kevin Harvick spun Ryan Newman in Sunday’s race on his way to a sixth-place finish that finds him fourth in the Chase standings, 28 points out of the lead and only one point behind Gordon.
"First thing I want to do is apologize to Ryan Newman," Harvick said. "I tried to shoot in the gap and just barely clipped the right rear (of) his car. It doesn’t make his day better but just got to thank all my guys on the Rheem Chevrolet.
"…We battled all day and had a decent car. They adjusted for the damage and had the car really good there at the end, and we live to fight another day."
Dale Earnhardt Jr. on relationship with girlfriend: ‘I’m a better person for it’
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Dale Earnhardt Jr., the 10-time winner of the NASCAR NMPA Most Popular Driver, hasn’t shared many personal details with the fans who have cast votes for that honor over the last decade. On Sunday, Junior opened up about his family, having children, how he spends his money and getting back to his racing roots.
In a taped interview on FOX Sports 1’s "NASCAR RaceDay," Earnhardt Jr. told reporter Wendy Venturini, "I feel really uncomfortable and there’s just a lot of attention and it’s something I never was all that comfortable with. It’s not a big deal. You want to keep some normalcy in your life and feel regular when you get home."
But he credited girlfriend Amy Reimann with helping him as he becomes "more proud of and more comfortable in my own skin."
"Before I was in a relationship with Amy, I was really a recluse and never would leave my bus on race weekend, " Earnhardt said. "I didn’t know what was outside the race track. I didn’t know what the towns were like, restaurants or anything. She’s got me to get out and enjoy and see and do. I think that’s really made life a whole lot more fun. People that know me really well say I’m a better person for it."
Reimann and the other women in his life have helped Earnhardt Jr. lead a "laid back" lifestyle and right his way. "I’m a bit obnoxious and sarcastic a lot of the time. I try not to be too annoying. My girlfriend, Amy, and my sister and mom always keep me straight, keep me grounded and from getting too carried away."
The son of NASCAR Hall of Fame charter member Dale Earnhardt used racing terms when he discussed becoming a father.
"I’d love to have kids," Earnhardt Jr. said. "Having kids is like the ultimate win — probably the most rewarding and greatest accomplishment you can have is raising a child. And I hear it all the time. All my friends that are having babies are telling me how amazing it is, and my sister … so, yeah, I’m always curious as to what that would be like."
If he were to have children, he would need to clear some shelf space and possibly curb "a little bit of an addiction to eBay and Amazon."
"I think I’m a tightwad, but apparently I’m not, because I’ll spend $100 on eBay in a heartbeat," Earnhardt Jr. said. "I collect old magazines, like ‘Stock Car Racing.’ I’ve been buying them from the ’70s and ’80s. I have an alias on eBay. … I’ve got a library upstairs in my house that I’ve kind of gotten this obsession of making it full. Every cabinet and shelf has to be full of books."
Earnhardt Jr. isn’t ready to race into the sunset any time soon mainly because he says, "I just feel like I wouldn’t know what to do with myself (if he quit racing). If I just stopped racing, I don’t know that I could fill the void."
"I really miss the days of loading up a gooseneck trailer and going to Myrtle Beach with your friends — three or four buddies and a dually — and racing, and how much fun just getting there and getting home was. I think it would be fun to experience that again because when I was in that moment when I was younger, I was so worried about making it and not making it and failing and winning that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wish I had.
"I wanted to drive race cars for a living and only a select few people get to do that for a living. I wanted to be good and wanted to live up to my name and my father’s reputation. And I worried sick about that. I put way too much pressure on myself, so it would be great to go back through that process and just really let it sink in."
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Has not spoken to Richard Childress Racing teammate Ty Dillon
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Less than 24 hours after citing his displeasure with "punk-ass kids" at Richard Childress Racing as the reason for his departure at year’s end, a contrite Kevin Harvick expressed regret on Sunday morning, but also said he hadn’t spoken with RCR teammate Ty Dillon.
"I think there was just a lot of emotion involved," Harvick said on FOX Sports 1’s NASCAR RaceDay after his post-race comments in Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Kroger 200 at Martinsville Speedway. "I hate it for everybody at RCR. You go back and look at the things that happened, and sometimes you regret the things that you say for sure.
"Yesterday was definitely one of them. I hate it for my guys, and everybody working on the cars. Obviously, when those emotional situations come about; you say things that you really don’t want to say. I just want to apologize to all of those guys, work hard today and try and do everything we can to win the race."
Harvick, who was parked by NASCAR for a premier series race in 2002 at Martinsville after an incident that day with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Coy Gibbs in a Truck race, noted his frustration with getting spun at NASCAR’s smallest track, the .526-mile Virginia bullring. He hoped to earn his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory at Martinsville in his 25th start at the track in Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 Powered by Kroger (1:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
"You never want to be in a situation like we’re in, and obviously, the short-track racing and everything that happened, you try to do the right things, and yesterday I didn’t do the right thing," Harvick said. "We just have to do what we have to do today to put ourselves in a position to be as successful as we can."
When asked whether he had spoken with the grandson of his owner, Richard Childress, Harvick said he thought cooler heads should prevail before discussing the events of Saturday. He also accepted responsibility for his actions.
"I think it’s best for all of us to just cool down and have a sensible conversation about things that are going," Harvick said. "I wish that’s what I would have done yesterday. It’s one of those situations that you don’t want to be a part of, but I don’t have anybody else to blame but myself."
Mike Dillon, RCR’s vice president of competition and the father to Ty and Austin Dillon, said Sunday morning on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that he thought it was up to the individuals involved to sort things out and that he felt the incident would be "over with in a couple of days."
"I don’t know how to respond, really. There’s going to be some people upset with people after this race today, and you’re going to run into each other on the track. Being professionals, how you respond to things, it just shows what you are, what you’ve got inside. It’s all good. We’ll go on to something else next week. … It’ll be somebody else upset with somebody next week.
"Me going back and forth or whatever with all that, there’s nothing positive about it so I think we’ll just roll on and we’re going to do our thing and try to go out here and win races. We got a championship to win here. We’re only 26 points out, and that’s the main focus of all our guys at the shop."
Harvick has run for RCR in NASCAR’s premier series since the second race of 2001 following the passing of NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt in the season-opening Daytona 500. Next season, the Bakersfield, Calif. native will drive the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet for Stewart-Haas Racing.
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Damaged car, missed opportunities drop Earnhardt Jr. in standings
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — An unsatisfying eighth-place finish and a torn-up No. 88 topped a crazy-eights type of Sunday for Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Martinsville Speedway.
Earnhardt, hoping to shift the momentum in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, instead left the series’ smallest track one place lower in the standings with three races left on the schedule.
"We had a pretty decent car but just didn’t do everything exactly like we needed to," Earnhardt said. "We had a pretty good car, though, maybe a fifth-place car. This tire was a struggle for us last year and the last time we were here, and we feel like we made a lot of good gains on it in practice and found some good speed. I don’t know what we’ve got to do to get that extra bit."
Earnhardt spent a portion of his day in the top five, but failed to make headway on the lead pair of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson or Joe Gibbs Racing’s Matt Kenseth, who emerged in a tie atop the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings. Sunday, he slipped four points further from the series lead, staring down a 56-point deficit as the series turns to the next race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Just shy of the halfway mark of Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 Powered by Kroger, Earnhardt was on the fringes of the top 10 in a battle with Greg Biffle, who later verbally sparred with Johnson after close-quarters contact. Earnhardt’s run-in with Biffle severely crumpled the right-front corner of the No. 88 Chevy, while the No. 16 Ford of Biffle spent nearly the next 125 laps with a dangling rear bumper cover.
From there, Earnhardt rallied from a shuffle of differing pit cycles to his eventual finishing position, failing to gain much ground on the tight, tricky layout where the degree of difficulty on passing has an extraordinarily high ceiling.
"I mean, it’s hard to pass," Earnhardt said. "If you can’t drive under ’em, you can’t drive under ’em. You saw everybody try to get to the bottom on the restarts because the bottom line is so much better than the middle. Trust me, if guys could drive up under people, they would. Everybody’s got the same race cars and running the same speed. All these teams are so competitive, you get 35 cars out there running within a tenth of each other, you’re not going to have a lot of side by side. I don’t care where you’re running at."
Teammate Jeff Gordon celebrated in Victory Lane for the first time this season and fellow Hendrick driver Johnson left Martinsville with a share of the points lead. Still, fresh from the car and needing more than a top-10, Earnhardt found it hard to take solace in the team’s overall good fortune.
"I’d rather win the race," Earnhardt said. "I’ve missed a lot of opportunities to win here, and we finish all right and we run all right. I’m really happy for my teammates when they do well, but right now we’re just worried about ourselves. We’ve got two, three races to go and we want to get as many points as we can."
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Driver credits NASCAR Drive for Diversity for opportunity
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Less than 24 hours after taking a historic first checkered flag in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Darrell Wallace Jr. was just starting to realize the magnitude of what he’d accomplished.
If he needed reminders, he only had to look to the left or right of him, as he was flanked Sunday morning at Martinsville Speedway by two sons of stock-car racing pioneer Wendell Scott, the only African-American driver to win a race in NASCAR’s premier series. Franklin Scott, joining his brother Wendell Jr. in wearing powder-blue shirts and caps with their father’s No. 34, was the first to suggest that Wallace had a bigger cheering section than he had thought.
"Well, when the checkered flag dropped," Franklin Scott said, "I heard a big boom from heaven, and my daddy said, ‘Hell, yeah.’ "
Wallace pulled away from the carnage behind him to score a convincing breakthrough victory in Saturday’s Kroger 200, becoming the first black driver to prevail in a NASCAR national series race since 1963, the year Scott posted his only big-league win. It was the culmination of a season so far of near-misses, growth and finally, victory.
The triumph became the subject of national news, even outside the realm of sports, and accordingly Wallace had begun making the Sunday TV and radio talk-show rounds. Despite the accompanying media blitz and historic nature of his win, the 20-year-old tried to keep perspective.
"It hasn’t hit me yet," Wallace said Sunday morning. "I think the only time it hit me was when I took the checkered, and then after that it still hasn’t hit me. I guess tomorrow or whatever, it usually takes a couple days for a big win to settle in. It has been over a year since my last one. But it’s been great seeing all the outlets that I’m on and doing all this stuff. It’s for the better, and it’s trying to change the sport, and I’m all in for that.
"Just carrying the torch that Wendell Scott laid down for us and taking it farther, and that’s the biggest thing I’m trying to do. I don’t really pay attention to all the media stuff and let that get to me and forget where I came from. That’s not my type. I read through it, appreciate everybody for all the comments, but I’ve still got three races to go."
Even as Wallace looks forward to the end of his rookie season, he’s allowed himself time to enjoy the moment and to reflect on his earliest days as a member of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, designed to help minorities and women break into the sport.
Wendell Scott Jr. talked about his days as a mentor and technical advisor for the program in 2008, when he was first sent to scout the young driver at Franklin County Speedway in Callaway, Va. He said he tried to "remain incognito" without contacting Wallace but dropped that idea after he heard the young driver’s name on the lips of fans in the grandstands at just age 15.
Fast forward to last Saturday with Wallace leading late and in command. Wendell Scott Jr. said he felt the same rush of emotion that initially won him over five years earlier.
"So when he was running the race that he eventually won, my brother and I were texting back and forth, so we were saying, ‘oh, Lord, watch so and so, watch so and so,’ " Scott said. "He did a Kyle Busch restart. It was one of the most magnificent starts to win a race I’ve ever seen, and anybody that saw that race knows that this young man has only just begun.
"So from Callaway, Virginia, way back over in the woods somewhere, none of us could probably get back there without GPS — but that’s a great track, by the way — but to now, to right now, and what daddy would really want to happen, it’s a miracle. But miracles only happen when you participate in miracles, and this is a miracle sitting here. So what more can I say?"
While Wallace has been well-known to NASCAR insiders for some time now, non-sports media outlets are just now learning his name. But as Wallace makes the media rounds, he’s quick to credit the Drive for Diversity program for not only the opportunity, but also for improving more than just his racing skills.
"Without that, I don’t think I’d be sitting here," Wallace said. "I’d probably be in like photography now, so probably be doing something there or trying to pick back up a basketball or something. But definitely the racing side of it helped out, but the media side, the outside stuff away from racing definitely helped out 10 times more."
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Driver of No. 55 for MWR taking setback in stride
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. — An upbeat Brian Vickers was back at the race track Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, wishing he was able to compete but carrying a thankful and positive outlook as he continues treatment for a season-ending blood clot ailment.
"I think I look at it more as, ‘that’s life.’ That’s just part of life," Vickers said. "Everyone in this room probably has had some sort of setback at some point in their life. I’ve had a lot of them, but I’ve also had a lot of good things happen, and I try to really focus on those."
Doctors discovered a small clot in Vickers’ right calf on Oct. 14, ending his season as a part-time driver in Michael Waltrip Racing’s No. 55 Toyota in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and as a full-time driver in the NASCAR Nationwide Series for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Vickers said Sunday that doctors earlier had placed him in an immobilizing boot after his involvement in a crash last August at Bristol Motor Speedway, leaving him with a severe foot sprain. He said Sunday that the boot is what caused the clot.
Vickers was placed on blood thinners after the clot was discovered; he said competing either on or off the medication poses its own set of risks.
"It’s not the clot and it’s not that I can’t race on blood thinners, it’s that I can’t crash," Vickers said. "As long as I can promise my doctors that I will not crash, then they’re fine with me racing. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of moving parts in the car that I can’t control and there’s 42 competitors that I can’t control, so I can’t firmly commit to that. So they’d rather me not race. The risk is not even so much external injury, like a cut or something, it’s really more of an internal injury — they wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding."
Vickers was announced Aug. 13 as the full-time driver for the No. 55 Camry in the 2014 Sprint Cup Series. Vickers, who had previously shared the MWR ride on a part-time basis with veteran Mark Martin, said he would take three months off from his driving career, but would be ready to compete for a championship next season, starting at Daytona International Speedway.
Elliott Sadler, Vickers’ teammate this season at Joe Gibbs Racing in the Nationwide Series, will replace Vickers in Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 (1:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Martinsville and in the remaining three races of the season. Team owner Michael Waltrip drove the No. 55 Toyota as previously scheduled last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.
Vickers missed most of the 2010 Sprint Cup Series season with blood clots in his leg and lungs. He had heart surgery that summer and returned to NASCAR competition the following year.
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Kenseth defies Martinsville odds to force standings deadlock
RELATED: Race results | Updated standings | Full Chase coverage
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — It was supposed to be Jimmie Johnson‘s statement race, one in which he and his Hendrick Motorsports team put a bit of distance between itself and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team with driver Matt Kenseth.
Kenseth, however, had other ideas.
Thanks to a runner-up finish and a bonus point for leading the most laps, Kenseth erased Johnson’s four-point advantage and the two title contenders are now tied with 2,294 apiece after 33 races.
"I think we saw here in the spring race with Matt and we’ve seen it in general in that Gibbs equipment, (that) he’s tough," Johnson said after finishing fifth in Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 Powered by Kroger.
"Those cars are great, he’s doing an awesome job and he’s bonding well with his crew chief. All in all, he’s doing what I would expect. I wish that he wouldn’t have had an awesome day here, we would have loved to have gotten some points on him.
"When it comes down to the championship at the end of the year, you have to expect the best out of people and they’re certainly doing an awesome job."
Both drivers found themselves having to race their way back through the field on Sunday due to varying pit stop strategies during an event that saw the caution flag appear 17 times.
Johnson, an eight-time winner at Martinsville, wasn’t conceded the win beforehand, but given the past success of he and crew chief Chad Knaus here, he was the easy favorite. He led three times for 123 laps, but never in the second half of the 500-lap race.
Stuck in the outside lane on numerous restarts made maintaining one’s position "tough," he said.
"You just keep watching that inside lane march on and not able to get down. That put us back and it forced our hand to pit a bit early and then I had to come through the pack. And as things cycled around, Matt was probably 8-10 positions ahead of me. … It just didn’t kind of go our way from lane starts, but that’s how it goes."
Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion, currently holds the tiebreaker between the two drivers with seven wins to Johnson’s five. Win No. 8 slipped from his grasp on Lap 480 when eventual race winner Jeff Gordon powered past for the final lead change of the race.
"I have nothing to complain about, just you always feel bad when you’re leading at the end and your crew puts you out front and you can’t hold on to win," Kenseth said. "So I’m disappointed about that.
"I’m just not that experienced running up front here and I had something that was working, but I was kind of hurting the rear tires and I hurt the front tires too."
Crew chief Jason Ratcliff said the No. 20 team was most concerned about the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Talladega and Martinsville, "so to come out here with a good performance, finish second … that’s like a win to me.
"Maybe we ran a little too hard in the first 10 laps … but he had one of the best out there breathing down his neck. … Between Jeff and Denny (Hamlin) and Jimmie, they are just so good here; when you can run against those guys here competitively for a win, that’s putting your in a different league in my opinion."
With three races remaining, Kenseth isn’t ready to call it a two-man race between himself and Johnson.
"I think if you’re within a race (points-wise), anything can happen. … If you’re more than 48 points behind more than one driver, more than two drivers, I think that’s hard to overcome with three races to go.
"But as we’ve seen through the years, anything can happen. You just never know what’s going to happen."
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