A night after his car owner Chip Ganassi won the IZOD IndyCar Series championship with Scott Dixon, Jamie McMurray delivered his first win of the season in Sunday afternoon’s 45th annual Camping World RV Sales 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
After migrating from the front of the pack for most of the race, McMurray with help from rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr. soared to the front of the pack and took the lead from Dale Earnhardt Jr. with 15 laps to go in the final restrictor plate race of the season.
Racing was intense, almost immediately from the drop of the green flag, putting the pack back into restrictor plate racing. Early on Chase contenders Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth all strutted their stuff and showcased that they were the class of the field.
An early caution for a blown motor from Tony Raines bunched the field back together and they raced.
Hard.
Even though a round of green flag pit stops until a two-car incident for Macros Ambrose and Juan Pablo Montoya initiated on the frontstretch on Lap 80.
Through the halfway point, Clint Bowyer in his Michael Waltrip Racing showed some muscle, before Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. swapped the lead through Lap 110. McMurray momentarily took the lead on Lap 122, before typical Talladega racing saw a swing of drivers take their command at the point through the race’s third quarter.
As the laps ticked away and the checkered flag neared, the pressure built on the field, two-three-and even four wide racing battles throughout the track. Then, surprisingly, the field took a single-file formation hosing in on 10 laps remaining, knowing that NASCAR’s best were formulating their plan to attack and more importantly, avoid the dreaded “Big One.”
Kevin Harvick darted from the top-side and was the first to work the bottom groove and continuously formed a pack inside the final 10 laps of the race. Despite their growing ensemble, progress was not being made thus sending the concentration back to the front of the pack with leader McMurray, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
The white flag flew on Lap 187 and as the field screamed out of turns one and two, the mini “big one” unraveled when Austin Dillon took a shot from Stenhouse Jr. which sent his No. 14 Bass Pro Shops / Mobil 1 Chevrolet careening through the air after impact from Casey Mears’ Ford. The crash severely damaged both machines.
NASCAR immediately threw the caution, freezing the field and essentially giving McMurray his seventh career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win and second at the 2.66-mile superspeedway. The Joplin, Missouri native also won in 2009 driving for Roush Fenway Racing.
“At the plate tracks, to get the right line, it requires a lot of risk, and I felt like I was pretty patient all day, and I saw the 17 (Stenhouse) and the 88 (Earnhardt) coming on the top,” McMurray said. “It just seemed the top was the better place to get hung out than if you got hung out on the bottom. Fortunately, I was able to get myself in position.
“I don’t know how the last lap would have played out, because I could see the 88 trying to set me up and trying to figure out where he could get a run on me, but then I saw the caution come out behind me. Honestly, I wanted to see it end under green, but at the same time, I said if there was a caution, I would be OK with that right now, too.”
For the second time in as many weeks, a non-Chase driver went to Victory Lane in a Chase race, the first time non-Chasers have won consecutive Chase races since Tony Stewart won back-to-back at Atlanta and Texas in 2006.
Earnhardt Jr., who led 38 laps settled for second, Stenhouse Jr was third, a career-best, Paul Menard fourth and Chaser Kyle Busch fifth.
NASCAR’s most-popular driver was obviously disappointed in his fourth runner-up finish of the year reenacted what he thought was going to happen on the last lap.
“I had a plan we were going to get a run down the back straightaway me and the No. 14 and whoever else wanted to go. They got together behind me getting into their quarter panels and we just never really got a chance to see what we could do. We had our run formed in the middle of (turns) one and two and we were coming off of (turn) two with pretty good steam when they spun out behind me. My car quit going because we weren’t being pushed anymore. We didn’t lose to no slouch.
“Jamie’s (McMurray) a great restrictor plate racer and he has got really good engines with Hendrick power so real happy to run second and definitely an improvement on what we have been doing here in the past.”
Stenhouse Jr., whose previous career-best finish (before Talladega) was an eighth at Chicagoland Speedway talked about his day.
“I thought the racing was great all day. We were two, three, four wide for a long time, and cars seemed to be able to make moves and get some momentum going. For our Nationwide Insurance team we were solid all day, in the top-10 a lot of the day, and led a few laps, which is good for us. We’re trying to get the ball rolling here late in the season, and that last lap there I was trying to hang back, time it right where Paul (Menard) and I could either kind of get a run on the 14 and go to the inside and see if we could make something happen or get him to pull out and go low and us get back in line on the top and try to have a full head of steam for Dale (Earnhardt Jr.) and Jamie (McMurray) there coming down to three and four. I just didn’t time it quite right, and us and the 14 met right there in the middle and caused a crash. I am bummed that we caused that, but all in all, it was a good day for us.”
May’s Talladega winner David Ragan was sixth, followed by Front Row Motorsports teammate David Gilliland seventh, Martin Truex Jr. eighth, Chaser Ryan Newman ninth and Chaser Clint Bowyer rounded out the top-10.
Chasers through the top-20 included: Greg Biffle (11th), Kevin Harvick (12th), Jimmie Johnson (13th), Jeff Gordon (14th), Joey Logano (16th), Carl Edwards (17th) Kurt Busch (18th) and Matt Kenseth (20th).
Kasey Kahne in his No. 5 Farmers Chevrolet SS never recovered after losing the draft early, then added insult to injury with a speeding penalty on pit road. He was credited with a 36th place run.
Jimmie Johnson inherited the points lead by four points over Matt Kenseth. Kyle Busch is third (-26), Kevin Harvick fourth (-26) and Jeff Gordon fifth (-34).
Johnson, looking for his sixth NSCS championship tweeted after the race, “A great big picture day.” He’ll know head to the paperclip, aka Martinsville for obviously one of his best tracks on the circuit and ironically, one of Kenseth’s worse.
Michael McDowell went the full distance for Phil Parsons Racing and finished 15th. Travis Kvapil posted his fifth top-20 finish of the year for BK Racing, claiming 19th.
Danica Patrick had a stellar day in her No. 10 GoDaddy.com Breast Cancer Awareness Chevrolet destroyed during the final round of pit stops. While running solidly in the top-10, Patrick missed her pit stall, plus was slapped with a speeding penalty, which meant she had to make two more trips down pit lane and completely erasing her from competition. Ultimately, she finished 33rd, one lap down.
Denny Hamlin’s miserable season continued on Sunday with another DNF (Do Not Finish) after his experimental motor expired on Lap 142.
Following the race, drivers, mainly NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship hopefuls were completely dumbfounded why no one made a move towards the front pack and completely remained in the high-line. Theories have been given about avoiding the “Big One” and the outcome of Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, which saw a freighting crash coming to the checkered flag. Also, the onwards look and tweets of some of the drivers wives on Sunday morning could easily fit into that category.
No one will truly know the answers to the theory, but the outcome of Sunday’s Camping World RV Sales 500 will truly live up to the hype that “This Is Talladega.” And truly, anything can happen.
Next up for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is a trip to the smallest track on the circuit at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway for the running of the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 on Sunday, October 27.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
