Hendrick Motorsports’ Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne all won NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races in 2014, but they won’t win the championship, after being eliminated from the Chase following Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
In a year where Jeff Gordon, the organization’s fourth driver has flourished with four wins – and the only Hendrick driver to advance to the Eliminator Round – the other teams have battled heartbreak along the way. Those heartbreaks took a final, glancing blow causing their hearts to ache even more, following the 32nd race of the season on Sunday.
Kahne had a solid outing in his No. 5 Farmer’s Insurance Chevrolet SS, but his 12th place finish couldn’t protect him in the final event in the Contender round, leaving him 14th in the championship standings when the checkered flag flew.
After a roller coaster season, Kahne earned a spot in the Chase with a win at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway in September. He barely survived the first round of the Chase and entered the elimination race hanging by a needle. His needle was (finally) cut after Keselowski won and Matt Kenseth, who entered Talladega one point behind him, finished second on Sunday.
Spotter Kevin Hamlin, a former driver himself tweeted following the race saying, “I feel sick.” Indeed, so does Kahne.
“You just try and get the best finish you can,” Kahne mentioned. “Basically the restart before, they all checked up in front of me so I went high to get momentum and that didn’t work. I don’t know why that didn’t work, but it didn’t. Anyways, I’m in 20th and got back to 11th. It was tough if you weren’t in the top few spots. Once we were up there early on we could race.
“We had a great Farmer’s Insurance Chevy – led laps and ran in the top-three and back to the lead. Once I was 10th or eighth, it was just really difficult to get back to that point. I think we got back to fifth or sixth, but that was about it.”
Jimmie Johnson undoubtedly gave one of his best performance of the season in his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS, but it still wasn’t enough. The six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion led nine times for 84 laps, but a late race restart found the reigning champion without any drafting help and dropping like a rocket in the final laps, finishing 24th.
“It feels relieving to go down swinging,” said Johnson. ”The last two weeks were really poor. At least we went down swinging. I’ll take some pride in that.”
Hard to believe that NASCAR’s most dominate driver is out of the hunt with four races left, isn’t it?
“Truthfully, I showed up this weekend thinking I’ve been playing with house money and I’ve had a very unique opportunity to advance,” added Johnson. “In any Chase, after two bad races like we had the last two weeks, you wouldn’t have a shot at the championship. So, the frustration was kind of peaking over the last two weeks. This week’s been chill. We qualified second and ran up front all day. And it’s so hard to win one of these races. You can’t come in here and say you’re doing to dominate Talladega and win the race. We dominated it. We just didn’t lead the lap that counted.”
Earnhardt Jr. hand-picked as one of the favorites to win Sunday’s race, for obvious reasons gave his fans and team a reason to hope, as the driver of the No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Chevrolet SS led the field twice for 31 laps, but his opportunity to advance to the Eliminator round were eliminated when five-car accident ensued on the backstretch on Lap 188.
Contact from Greg Biffle in the closing laps of the race, sparked a crash on the backstretch, which abruptly ended Earnhardt Jr’s chances of a championship with Steve Letarte as crew chief.
“We worked real hard all day long trying to run up front,” said Earnhardt Jr. “I knew we needed to be up front all day long. We got shuffled to the back. I made a move trying to get up front and it didn’t work out. So, we lost a lot of track position and never got it back.
“You need to be up front. You need to be in the top 4 the last few restarts. Those are the guys that have a shot at it. You know you’re not going to pass ten or 12 cars there in six or seven laps. We tried. It just didn’t work out.
When asked what’s left of his 2014 season? “Well we will just go try to win some more races before the year is out. That is all we have left.”
The end of the road is here for the 5, 48 and 88 teams, but once thing is for sure, they refused to go down without a fight.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
