SPEEDWAY, Ind. – While Kasey Kahne allowed his 18th career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series finish to soak in just before sunset at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, several teams and drivers earned noteworthy performances in this past Sunday’s Brantley Gilbert Big Machine Brickyard 400 that made their results feel like a win.
Ryan Newman utilized pit strategy to keep his No. 31 Velveeta Shells & Cheese Chevrolet near the front in the closing laps. From staying out on older tires and fuel, to pitting late and finding himself in contention for his second victory of the season.
Newman settled for third.
“Yeah, crazy at the end there,” said Newman. “It’s just the opposite of what you expect sometimes when you see a bunch of green flag runs when we get the caution flags they just breed more caution flags. Guys are a little out of control, but good run for the Velveeta Chevrolet.
“Proud of the guys. Made some big improvements, but we’ve got some more work to do.”
Rookie Daniel Suarez continues to deliver strong finishes in his freshman year of Cup Series competition. While the 2016 NASCAR XFINITY Series champion is still looking to post his first top-five run, the Monterrey, Mexico native posted his sixth top-10 of 2017 with a seventh in his first Brickyard showing.
“It was tough,” said Suarez. “I feel like we had an okay car, but it was a very crazy race. A lot of accidents and a lot of stuff going on right there at the end and we are lucky that we survived.
“I think we were okay. I don’t really know. These guys raced very aggressive and when you race them sometimes back the same way they don’t like I don’t know. I’m just trying to learn how far I have to push, but overall just very proud of my guys. They work very hard. We had a decent car and we were able to survive with it at the end.”
GO FAS Racing’s Matt DiBenedetto earned the team their career-best non-restrictor plate performance in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 with an astounding eighth place drive.
DiBenedetto opened his 2017 season with GO FAS Racing drafting to the team’s then career-best ninth place finish. For car owner Archie St. Hilaire, it was his best finish in Cup competition since entering the elite series in 2012 and some 118 races later.
“A top 10 in the Daytona 500 and a top 10 in the Brickyard 400 finishing eighth today. It’s crazy,” said DiBenedetto. “It was a crazy day. It’s pretty unreal what we’ve been able to accomplish this year. I’m so proud. It’s not all me. My team are the ones that deserve the credit and I’m more happy for them than myself.
“I’ve worked so dang hard the old-school way to get here, countless late nights for these guys working, many sleepless nights in my career thinking it was over about 30 to 40 times and that’s not even an exaggeration, and to have these kind of races this year is just unbelievable. It’s been fun.”
Being a smaller team, DiBenedetto said the team earned their finish the old fashion way.
“Obviously being a smaller team we just try and get a good handle on our cars,” he added. “We come here and dial in our car the old-school way, through communication. We have no simulation or nothing. We just have 15 guys and we work our tails off. Through the race, we had a good handling car.
“It felt good in practice, so we were able to run competitive all race, and then because we had a good handling car we were able to take advantage of everybody else’s mistakes by being competitive and being in front of a lot the guys that were racing, and being in the right place at the right time there a lot of times at the end. Don’t get me wrong, though, we had our share of close calls.”
The two cars of JTG-Daugherty Racing left Indianapolis Motor Speedway happy campers. Both Chris Buescher and A.J. Allmendinger earned top-10 finishes together for the second time in 2017.
A few weeks ago, at Daytona International Speedway, Allmendinger racked in an eighth-place run, while Buescher tailed his then season-high 10th.
Sunday’s finish was a good boost for a team that is in desperate need of momentum and solid finishes as the organization has struggled to find its mojo since adding Buescher’s car to the fleet at the beginning of the season.
“It felt like a battle more than a race today,” said Buescher. “Just an excellent job by our team to stick with it today. We had damage throughout a lot of this race and this Clorox team they worked really hard to make sure we got it back to where it needed to be to be able to get some drivability out of it.
“We were able to miss some of that craziness there at the end and got ourselves a good finish out of it.”
Allmendinger earned his fourth top-10 finish of the year but still sits a distant 27th in the series standings.
“It wasn’t from lack of effort for sure, said Allmendinger. “The guys, I can’t believe what we were doing under a pit stop to try to fix it. All goes to the guys for working so hard. We were just so off all weekend. In the race, we made it a little better, but it still wasn’t very competitive. You know just one of those days you’ve just got to keep fighting and get a little lucky.
“Fortunately missing all the wrecks, we’ve got to keep working on trying to get better and trying new things for sure. That is what we are doing, but we are a good bit off, so we’ve got to keep going to the drawing board and keep working on it.
“But, you know a day like this it’s all from the work of my guys. The pit crew, they did great, road crew, jumping over the wall, to do all kinds of mega changes to try to fix it. But, a day like this is on them. They put the effort in for sure.”
And as a good honorable mention, Timmy Hill in his 200th career NASCAR National Series race earned Carl Long a 14th place lead lap finish at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Long, a mainstay in NASCAR for several decades owns one Cup car that was purchased from the now defunct HScott Motorsports at the end of the 2016 season.
With Hill’s career-best finish in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and a nice payout for Long to boot, a congratulatory high-five is in order for the No. 66 sponsorless team.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
