SPARTA, Ky – While a familiar face in Brad Keselowski was celebrating his fourth win of the 2016 Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway, a fuel strategy race shuffled the finishing order in the Quaker State 400 presented by Advance Auto Parts earning some drivers and teams some much-needed race results.
Ryan Newman in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet earned his season-best finish with a third place run.
“I don’t think there’s a driver here that didn’t have a handful at some point in Turn 3 tonight,” said Newman. “But a good well played race by Luke (Lambert) and all of us to get the finish that we did. We did have a good car. We just never seemed to be able to get good track position and played the fuel game there at the end, did what I thought I had to do, and with no fuel gauge or any kind of telemetry was able to make it to the end.
“Was hoping that we were going to be the first guy that could pull that one off, not the third guy, but just proud to get our first top five of the season with the Caterpillar Chevrolet and the guys at ECR and RCR have been working really hard and a night like this is definitely something that we are really proud of.”
Newman’s first top-five finish of the season jumped him two positions in the standings to 12th and second inside the top-12 without a Sprint Cup victory.
Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway race winner Tony Stewart also stretched his fuel tank and earned his second top-five finish of the season and padded his protection to stay inside the top-30 in the championship standings with his fourth top-10 finish of the season.
“It’s just tough conditions out there tonight,” said Stewart. “I mean especially when the sun was still out it was sketchy going into (Turns) 1 and 3 in a big pack of cars. We hope we were going to get more green flag stops where we could come in and take off on fresh tires without being in a was like that, but all the wrecks happened within zero to five laps after a caution. Really hard to figure out what to do, but just had to try to keep it stable to where you could race. It’s really nobody’s fault.
“I mean Goodyear is trying to do what they can to protect themselves and make sure they don’t have tire problems. They didn’t have to worry about that. It was the hardest thing on the planet. NHL doesn’t have anything on them on a hard puck. Like every other repave, as they get laps and more races on this track it will get to where they can come off the hardness of the tire and it will be better for everybody. This is as bad as it’s going to get. It will get better from here.
“You are not really going to race anywhere else the rest of the year like this, so I don’t think it’s an indication of what our season is going to be like, but we ran anywhere from 11th to 22nd, pretty much just stayed in that range all day. It was just really tricky on restarts of being able to stay around cars. Kasey Kahne drove around me on the outside once and I about wrecked. It chattered the right-rear and all he did was just drive around me just like Pocono. It’s kind of hard when you have conditions like that. The track is going to be fine. NASCAR did the right thing. It’s easy to point the finger at Goodyear, but they had to do what they thought was right and what was conservative for them. It is just way too hard and the wrecks kind of proved that.”
Last week’s pole sitter Greg Biffle earned back-to-back top-10 finishes with a sixth place result in his No. 16 KFC Ford Fusion, his best result of 2016.
Jamie McMurray quietly earned his fourth top-10 finish of the year in his No. 1 Cessna Chevrolet with a seventh place result. It was his best effort for Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates since a ninth at Michigan International Speedway last month.
“We had a really good car, probably the best 1.5-mile car we have had in a while,” said McMurray. “I thought I had a flat tire there at one point and we lost like 10 spots in three laps. Then it started shaking, so I just went ahead and came in to be careful.”
Solidly inside the top-15 all night in Kentucky allowed the Joplin, Missouri native to contend for the finish which ultimately earned him crucial points as the 40-year-old remains near the cutoff point in the Sprint Cup standings.
“We got a little bit lucky because we were the lucky dog when the caution came out,” added McMurray. “It all just kind of worked out. My thoughts on the night are just that we had a little bit of luck and we haven’t really had that. We haven’t really been unlucky; we just haven’t had anything go our way. This sport is about having some luck every once in a while.”
After 18 races, the seven-time Cup winner is just 10 points ahead of Roush Fenway Racing’s Trevor Bayne in 16th with Hendrick Motorsports’ Kasey Kahne just 16 points behind McMurray.
With Stewart’s triumph at Sonoma, McMurray heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway on the actual cutoff line with eight races remaining for the opening race of The Chase at Chicagoland Speedway in September.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
