TALLADEGA – – Despite not seeing the breathtaking two and three wide finishes that we’ve been accustomed to at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in the past, all seemed right in the NASCAR world with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s first win of the season in the GEICO 500.
Of course, Earnhardt delivering his punch into NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup and giving new crew Greg Ives his first win as a crew chief, Earnhardt’s win on Sunday was one of the most emotional in his career – adding to his legendary father’s legacy at the 2.66-mile superspeedway.
If you were in sight at the track on Sunday, you didn’t have to see Earnhardt actually take the checkered flag to win the race. The crowd did that for you. Jr’s fans otherwise known as “Jr Nation” hollered and raised their fists to salute their hero in the 10thrace of the Sprint Cup.
And while it was important for Earnhardt to score his 24th career victory, several other drivers had noteworthy runs too.
Paul Menard scored his first top-five finish since a fourth at Auto Club (Calif.) Speedway Sunday. Qualifying a strong seventh Saturday, Menard had a quiet but uneventful day despite maintaining a presence inside the top-10 through much of the races’ 188 laps. With fellow ECR teammates Brian Scott and Austin Dillon losing their engines during Sunday’s race, any nervousness from the No. 27 camp couldn’t be seen.
Menard’s run picked him up two places in the championship standings to 11th and still inside the top-16 Chase grid with 16 races before the cutoff at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway in September.
“Everybody was just waiting for somebody to make a move,” offered Menard post-race. “I didn’t want to be the first guy and I think Kevin (Harvick) or Denny (Hamlin) made the move and we just kind of all went wherever we needed to from there. Really fast Quaker State Chevy. We ran hot with oil all day long and the oil held up for us. Fast cars at RCR and ECR horsepower.”
A dismal season for Sam Hornish Jr. and the No. 9 Richard Petty Motorsports team, their efforts gained a pulse of sorts in Sunday’s race at Talladega.
After qualifying a season-best 12th, Hornish didn’t make his attack until the final 30 laps of the race. Moving from 14th at Lap 150, Hornish chose his drafting partners wisely and crafted his way inside the top-five 10 laps later into fourth.
The single-line formation broke apart on the final lap of the race, but Hornish refused to be shuffled out of his 10th career top-10 finish. Latching and pushing his Ford counterpart Ryan Blaney to fourth, Hornish settled for sixth – hoping Sunday’s result to be some light at the end of the tunnel.
“It was a really good day,” said Hornish. “I felt like we were gonna have more of an opportunity to try to at least get a top five out of it or maybe to win, but some of the other guys made their move a little bit quicker than what I thought that they were going to and that really kind of stuck us on the outside.
“I thought the outside lane would have stayed together a little bit more when we lost a couple of those guys going to the bottom, but, all in all, our Medallion Bank Ford handled really well and I’m just really proud of everybody at Richard Petty Motorsports. They gave us a fast race car and just tried to be real smart with it and understand what we needed to do today and get some points.”
Before Sunday’s result, Hornish season-best effort came in the other restrictor-plate race of the season at Daytona in the 500 where he placed 12th.
Utilizing pit strategy at the end of the race, Cole Whitt started the race as the leader. While he was quickly passed by eventual race winner and former boss Dale Earnhardt Jr., Whitt stayed in the throttle and tucked inside the tight niche draft to finish 13th, his best effort at Front Row Motorsports since joining the Statesville, North Carolina-based team at the beginning of the 2015 season.
“My car ran against the wall really well,” said Whitt. “It didn’t really run the bottom or the middle very good, so my plan was I know that’s where I needed to be. I was gonna be right up against the fence and whoever was in my way I was going to push them forward. The 17 seemed to be committed to that as well, so I was hoping just to push Ricky as far as I could and then all of that stuff started happening and I was looking for holes to get through. I snaked through there and it all worked out.
“I’m just happy we could get a good run and hopefully we can get some momentum built for the year because I think we can get back on those top 25s. I know we can run, we just have to start proving it.”
The Alpine California native’s best run of the year before Sunday at Talladega was 22ndtwice at Daytona in February and Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in March. He moved up
Other notables: JJ Yeley (14th), Alex Bowman (16th), Matt DiBenedetto (18th) and David Gilliland (20th).
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
