It’s a weird world when NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars pit for gas and grease. Yet grease is the new commodity at restrictor plate races where teams need to slick up the bumper to minimize the chance of getting hooked and spun in this new era of plate racing.
It’s also a weird looking world when it takes 170 laps to run a 160-lap NASCAR race.
With 10 to go in the Coke Zero 400, we watched Ryan Newman lead the pack with Denny Hamlin pushing, but then the pack started to collect into a mass of frenzied NASCAR racers and as we all know, it doesn’t matter where drivers are with 10 to go. But with Newman leading, Kevin Harvick was being pushed by the no. 27 (Paul Menard), and Dale Earnhardt Jr‘s 88 pushed by Jimmie Johnson in the No. 48.
With 7 to go, the Matt Kenseth/David Ragan tandem took the lead and the pack was spread out by a few seconds. With 5 to go, the pack was still spread out but the lead pack had 10 cars in it.
With 2 to go, Jeff Gordon got turned after a Red Bull car (No. 4 Brian Vickers) slowed up and jammed the pack up. Despite being turned, Jeff Gordon saved the car and no one got collected. But the damage was done and the caution came out. This made the final laps the intensity that fans have all come to expect from restrictor plate races. Whether those expectations are good or bad, they were fulfilled.
When the first green/white/checkered experience took place, it was for the win but then Joey Logano got into Mark Martin and a 15-car crusher took place. Through it all, Dale Earnhardt Jr. ducked low and missed the mass of cars crumpling all around him.
David Ragan and Ryan Newman led the pack from the front row for the 2nd restart… but the tandem of Newman and Hamlin ended up getting freight-trained on both sides and there were all new leaders up front.
On the white flag lap, a wreck took place in the back stretch but that did not produce a yellow flag as NASCAR wanted to let the leaders run for the checkers. But then a second wreck took place coming out of turn 4 as cars were still coming full-speed onto the front stretch.
But through it all, David Ragan gets his first NASCAR Sprint Cup win in the series!
And through the melee, Ragan was followed by Matt Kenseth, Joey Logano, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick in the top-7 finishing positions!
The tandem of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson finished 19th and 20th.
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Other Points From the Coke Zero 400
Trevor Bayne was the early casualty off the nose of the No. 2 car in lap 5. But then after that, the gang running the laps seemed to bail on Keselowski and did not draft with him for a while. It’s as if they saw what he did to Bayne and no one wanted to play with him.
Lap 24 saw Carl Edwards get turned off of turn 4 by Greg Biffle and he backed up into the inside wall.
Everyone took this caution as an opportunity to make their first pit stops.
Lap 48 saw Dave Blaney hit the wall…
Lap 92 saw the first green flag pit stops of the evening.
With 31 to go, more green flag stops took place. After that, well, you know the melee that took place!
