Ryan Newman finished off a great day by winning the 63rd Annual Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville. His Outback Steakhouse Chevrolet had a good battle on the final laps with the #22 AJ Allmendinger Shell Pennzoil Dodge. Ryan overcame a speeding penalty on pit road earlier in the race and was in the right spot at the right time when there was a late race wreck. This is the third win for Stewart Haas racing this year.
With only a hand full of laps left and Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson battling for the lead there was a late race caution because of David Reutimann stalling on the racetrack. Jeff and Jimmie both lead the most laps as Jeff led for 328 and Jimmie led for 112 laps.
On a day that totally dominated by Hendrick owned cars the best placed Hendricks car was Dale Earnhardt Jr. who finished third and led for a few laps.
Dale Jr after the race said “Yeah, I’m real happy with our finish. We worked really hard all day, all weekend really we worked hard to obviously get the best finish we could. This is our first race with AMP on the hood, and we are proud to have a good finish for those guys, had a lot of people here in weekend.”
Kasey Kahne continued his bad luck streak when he had a blown engine on lap 316. It was a bad day for both Busch brothers as Kurt had a tire go down twice early on and Kyle had a crash on lap 99 when something broke in the rear end.
AJ Allmendinger on finishing second: “Well, I knew I had a shot. I knew Dale and Martin were on two tires, as well. So you know, I was — I knew I had a shot, but Ryan had been really good all day. He kind of — I think he basically had one bad run that got him shuffled in back — or he had a pit road penalty and that’s what caught him there.”
But today was all about Ryan Newman after the race had a few comments.”No doubt an impressive day for us; for me to take us out of the game and we ended up going a lap down because of my speeding penalty, and the guys did an awesome job in giving us the car to make the changes.
We were not a dominant race car today but we put ourselves in contention. The way the strategy and everything worked out, coming in for two tires and Clint kind of clearing out turn one for us, we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
We have been in that position here and been in the wrong place at the wrong time and it’s nice to be able to at least balance it out and get Outback in victory lane. That was really special for us, their first race with the team and if we get in the Top-10, we get free Bloomin’ Onions if you go to Outback and mention my name. Not sure, they might be rethinking that after this week.”
Average Speed: 78.823 MPH Lead Changes: 19 among 10 drivers Time of Race: 3 Hrs, 26 Mins, 12 Secs. Cautions: 7 for 56 laps Margin of Victory: 0.342 Seconds Attendance: 63,000
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