After a weekend that was totally dominated by Kyle Busch it was Jeff Gordon that was the winner of Subway Fresh Fit 500 in Phoenix. The #24 “Drive to End Hunger” Chevrolet ran very good all day and it was no surprise when he came to the front at the end. This win breaks Jeff’s 66 race win streak and it showed as it looked like he forgot how to do a burnout after the race. With this win Jeff Gordon tied Cale Yarborough with 83 wins in Cup racing. A big accomplishment indeed in the world of NASCAR
The race had a lot of wrecks as tires seemed to wear out and cause some pretty big wrecks. The worst was when David Regan blew a tire and hit the wall pretty hard causing a wreck behind him that took out a lot of drivers from being able to have a good finish. Carl Edwards had a good car and looked to be a tough guy to beat but it just wasn’t meant to be. Kyle Busch got into Carl and sent him into the grass and messed up his handling on his race car.
Jeff had to catch Kyle Busch with only a few laps to go but Jeff Gordon’s car was much better and gained on Kyle every lap until he caught him with a few laps to go. With Kyle coming in second he takes over the points lead by 3 over his brother Kurt Busch.
Hendricks winning today’s race was a surprise to many as they qualified terrible in all four cars. It was Hendricks powered cars that made the top of the field as Jimmie Johnson was third and Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr near the top ten.
Kyle Busch on Jeff Gordon winning -“I think he was on a mission today, that’s for sure and when Jeff Gordon has a good car and he has the opportunity to beat you, he’s going to beat you so. There’s no doubt about that. He’s my hero and I’ve always watched him and what he’s been able to accomplish over the years. It’s no surprise that he beat us. You know, we were good. If you look at it, we were better than the third place car by a little ways, kind of like yesterday. Seemed like front two would just kind of walk away from it. But there’s always that one car that’s got to ruin the whole weekend, and it had to be the 24 car.”
Jimmie Johnson finished third and his car was running very good at the end but not enough to catch the leaders. Jimmie was asked about it after the race “We were struggling and getting smarter through practice. The first half of the race we could not really get going, just way too loose and we pitted every caution that there was. And at one point we thought we were going to be out of tires because we came to pit road so many times. We got the car right and I was trying to come through traffic and I was right in the middle of those two wrecks on the backstretch and luckily I got through there clean, but from that point on, after the red flag, we were able to then get going because the car was underneath me. We got it tightened up and off I went.”
The race had 8 cautions including one on lap 68 that involved 14 cars. It appeared to be a sold out crowd of 75,000 . Jeff even mentioned how cool it was to see the stands full when he tried to do a burnout.
Leave a Reply