Matt Kenseth, driver of the #20 Dollar General Toyota, races to the checkered flag to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 53rd Annual IRWIN Tools Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on August 24, 2013
Photo – Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images
A familiar end to a Sprint Cup race this season – Las Vegas in March. Kansas in April – and again, Saturday night under the lights at Bristol Motor Speedway, it was Matt Kenseth holding off Kasey Kahne in the closing laps.
Kenseth won a heated battle against Kahne to claim victory in Saturday’s Irwin Tools Night Race and he did it on worn tires with his fuel tank teetering on empty. Kahne took on the challenge after taking over second-place on lap 473 of 500.
His fifth win of the season guarantees Kenseth at least a Wild Card spot in the Chase for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup.
Completing the top-five finishing positions are Juan Pablo Montoya in third, Brian Vickers fourth and Joey Logano in fifth.
Kenseth’s third victory at Bristol and 29th of his career was anything but easy, with a hard-charging Kahne pulling alongside or nosing ahead, but not able to complete the pass.
“I think, at the end of the day, I just don’t wreck people,” said Kahne definitively after the race and clearly disappointed in failing to win with the better car.
Given four incidents earlier this season, in which Joe Gibbs Racing drivers have wrecked Kahne’s Hendrick Motorsports car, Kenseth owes Kahne his gratitude and respect.
“When he got there with about eight (laps) to go, I knew we had our work cut out for us,” said Kenseth. “I didn’t know what would happen. The interesting thing about this track is that there’s only one really fast groove, and I knew I couldn’t let him outside of me…
“He almost cleared me into (turn) three, one time. I had to drive in really, really hard to make sure he couldn’t get up in front of me. That’s when I had that rubbing together off of (turn) four. There wasn’t a lot of extra room there. It was an intense race. Kasey’s got a great reputation. He’s a really hard racer, really talented and he’s also a really fair racer.
“I thought he was going to pass me. I thought he was going to get around me there but we had just enough to hang on.”
From Kahne’s perspective, he felt he couldn’t have passed Kenseth without putting both drivers at risk.
“Yeah, I thought Matt did a good job of just running as hard as he could as close to the wall as possible, which helped him a lot, and then I was just trying to gain speed,” said Kahne. “I had a better car. We were on the right strategy and I just couldn’t clear him. There was a couple shots I took and I had to have been close, but I could feel him on the right side of my car and I just didn’t clear him.
“I didn’t figure out how to get by. It’s disappointing not to win here. I thought we had the best car the last 200 laps and it was a lot of work. We didn’t start the best, but (crew chief) Kenny (Francis) made a lot of good calls and our strategy was perfect at the end. It was a great night for us, good for the points and things, but yeah, I wish I could have figured out how to get by him.”
In third place, Montoya had the best seat to watch the battle from a safe distance and was hoping for contact between the top two drivers.
“I was hoping they were going to wreck on the white flag (lap), to be honest,” said Montoya.
After a wreck in turn one involving Montoya, David Stremme and Jeff Burton, Kenseth led the field to green on the restart. By lap 430, Kenseth led by more than one second over Jeff Gordon.
The tenth caution of the night came on lap 439 for debris on the frontstretch. Kenseth and Gordon led the field for the restart on lap 447, while saving fuel. But before reaching the green flag, there was contact between Brian Vickers and Denny Hamlin, triggering a huge wreck in turns three and four, and dealing heavy blows to the Chase hopes of Martin Truex Jr and Brad Keselowski.
Truex finished 35th, dropping two spots to 14th in the point standings, but still holds a provisional Wild Card spot with two races remaining before the Chase line-up is set at Richmond. Dropping from eighth to 11th in the point standings, Keselowski came home 30th, with no wins to give safe haven with a Wild Card spot.
For Logano it was a good points night moving into the top-ten, as did Kahne. Kurt Busch finished 31st, with the help of a loose wheel and time in the garage, dropping him from ninth to 12th in points. Busch also has no wins for the season, keeping him from holding a Wild Card ticket into the Chase with only Atlanta and Richmond races remaining to get his seat.
After a four-minute, 27-second delay for debris clean-up after the lap 447 wreck, Montoya sprinted from fourth to second on the lap 454 restart in pursuit of Kenseth. But with a full tank of fuel and fresh tires, Kahne passed Montoya for second on lap 473. Kahne caught up with Kenseth and fought an intense battle in the closing laps, but fell short by a mere .188 seconds.
Also clinching his spot in the Chase is Clint Bowyer with a 14th-place finish. Bowyer remains second in the point standings and narrows Jimmie Johnson’s lead to just 18 points, after Johnson broke his radiator in a lap 358 wreck and finished 36th.
Next up is Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 1st with television coverage on ESPN starting at 7:30pm ET.
