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Kenseth Victorious After Long Day/Night At Chicagoland Speedway

Joliet, IL – “I’ve always wanted to win here in Chicago. It feels great to finally get the win here.”

Finally! After enduring over six hours of rain delays, Matt Kenseth, top-seeded driver in NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, fought off his dominant rival Kyle Busch on a final restart, to win the Geico 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.

    Matt Kenseth celebrates after winning the Geico 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. [Mark Walczak Photo]


Busch, who led a race-leading 67 laps, held the top spot with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kenseth along-side as the field lined-up for the final restart on lap 245 to settle a rainy day battle that had enough plots to write a soap opera.

But it took some help from rival Kevin Harvick, whose Richard Childress Chevrolet was on Kenseth’s back bumper, to get clear of Busch.

“I have to thank Kevin for the help. Man, he gave me a big push on that restart when he could have tried to squeeze it in to the apron-a big push and got me out front. I owe him one for that, for sure.” said the winner.

Harvick pushed Kenseth’s Joe Gibbs Toyota past a somewhat startled Busch and into the lead that the Cambridge, WI native never gave up.

“They (Kenseth and Busch) were evenly matched. I was hoping they would get side-by-side. You have one of them slide up able to get three-wide or something happen. I figured (pushing him) was better than going three-wide and getting pinned on the bottom,” explained Harvick, who will drive for Stewart-Haas next season.

“The 29 (Harvick) pushed him. 1600 horsepower versus 800. Just got going fine and actually beat Kenseth to the start/finish line, but then he got help from behind and got pushed past me basically. Kurt (Busch) didn’t get a good enough restart to get with me and push me forward to keep us side-by-side going into 1,” said the younger Busch who finished second for a 1-2 Gibbs’ sweep.

Kenseth, whose win was a career-high sixth of the season and 34th of his Cup series career, was glad a tough week and race-day were both over. “Man it’s been a long week for everybody. It feels good to finally race and get to victory lane.”

But things didn’t go quite so easy for other members of the Chase crew.

Five-time series’ champion Jimmie Johnson endured two pit stop problems, but rallied back from 22nd place to finish fifth in his Hendrick Chevrolet.

“We finally got back during our next-to-last run. We had a jack failure on one stop and a NASCAR official held us when he thought all of the lug nuts weren’t on. Those both lost us time early, but a great recovery; we’re off to a good start.”

Another comeback story was Johnson’s teammate Jeff Gordon who suffered a flat tire after leading the field for 17 laps. “We were lucky to get that caution that got us back on the lead lap,” the Hendrick Chevrolet pilot said. “That shows how much fight this team has. We were far down on that last restart and we ended up with a shot at fifth behind Jimmie.”

Kurt Bush overcame a frustrating early-race speeding penalty to finish fourth for his single-car Furniture Row team. Johnson ended up fifth and Gordon sixth in a race that could have been worse for both.

Other Chase members were not as fortunate, however.

Ryan Newman (10th), Carl Edwards (11th), Martin Truex Jr. (18th), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (35th) and Joey Logano (37th), all find themselves well behind the leaders with nine races remaining.

Logano, who started on the pole in his Penske Ford and led the first 32 laps, was especially dejected about his early problems.

“I am pretty angry. That was such a fast race car we had. After the rain delay we came in and put on four tires and lost some track position but we were going to take two on the next stop and get track position. Unfortunately the motor blew up,” said Logano, who briefly re-entered the race, only to retire for good on lap 175.

Earnhardt Jr. had a pit stop encounter with Kasey Kahne on lap 170 that resulted in a damaged grill which was replaced at the cost of a lap. He came back, only to suffer overheating trouble on his Hendrick Chevrolet due to the nose damage.

“I don’t know what happened there in the pits. They all stopped there in front of me and I ran into Kasey. We tried to fix it but the downforce was gone,” said the hard-luck fan favorite. “Something broke later in the motor. It’s going to be really hard to win a championship this far behind.”

The race, which started over an hour late, was halted for 5 hours and 10 minutes on lap 116 as a series of showers hit the region about 20 laps short of half-way; which would have made it an official race.

During the long delay Kenseth took a “fifteen-minute power nap, let the kids crawl all over me, and woke up with the feeling we’d win the race.”

That turned out not to be a dream.

Chase Notes:
• By the time the race restarted at 10:00 pm eastern, much of the less-than-capacity crowd had long-since left for a drier place. Only a few thousand were there for the finish.

• Kenseth hopes to follow in the footsteps of the two most recent Chicagoland winners, Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski, both of whom went on to capture the series’ crown.

• Ricky Stenhouse, the top-finishing rookie, admitted that they went to a Sonic drive-in during the rain delay. He also took a nap, and I’m sure to the delight of NASCAR and their new regulations, said he gave it 110% during the race.

• 18 Chevrolets, 14 Fords and 11 Toyotas started the Geico 400.

• Only 43 entries were filed for the race, so every car made the starting field.

• Kyle Busch, who won the Camping World Truck event on Friday and the Nationwide race on Saturday, missed the weekend sweep when he “only” ended-up second in Sunday’s Sprint Cup run.

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