“Summer’s Five Things” is a daily column by Summer Bedgood for NASCAR fans to catch up on the most recent, relevant, and need-to-know news and information in the sport! While mostly focused on NASCAR, this column may also feature other interesting and exciting moments from the world of motorsports. Enjoy!
- Brad Keselowski sweeps weekend at Darlington Raceway
Prior to this weekend, Brad Keselowski had never won a national series race at Darlington Raceway.
Now, he has won in both the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) and the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS), and did so on the same weekend.
In both instances, Keselowski did not have the fastest car, but rather took advantage of the circumstances he was dealt in order to make it to Victory Lane.
And, interestingly enough, it was the No. 42 DC Solar Chevrolet in both races that he had to beat to do it.
On Saturday, Ross Chastain had the quickest car, leading a race high 90 of the 147 laps. However, a late-race tangle with Kevin Harvick took Chastain out of contention and allowed Keselowski to squeeze through for his third NXS win of the season.
On Sunday, Kyle Larson was absolutely the fastest in the No. 42 machine, and it wasn’t even close. Larson led 284 of the 367 laps, lapping cars so quickly that the free pass driver became a big part of the storyline.
However, as is often said in this sport, NASCAR is more than just a “fast car” competition. It is a race of mental acuity, intestinal fortitude, and true grit.
And that’s just on the driver’s part.
The pit crew, as both Larson and Keselowski would prove, is a huge part of the equation as well.
On what would be the final pitstop of the evening, Keselowski barely edged out Larson at the exit of pit road, giving Keselowski the lead and lane choice on the ensuing restart.
It was just enough. Keselowski was able to clear Larson on the restart, and Larson’s car began to fade when the No. 42 was no longer in clean air.
Eventually, Keselowski’s teammate Joey Logano was able to get by Larson for second, but Keselowski was already too far gone by that time.
Keselowski earned his first win of the 2018 season, his 25th career victory, and the first win for Team Penske at Darlington Raceway since 1975.
Keselowski was already locked into the Playoffs on points, which begins after next weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, the victory doubles his playoff points, which will greatly benefit his standing when the points are reset after next week’s race.
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Unofficial Race Results
- Kyle Larson once again loses a race that he dominated
Kyle Larson has a rather depressing statistic going for him right now: he has never won a race in which he has led 200 or more laps.
That’s crazy, right? For many races on the schedule, that number would be over half of the laps, and even on short tracks that’s nearing 50 percent of the total distance. How is that possible?
And yet, the numbers don’t lie.
Larson led 202 laps in the April race at Bristol Motor Speedway last season, but finished sixth; he led 241 laps in the June race at Dover International Speedway in 2017, but finished second; he led exactly 200 laps in the spring race at Bristol earlier this season, but finished second; and again on Sunday led 284 laps but finished third.
That has to be frustrating, right?
“I mean, this is my fifth Cup season, and I’ve run second or third a lot,” said Larson during his post-race press conference. “I guess you get used to the disappointment or whatever you want to call it. I can handle it, I guess, better than most people. But yeah, I mean, I’ve said it a few times, but obviously would like to have got the win today, but I’m just really proud of our race shop and our team for building a car like we had this weekend. Like I said, it’s a good time of year to show some speed.”
Larson has finished either second or third 28 times in his MENCS career. He has led 2,566 laps over the course of his career and has only five victories.
Many racecar drivers would have lost their sanity with those kinds of numbers.
The reasonable conclusion is that those stats are obviously going to change for Larson at some point. He’s going to have races where he shreds the competition and goes on to win the race, just as he has easily had the fastest car at times with no trophy to show for it.
Specifically for Sunday’s race, it was the loss of clean air that dashed Larson’s chances of victory. When eventual race winner Brad Keselowski beat Larson off pit road in the final pitstop, Larson had to race in traffic and his car’s handling suddenly went away.
“It’s always important to come out the leader off pit road or be the control car on the restart,” said Larson post-race. “I felt like if I could have been in clean air, I would have been all right. All day when I would get in traffic I’d get loose. There on that last run I was just really loose and allowed Joey (Logano) to get by. I knew the only really weakness we would have throughout the race was a short run and that’s what it kind of came down to. On long runs, I was just really, really good all race long. That was good. Hat’s off to everybody back at our race shop. This car was extremely fast. We had the dominant car and we proved it. We just came up a little bit short. Thanks to DC Solar and everybody, like I said. It’s nice to show some dominant speed like that and a 1.5-mile like this leading up to the Playoffs.”
Even though Larson has not yet made it to Victory Lane this season, the 26-year-old driver is locked into the Playoffs on points with one race remaining in the regular season.
- Tough day for Jimmie Johnson leaves him in precarious position
It’s no secret that 83-time winner and seven-time MENCS champion Jimmie Johnson has not lived up to expectations as of late. He is so far winless in 2018 after 25 races and is in the middle of the longest winless drought of his career.
However, it hadn’t just been Johnson. Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet as a whole seemed to be behind for much of this season, and only recently had they started to show that they were catching up.
On Sunday at Darlington, though, fellow Chevrolet driver Kyle Larson was dominating the Bojangles’ Southern 500 while Johnson’s teammate Chase Elliott raced around the top five for much of the evening.
It seemed that this was just not Johnson’s night.
To start off what would prove to be a dismal night, Johnson made an unscheduled pitstop on lap 63 due to a loose wheel, but had to come back to pit road to serve a penalty for a commitment line violation.
Later on in the race after Johnson had been fighting to get back on the lead lap, the No. 48 was back on pit road after Johnson reported the engine wasn’t running.
The No. 48 was pushed to the garage and, after the crew worked to diagnose the issue, officially retired from the race.
He would finish 39th after running just 227 of the 367 scheduled laps.
“It was something about the oil pump, I believe,” Johnson said in the garage area. “I’m not sure if it’s through the belt, of something else went on. But, the amount of time it takes to get the engine apart and the oil pump out to put a new one on, it just takes too long. Thankfully, the engine is okay, we think; but it just takes too long to get the oil pump out.”
“It’s just about cleaning things up,” Johnson continued when asked about the bad luck that seems to be plaguing his team. “I didn’t have a great lap in that second round of Qualifying that put us back. Unfortunately, we had a loose wheel; and then I missed the commitment line coming in. We’ve just got to clean those things up. Our cars are much better. I just have to thank everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for working so hard. We just have to minimize mistakes; and I think we can run a top five pretty easily.”
If it is any consolation, Johnson’s teammate William Byron also retired from the race early due to an engine issue that sounded very similar to what Johnson had described.
Next weekend is the regular season finale at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Johnson could potentially miss out on the postseason for the first time in his career if things don’t go his way.
He and teammate Alex Bowman will clinch a spot in the Playoffs as long as someone currently below the cutoff line does not win the race.
- Clint Bowyer frustrated following crash with Ryan Newman
With Darlington Raceway knowing for eating up tires, pit stops were a common site in Sunday’s race.
And since there weren’t a lot of cautions, many of these stops happened under green.
Unfortunately, Clint Bowyer was caught off guard when Ryan Newman attempted to make his stop.
On lap 312, through a series of unfortunate events, Newman slowed dramatically as he planned to head to pit road under green. Bowyer appeared to have no idea, and slammed into Newman’s rear bumper at full speed. Jeffrey Earnhardt also sustained some damage in the incident.
Both drivers were okay after the incident, though Bowyer’s night would end right then and there. Newman was able to continue.
Interestingly enough, Bowyer seemed more frustrated with lapped cars than he did with the crash that forced him to retire from the race early.
“I hit the 31 really hard,” said Bowyer. “I don’t know. I guess he was pitting or something and it’s a product of this place, I guess. There are lapped cars that are 50 laps down all over the damn place. That’s pretty frustrating. I’m about tired of that. This track is too narrow for cars to be that far off the pace.
“You’re in and out of those guys, diving all over the place, trying to navigate around them, trying to figure out where the hell they’re going, and then you come up on somebody trying to actually compete in the race and you’re not on the game — he’s pitting or something and I run over him,” Bowyer continued. “I didn’t see him wave, but, like I said, when you come off of two and you pass 37 lapped cars and you get your bearings and everything else – maybe he waved, maybe he didn’t – I didn’t see it. He just stopped right in front of me and I hit him hard. I’m obviously pissed off and frustrated, but it seems to be that way for me every time I come here. We run decent. We had a frustrating night, just mistake after mistake and obviously we ended up wrecked.”
Bowyer wound up finishing 36th while Newman ended the night in 19th, just one lap off the pace.
With next week in Indianapolis serving as the regular season finale, Bowyer is already locked into the Playoffs by virtue of his two wins this season.
Newman will have to win the race in order to make the postseason. He has one win at the Brickyard, earning the victory after leading 45 laps in 2013.
- No time like the present
What’s one more Darlington paint scheme announcement for 2018?
By Sunday morning, you would have expected that all Darlington paint schemes had been announced, unloaded and unveiled.
Richard Petty Motorsports, however, had other plans.
In an attempt to relive the story of how the famous STP day glo red/Petty blue paint scheme came about, RPM received approval from NASCAR to switch the car from all Petty blue to include the STP red ahead of the race Sunday night.
The inspiration from this came from the compromise that occurred between then-driver Richard Petty and STP’s Andy Granatelli when STP became a major sponsor of Petty’s in 1972. The paint scheme debuted in the Daytona 500 that season and has since become one of the sport’s most iconic paint schemes.
RPM’s current driver of the No. 43, Bubba Wallace, drove the car to a 26th-place finish in Sunday night’s Bojangles’ Southern 500.
~~
If you would like to receive “Five Things” in your inbox, or just connect with me, you may send me an e-mail at [email protected].
You can also follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
Summer’s Five Things: What You Need To Know For September 3, 2018
“Summer’s Five Things” is a daily column by Summer Bedgood for NASCAR fans to catch up on the most recent, relevant, and need-to-know news and information in the sport! While mostly focused on NASCAR, this column may also feature other interesting and exciting moments from the world of motorsports. Enjoy!
Prior to this weekend, Brad Keselowski had never won a national series race at Darlington Raceway.
Now, he has won in both the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) and the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS), and did so on the same weekend.
In both instances, Keselowski did not have the fastest car, but rather took advantage of the circumstances he was dealt in order to make it to Victory Lane.
And, interestingly enough, it was the No. 42 DC Solar Chevrolet in both races that he had to beat to do it.
On Saturday, Ross Chastain had the quickest car, leading a race high 90 of the 147 laps. However, a late-race tangle with Kevin Harvick took Chastain out of contention and allowed Keselowski to squeeze through for his third NXS win of the season.
On Sunday, Kyle Larson was absolutely the fastest in the No. 42 machine, and it wasn’t even close. Larson led 284 of the 367 laps, lapping cars so quickly that the free pass driver became a big part of the storyline.
However, as is often said in this sport, NASCAR is more than just a “fast car” competition. It is a race of mental acuity, intestinal fortitude, and true grit.
And that’s just on the driver’s part.
The pit crew, as both Larson and Keselowski would prove, is a huge part of the equation as well.
On what would be the final pitstop of the evening, Keselowski barely edged out Larson at the exit of pit road, giving Keselowski the lead and lane choice on the ensuing restart.
It was just enough. Keselowski was able to clear Larson on the restart, and Larson’s car began to fade when the No. 42 was no longer in clean air.
Eventually, Keselowski’s teammate Joey Logano was able to get by Larson for second, but Keselowski was already too far gone by that time.
Keselowski earned his first win of the 2018 season, his 25th career victory, and the first win for Team Penske at Darlington Raceway since 1975.
Keselowski was already locked into the Playoffs on points, which begins after next weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, the victory doubles his playoff points, which will greatly benefit his standing when the points are reset after next week’s race.
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Unofficial Race Results
Kyle Larson has a rather depressing statistic going for him right now: he has never won a race in which he has led 200 or more laps.
That’s crazy, right? For many races on the schedule, that number would be over half of the laps, and even on short tracks that’s nearing 50 percent of the total distance. How is that possible?
And yet, the numbers don’t lie.
Larson led 202 laps in the April race at Bristol Motor Speedway last season, but finished sixth; he led 241 laps in the June race at Dover International Speedway in 2017, but finished second; he led exactly 200 laps in the spring race at Bristol earlier this season, but finished second; and again on Sunday led 284 laps but finished third.
That has to be frustrating, right?
“I mean, this is my fifth Cup season, and I’ve run second or third a lot,” said Larson during his post-race press conference. “I guess you get used to the disappointment or whatever you want to call it. I can handle it, I guess, better than most people. But yeah, I mean, I’ve said it a few times, but obviously would like to have got the win today, but I’m just really proud of our race shop and our team for building a car like we had this weekend. Like I said, it’s a good time of year to show some speed.”
Larson has finished either second or third 28 times in his MENCS career. He has led 2,566 laps over the course of his career and has only five victories.
Many racecar drivers would have lost their sanity with those kinds of numbers.
The reasonable conclusion is that those stats are obviously going to change for Larson at some point. He’s going to have races where he shreds the competition and goes on to win the race, just as he has easily had the fastest car at times with no trophy to show for it.
Specifically for Sunday’s race, it was the loss of clean air that dashed Larson’s chances of victory. When eventual race winner Brad Keselowski beat Larson off pit road in the final pitstop, Larson had to race in traffic and his car’s handling suddenly went away.
“It’s always important to come out the leader off pit road or be the control car on the restart,” said Larson post-race. “I felt like if I could have been in clean air, I would have been all right. All day when I would get in traffic I’d get loose. There on that last run I was just really loose and allowed Joey (Logano) to get by. I knew the only really weakness we would have throughout the race was a short run and that’s what it kind of came down to. On long runs, I was just really, really good all race long. That was good. Hat’s off to everybody back at our race shop. This car was extremely fast. We had the dominant car and we proved it. We just came up a little bit short. Thanks to DC Solar and everybody, like I said. It’s nice to show some dominant speed like that and a 1.5-mile like this leading up to the Playoffs.”
Even though Larson has not yet made it to Victory Lane this season, the 26-year-old driver is locked into the Playoffs on points with one race remaining in the regular season.
It’s no secret that 83-time winner and seven-time MENCS champion Jimmie Johnson has not lived up to expectations as of late. He is so far winless in 2018 after 25 races and is in the middle of the longest winless drought of his career.
However, it hadn’t just been Johnson. Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet as a whole seemed to be behind for much of this season, and only recently had they started to show that they were catching up.
On Sunday at Darlington, though, fellow Chevrolet driver Kyle Larson was dominating the Bojangles’ Southern 500 while Johnson’s teammate Chase Elliott raced around the top five for much of the evening.
It seemed that this was just not Johnson’s night.
To start off what would prove to be a dismal night, Johnson made an unscheduled pitstop on lap 63 due to a loose wheel, but had to come back to pit road to serve a penalty for a commitment line violation.
Later on in the race after Johnson had been fighting to get back on the lead lap, the No. 48 was back on pit road after Johnson reported the engine wasn’t running.
The No. 48 was pushed to the garage and, after the crew worked to diagnose the issue, officially retired from the race.
He would finish 39th after running just 227 of the 367 scheduled laps.
“It was something about the oil pump, I believe,” Johnson said in the garage area. “I’m not sure if it’s through the belt, of something else went on. But, the amount of time it takes to get the engine apart and the oil pump out to put a new one on, it just takes too long. Thankfully, the engine is okay, we think; but it just takes too long to get the oil pump out.”
“It’s just about cleaning things up,” Johnson continued when asked about the bad luck that seems to be plaguing his team. “I didn’t have a great lap in that second round of Qualifying that put us back. Unfortunately, we had a loose wheel; and then I missed the commitment line coming in. We’ve just got to clean those things up. Our cars are much better. I just have to thank everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for working so hard. We just have to minimize mistakes; and I think we can run a top five pretty easily.”
If it is any consolation, Johnson’s teammate William Byron also retired from the race early due to an engine issue that sounded very similar to what Johnson had described.
Next weekend is the regular season finale at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Johnson could potentially miss out on the postseason for the first time in his career if things don’t go his way.
He and teammate Alex Bowman will clinch a spot in the Playoffs as long as someone currently below the cutoff line does not win the race.
With Darlington Raceway knowing for eating up tires, pit stops were a common site in Sunday’s race.
And since there weren’t a lot of cautions, many of these stops happened under green.
Unfortunately, Clint Bowyer was caught off guard when Ryan Newman attempted to make his stop.
On lap 312, through a series of unfortunate events, Newman slowed dramatically as he planned to head to pit road under green. Bowyer appeared to have no idea, and slammed into Newman’s rear bumper at full speed. Jeffrey Earnhardt also sustained some damage in the incident.
Both drivers were okay after the incident, though Bowyer’s night would end right then and there. Newman was able to continue.
Interestingly enough, Bowyer seemed more frustrated with lapped cars than he did with the crash that forced him to retire from the race early.
“I hit the 31 really hard,” said Bowyer. “I don’t know. I guess he was pitting or something and it’s a product of this place, I guess. There are lapped cars that are 50 laps down all over the damn place. That’s pretty frustrating. I’m about tired of that. This track is too narrow for cars to be that far off the pace.
“You’re in and out of those guys, diving all over the place, trying to navigate around them, trying to figure out where the hell they’re going, and then you come up on somebody trying to actually compete in the race and you’re not on the game — he’s pitting or something and I run over him,” Bowyer continued. “I didn’t see him wave, but, like I said, when you come off of two and you pass 37 lapped cars and you get your bearings and everything else – maybe he waved, maybe he didn’t – I didn’t see it. He just stopped right in front of me and I hit him hard. I’m obviously pissed off and frustrated, but it seems to be that way for me every time I come here. We run decent. We had a frustrating night, just mistake after mistake and obviously we ended up wrecked.”
Bowyer wound up finishing 36th while Newman ended the night in 19th, just one lap off the pace.
With next week in Indianapolis serving as the regular season finale, Bowyer is already locked into the Playoffs by virtue of his two wins this season.
Newman will have to win the race in order to make the postseason. He has one win at the Brickyard, earning the victory after leading 45 laps in 2013.
What’s one more Darlington paint scheme announcement for 2018?
By Sunday morning, you would have expected that all Darlington paint schemes had been announced, unloaded and unveiled.
Richard Petty Motorsports, however, had other plans.
In an attempt to relive the story of how the famous STP day glo red/Petty blue paint scheme came about, RPM received approval from NASCAR to switch the car from all Petty blue to include the STP red ahead of the race Sunday night.
The inspiration from this came from the compromise that occurred between then-driver Richard Petty and STP’s Andy Granatelli when STP became a major sponsor of Petty’s in 1972. The paint scheme debuted in the Daytona 500 that season and has since become one of the sport’s most iconic paint schemes.
RPM’s current driver of the No. 43, Bubba Wallace, drove the car to a 26th-place finish in Sunday night’s Bojangles’ Southern 500.
~~
If you would like to receive “Five Things” in your inbox, or just connect with me, you may send me an e-mail at [email protected].
You can also follow me on Twitter and Instagram.