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Snakebit Stewart
Late flat tire helps give win to Kahne
AP Photo
Kasey Kahne celebrates in Victory Lane after his second win at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in eight days.
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Published: May 26, 2008
CONCORD - CONCORD - Tony Stewart was on the verge of snapping a nine-month winless skid when he cut a tire and slapped the wall while leading comfortably with three laps to go, and Kasey Kahne survived a bad pit stop the last time around to win the Coca-Cola 600 Sprint Cup race last night.
Kahne won by 10 seconds against Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
A fluke? What fluke? Kahne's surprising All-Star victory sprint one week ago may not seem all that surprising now after his performance in last night's 41/2-hour marathon in Kenny Francis' Dodge in front of a crowd of some 160,000.
Kahne, who led 66 laps, was up front much of the race, and appeared sailing to a solid win, but his crew took too long on a gas-only, green-flag stop with 16 laps to go.
Kahne got his winning break when Stewart slapped the wall while cruising to what would have been his first win since last August. Stewart finished 18th.
And Kahne finally broke his own tour winless streak, which stretched back to 2006.
"We were one of the best cars all night," Kahne said proudly. "Dale Jr. fell out; he was awesome. Tony fell out at the end; he was awesome and there was no way to catch him. I was hoping he'd run out of gas.
"I was thinking second. Then I thought he'd run out of gas. I couldn't believe it.
"Our team has really stepped it up the last few weeks. I hope we've got it turned around now."
Greg Zipadelli, Stewart's crew chief, was frustrated: "We got a flat, another tire that wouldn't hold air. It's hard to believe. We lost a tire with a 51/2-second lead.
"We were so loose that last run (to keep from abusing the right-front) because we knew we had to be there at the end.
"It's just stupid. We must have run over something or had a small leak. There was no tire wear at all; we must have run over something; it blew out pretty quick."
However, Zipadelli might have tried to stretch his tires too far -- Stewart ran his last set of tires a full 100 laps, which Francis said was a gamble.
"Goodyear had great tires here, and I don't think anybody was complaining," Francis said. "The first long run we had in the race, we did see shades of cords, so we kept on our toes. But we never had any problems."
"If you keep putting yourself in contention to win, you're going to win, and now I'm proud of these guys," Ray Evernham, Kahne's car owner, said. "This is still a human sport, where that little extra bounce in your step can mean so much."
Gordon, embarrassingly slow all night, gambled on gas to pull out an almost miraculous fourth: "Man, it was a crazy one for us. But you take 'em any way you can. We had to right really hard to get our lap back. Steve Letarte (his crew chief) made some great calls. Man, it was pretty interesting racing these guys for fuel mileage, like Dale Jr. and Carl Edwards.
"But we just need to qualify better and get better track position. Unfortunately we couldn't get track position until the end."
Gordon and Busch exchanged words after the race. Busch wouldn't talk about that. Gordon: "I guess he doesn't like people to race him. Kyle and I never had any issues … but I raced him hard, just like I did everybody. And when track position is as important as it is here, you've got to race every single car for every single position. And I wasn't going to give anybody an inch.
"He's got an issue because he gave me the finger, and you know what -- that's not necessary."
"It was unfortunate for us but it was great points night," Busch said, who leaves Lowe's Motor Speedway the same way he arrived 10 days ago, atop the Sprint Cup standings.
Busch leads Jeff Burton by 94 points, Dale Earnhardt Jr. by 139 points, Denny Hamlin by 264 points, and Clint Bowyer by 282 points. The rest of the top 12: Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Gordon, Biffle and Kahne.
Busch, like nearly everyone, had to fight through problems: "Early on I thought I had a tire going down, and fell a lap down. We got that back. But then we had an alternator problem, just like Tony (his teammate) had at Richmond. We had to fight that battery problems all night -- no fans, no blowers. And we finally had to change it.
"Then we got up there, and we were racing for third at the end, and Carl Edwards raced us so hard he ran himself out of gas, and Greg got by us for second."
"This was hard fought, by all of us, the car was a handful to drive all night," Biffle said. "We know they're temperamental, but jeez…. We had to make some great saves.
"That's probably the toughest car I've ever driven. It was back and forth, all over the place. We probably had a fast enough car to run with Kasey, but we couldn't get track position.
"What a long night. Just like Greg Erwin (his crew chief) said, ‘Nothing goes uneventful here.'
"That's two straight weeks Kasey got us. You'd think 600 miles is long enough to get it done, but it took us that long just to get track position."
"We got lucky at the end -- got gas and made it last," Earnhardt said after rallying to fifth with a badly banged up car. He led 76 laps. "After we slapped the wall, I thought we were done. But we got lucky."
The final 100 miles (63 laps) went green, so just about everyone was fighting to save fuel, but most needed one final gas stop in the closing moments.
So the last laps went like this:
Kahne was leading when he pitted routinely under green with 16 to go.
That put Stewart in the lead, six seconds ahead of Kyle Busch, nine seconds ahead of Burton.
Busch and Stewart both pitted with 13 to go, putting Burton in front, about two seconds ahead of Biffle and Matt Kenseth.
Burton pitted with 11 to go, and so did Biffle and Kenseth.
That put Hamlin in the lead, but he pitted with 10 to go, putting Dave Blaney out front.
When Blaney pitted for gas with seven to go, Stewart was back in the lead, five seconds ahead of Kahne.
Then Stewart slapped the wall, Kahne regained the lead and eased home.
So Stewart was wrong. Last night's race wasn't like last week's follow-the-leader All-Star race. And this was wasn't boring. Confusing maybe, but certainly not boring.
In fact the last 90 minutes of the race was some of the best action in some time at Lowe's Motor Speedway, which raises questions as to why these drivers didn't do a better job of showmanship when there was $1 million on the line to the winner.
Take the 600 restart with 95 laps to go, Stewart did a slow restart, and cars were jammed all up behind him. Did Stewart brake-check the field? That all-but took Edwards and Hamlin out of the end game.
Some of the sport's biggest names had trouble during the tour's longest race.
Johnson, long a power here, was finally leading late when his car filled with smoke and he was forced to park. He wound up 39th.
Teammate Gordon was so far out of contention it was embarrassing. He was lapped early and had to fight to get back on the lead lap.
Earnhardt was leading comfortably when he cut a right-side tire and slapped the fourth-turn wall. J. J. Yeley then slammed into him from behind. That turned out to be a good play for Busch, whose crew needed to change the battery, which it did under that yellow.
Earnhardt, during repairs, was penalized a lap for speeding around the track safety vehicles; NASCAR, however, then abruptly rescinded the penalty.
Brian Vickers dominated much of the first half of the race, after Busch pitted when he felt he had a flat right-front. Busch's tire, though, was fine, but he then had to fight back from a lap down.
But then Vickers' left-rear wheel ripped off the car just before the halfway mark, sending him into the wall. That crash -- apparently triggered by loose lug nuts that ripped the entire wheel off Vickers' car -- sent the wheel flying through the air and into the infield, where it landed -- slowly, fortunately -- in a camper lot. Wheel-and-tire assemblies weigh about 75 pounds and are clearly dangerous as flying objects.
That was one of several loose-wheel incidents that have appeared to plague the stock-car tour the past few weeks, for unclear reasons.
Kurt Busch was strong early too, leading 64 laps, but a tire issue put him in the wall and he never recovered. He finished 16th.
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
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