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Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

Jeff Gordon fought back from a late slip to pass Kyle Busch with eight laps to go to win the Subway 500 at Phoenix International Raceway and end a victory lane drought that lasted almost two years.

Gordon dominated the last half of the race and led 138 of the 312 laps-- the most of anyone -- but a slow exit on the final pit stop cost him the lead to Busch. But Gordon had the faster car, and he relentlessly tracked down Busch, taking the lead coming out of the fourth turn and down the frontstretch with just a few miles to go.

It was Gordon's first victory in 66 races -- almost two years -- and it breaks the longest streak of futility in a storied career that features four Sprint Cup championships. . And it came in only his second race with a new crew chief, Alan Gustafson, after team owner Rick Hendrick decided to shake up the driver-crew chief combinations during the off-season.

With a yelp of delight we haven't heard in months, Gordon gave a ya-hoo and shouted, "You guys are awesome!" as he took the checkered flag.

"Welcome back, welcome back," said Gustafson. "Awesome job."

Moments later, Hendrick got on the radio with his own congratulations.

"Thanks so much, boss," Gordon replied. "Thank you sooo much for this opportunity. I'm loving these guys."

The race was slowed by eight yellow flags, especially toward the beginning of the race, including one for a multi-car crash that took out pole winner Carl Edwards and a number of other good cars.

 

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Filed under: Elliott Sadler, Michael Waltrip, Daytona Int'l Speedway, Camping World Truck Series, SPEED TV, NASCAR

When MIchael Waltrip crossed the finish line a winner in the Camping World truck series race at Daytona International Speedway Friday night with only half a spoiler to retard his progress, you knew NASCAR wouldn't stand for that, at least to a degree.

Despite the broken spoiler (above), it was an emotional, stirring victory for Waltrip, coming as it did 10 years to the day of his first Daytona 500 victory in 2001 in the race that took the life of his car owner and friend, Dale Earnhardt.

In the announcing booth after the truck race, Michael's brother, Darrell, confidently predicted that the victory would stand, but NASCAR would fine the team for the broken piece.

Darrell Waltrip's prediction was spot on, as NASCAR levied hefty penalties for the spoiler, which "did not meet specifications in post-race inspection," the sanctioning body announced Wednesday.

"As a result, crew chief Doug Howe has been fined $25,000 and placed on NASCAR probation until Dec. 31. Owner Billy Ballew has been penalized with the loss of 25 championship owner points," NASCAR's statement said.

 

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Filed under: Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Nationwide Series, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

Whoever wins the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup series championship, his name won't be Daytona 500 champ Trevor Bayne.

The 20-year-old rookie, who became the youngest winner of the Daytona 500 Sunday, said he's sticking with his original plan for the season -- a full-time Nationwide series run for the championship and a part-time Sprint Cup campaign.

"I think I am going to stay with Nationwide," Bayne said Tuesday on the weekly NASCAR teleconference. "Nothing has really changed for me other than that I am the Daytona 500 champion, which is really incredible.

"I think we are still going to have an awesome year for Roush Fenway running for that Nationwide championship. Obviously we still have a blank car and I would love to get some partners on it, but as of now we are still running for it full time over there. I am still not full-time Cup and I am going to run for the championship in Nationwide. I don't regret any of our decisions there."

Bayne will also run at least 17 more races in Sprint Cup for the Wood Brothers.

As they have for the past several years and for most of their long and storied history in NASCAR, the Wood Brothers are running only a partial schedule.

 

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Filed under: Elliott Sadler, Michael Waltrip, Daytona Int'l Speedway, SPEED TV, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- An emotional, out-of-breath Michael Waltrip could barely choke out words of thanks after he made a dramatic last-lap pass to win the NASCAR Camping World Truck series 250-mile race Friday night at Daytona International Speedway.

Waltrip, who usually announces the truck races, swept past Elliott Sadler in a classic Daytona slingshot pass as the trucks sped into the tri-oval toward the checkered flag in a green-white-checkered, two-lap finish after a couple of big wrecks late in the race.

It came on the 10th anniversary of Waltrip's greatest and worst day -- his win in the 2001 Daytona 500 seconds after his car owner Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash in turn four on the last lap.

"I'm just so thankful, Waltrip said Friday night, nearly breathless, with tears and sweat gleaming on his face in the glare of the television lights in victory lane. "I want to thank the fans, man. They keep us going. And they've just been so good to us. It's just very emotional and I didn't know I could push Elliott all the way around there. And I was able to do it.

 

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Filed under: Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Daytona Int'l Speedway, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Sprint Cup, Richard Childress Racing, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Jeff Burton, with help from teammate Clint Bowyer, swept to victory in the second Gatorade Duel Thursday at Daytona International Speedway.

It was the first Speedweeks victory ever for the veteran driver, 43, from South Boston, Va.

Bowyer was second, followed by Michael Waltrip, Kyle Busch and surprising, unsponsored Brian Keselowski, who got a big push from his little brother, Brad, to become the most unlikely top-five finisher in a Sprint Cup race in quite awhile. Full results are here.

In the first Gatorade Duel, Kurt Busch captured the checkered flag.

"It's a shame two cars can't fit in here (in victory lane)," Burton said. "With the way things are going (with the two-car draft), Clint and I decided we were just going to find each other early and it worked out for both of us. For us, it was a great start (to the season)."

Waltrip's finish put him in his 25th consecutive Daytona 500. Waltrip and Brian Keselowski were the two drivers who raced their way into the 500 by virtue of their finishes in the second Duel.

"They like to put a car together at MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing) for the old man," Waltrip said. "To race in the Daytona 500 is just such a great opportunity. I'm certainly proud we have a fast car. We're going to be up in the middle of all that mess."

Bowyer said, "I don't know if there will be another rule change. It was fun out there. Obviously, you always want to win, but I probably should have made my move a little earlier."

As Burton took the checkered flag, Trevor Bayne and Jeff Gordon lost control of their two-car draft and Bayne spun into David Ragan, sending them both spinning.

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Crashes, Sprint Cup, FanHouse Exclusive, NASCAR

To live in Kannapolis, N.C., during the 20th century was to live in a company town, and if folks there didn't exactly sell their soul to the company store, everyone lived by the pulse of the massive Cannon Mills, provider of fluffy cotton towels and washcloths to a increasingly cleanliness-conscious nation.

"They had three shifts there -- first, second and third," recalled Martha Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt's mother. "When it came time for a shift change at Cannon Mills, a mile or so away, "they had a horn that blew," she said in a 2007 interview with this writer for Racing Milestones magazine. "You could hear it."

Ralph Earnhardt, her husband, started his adult life in the mills, but didn't stick around. He was too independent-minded for that. "He definitely didn't like being shut up in there," she said.

"When he and I got married, he was working on the third shift in the mill. He worked in the weave room. That was in '47. I was 17 when we got married and he was 19. He left the mill not too long after we got married and went to work for a gentleman down here on (U.S.) 29 in a garage. That's where he learned about building motors and all that.

"But then some of the local guys that raced around here came down, and Ralph worked on their cars. That's how he got into racing. He didn't like the mill anyway. It was a place to get out of."

 

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Filed under: FanHouse Exclusive, NASCAR

Once there was a time when the great Dale Earnhardt was a crew chief.

As you might expect, it was before he could legally drive.

From the age of 13 until well after he got behind the wheel of a race car, Earnhardt was the crew chief for Gray London, a Kannapolis sandwich maker who took up racing in the 1960s to escape the stress of producing 60,000 sandwiches a day at his Dainty Maid Foods plant in Kannapolis. The teen-aged Earnhardt also worked at London's Sunoco gas station in Kannapolis.

One night early in his driving career, London's yellow 1957 Chevy was fishtailing every time he came off the second turn on the dirt track at Concord (N.C.) Speedway.

"I came back into the pits and Dale was jumping up and down, raising Cain."

"Quit that!" the 13-year-old crew chief hollered at London.

"Quit what?"

 

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Filed under: Tony Stewart, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IRL, Indianapolis 500

The golden voice of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing has been stilled.

Tom Carnegie, the public address announcer at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more than 60 years, died Friday at age 91 in the Indianapolis suburb of Zionsville, the speedway announced.

From the end of World War II until well into the 21st century, Carnegie called the action for the fans in the grandstands. From 1946 to 2006, he called 61 Indianapolis 500s, 12 Brickyard 400s and six United States Grand Prix races.

His voice literally grew with the speedway. As the Indy 500 became ever more popular through the latter half of the 20th century, and more and more fans came to see the 500, Carnegie's voice became an ever-deeper, ever-richer baritone, with ever-more dramatic flourishes.

He was in his prime in an era when the Indy 500 was not only a race. but a contest of speed as well. Before the 500 itself on Memorial Day, the month of May was filled with the drama of the quest to go faster than the year before -- to reach 150 mph, and then 175, and finally the magic barrier of 200, and then even higher.

Through those magical years, Carnegie's deep voice cut through the din. And when he said, "And it's a NEEEEW TRACK RECORD!!", the packed grandstands roared.

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Crashes, NASCAR

It was the end of the 1995 Winston Cup season, and Jeff Gordon -- "Wonder Boy" -- was the new NASCAR champion, set to be formally crowned at the annual banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

High up in his lavish suite on the 36th floor, a day before the banquet, the runner-up, Dale Earnhardt, sat down with me and five other motorsports writers for an interview. I was doing a profile of him for Car and Driver, ready to ask him broad, overarching questions about his career, his life and his place in the sport. (Earnhardt and his wife, Teresa, are shown above at his seventh championship banquet in 1994).

It was a time of rapid expansion in a booming sport, with even bigger changes looming. NASCAR was talking about racing in Japan. Bruton Smith, on the fast track to becoming a billionaire, had gone public with Speedway Motorsports, Inc., in February 1995 and would open Texas Motor Speedway in 1997 and Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 1998.

Earnhardt was 44, having completed his 17th full season in the NASCAR Winston Cup series. Less than two weeks earlier, the two-time defending Cup champion (only his 1992 hiccup interrupted what could have been Earnhardt's own five-in-a-row string) had faced an all-but-insurmountable, 147-point deficit to Gordon going into the final race at Atlanta.

Gordon did his best to choke, stumbling to a 32nd-place finish, 14 laps down, but had such a large points lead it was all over on lap 61, when the 24-year-old rising star led a lap to clinch the title. Earnhardt, meanwhile, drove like a man possessed, and 19 laps later, made one of the classic moves of his career, passing four cars in one fell swoop in turns three and four to blast from fourth place to the lead.

Earnhardt won that race in a runaway -- his fifth victory of the year -- and even though he didn't win the title, it was a vintage Earnhardt year. He won the second Brickyard 400 in August and then at Bristol drove like a wild man, barging past anyone and everyone in his way until he got to leader Terry Labonte at the finish and wrecked him, too, though Labonte won it while crashing.

Earnhardt finished the season with 10 straight top-10s -- eight of those top fives, including two victories -- but couldn't catch Gordon. The Intimidator was done in by his two DNFs, both at Michigan, including a crash in June that injured his neck and shoulders and left him sore right up to the point of this interview on Nov. 30, 1995. But he was a happy man that day, secure in his life and his sport and still king of his domain, even as the upstart kid was challenging his supremacy.

 

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Filed under: NASCAR Tracks, Sprint Cup, NASCAR, Charlotte Motor Speedway

CONCORD, N.C. -- Three tour buses slowly circled Charlotte Motor Speedway Tuesday and stopped on the backstretch, disgorging dozens of media members into the cold winter air next to the construction site of billionaire O. Bruton Smith's latest promotional extravaganza -- the world's HD largest video board.

This television screen will be 200 feet wide by 80 feet high and will tower some 30 feet higher than the backstretch lights. It will be visible -- with an impressively large image -- from every seat of the grandstands stretching from turn four all the way down the frontstretch and well into turn two.

In typical speedway fashion, the announcement included fanfare -- in this case the arrival of Marcus Smith, speedway president, and FOX NASCAR announcers Jeff Hammond and Mike Joy, all driving front end loaders.

But many in the media were more interested in hearing from Marcus Smith's father, Bruton, who parked his jet-black, brand-new Mercedes right there in the middle of the backstretch just a few yards away.

As a promoter, Smith goes back to the earliest days of NASCAR. He's always been the most innovative of the major racing promoters, and he's always been one to speak his mind. So despite the fanfare engineered by his son, when Bruton stepped out of his car, he was the one who was quickly surrounded by eager reporters.

 

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