Bowyer beats Burton at Talladega

October 24th, 2011

Clint Bowyer edged his Richard Childress Racing team-mate Jeff Burton in a close finish at Talladega, giving the team its 100th NASCAR Sprint Cup victory.

The RCR pair worked in tandem all the way through the 500 miles and were up front when the green flag waved for the final restart with two laps to go, following the ninth caution of the race – caused by an incident in which Furniture Row’s Regan Smith crashed hard against the SAFER barrier at Turn 2.

Bowyer lined up right behind Burton to push him in the two-car draft after crossing the start-finish line to start the penultimate lap, both gaining enough momentum to be able to break away from the pack immediately.

Then out of the final turn, with rivals way behind in their mirrors and the chequered flag in sight, Bowyer made his move on the inside to try to beat his team-mate, eventually being able to just edge Burton by 0.019 seconds in a close drag race to the finish.

“I knew it was too early to go, but it was going to be a drag race, give us both a shot at it,” said Bowyer after claiming his fifth Cup win, his second at Talladega.

“[Burton] worked so well with me all day long. You hate that it comes down to that. It is what it is. You owe it to your team, to your sponsors to go out and win the race. Unfortunately it came down to that situation.

“But trust me, I was prepared to push him to the win no matter what the cost was if we would have had people breathing down or necks, too. Just wasn’t meant to be for him. He’s been a great team-mate. Learned a lot from him. He’s already won a lot of races. I think he’s won like 20-something races, I’ve only won five.”

Dave Blaney ran third at the flag, pushed by Chase contender Brad Keselowski in fourth, ahead of the Red Bull tandem of Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne, the latter recovering from a spin earlier in the race. Tony Stewart led the most laps, working with at least three different drafting parters, and eventually finishing seventh.

Roush Fenway Racing’s Carl Edwards finished 11th after a conservative run to the finish, pushed by his team-mate Greg Biffle. His solid result allowed him to increase his lead in the Chase standing up to 14 points over his team-mate Matt Kenseth, who finished 18th.

“That was a heck of a day for teamwork,” said Edwards. “Greg did an unbelievable job of sticking with me and we get to come out of here extending our points lead, which is good. I am pleased that we are able to get out of here with the points lead intact because you just never know what can happen here and to extend it is just great.”

Hendrick Motorsports drivers had looked strong in practice and qualifying, sweeping the front row of the grid, and despite all of them taking turns in the lead of the race while drafting together, they were unable to make enough progress in the closing laps, after running at the back of the field for most of the race while trying to avoid trouble.

“With the green-white-chequered situation, there’s not a lot of time to get organised and we lost our momentum there and got to the outside and kind of stalled out up on the top and finished far worse than we had hoped to,” said Johnson, who moved up one spot in the Chase but lags now 50 points from Edwards.

Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch were both involved in a multi-car incident on lap 104 when Richard Petty’s AJ Allmendinger lost control of his car while being pushed by his team-mate Marcos Ambrose. Kurt Busch was also among the Chase contenders hitting trouble, crashing hard into the spinning JTG Daugherty Toyota of Bobby Labonte later on.

Ryan Newman also had a tough day, spinning on lap 80 while pushed by his Stewart Haas team-mate Stewart, dropping to the bottom of the Chase standings as a result.

Labonte was checked for pain in one of his feet at the track’s infield care centre while all other drivers involved in incidents were evaluated and released.