Dodge Boys find tough going at Martinsville

Posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 9:30 AM EDT.

Martinsville (Va.) Speedway is the smallest track on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit, a .526-mile, paper clip-shaped oval, but considered one of the toughest on the schedule.

It proved to be tough for the Dodge Boys Sunday afternoon in the Tums Fast Relief 500. It was typical short-track beating and banging for 500 laps. When the checkered flag appeared, the top-10 finish order was without a Dodge for the first time since the 11th race of the season at Darlington, S.C.

Eight of the top-10 finishers were Chase drivers. The two Dodge drivers in the Chase—Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne—didn’t fare as well.

Busch had problems on a pit stop, lost track position and had to battle back the final 200 laps to finish 17th in the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger. He was the only Dodge driver finishing on the lead lap at the checkered flag. A late-race caution extended the race beyond the scheduled distance for a green-white-checkered finish.

“It was a tough day for our Miller Lite Dodge,” Busch said. “We started at the back (of the field) and made it all the way up inside the top 10 for quite a few laps. Because of our qualifying position, we didn’t get the best pit stall and trying to pit between stalls 26-31 was a challenge all day long. On a pit stop with about 200 laps to go, I had to get too close to the wall to squeeze into our pit box and that really did us in. We lost about 15 spots and got caught up way back in the pack.

“We got a lap down during that last long green flag run and worked our way into the Lucky Dog, but we couldn’t get the caution we needed until about 15 laps to go. It was too little too late to make up the spots we needed and finished 17th.”

Busch started 37th, but managed to work his way into the top 10 before the pit road issue which left him deep in the pack. He is sixth in the Chase standings, trailing leader Jimmie Johnson by 240 points.

Kahne had a couple of encounters with the retaining wall in the No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger. The first came after he cut down a tire and the second due to handling issues. Kahne finished 32nd.

“It definitely wasn’t our day,” Kahne said. “I can’t tell you what happened when our tire went down, but the car just went around on me in Turn three and I was in the wall. We had some pretty significant damage to the fuel cell area, but the team was able to fix that. Then I just got loose a few laps later and up into the wall again. This hasn’t been a great track for us, so we need to work on that. It was a pretty frustrating day.”

Kahne slipped to 11th in the Chase standings, 439 points behind the leader.

The race was slowed by 15 cautions for 77 laps. There were 21 lead changes among 12 different drivers. Race winner Denny Hamlin led the most laps—206. Four races remain on the 2009 Sprint Cup schedule.

Driver, team, finish
Kurt Busch, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, 17th
Elliott Sadler, No. 19 Best Buy Dodge, 21st
Reed Sorenson, No. 43 McDonald’s Dodge, 24th
Kasey Kahne, No. 9 Budweiser Dodge, 32nd
David Stremme, No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge, 33rd
AJ Allmendinger, No. 44 Coleman Natural Foods Dodge, 34th
Sam Hornish, No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge, 36th

NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase point standings
(Race 6 of 10 in the Chase)
1. Jimmie Johnson, 6,098
2. Mark Martin, -118
3. Jeff Gordon, -150
4. Tony Stewart, -192
5. Juan Pablo Montoya, -200
6.  Kurt Busch (Dodge), -240
7. Ryan Newman, -312
8. Greg Biffle, -350
9. Denny Hamlin, -352
10. Carl Edwards, -413
11. Kasey Kahne (Dodge), -439
12. Brian Vickers,-530

Tums Fast Relief 500 results
Martinsville (Va.) Speedway
1. Denny Hamlin
2. Jimmie Johnson
3. Juan Pablo Montoya
4. Kyle Busch
5. Jeff Gordon
6. Jamie McMurray
7. Ryan Newman
8. Mark Martin
9. Tony Stewart
10. Kevin Harvick
(Dodge Drivers)
17. Kurt Busch
21. Elliott Sadler
24. Reed Sorenson
32. Kasey Kahne
33. David Stremme
34. AJ Allmendinger
36. Sam Hornish Jr.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 9:30 AM EDT and is filed under Motorsports and tagged Dashboard. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.