We ran 400 laps tonight at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and the winner wasn’t decided till the last turn of the last lap! Jimmie Johnson passed Bobby Labonte on the outside coming off turn 4 for the final time and pulled off the three-peat tonight in the Coca-Cola 600. Johnson came from 3rd in the five-lap shootout after a late race red flag to get his second victory of the year (he won at Las Vegas in March), the 16th of his Nextel Cup career (he’s solo in 40th place on the all-time win list), and his 4th win in the last 5 events at “his house”.
This was win #135 for Hendrick Motorsports (their fifth of 2005) and was worth $470,091 from the over $6.3M in posted awards.
Set a bunch of records lately. We had a race record for leaders (21), a Cup record for cautions (22), and a world record for the use of the word “levigate”. Hopefully we won’t threaten those last two marks anytime in the near future. Sterling Marlin hit it on the head…..he can thank NASCAR for his being involved in the wreck that took out two of the Ganassi cars. Surely we’ve never been heard to utter “they make ’em up as they go along”, have we?
Bobby Labonte (2nd) had his best finish since he was the runner-up at Martinsville in April of 2004. His Top-5 finish gives us 24 drivers to score that mark this season….last year we had 31 drivers grab a T-5.
Carl Edwards (3rd) had his best finish since he won at Atlanta in March.
Martin Truex Jr (7th) had his career-best finish tonight. His previous best was 21st at Talladega earlier this month. His Top-10 finish makes 34 drivers to garner a Top-10 this season….last year we had 39 of ’em.
Dale Jarrett (8th) had his best finish since he was 5th at Bristol in April.
Jeff Green (11th) had his best finish since he was 7th at Martinsville last October.
Kevin Lepage (12th) had his best finish since he was 9th at Daytona in February.
Mike Bliss (15th) had his best finish since he was 12th at Fontana in February.
Mike Wallace (16th) had his best finish since he was 7th at Richmond last September.
Kyle Petty (17th) had his best finish since he was 8th at Bristol in April.
Bill Elliott (20th) had his best finish since he was 9th at the Brickyard last August.
STREAKIN….Ryan Newman has 3 Top-5’s in a row. Greg Biffle has 3 Top-10’s in a row.
This Week’s Elevator….UP: Operator of the Week is a tie between Bobby Labonte (+32) and Jeremy Mayfield (+32), followed by Kevin Lepage (+31), Jeff Green (+28 ), Greg Biffle (+27), Mike Wallace (+26), Kyle Petty (+20), and Joe Nemechek (+20). DOWN: The Big Dropper was Matt Kenseth (-34), followed by Jeff Gordon (-28 ), Jimmy Spencer (-25), Kasey Kahne (-22), and Johnny Sauter (-21). Almost a third of the field active in the “Shaft” tonight.
Martin Truex Jr led tonight for the first time in his NEXTEL Cup career. Bill Elliott led tonight for the first time since he led twice for 26 laps at Texas in April of ’04. Ricky Rudd led tonight for the first time since he led once for 2 laps at Kansas last October. We’ve had 40 different drivers lead a lap this season….last year we had 50 different leaders.
Jimmie Johnson padded his points lead tonight….it’s back up to 71 markers over Greg Biffle. We also lopped another three drivers from our “Stayin’ Alive” line….it’s now 16. The low-water mark this year was 15 when we left Darlington a couple weeks ago.
Bobby Labonte (31st to 24th) made the best move forward in the points this weekend, while Kurt Busch (5th to 10th) and Ricky Rudd (27th to 32nd) fell the most spots.
Our “locked-in” list (the Top-35 in Owner Points) appears to be stabilized as Jason Leffler (by virtue of missing this week’s event) is now 143 points out of 35th on the Owner Points list….and that’s gonna take a good two to three races (in all probability) to make up.(Stock Car Fans)(5-29-2005)
