ALL-STAR: Winning Is Everything

Sprint Cup

ALL-STAR: Winning Is Everything

The NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race is one of the biggest events on the calendar...

Tom Jensen | Posted May 21, 2011 Concord, NC

Kurt Busch celebrates his win in the 2010 Sprint All-Star Race. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

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Without question, the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 are NASCAR’s two biggest races. But with a $1 million purse, hometown crowds and a spectacular night of fireworks, tonight’s Sprint All-Star Race is one of the most prestigious events on the schedule, an event all 21 drivers want to win badly.

Last year, Kurt Busch won his first All-Star race after crashing out of the 2007 event while racing his brother Kyle for the lead. Kurt said to finally break on through and win was a huge moment.

“To be part of the winners – to be up there with guys like Darrell Waltrip, Dale (Earnhardt) Sr., the names that have won that race, it’s almost like the fraternity of winning a (NASCAR) championship; there’s only a select few that have done it,” Busch said. “To have won my first race at Bristol, bring home a championship and to have that sweep here last year at Charlotte, it ranks right up there. It’s a top-three event through my career. It’s really a special night to be able to pull it off and claim a million bucks in one night.”

Asked where his record-tying three All-Star victories rank in his career, Jeff Gordon said they were up there. “They are definitely big,” Gordon said. “The way I look at big races is if you are fortunate enough to win one, the only way to truly appreciate it is to see where it came in your career. If it came early in your career and then you’ve had time to go and run in that race and see how challenging it is and learn the history about it and struggle at trying to win it again, then you appreciate it a lot.”

Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin, both two-time All-Star winners, agreed.

“This one is in the top three-to-five for sure,” said Johnson. “All-Star races are hard to win. The prize money; you can make an amazing year out of winning this race. The prize money generated here affects the bottom line that much. And it’s just such a cool race. It’s in the top five for me.”

Martin won his first All-Star race in 1998, when Gordon ran out of gas on the last lap, and a second in 2005, when he drove what may have been the best race of his career. Both of those victories came with his former team, Roush Fenway Racing.

“I don’t have a good way to rank those things, other than which ones do you remember. I vividly remember both those All Star wins,” said Martin. “I only have a small handful of wins that I vividly remember, none which are any more clear to me than those two wins. Both of them were dramatic in some fashion.

Mark Martin has two wins in the Sprint All-Star Race. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

“Jeff Gordon ran out of gas on the last lap. I had no idea I was going to win the race until I won it, which was really fun and exciting. That’s the coolest way to win a race. And then a 2005 win with the red, white, and blue paint on it was really a major throwback and it was at the point in my career when I was afraid that I wouldn’t ever see another checkered flag. And to go out and earn that one the way we earned it flat-out — a lot of times I feel like my car wins my race for me, and I had a good car that night. But I feel like I made a real solid contribution to being able to pull that one off. I was very lucky. Every single move I made all night was the right move. And that never happens. I’m lucky to get 50/50 usually, so that was a real special night.”

For Kevin Harvick, winning here in 2007 meant he and his Richard Childress Racing crew had finally come to grips with a track where historically they had struggled.

“It is a night where everything is supposed to be your best cars, the best guys on the race track and I think that just knowing this is a race track that we haven’t had a lot of success at for us it was a huge moral victory more than it was anything,” said Harvick. “So, that lets us know that we can be capable of winning a race here. We’ve just got to put it all together. That was the best part of the night for us.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.

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Tom Jensen

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