CUP: Sunday Bristol Notebook

Sprint Cup

CUP: Sunday Bristol Notebook

Kasey Kahne’s epic bad luck continued at Bristol...

Tom Jensen | Posted March 18, 2012 Bristol, TN

Kasey Kahne was supposed to contend for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship in this, his first season with Hendrick Motorsports. Instead his year has begun with crashes in three of the first four races, the latest coming Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

And Kahne’s crash on Lap 24 of the Food City 500 had major ramifications on the outcome of the race. The accident started when fifth-place Kahne moved up into the outside on the frontstretch and was hit by Regan Smith, triggering a big pile-up behind them that also snared Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Marcos Ambrose and Kevin Harvick.

Kahne’s spotter, his cousin Kole, cleared Kahne, who was clearly past Smith in Turn 4, but when Kahne moved up on the frontstretch, Smith had caught up to him.

Busch, a five-time Bristol winner, was moving up through the field when the crash occurred. He got out of his Joe Gibbs Racing and slammed his arm into the roof of the car, obviously angry with the early race incident.

“I think Regan was battling with that same thing we all battle with here which is should you let the guy go or keep racing him,” said Edwards. “Kasey probably thought he was clear and that ended up in a wreck. It is hard to put 43 cars on a half-mile going this fast and not wreck. It is too bad it happened this early. We have a really great race car and I was excited to race today. I wanted to drive more.”

“This is the worst way I could start a season,” said a frustrated Kasey Kahne. “To have the fastest car every single week and something happens. Right there, there is no reason to force the issue at all. I’m just taking my time just cutting the bottom. Simple. I’m under Regan Smith as slow as he was I knew when my spotter cleared me in the center I would be clear on exit. He said ‘all clear good to go’. So when I get to the exit I knew Regan was slow and then he was back there. I listened too much to my spotter, I guess. I hate it for everybody it’s really disappointing and discouraging to have as fast of race cars as I have and not have nothing to show for.”

In his four starts with Hendrick, Kahne has finished 29th, 34th, 19th and 37th, an average of 29.75. He is now 32nd in points.

MIXED BAG FOR ROUSH FENWAY — To say Roush Fenway Racing had somewhat erratic results in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway is putting it mildly. The good? Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth finished second behind Brad Keselowski after battling for the victory late in the race. The bad? Carl Edwards finished 39th after being caught in the early race accident. The ugly? NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader Greg Biffle started on the pole and led 41 laps early before fading in the middle and late stages of the race to finish 13th.

“I raced him as hard as I could race him,” said Kenseth of his duel with Keselowski. “I was hoping he would get under me honestly and burn his right rear up and we would be able to drive away. I was trying to be careful on mine but yet racing as hard as I could against the fence there. I held him off as long as I could and he finally slipped by me. He had a little better car there at the end.”

“Just way, way too tight,” said Biffle. “We were way too tight at the end and we were plowing down on the splitter. It was all I could do.”

Wrecks are just a part of the landscape at tiny Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

MISTAKES HAMPER HENDRICK — Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was something of a house of horrors for Hendrick Motorsports, with Jimmie Johnson’s eighth-place the only one of the team’s four drivers to crack the top 10.

Kasey Kahne got wrecked early and finished 37th. Jeff Gordon had one of the fastest three or four cars in the field but cut a left-rear tire on the exhaust pipe of teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., sending the No. 24 Hendrick Chevy backward into the Turn 3 wall on Lap 360, en route to a 35th-place finish.

Gordon was not happy afterwards. “I think we bumped more than we should have is the way it looks like,” Gordon said of the contact with Earnhardt. “We definitely didn’t hit in the right location, because I think the tailpipe or something just cut the left-rear (tire) immediately. We didn’t hit that hard. We were a little bit too tight and he was pretty good on the restart there and we were racing hard. I know that it wasn’t intentional, but it certainly ruined our day.”

As for Earnhardt, he ran in the top five much of the day, but was caught speeding on pit road during his final pit stop. That penalty dropped him to the rear of the lead-lap cars and he finished 15th, the last car on the lead lap. In his last 22 points races, Earnhardt has now finished between 10th and 20th 14 times.

“We were real fast all weekend,” Earnhardt said, “Real happy with the way the National Guard/Diet Mountain Dew Chevrolet ran all day. We just sped on that last (pit) stop, I guess. A difficult way to give up a good finish.”

Earnhardt said he was sorry about the contact with Gordon. “I hate what happened with Jeff,” he said. “We were racing really hard — it was fun — if there’s a track where you can lean on each other, this ought to be the place, but we just barely rubbed down the back straightaway.”

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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