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Ryan Newman stops for tires and fuel at Pocono Raceway en route to another second place. (Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR) » More Photos
HOT STUFF Suddenly, Ryan Newman is the hottest driver on the NASCAR Nextel Cup circuit who drives for someone other than Hendrick Motorsports. The Indiana native came up about half a car-length short of winning the rain-delayed Pocono 500, but it was one of the few failings he's had lately. Newman captured his third straight pole on Friday and scored his second straight runner-up finish on Sunday at Pocono Raceway. He's had top-10 finishes in five of the last six races and moved from 26th to 13th in the Nextel Cup standings during that period. All of which made his rain-shortened end-of-race duel with winner Jeff Gordon a little easier to swallow.
"Unfortunately, the rain came on the wrong lap," said Newman. "I'm not mad by any means. I won my first race because it rained out and got too dark. I guess it's only right I lose one that way at some point. … It's just the way it worked out. Obviously we were four feet short, but there is no controversy about it. In future reference, there was no way to get the race started back again. They would have had to make a controversial call at that point to shorten the race to a certain lap number with certain teams off sequence. We felt like we had it all figured out until they called it.
Of the caution that flew to end the race just as Newman was closing on Gordon, the runner-up knew it was coming. "Jeff saw the rain for the first time the lap the caution came out," Newman said. "He checked up because he didn't know how hard it was raining. I just kept the pedal to the metal and came up four feet short or whatever. I told Jeff after it was over if I had seen the caution light I was fixing to use eight tires instead of four."
Gordon's under-cover celebration widened his championshp lead. (Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR) » More Photos
NO THREEPEAT The hard-luck story of the Pocono 500 was the hard-luck story of the year, Denny Hamlin. Hamlin lost in Phoenix because of a pit-road speeding penalty, in Darlington because of a dropped lugnut on his last pit stop and in Bristol because of a fuel-pump drive failure. He once again led the most laps Sunday at Pocono, but pit strategy doomed his hopes of becoming the first driver since the late Tim Richmond to win three straight races here.
Hamlin was running in second place on Lap 65 when a caution flew for debris. Six lead-lap cars stayed out on the track and two others, eventual runner-up Ryan Newman and Tony Stewart, Hamlin's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, took two tires during the stop. Hamlin took four tires and rejoined the race in 11th place, where his car was nowhere as good as it had been in clean air. So instead of being out front, he was mired in mid-pack traffic. He soldiered on to a respectable albeit disappointing sixth place.
"In hindsight, the risk wasn't worth the reward," said Hamlin of his four-tire stop. "When you get back there, you have to really burn up the brakes and run your car hard - harder than I'd like, especially how good it is. You never know how many cars are going to take
ON A ROLL Two weeks ago, Casey Mears was teetering on the edge of falling outside the top 35 in points. But after scoring his breakthrough first win in the Coca-Cola 600 and finishing a respectable 13th at Dover, Mears had a strong fourth-place run at Pocono and has moved all the way to 23rd in the standings in just three races. He credited his crew chief, Darian Grubb, with following the same pit strategy that resulted in Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon winning the race. Like Gordon, Mears pitted out of sequence on Lap 82 of 107, a move that temporarily dropped him back in the field, but gave him track position at the end as the rain moved in that shortened the race.
"We've got a couple of good weathermen on our team. It just worked out good. We had a car capable of running inside the top five, we just needed to get there and he (Grubb) made a great call. It was a great call for us," Mears explained. "These guys have learned over the years how to read those weather things pretty good. Darian did an excellent job. Stevie (Letarte, Gordon's crew chief) is also on the same page."
FLATTENED OUT One of the most controversial moments of the Pocono 500 occurred on Lap 90, when Jimmie Johnson blew a right-front tire and had to go nearly a full lap around the track, in the process grinding off the front sway bar of his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Yet NASCAR chose not to throw a caution in order to finish the race before the rains arrived.
"We lost the left-front tire and when that happened it went flat and ground through the sway bar arm so we had to come into the garage area and put on a new sway bar arm. It was just the sway bar arm," said Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus. "That was the issue. And when he (Johnson) lost the tire, it was coming off of Turn 3 and he had to go a full 2.5-miles to get around the race track. When you have steel and concrete, the concrete is going to win over 2.5-miles."
POINTS UPDATE With his win in Sunday's Pocono 500, Jeff Gordon widened his points lead to 242 over new second-place man, Matt Kenseth (-242 point), who moved up on the basis of his ninth-place finish and Jimmie Johnson's 42nd. Denny Hamlin is third, the same place he finished last year, and trails Gordon by 247 markers. Then it's Johnson (-305), Jeff Burton (-421), Tony Stewart (-516), Carl Edwards (-539) and Clint Bowyer.
Positions nine through 12, are Kevin Harvick (-601), Kyle Busch (-636), Martin Truex, Jr. (-652) and Mark Martin (-663). Martin's total is especially impressive given that he's already skipped three races this season.
Pocono was race No. 14 on the Nextel Cup season. After race No. 26, the top 12 drivers will qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup and be eligible to compete for the championship.
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