Kenseth triumphs when Stewart gets knocked upside down

TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) — The cham­pi­onship con­tenders said Tal­ladega Super­speed­way would be the wild-card race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

That was an understatement.

Tal­ladega deliv­ered yet another “big one” Sun­day, when defend­ing NASCAR cham­pion Tony Stew­art trig­gered a 25-car pileup as he tried to pro­tect the lead.

His bid to block a long line of traf­fic on the last lap back­fired, and his car was sent sail­ing through the air in a chaotic crash that col­lected 10 of the 12 title contenders.

Day­tona 500 win­ner Matt Kenseth won under cau­tion, and every­one else was left won­der­ing when NASCAR will do some­thing dra­matic to alter the dan­ger­ous rac­ing at restric­tor– plate tracks.

“It’s not safe. It’s not. It’s blood­thirsty,” Dale Earn­hardt Jr. said. “If that’s what peo­ple want, that’s ridiculous.”

Stew­art, who assailed the wreck­fests at Tal­ladega with a sar­cas­tic dia­tribe in May, took full respon­si­bil­ity for cre­at­ing the lat­est carnage.

He had charged to the lead on the first lap of a two-lap sprint to the fin­ish, but got too far ahead of the pack to hang on to any draft­ing partners.

Kenseth was charg­ing on the out­side of him and Michael Wal­trip was lead­ing a line of traf­fic on the inside.

Stew­art was block­ing all over the track, and said he mis­tak­enly chopped across the front of Waltrip’s car to trig­ger the accident.

The con­tact hooked Stew­art to send him into a spin, and his car lifted into the air and sailed on its roof and then on its side over sev­eral other cars. It cre­ated chaos through the pack, which was run­ning three-wide in a fran­tic dash to the finish.

“I just screwed up. I turned down and cut across Michael and crashed the whole field,” Stew­art said. “It was my fault, block­ing and try­ing to stay where I was at.

“I was try­ing to win the race and I was try­ing to stay ahead of Matt there and Michael got a great run on the bot­tom and had a big head of steam, and when I turned down, I turned across the front of his car. Just a mis­take on my part but cost a lot of peo­ple a bad day.”

Stew­art gamely waved to the crowd as he climbed from his bat­tered car, while Jim­mie John­son sat on the ledge of Earnhardt’s win­dow for a lift back to the garage. Every­where they looked, they saw crum­pled cars.

Five-time Tal­ladega win­ner Earn­hardt said enough is enough with the car­nage. He was cred­ited with a 20th-place fin­ish that dropped him four spots in the stand­ings to 11th.

“If this was what we did every week, I wouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “I’ll just put it to you that way. If this was how we raced every week, I’d find another job. That’s what the pack­age is doing. It’s really not rac­ing. It’s a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. It cost a lot of money right there.

“If this is how we’re going to con­tinue to race and noth­ing is going to change, how about NASCAR build the cars? It’ll save us a lot of money.”

Of the 12 Chase dri­vers, only race win­ner Kenseth and second-place fin­isher Jeff Gor­don avoided the final wreck and it pushed Gor­don up four spots in the stand­ings to sixth with six races remaining.

But there was lit­tle change beyond that as every­one else ended up with a sub-par finish.

“That was the cra­zi­est, cra­zi­est fin­ish I’ve ever expe­ri­enced at Tal­ladega,” Gor­don said. “It was just insane. I remem­ber when com­ing to Tal­ladega was fun, and I haven’t expe­ri­enced that in a long time. That was bumper-cars at 200 mph. I don’t know any­body who likes that.”

It took NASCAR more than an hour to sort the final fin­ish­ing order. When the results were finally posted, Kyle Busch was third and was fol­lowed by David Ragan and Regan Smith, who grabbed a season-best fifth-place fin­ish in his final race with Fur­ni­ture Row Racing.

Chase dri­ver Greg Bif­fle was sixth, fol­lowed by points leader Brad Keselowski, Travis Kva­pil, Ryan New­man and Jeff Burton.

Keselowski con­sid­ered him­self lucky to be leav­ing with a 14-point lead over John­son. Keselowski said he was hold­ing on try­ing to stay in the bot­tom lane because he fig­ured that would be his escape route when the inevitable acci­dent happened.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.