Article by Brody Jones
The “Wild West” was an apt description for the Subway FreshFit 500. After all the sheet-metal, smoke, and Speedy-Dry settled, it was in the Arizona desert where Jeff Gordon, despite an early-race incident with Carl Edwards, broke a 66-race winless streak by passing Kyle Busch with eight laps remaining to win at Phoenix. Despite the weather being a bit on the brisk side of things, Phoenix International Raceway had the aura of excitement surrounding it Sunday afternoon as Carl Edwards was sitting on the pole with a new track record at 137.279 mph. The Busch brothers led the early going, with Kyle taking the lead from brother Kurt at lap 7. On lap 20 the first caution came out for debris, leading to the first round of pit-stops on the afternoon. The second caution came out on lap 34 when “The Tasmanian Devil” Marcos Ambrose turned Robby Gordon around, leading to a lengthy garage stay for the Orange, California native. At lap 50, last week’s Cinderella story, the local boy Trevor Bayne (even if he did go to… ick… Halls), had his golden carriage turn into a pumpkin following contact with Travis Kvapil as he backed into the turn 1 wall.
At Lap 59, Kyle Busch got loose in turn 2 and rammed hard into pole-sitter Carl Edwards, causing him to hit the rumble-strips hard and hit the wall in turn 3, taking Jeff Gordon into the wall with him. Behind that incident, as a result of the Busch/Edwards skirmish, Kevin Harvick was spun around by Mark Martin. Seven laps later, “The Big One” took place as Matt Kenseth and Brian Vickers made contact, triggering a massive 13-car pile-up that took out several of the front-runners such as Jeff Burton, Clint Bowyer, and Vickers among others. The race was red-flagged for 14 minutes to clean up the track. On lap 126, the 6th caution of the day came out when David Ragan blew a tire on exit in turn 3 and hit the wall at a hard one-o’clock angle, resulting in heavy damage to Ragan’s UPS Ford Fusion. All was quiet on the western front until lap 217 when Joey Logano’s engine expired for the event’s 7th caution of the day. Jeff Gordon was leading the race at this point with Jimmie Johnson in second going into the pits. But on the pit stop, it looked like signs of the late 2010 pit-road miscues for Jimmie Johnson’s team reared their ugly head as they fell from second to ninth place.
On Lap 285, the final caution of the afternoon came out following a round of green-flag pit stops due to an Andy Lally accident. Tony Stewart had taken two tires on his pit-stop and had the late-race lead, trying to do the same thing that team-mate Ryan Newman did to win at Phoenix in last spring’s race with Kyle Busch in second as they took the green flag. Busch blew past Stewart on the restart and it looked like Kyle was getting his broom out for his second career NASCAR week-end sweep. But a funny thing happened on the way to Kyle’s victory coronation, as Jeff Gordon kept reeling in Busch and with 8 laps to go, muscled past Busch and would never look back as he took the checkered flag for the 83rd time in his career, tying him with Cale Yarborough on the all-time Sprint Cup win list with 83. After the race, he did the weakest donut this side of a stale Dunkin Donut.
Kyle (or as this reporter has dubbed him, “Cryle”) Busch had to settle for second. Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five. Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, A.J. Allmendinger, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. rounded out the top ten on the afternoon.
Jeff Gordon led 6 times for 138 laps en route to the victory. Kyle Busch currently holds the Sprint Cup points lead with 80 points with brother Kurt in 2nd, three points back. Tony Stewart, A.J. Allmendinger, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, Ryan Newman, Juan Pablo Montoya, and David Gilliland is tied for Paul Menard for 10th in points. The next stop for the Cup Series is Las Vegas in one week’s time. Will the Busch brothers continue to stay one-two in the standings in their home-town, or will someone else hit the jack-pot? Will Carl Edwards ever teach me how to do a back-flip? Can Michael Rose talk Danica into accepting a sponsorship offer from SORSN.com, putting behind GoDaddy.com (although our commercials aren’t as racy… believe me, you don’t want that!) Tune in next week to find out!