tool name
closeKenseth wins again on Sunday,
notches the California sweep
DAVID POOLE / The Charlotte Observer
Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007
FONTANA, Calif. – Score one for the Robbie Reiser Machine.
Reiser wasn’t at California Speedway on Sunday, but Kenseth said that doesn’t mean his crew chief wasn’t a part of the team’s victory in the Auto Club 500.
“He should be really proud of the team he has assembled,” Kenseth said of Reiser, who is sitting out a four-race suspension levied by NASCAR for a rules infraction found on the No. 17 Ford in Daytona 500 qualifying.
Chip Bolin, the team’s engineer who’s filling Reiser’s crew chief role in the interim, agreed. “Robbie has a machine here that will run itself if we all do what we’re supposed to be doing,” Bolin said.
Reiser’s suspension from the track doesn’t keep him from working at the team’s shop, so while Kenseth and Bolin were at Daytona he was back in North Carolina getting this car ready to try to win this race for a second straight year.
The over-the-wall crew that Reiser has carefully assembled and leads played an important role, too, getting their driver back on to the track with the lead on the day’s final pit stop.
While that certainly played a major role in the ultimate outcome of the season’s second points race, what happened before and not long after that pit stop helped, too.
Kenseth led 133 of 250 laps, but after making a green-flag stop on Lap 196 he found himself about two seconds behind Jimmie Johnson.
“We had a nice lead there,” Johnson said. “And then, the wonderful debris caution came out. I think we all saw it coming.”
Was Johnson questioning the validity of that yellow?
You bet.
“If anyone has seen the debris, I would like to know what it was,” he said. “I think they had five trucks looking for it.”
All of the leaders would have had to make pit stops anyway. Now, they would all come under yellow and at the same time. Kenseth’s crew got it done while Johnson’s had a slight misstep and got their driver back out in the fifth spot.
Jeff Burton and his Richard Childress Racing teammate, Kevin Harvick, were lined up behind Kenseth for the restart with 20 laps left, and it was Harvick, the Daytona 500 winner, who mounted the charge. He was eroding Kenseth’s edge as the laps counted off.
“He certainly was faster at the time,” Kenseth admitted. “He was certainly going to get there and make it hard. I don’t know if I could have held him off or not. I am glad I didn’t have to find out.”
Harvick’s charge was blunted when David Reutimann’s crash on Lap 243 brought out a yellow and then a red flag. After a delay of just more than 15 minutes, as the field lined up for a four-lap race to the finish, Harvick had a flat left-front tire and had to pit.
“It has been one of those weeks,” said Harvick, who wound up 17th and still doesn’t have a top-five finish here. “We had a flat yesterday in the Busch race and one today. But running with the leader and having a chance to win is what it is all about.”
That left Burton in second as the green flew, but he spun his tires on the restart and got passed by Jeff Gordon for second and Jimmie Johnson for third. Nobody, though, mounted much of a challenge to Kenseth, who swept the Busch and Cup races here the same way Harvick did it at Daytona.
